12 Nov 2015
YouTube Music Released For Android And iOS
YouTube is the world’s biggest online video streaming website but it’s also used for listening to music, perhaps more so than any proper music streaming service like Spotify or Apple Music. Google obviously knows that and it’s looking to cash in on the hundreds of millions of users who head to YouTube for listening to music. The standalone YouTube Music app has now been released for both Android and iOS.
YouTube Music provides a completely new type of experience that has been designed to make discovering music on YouTube easier than ever before.
Launching the app will take you to the home tab which will show recommended tracks based on your preferences, you can also create personalized stations as per your liking. It also provides you with access to the largest music catalogs out there, enabling you to quickly find music videos, artists, tracks, albums and more like concert footage, remixes, covers and more that you already watch via YouTube.
All of these features are available for free but you can “amplify” the experience with a YouTube Red membership, the subscription plan that provides an ad-free YouTube experience as well as exclusive content that the company is creating with its biggest stars. YouTube Red expands the same ad-free experience to YouTube Music and allows you to listen to music offline, easily switch between video or audio only modes, you will even be able to hear the video play when you’re in another app or have the screen turned off.
YouTube Music is now available for download via the Google Play Store and the App Store, all users get the amplified experience free for 14 days, and if they decide they don’t want to pay, they can continue using the ad-supported version of YouTube Music.
The Computer pioneer Gene Amdahl dies, aged 92
Computer pioneer and entrepreneur Gene Amdahl has died, aged 92. Amdahl joined IBM in 1952 after graduating with a clutch of degrees from South Dakota State University and the University of Wisconsin. As chief architect of the IBM 704 scientific mainframe computer, his engineering decisions helped IBM to sell many more of the machines than IBM had expected.
Further reading
Amdahl left IBM in 1956, but rejoined in 1960 when he was appointed chief architect of the wildly popular System/360 series of mainframe computers - "a daring business and technical gamble that became one of the greatest success stories in the history of computing", according to the Computer History Museum.
Gene Amdahl founded his own, eponymously named company in 1970 after leaving IBM for a second time.
Amdahl Corporation's mainframes were designed to be IBM-compatible - capable of running the same software - but at lower cost. At its peak, it was one of the biggest computer makers in the world, with a global market share of about eight per cent of the mainframe market at a time when "national champion" computer makers were often protected by governments. It was, however, acquired by Fujitsu in 1997.
However, Gene Amdahl had left the mainframe company that he founded in 1979 and, in the 1980s, founded a number of other companies, none of which could approach the success of Amdahl Corporation. These start-ups include Trilogy Systems in 1979, which designed integrated chips for mainframes, and VLSI [very-large-scale integration] technology; and Andor International in 1987, which was intended to build mid-sized mainframes. That company also foundered.
Gene Amdahl was also the co-founder of Commercial Data Servers, in 1996, which developed mainframe-like machines with super-cooled microprocessors. It continues to trade today as Xbridge Systems, but in a very different form.
Gene Amdahl's degrees included a BS in engineering physics in 1948 from South Dakota University, and a Masters and a PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Wisconsin. He was named an IBM Fellow in 1965 and became a member of the US National Academy of Engineering in 1967. He was recognised as a "Centennial Alumnus" of South Dakota State University in 1986.
His 1951 PhD thesis, 'The Logical Design of an Intermediate Speed Digital Computer', can be read here.
To create installation media for Windows 10 November Update
Once you have download the Windows Media Creation Tool from Microsoft just double click on the downloaded file to start the process. This is the first screen you will see if you are on the machine you want to upgrade you can use the first option, Upgrade this PC now, to begin the upgrade process.
If you want to create a USB drive to upgrade multiple machines then select the Create installation media for another PC.
Microsoft has released the first significant update for its Windows 10 operating system since it was released on 29 July of this year.
Although members of the Windows Insider program have been testing versions of this update since shortly after the release of Windows 10 at the end of July this is the first update, beyond the regular Cumulative Updates that have been released, that non Insiders will see on their systems.
