Since the release of the Gen4 Glock 17 there have been a great number of reliability complaints. I’ve seen some of this first hand with my Gen4 Glock 17. Although it functions flawlessly in my hands it’s a regular jam-o-matic when a smaller person tries to use it. After long last Glock has finally issued notice that they are swapping recoil springs free of charge.
Tag: General Hardware
My Love of the Ridiculously Overpowered Strikes Again
I have a slight confession to make, I love things that are ridiculously overpowered. For example when I purchased my Ford Range I made sure it had the biggest engine available thrown in. Do I ever use it to tow things that require such a large engine? Fuck no. When I go to three-gun tournaments I shoot in the heavy metal division so I have an excuse to lug around a .45 auto handgun, 7.62x51mm rifle, and 12 gauge shotgun. Does my shoulder get sore causing me to question my thought process of shooting heavy metal instead of something more practical? For about three seconds maybe until I remember how awesome bigger caliber weapons are. I also have a Desert Eagle in .50 AE that has the titanium gold finish on it. The gun should be made of gold considering the price of the ammo but even though the weapon lacks any practicality I wanted one because it was a ridiculously overpowered handgun.
What happens when this love over all things overpowered meets my love of lasers? This:
Meet the Wicked Lasers Spyder III Arctic 1W blue laser. I’ll admit I’ve not had as much time to play with it as I’d like but I can give you a quick overview of the device. To imagine this device in your hand take a regular laser power, throw it out the window because it’s pathetic, pick up a light saber, and you’re basically holding what’s pictured above.
The laser is about the size of a medium Maglight flashlight, made of solid aluminium, and is powered by a rechargeable lithium-ion 18650 battery. It also ships with a pair of laser safety glasses since a microsecond or so of eye exposure can cause permanent blindness.
So far all I can really say about this beast is that it’s fucking awesome. This thing gets the Christopher Burg seal of approval already just for being what it is, ridiculous. I’ll probably record some videos of the laser burning through shit because it does that quite well.
HP Announced the End of WebOS Device Operations
When I said things weren’t looking good for WebOS I didn’t think they were quite this bad. Hewlett-Packard (HP) announced that they will be discontinuing WebOS device operations:
In addition, HP reported that it plans to announce that it will discontinue operations for webOS devices, specifically the TouchPad and webOS phones. HP will continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward.
And just like that Palm’s legacy is effectively dead. I guess there is always the possibility that HP will find somebody to license and utilize their fledgeling operating system but I’m doubtful. As it sits right now any manufacturer can use Android which is already incredibly popular, is being rapidly developed, and has a good application ecosystem. There seems little reason, in my opinion, for a manufacturer to license WebOS.
Although WebOS is an operating system with great potential the execution by those who’ve had it has been lackluster at best. When HP acquired Palm they continued executing the ill-fated plan Palm had started, which was to offer phones (and a tablets) nobody wanted. The Palm Pre and Palm Pre Plus performed poorly and the Palm Pre 2 fared even worse. Most companies would have decided to release a radically different device but HP instead decided to manufacture two new devices that were effectively Palm Pres; one in a smaller form factor and another in a larger form factor. The TouchPad was nothing more than an expensive iPad wannabe with buggy software and no available applications.
So long WebOS, you contained innumerable interesting ideas but interesting ideas alone are seldom enough to save a product from extinction.
Things Not Looking Good for the HP TouchPad
Things keep looking more and more glum for Hewlett-Packard’s (HP) TouchPad. Best Buy has had such a hard time selling the poor devices that they’re apparently requesting that HP take them back:
According to one source who has seen internal HP reports, Best Buy has taken delivery of 270,000 TouchPads and has so far managed to sell only 25,000, or less than 10 percent of the units in its inventory.
[…]
Best Buy, sources tell us, is so unhappy that it has told HP it is unwilling to pay for all the TouchPads taking up expensive space in its stores and warehouses, and wants HP to take them back. HP, for its part, is pleading with Best Buy to be patient. We’re also told that a senior HP executive, possibly executive VP Todd Bradley, is slated to travel to Minneapolis soon to discuss the matter with Best Buy executives.
Sadly, I’m not surprised. WebOS seems destined to be the operating system that has many great features but is doomed to failure by poor hardware and lack of polish. I managed to handle a TouchPad some time back at Best Buy and I wasn’t impressed. HP is coming into the tablet game late meaning they need to find some way of persuading customers into buying their new tablet instead of the already established devices released by their competitors.
The TouchPad was originally released with the same price tag as the iPad, a move which I said was rather stupid. Apple is able to sell their iPad at that price because they already have market recognition (people want them) and their devices generally are very well built and polished to an almost mirror shine. Companies releasing Android tablets are able to sell their devices because many people dislike iOS and/or Apple causing them to look elsewhere. On top of that Android has a lot of great features that separate it from iOS (it’s open source nature being a big boon for those who like to tinker and hack). As Android is free manufacturers can also create some very reasonably priced devices.
