Samsung has been busted cheating on smartphone benchmarks again. Apparently Samsung's "Game Optimizing Service" would throttle the performance of other apps when a benchmark app, like Geekbench for example, was running. This frees up more resources so the benchmark runs better and looks better in reviews and comparisons to other devices - to the tune over 35% to 45%. Samsung was caught out by users of a South Korean forum that found their benchmark scores changed if they changed the name of the benchmarking app. Up to 10,000 apps were listed in Samsung's "optimisation" app as whitelisted for throttling should a benchmark app be active.
Sci-Hub is really fucking excellent. It opens up the world of scientific research to everyone, providing acess to papers without having to pay thousands for journal access. It sucks then to see that Sci-Hub's founder, Alexandra Elbakyan, appears to be under investigation by the FBI. Google has confirmed to Alexandra that "Google received and responded to legal process issued by the Federal Bureau of Investigation compelling the release of information related to your Google account". It's unknown what the investigation is about, but her critics (the grubs at the publishing companies of these journals) have spread baseless rumours that she's a Russian spy and Sci-Hub is a ruse to "steal U.S. military secrets from defense contractors".
Research done by Heriot-Watt University in Scotland has found that brown crabs are addicted to undersea AC power cables - like the ones used to get power generated by off-shore wind turbines back to land. Apparently they're so entranced by the relatively low magnetic field these high voltage power cables emit (5% of the strength of a fridge door magnet), they "just sit still". The electromagnetism itself doesn't harm the crabs, but if they don't move, that means they're not eating or looking for a mate. I don't know if this is an actual problem, but it's so weird I couldn't help but share it.
Here's five interesting discussions over on The Sizzle's paid subscriber forum for you to enjoy over the weekend. If you are not a paid subscriber but want to get involved, visit https://thesizzle.com.au/payme to get onboard.
📻 Testify - Rage Against The Machine
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📚 Browse The Sizzle Archive. A few issues are missing and it's not searchable, but it's better than nothing.
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