The upgrade is being delivered through Windows Update and will use the same upgrade process that everyone experienced with the July Windows 10 release.
However, if you prefer not to wait for the staged rollout and want to do an in place upgrade or a clean install, you can use the Windows Media Creation Tool to either build an installation USB or save the ISOs.
The Media Creation Tool will allow you to store/create install media for both 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows 10 and it will identify the version of Windows already installed on your device to upgrade or install the right version of Windows 10.
Check out the gallery to see the step by step process to upgrading/clean installing the Windows 10 November Update using the Windows Media Creation Tool.
You begin this process by downloading the tool from Microsoft.
30 best people in advertising to follow on Twitter
They're barely updated, and when they do tweet, it's just an RT of praise for their company.
That's why we pull together an annual list of the best people in advertising and marketing to follow on Twitter.
These are the execs that provide the best value to the industry with their tweets full of information, insight into the companies they work for, opinions on marketing, or humor and entertainment. Not all of them work at agencies or have "advertising" or "marketing" in their job titles, but we feel these people all bring value to the advertising community.
Methodology: We've weighted our rankings using a (not entirely mathematical) scale of how often the user tweets, plus whether the majority of those tweets tend to be useful/opinionated/funny/or simply brighten up people's Twitter feeds day-to-day.
Google Tried, by Designing a New System to Make Your Email More Secure
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Google said it plans to roll out these notifications in the coming months
Anyone who missed a recent technical conference in Japan dedicated to “Internet measurement,” here’s some good news that came out of the event:
Email is getting more secure, and encryption is on the rise. (The number of encrypted emails sent from non-Gmail users to Gmail users doubled to 61% between December 2014 and October 2015, for instance.)
Now for the bad news: Internet attacks that force encrypted connections to downgrade to unencrypted ones are also prevalent. In laymen’s terms, this means that many email messages are still being sent in readable plaintext.
Now the even worse news: Email correspondents have no way of knowing whether they have been targeted by such an attack. They’re completely blind to the threat, in other words.
That’s the disturbing conclusion of a recent research paper that analyzes the security of email delivery, presented at the conference by anti-abuse and anti-fraud computer researchers at Google as well as the University of Michigan and the University of Illinois. Now Google is working on a way to address the issue.
A spokesperson tells Fortune that the company is designing an alert system that will warn Gmail users when they receive an email message through unsecure connections. Although the details have yet to be ironed out, Google says it plans to roll out these notifications in the coming months.
More information is available in a post on Google’s online security blog here.
Notably, the attacks only affect messages sent between different email providers, according to Google. So, communications between Gmail and Microsoft Outlook or Yahoo accounts could be affected, for example.
As the research paper authors note, these attacks “are not inherently malicious,” as they may sometimes be the result of legitimate email filtering. “Regardless of intent,” the authors conclude,” this technique results in messages being sent in cleartext over the public Internet, enabling passive eavesdropping and other attacks.”
Earlier this year, the search giant introduced Password Alert, an anti-phishing tool that raises an alarm whenever a user enters his or her Google account credentials in an untrusted site. In 2012, Google began notifying Gmail users when it suspected they might be the target of state-sponsored hacking attempts.
Last month, Facebook too began alerting its users whenever it detected that a state-sponsored attacker might be trying to compromise a person’s account on the social network.
Google gets cellular connectivity to Android Wear, first device on sale now
Google is finally getting around to adding LTE connectivity to Android Wear, allowing equipped wearables to connect to the Internet, place calls, send and receive texts and more without having to be in close proximity to a smartphone.
Up to this point, Android Wear smartwatches have had to use a companion smartphone connected via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi as a middleman to the outside world. Devices like the Samsung Gear S already offer 3G cellular connectivity but do so running Tizen.
The first Android Wear smartwatch with onboard LTE is the LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition LTE. The Snapdragon 400-powered wearable packs a circular 1.38-inch P-OLED display (480 x 480 resolution, 348 PPI), 768MB of RAM and 4GB of local eMMC storage. The watch is IP67 certified against dust and liquid and is brought to life by a “long-lasting” 570mAh battery.