The TouchPad on the other hand lacks polish in many regards. First the device feels cheaply built with everything being made of plastic. Second WebOS 3.0 is buggy and includes some rather glaring problems that any quality assurance team should have caught before release. Battery life on the TouchPad isn’t great, coming in at roughly half the battery life of the iPad. Another problem is WebOS isn’t open which doesn’t help attract attention to the hacker crowd who are always looking for an OS they can add functionality to and improve (although there is a strong hacker community around WebOS, it’s not nearly as strong as Android’s). Thus the only other factor HP could hope to compete on is price, which they failed miserably at by setting the price at the same level as the iPad.
HP flubbed the TouchPad in every way, shape, and form so it’s not surprising to see that it’s not selling well. I would go so far as to say the TouchPad is a great lesson for other manufacturers to learn from, how not to release a new device.
Google Acquires Motorola Mobility
When I woke up this morning I wasn’t expecting to see a story about Google acquiring Motorola Mobility but that’s exactly what they’ve done:
Since its launch in November 2007, Android has not only dramatically increased consumer choice but also improved the entire mobile experience for users. Today, more than 150 million Android devices have been activated worldwide—with over 550,000 devices now lit up every day—through a network of about 39 manufacturers and 231 carriers in 123 countries. Given Android’s phenomenal success, we are always looking for new ways to supercharge the Android ecosystem. That is why I am so excited today to announce that we have agreed to acquire Motorola.
I think this was a very smart move on behalf of Google. Motorola has been producing some great phones as of late and Google really needs to start manufacturing their own line of mobile handsets. The biggest problem with Android in my opinion is carrier and handset manufacturer customizations to the operating system. These customizations make the user experience different from handset to handset but more importantly they require additional work when a new version of Android is released. In order to update their phones manufacturers have to waste time customizing the new version of Android to their likings. I would be more willing to purchase a handset made by Google as it would likely come installed with vanilla Android and updates would be released frequently.
See What Lack of Regulations Get You
The personal electronics industry is considered to be one of the less regulated industries in the United States. While the government continues to meddle with emission requirements on automobiles, keeping monopoly control over wireless spectrum, and requires it’s sign off on every single item they randomly label as a drug they don’t do a hell of a lot in regulating personal electronics devices.
The fruits of less regulations can be seen by many aspects of personal electronics. Our electronics are becoming every smaller, more powerful, and an ever increasing number of devices are being made available for our purchasing pleasure. Another benefit is the fact that our devices are getting cheaper by the day. You know that super fast video card you purchased today for $400.00? In a few months it’ll be old business and the price will drop to $200.00. For those of us who don’t care about the latest and greatest in video cards we’ll be able to nab a perfectly serviceable card for half the price. For those who want the bleeding edge in graphics technology it’s there for the taking.
And for those who want an entire terabyte of data in their laptop they can have it for roughly $100.00. Don’t worry, I’m not shilling for Newegg on here since they don’t pay me to but I thought it was rather awesome that laptop drives with 1TB of capacity have dropped to the $100.00 range so quickly. Ever increasing capabilities for an ever decreasing price is a side-effect of less government regulation and should be celebrated by all. Just imagine what could be done for other markets if the government would simply pull its fingers out and let us, the consumers, decide on what should and shouldn’t be implemented.
The Coolest Flying Drone Out There
What if I told you there was an unmanned drone that was developed to fly around, sniff Wi-Fi networks, and eavesdrop on GSM phone conversations? You’d probably get angry and yet another device developed by
At the Black Hat and Defcon security conferences in Las Vegas next week, Mike Tassey and Richard Perkins plan to show the crowd of hackers a year’s worth of progress on their Wireless Aerial Surveillace Platform, or WASP, the second year Tassey and Perkins have displayed the 14-pound, six-foot long, six-foot wingspan unmanned aerial vehicle. The WASP, built from a retired Army target drone converted from a gasoline engine to electric batteries, is equipped with an HD camera, a cigarette-pack sized on-board Linux computer packed with network-hacking tools including the BackTrack testing toolset and a custom-built 340 million word dictionary for brute-force guessing of passwords, and eleven antennae.
“This is like Black Hat’s greatest hits,” Tassey says. “And it flies.”
On top of cracking wifi networks, the upgraded WASP now also performs a new trick: impersonating the GSM cell phone towers used by AT&T and T-Mobile to trick phones into connecting to the plane’s antenna rather than their carrier, allowing the drone to record conversations and text messages on a32 gigabytes of storage
How fucking cool (and scary) is that? Truth be told the security on many devices that we commonly use today is completely nonexistent. Last year there was a demonstration at Defcon showing that it’s very possible for an average person to get the equipment necessary to spy on people using GSM phones (CDMA, as far as I know, is still safe from non-government snoopers).
