International malaise among US allies purchasing F-35 fighters continues as Japan loses one of their few over the Pacific, an event that has lead them to ground the rest of their F-35 fleet (archived). Other US allies including Italy are looking to escape the costly boondoggle while NATO member Turkey managed to escape the program by prioritizing the purchase of state of the art Russian air defense missiles over the fighters of a utility so questionable the US has had to resort to purchasing foreign turboprop aircraft to handle a portion of the F-35's designed mission.
Category Archives: Hardware
GPS Disciplined Time To Experience Undisciplined Event This Weekend
This weekend the time kept by the USG's GPS constellation will hit its 1024th week since its 10 bit register last rolled over in 1999 (archived). This raises the potential for lazily implemented devices depending on GPS disciplined time to behave in rather undisciplined manners.
F-35 Deliveries To Turkey Suspended As Turkey Determines Russian Missiles A Better Value
Long teased, the US finally suspended F-35 related deliveries to Turkey after realizing that Turkey was serious when Turkey decided Russian missiles were a better value proposition than US warplanes (archived). Other NATO allies including Italy have been looking for ways out of the F-35 money pit as well.
USG Leveraging Discord In The Home To Disarm Americans, Illinois Moving Ammo Serialization Bill Through Legislature
USG prosecutors are increasingly turning intra-marital disputes into federal cases for the purpose of disarming American males (archived).
Meanwhile, Illinois is looking to test legislation mandating serializing handgun ammunition with no grandfather clause allowing private possession of ammunition purchased before the serialization requirements go into effect (archived). The text of the proposed bill singles out .22 caliber rimfire ammunition as subject to the serialization requirement, and each round of traditional unserialized ammunition would count as a seperate offense. This is a serious problem for target shooters who buy .22 long rifle by the 500 round brick. The full text of the Illinois proposal scheduled for a hearing in committee tomorrow is presented below: Continue reading
US Air Base Home To STRATCOM Hit By River Flooding
Nebraska's Offutt Air Force Base has been hit by Missouri River flooding which is inundating a substantial portion of the outpost's acreage (archived). The base is home to the US Air Force's STRATCOM and is home to the US's fleets of RC-135 surveillance and E-4B command aircraft. In a manner consistent with other observed USG problem solving processes, flood barriers to protect the base's flight simulators are being flown in from Louisiana. Numerous buildings, fuel storage facilities, and satellite communications arrays have already been defeated by the Missouri River.
China Makes Humanitarian Move To Aid Venezuala Restore Electricity Amid Dam Sabotage
China is offering to aid to Venezuela as Maduro struggles to restore electricity following apparent sabotage at the Guri dam's hydroelectric plant (archived). With Russia already showing strong continuing support for Maduro's regime and China making this move, it is going to be very hard for the US to contine painting action against Maduro as backed by the "International Community" while two UN Security Council veto powers are not merely voting, but acting against US efforts.
In related news, the RAND Corporation has loudly published reports showing the US losing to China and Russia in most WWIII scenarios they managed to imagine (archived).
Sears Sued By Stanley Black And Decker Over "Limited Line" Clause In Craftsman Sales Agreement
Stanley Black and Decker is suing Sears for breach of contract after buying the "Craftsman" brand from the once large retailer (archived). When Stanley Black and Decker bought the "Craftsman" brand from Sears, the agreement left Sears the ability to use the "Craftsman" brand to market a "limited line" of tools. In a case of if you can you must, Sears proceeded to have a high end line of "Craftsman Ultimate" mechanics produced and used to market their ailing chain as the "the real home of the broadest assortment of Craftsman" after emerging from bankruptcy. Stanley Black and Decker apparently perceives this as incredibly unfair to their other, larger retail partners.
Venezuela's Guri Dam And Simón Bolívar Hydroelectric Plant Sabotaged Leading To Blackouts
Profound blackouts have sticken Venezuela after sabotage at Guri dam's Simón Bolívar hydroelectric plant (archived). The dam, originally built in the 1960's has been continually upgraded through its life to a generating capacity of more than 10,000 megawatts. A portion of the complex's power output is normally exported to Colombia and Brazil. At this time it is uncertain whether the sabotage was carried out by a stuxnet type attack or by the other guys, but terrorism carried out by a rogue state leads the list of possible causes.
Of course, these "humanitarian interventions" have always tended to be very destructive and expensive for the humanitarianly aided (archived).
Newly Documented Intel Speculative Memory Management Bug Affects All Generations Of Intel "Core" CPUs, Makes ROWHAMMERing Much Easier
A weakness in the way addresses are speculated in the memory subsystem of Intel CPUs makes all manner of attacks much easier to pull off (archived). Particularly ROWHAMMER. This speculation weakness appears to be particular to Intel CPUs with AMD, ARM, and others not being weak in this specific way. Across Intel processors however, this weakness is endemic stretching all the way back to when Intel first started using the "Core" branding to label processor models.
Intel was reportedly informed of this defect in their products on December 1st. The fellows who sinfully waited 90 days later before going public would like for this property of Intel's late model CPUs to be dubbed SPOILER, an all caps name that in this case is not an acronym for anything.
Indian Licenses Russian Assault Rifle For Domestic Production While US Scolds Pakistan Over Potential F-16 "Misuse"
The two south Asian giants in a hot border dispute are enjoying very different relationships with their major foreign arms suppliers. Indian managed to sign an agreement with Russia allowing them to produce more than 700,000 AK-203 assault rifles to replace their current standard issue INSAS rifle (archived). The move is being hailed as an end to the hunt to replace INSAS which disappoints in many of the environments where India needs the rifles to be used.
Meanwhile the US State Department is investigating whether Pakistan broke a clause in their F-16 purchase agreement which supposes that Pakistan needs to ask the US for permission before deploying the fighter jets in any situation where they might be useful (archived). For this reason Pakistan is producing and deploying Chinese designed JF-17 fighters to complement/replace their US made F-16 fleet. Pakistan has already lost one of their F-16 fighters in combat against Indian MiG-21 fighters during this conflict (archived).