Although the wearable can technically connect to a cellular network without your phone nearby, it can’t do so entirely on its own as both the watch and your phone must be connected to a cellular network simultaneously. It doesn’t have to be the same tower or anything; the point is, you can’t buy the watch and expect to use it as a phone without linking it to a phone. While not mentioned specifically, it likely relies on AT&T NumberSync and Verizon Messages to make the magic happen. The requirement isn't really a big deal as virtually anyone interested in buying a smartwatch already has a smartphone but it’s certainly worth clarifying.
The LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition LTE is available online from AT&T and Verizon with pricing starting at $199.99 (from AT&T with a two-year service agreement).
You Can Enter to win an Alienware 13 R2 from the tehnng center
If you know gaming hardware, then you know Alienware makes some of the best gaming computers on the market. But they don't come cheap - a good Alienware computer will cost you at least $1,000, if not more.
Lucky for you, you can enter to win an Alienware 13 R2 laptop from the TechSpot Store.
All you need to do is fill out the online entry form with your valid email address and you’re automatically entered. Share the giveaway on your social networks to increase your odds of winning - the more people you get to sign up, the more entries you get.
The Alienware 13 R2 packs 6th-gen Intel Core i5 CPU, a GeForce GTX 960M GPU (with an optional graphics amplifier). And the size? Amazingly light, considering its advanced copper heat pipe cooling system. The 13 R2 weighs 4.5 lbs., which is surprisingly slender for a gaming laptop like this. Don't miss out on your chance to win and enter the Alienware Gaming Laptop Giveaway.
Pro Tip: There's usually more than one giveaway open at any given time on the Store. All giveaways are shared with the StackSocial community, however for entering you only need to sign up to the TechSpot Store newsletter.
11 Nov 2015
The Tim Cook: Watch doesn’t need FDA regulation, but Apple making other medical products
Reports detailing Apple’s meetings with the Food and Drug Administration before the Apple Watch was unveiled suggested the company might have some special medical-related plans in mind for the future of its upcoming medical device.
However, in an interview on Tuesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook dispelled the belief that the Apple Watch will indeed need FDA regulation in the future, revealing that Apple might be working on a different kind of medical product that might seek FDA approval.
“We don’t want to put the watch through the Food and Drug Administration process,” Cook told The Telegraph. “I wouldn’t mind putting something adjacent to the watch through it, but not the watch, because it would hold us back from innovating too much, the cycles are too long. But you can begin to envision other things that might be adjacent to it – maybe an app, maybe something else.”
Cook did not share any details about a second wearable coming from Apple, but medicine appears to be on Apple’s mind. During the interview, Cook highlighted the health benefits of the Apple Watch, which let customers monitor activity and heart rate, telling the story of a senior high school football player whose Watch saved his life.
“He learnt from his watch that his heart rate was elevated; he mentioned it to his trainer who became very worried about it. He sent him to the doctor, and the doctor told him he would have died the following day had he not come in. Basically, his organs were shutting down,” Cook said.
When it comes to overall Apple Watch sales, the CEO did not reveal any numbers. “I think we will set a new [sales] record this quarter; so things are going well,” he said.
10 Nov 2015
A 1700HP Twin-Turbo Ford GT and 18 More Interesting (Yet Random) Photos
Johnny Bohmer, owner of this heavily modified, twin-turbo 1700-horsepower Ford GT took this car to the landing facility at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and set a new, verified Guinness World Record for the fastest standing mile in a street car. He managed to hit an eye-watering 283.3mph (456 km/hr). Powered by a twin-turbocharged 5.4-litre Ford V8, complete with an upgraded intercooler and fuel system, the gearbox had to be strengthened to support the massive power, while the chassis remains completely stock. However, it's not just a show car, as Bohmer regularly drops off and picks up his kids from school in the monstrous vehicle. Continue reading for more interesting, yet random, photos.