Chiappa and RFID
It has been discovered that Chiappa is going to start adding radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips to their handguns for inventory and quality control purposes. RFID, like any technology, has good and bad uses. The Firearm Blog has a nice writeup on the whole situations including a press release from MKS Distributing which is rather snarky:
RFID Removal: For those still concerned you can simply remove the grip and remove the hot glued RFID from the frame in the grip area when (over a year from now) these begin to appear. Others may prefer to wrap the revolver and their head in aluminum foil, curl in a ball and watch reruns of Mel Gibson’s 1997 film, Conspiracy Theory. Well, that’s a plan too!
I smiled a little at the snarky remark and then shook my head as its obvious MKS Distributing doesn’t understand the very real concerns over implanting RFID chips into firearms. Although MKS Distributing claims the RFID chips can only be read a few inches a way that was proven to be completely incorrect at last year’s Defcon. RFID chips are very simple, thus they have no built-in security mechanisms meaning anybody with the right equipment can read them without your knowledge.
Combine this with the fact that obtaining RFID readers is pretty cheap these days and you can see a problem for people carrying concealed. Although I would rip these chips out the second I obtained a gun with embedded RFID chips, most people would not know to look for or pull out these blasted little identification chips. With simple equipment somebody would be able to read the RFID chip on your firearm and instantly know whether or not you were carrying a firearm. Part of the reason people carry concealed is because they don’t want anybody else to know they’re carrying. Often this is to make others feel more comfortable but another reason is to have the element of surprise should you ever have to pull it. Embedding RFID chips into firearms would give criminals a means of know whether or not you were armed and take appropriate actions.
Of course there is also the possibility of using the RFID chip to identify homes of gun owners (a person staking out your home could just drop an RFID reader in your area and see if they come across any hits). If a person has one gun (for instance if they’re carrying it out the door when leaving for work) it’s likely they have others which would make their home a desirable target for the would be thief. On top of that, if you left the reader in the area for a couple of weeks a potential thief could figure out when the homeowner is away so they could move in and rob the place without resistance.
Putting a passive remotely readable device into anything isn’t a great idea, but that idea becomes far worse when that object is a firearm. Personally I won’t support Chiappa as I feel that would be promoting this type of behavior but I also believe what MKS Distributing said is true, RFID chips will become far more prevalent in firearms down the line.
Frickin’ Lasers
You’ve got a 25mm autocannon and you’re thinking to yourself, “What could I do to make this more awesome?” Explosive ammunition seems a bit dull, especially with that sweet tomahawk missile launcher next to the autocannon, you don’t want to pay the electric bill for that sweet rail gun, and honestly upgrading the targeting system for the autocannon is a bit dull. Finally it hits you, mount a frickin’ laser to the top of your frickin’ autocannon:
The Mk 38 Mod 2 Tactical Laser System couples a solid-state high-energy laser weapon module with the operational Mk 38 Machine Gun System. The addition of the laser weapon module brings high-precision accuracy against surface and air targets such as small boats and unmanned aerial vehicles. The system also provides the ability to deliver different levels of laser energy, depending on the target and mission objectives.
Lasers are always cool. Now that autocannon can pew pew enemies into non-existence. By the way if anybody from Boeing is reading this I would like you to know that I would be more than happy to test a review unit and post my findings on this very website. If you’re interested contact me via the e-mail address on the sidebar and we can set something up.
New Bullet Promises Equal Under and Above Water Performance
The Firearm Blog points out something that is just wickedly cool:
The DSG Technology ammunition type DR is going to focus on in this article is DSG Multi-Environment Ammunition (MEA) Series Supercavitating Rifle Ammunition (underwater rifle ammo) round, that’s going to be an absolute game-changer for naval and Special Operations waterborne ops of various types, including, but not necessarily limited to, diver protection (defensive) and enemy diver neutralization (offensive) applications, VBSS/MIO (Visit, Board, Search, and Seizure/Maritime Interception Operations) and GOPLATS (Gasoline and Oil Platforms) boarding operations, speedboat interdiction and neutralization, anti-submarine warfare, anti-torpedo operations, and anti-piracy ops.
With DSG Technology’s MEA Supercavitating Rifle Ammo, you can fire at an underwater enemy target from above the water, an above-the-water enemy target from below the surface, or at an underwater target while you are also underwater.
The that the bullet works properly underwater is amazing in of itself, but that it works equally well above and below water is a rather spectacular feat of engineering. Not only does the bullet work above and below water but it’s capable of being fired into the water at very low angles:
The kicker is that DSG MEA supercavitating ammo also has a unique low-angle capability, allowing an operator/shooter to fire the ammo from above the surface into the water at a very low angle of attack, as low as two degrees in choppy water and 7 degrees into glass-smooth water without ricochet. After entering the water, the bullet will continue its true line of flight. There’s no bullet deflection whatsoever, so the operator only need deal with the aforementioned optical refraction of the water.
I’m not going to lie, if this bullet works as advertised it’s going to be freaking amazing. The limited factor of this technology would certainly be the launching platform as few firearms are built to operate reliably underwater (although some are). But as with any advancement in technology other devices will need to play catch up for a while.