This Android Wear's next update should boost your battery
Smartwatch gobbling the juice? This should help.
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Android Wear users could only look on in envy at the Duracell Bunny-like battery life of Pebble smartwatches, but reports suggest Google's next update will help level the playing field.Details about version 1.4 of the wearable OS have leaked onto Android Police, with "battery life improvements" listed as one of its key features.
Nobody is expecting the likes of the Moto 360 or the LG Watch Urbane to match the Pebble Time's week-long runtime, but any improvement will no doubt be welcomed by the Android Wear community.
Other new features of update 1.4 include improved support for messaging apps like WhatsApp and Viber, and the ability to play sounds and take calls on watches with a speaker.
New gesture commands and language options for Mandarin, Cantonese, Indonesian, Polish, Dutch and Thai are also included in the patch.
A new addition to the Android Wear family was revealed this week - the blingtastic Tag Heuer Connected, priced at a wallet-busting £1,100.
Android Wear users could only look on in envy at the Duracell Bunny-like battery life of Pebble smartwatches, but reports suggest Google's next update will help level the playing field.Details about version 1.4 of the wearable OS have leaked onto Android Police, with "battery life improvements" listed as one of its key features.
Nobody is expecting the likes of the Moto 360 or the LG Watch Urbane to match the Pebble Time's week-long runtime, but any improvement will no doubt be welcomed by the Android Wear community.
Other new features of update 1.4 include improved support for messaging apps like WhatsApp and Viber, and the ability to play sounds and take calls on watches with a speaker.
New gesture commands and language options for Mandarin, Cantonese, Indonesian, Polish, Dutch and Thai are also included in the patch.
A new addition to the Android Wear family was revealed this week - the blingtastic Tag Heuer Connected, priced at a wallet-busting £1,100.
The Mozilla clarifies what the removal of full themes actually means
Mozilla announced last Friday that it plans to remove heavyweight theme support from the Firefox web browser in a bug listing on the organization's official bug tracking website. Back then, Benjamin Smedberg, one of Mozilla's senior Engineers, mentioned that Mozilla decided to "stop support for "heavyweight" themes which can do arbitrary styling and replace chrome packages" and that the organization may simply remove support or extend lightweight themes with additional features depending on how the discussion progresses.
The negative reaction to the announcement on Bugzilla and also other sites who mentioned it caused Mozilla's Kris Maglione to emphasize that the bug listing was not "just about removing support for heavyweight themes" but also for for deciding what the future of theme support in Firefox would look like.
I would just like to point out that this bug is not just about removing support for heavyweight themes. It's also about coming up with a plan what kind of theming support we want to add to replace them.
Another Mozilla employee, Kev Needham confirmed Maglione's assessment of the situation.
The point of this bug is to start to lay the groundwork for what themes support will be in the future, with the goal of making them simpler to create and maintain. This bug isn't meant to say "we're killing Complete Themes in Firefox", it's the starting point for planning what happens with them moving forward, and scoping what we can support and how.
complete theme for Firefox
Maglione highlighted the reason behind the decision in the same post on Bugzilla stating that current heavyweight themes "are not sustainable".
The basic fact of the matter is this: heavyweight themes, in their current form, are not sustainable. They require a complete reimplementation of the Firefox front-end CSS for every theme. They require significant, painstaking updates for every release (which happen *much* more often now than they did when the feature was designed). They require a massive amount of energy by both Firefox developers and third-party theme developers to keep alive. Most themes fall by the wayside after a couple of years (and that's being optimistic).
Mozilla basically wants to change what complete themes can do in the same way that it plans to change what add-ons can do in Firefox. The organization announced back in August 2015 that it would deprecate XPCOM and XUL based add-ons in favor of a new Web Extensions API.
Back then it asked for user and especially add-on developer input as to what the API should offer, and it is the same this time for themes.
Several add-on developers announced afterwards that they would stop development of their add-ons for Firefox, and it is likely that the same is going to happen in regards to the few theme developers who are still working on full themes for the browser.
While it is too early to tell how theme support will look like in Firefox once Mozilla is done with the changes, it is likely that it will be still superior to Chrome theming but less powerful than before.
Google releases open-source machine intelligence library
Google's TensorFlow machine intelligence library has been released under a permissive, open-source licence - a big move by the company. Advertising giant Google has made its biggest open source release to date: TensorFlow, a machine intelligence software library which underpins everything from the company's search algorithms to its speech recognition system.
Developed as a successor to DistBelief, the machine intelligence engine which the company has been using since 2011, TensorFlow is claimed to offer significant improvements over its predecessor. 'TensorFlow is general, flexible, portable, easy-to-use, and completely open source,' explained Google fellow Jeff Dean and technical lead Rajat Monga in a joint announcement. 'We added all this while improving upon DistBelief’s speed, scalability, and production readiness - in fact, on some benchmarks, TensorFlow is twice as fast as DistBelief.'
For Google, it's an interesting move. While the company has embraced open source in the past, it has typically stopped short of giving away the crown jewels: its Android operating system is available as the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), but the Google-branded apps it places on top - things like Google Play Music, Play Store, and Play Games - are resolutely closed-source. With TensorFlow, however, the company is placing no such restrictions: the entire library, as used by Google, is available under an Apache 2.0 licence for both research and commercial reuse and modification, though the company warns that it's more of a framework than a ready-to-deploy black-box solution.
The software itself was born from Google's Brain Team, a part of the company's machine intelligence arm, for conducting research into machine learning and deep neural network projects. The company sound found that its approach to the problem, in particular its use of easy-to-follow data flow graphs, made it extremely powerful - but it has no intention of keeping that power, which scales from mobile CPUs all the way to massively-parallel GPUs, to itself.
'If TensorFlow is so great, why open source it rather than keep it proprietary? The answer is simpler than you might think: We believe that machine learning is a key ingredient to the innovative products and technologies of the future,' the company explained in its official documentation on the project. 'Research in this area is global and growing fast, but lacks standard tools. By sharing what we believe to be one of the best machine learning toolboxes in the world, we hope to create an open standard for exchanging research ideas and putting machine learning in products. Google engineers really do use TensorFlow in user-facing products and services, and our research group intends to share TensorFlow implementations alongside many of our research publications.'
More information on TensorFlow is available on the official website where a copy can also be downloaded for hands-on experimentation.
Flash:Secretly record desktop activity with Hidden Capture
Finding out what others are doing on your PC can be difficult. You might spend an age exploring various histories -- browsers, applications launched, documents opened -- and still not be entirely sure. Hidden Capture is a free tool which can help by automatically taking screenshots of your desktop at regular intervals.
As you’ll guess from the name, the program is semi-stealthy, running in the background without a system tray icon or other user interface, so others won’t immediately spot what’s happening.
But the program is visible in Task Manager, your installed programs list, and (by default) the Start Menu, and we wouldn’t expect it to fool technical users for very long.
Still, you don’t have to use Hidden Capture as a surveillance tool. It’s extreme configurability means it could come in useful for anyone who needs to grab a series of screenshots.
Basic operations are simple enough. Launch HC.EXE as an administrator, click "Start Capture", and the program displays a reminder of its hotkeys. Click OK and recording begins.
Now carry out a few actions, just to test the recording. After 30 seconds or so, press Ctrl + * (on your numeric keypad) to stop captures.
A dialog will ask you for your name, but that’s actually a sneaky password request. There’s no password right now, so hit enter, recording will stop, and you’re able to review any images in Hidden Capture’s application folder (probably C:\Program Files (x86)\Hidden Capture\Sessions\).
That’s nothing too unusual, but Hidden Capture gets more interesting when you look at its settings.
You’re not restricted to capturing the desktop, for instance -- the program can grab the active window, whatever element is under the cursor, a defined area around the cursor, or a fixed area of the screen.
You’re able to define the interval between captures (2500 milliseconds by default), the file name pattern and format (JPG or BMP), and the destination folder.
If you’re intending to use the program stealthily, you can have it automatically launch when Windows starts, and set up a custom password to prevent others tweaking your settings. (They can still just close the program from Task Manager, though, so don’t expect too much.)
If you’re more interested in just using Hidden Capture as an automated screenshot tool, you can also run it manually, and apply various other tweaks, such as copying the last capture to the clipboard.
What you don’t get is any documentation. This isn’t critical -- you’ll figure out the basics very quickly -- but there are plenty of settings and options which aren’t clear at all. Expect to spend quite some time experimenting before you understand every detail.
Still, if you’ve an experienced user with time to spare then Hidden Capture’s configurability makes it worth a try.
Hidden Capture is a freeware screen capture tool for Windows XP and later.
finally Sony killing Betamax
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The company is also taking its tiny MicroMV camcorder cassettes off the market at the same time. To be clear, Sony hasn't been trying to make a go of Betamax and MicroMV all these years; it stopped producing the last recorders back in 2002. The company's Japanese store already lists Beta tapes as being out of production, too, although you can still find new cassettes on Amazon Japan easily.
The last Betamax products in production were the EL-500B, 2L-500MHGB, 2L-750MHGB cassettes and L-25CLP cleaning tape, and MicroMV is going out with the MGR60 tape and MGRCLD cleaning tape. For those still using any of these products in 2015, we here at The Verge salute you and offer our sincerest commiserations.
Addressing the mobile app trust gap
According to a new survey 80 percent of consumers would stop being a customer if there were a security breach in a company's mobile app. But app developers admit in the same study that many apps are not secure due to pressure to release them to market before they are ready. These findings come from mobile security and analytics company Bluebox Security which talked to over 400 consumers and approximately 300 developers.
The results reveal that 69 percent of consumers are somewhat to very confident that the apps they use are safe from hackers. However, this confidence is misplaced as the developers of those apps confess they are not secure. In fact, 74 percent of developers believe most mobile apps are moderately vulnerable and 24 percent say they are highly vulnerable.
Almost half of all developers admit that they have rushed an app to market, despite it not being completely ready. Also 53 percent of developers admit that they have taken shortcuts or put temporary solutions in place in order to get their app out on time. Developers are using unsecured third party frameworks too, 96 percent say they use third party frameworks that may or may not be safe to build their apps. Only 32 percent said that they would prefer to develop their own code.
To address these issues Bluebox is launching a new solution for enterprises to secure their consumer-facing apps and fight back against mobile threats that are placing consumers and businesses at risk. Bluebox for Consumer Apps allows enterprises to turn their consumer mobile apps -- those available on the Apple App and Google Play stores -- into self-defending apps that secure, detect and respond to mobile threats, and provide mobile threat intelligence data with a single click.
"Companies have underinvested in mobile security in a rush to become mobile first, and now the bill is due. With mobile threats being discovered almost daily, and enterprises losing control over consumer devices, it's only a matter of time before a mobile hack is the root of the next major breach," says Pam Kostka, CEO of Bluebox. "Our goal is to enable businesses to have confidence in the security posture of the apps that they build and distribute. Our security and threat analytics are easily embedded with the click of a button, transforming any app into a self-protecting island that can intelligently defend itself in real-time when it is in a hostile environment or actively under attack".
The complete survey findings are available on the Bluebox blog and Bluebox for Mobile Apps will be available in December.
Image Credit: LovePHY / Shutterstock
9 Nov 2015
Top 7 Secret Weapons That Were Never Completed
Mankind is in a never-ending arms race against himself, other nations, religions and whoever is deemed a threat to existence. This leads governments to spend enormous amounts of money on even the craziest of ides, often leading to ridiculous weapons that eventually disappoint or simply never get developed.
Lunar Nuclear Bomb
Also known as Project 119-A, the plan was to Nuke the moon to boost public morale in the United States after the Soviet Union took an early lead in the Space Race. This was never carried out, because they figures putting a man on the moon was better than trying to blow it up.
Iceberg Aircraft Carrier
Also known as Project Habakkuk, the Brits developed a plan during World War II to construct an aircraft carrier out of pykrete (a mixture of wood pulp and ice). It took them some time, but developments in the war effort and realizing what a huge waste of resources it might be sunk the idea.
The Flying Dorito
The A-12 Avenger II was also known as the flying Dorito. It was to be an all-weather, carrier-based stealth bomber replacement for the Grumman A-6 Intruder in the United States Navy and Marine Corps; The development of the A-12 was troubled by cost overruns and several delays, eventually being cancelled in 1991 after wasting more than $5 billion on the project.
Soviet Doomsday Device
Some say it’s a myth, but in the early 1990s several former high-ranking members of the Soviet military and the Central Committee of the Communist Party in a series of interviews to the American defense contractor BDM admitted the existence of the Dead Hand, making somewhat contradictory statements concerning its deployment.
What is it? Possibly still fully operational, a nuclear-control system that can automatically trigger the launch of the Russian Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) if a nuclear strike is detected by seismic, light, radioactivity and overpressure sensors, creating a fail-deadly deterrence.
The Un-landable Plane
Instead of having an aircraft take off only from carriers, the US government wanted fighters on all their ships. From that, the XFV Salmon was born, a plane with landing gear on its tail. After development and some thinking, the plan to have a fighter jet on every ship was scrapped, because pilots couldn’t land backwards. The jet was also much slower than other contemporary fighters and was too complicated to fly.
Intruder From the Future
Imagine a bomber, designed to carry atomic bombs, that can fly at an altitude of 15 miles and three times the speed of sound. The B-70 Valkyrie was supposed to be the aviation dream from the future, but while it was developed, the improvements of high-altitude surface-to-air missiles, the change to low-level penetration bombing, the program’s high development costs, and the introduction of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBMs) led to the cancellation of the B-70 program in 1961. Two prototypes were eventually used; one of them crashed following a midair collision in 1966.
The Thunderscreech
The XF-84H was an experimental turboprop aircraft, powered by a a turbine engine that was mated to a supersonic propeller. Too many aerodynamic decencies and the fact that it was the loudest aircraft ever made; the sound of its engine starting up could be heard 25 miles away, along with blowing out eardrums and causing severe nausea among the ground crews led to its cancellation.
Lunar Nuclear Bomb
Also known as Project 119-A, the plan was to Nuke the moon to boost public morale in the United States after the Soviet Union took an early lead in the Space Race. This was never carried out, because they figures putting a man on the moon was better than trying to blow it up.
Iceberg Aircraft Carrier
Also known as Project Habakkuk, the Brits developed a plan during World War II to construct an aircraft carrier out of pykrete (a mixture of wood pulp and ice). It took them some time, but developments in the war effort and realizing what a huge waste of resources it might be sunk the idea.
The Flying Dorito
The A-12 Avenger II was also known as the flying Dorito. It was to be an all-weather, carrier-based stealth bomber replacement for the Grumman A-6 Intruder in the United States Navy and Marine Corps; The development of the A-12 was troubled by cost overruns and several delays, eventually being cancelled in 1991 after wasting more than $5 billion on the project.
Soviet Doomsday Device
Some say it’s a myth, but in the early 1990s several former high-ranking members of the Soviet military and the Central Committee of the Communist Party in a series of interviews to the American defense contractor BDM admitted the existence of the Dead Hand, making somewhat contradictory statements concerning its deployment.
What is it? Possibly still fully operational, a nuclear-control system that can automatically trigger the launch of the Russian Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) if a nuclear strike is detected by seismic, light, radioactivity and overpressure sensors, creating a fail-deadly deterrence.
The Un-landable Plane
Instead of having an aircraft take off only from carriers, the US government wanted fighters on all their ships. From that, the XFV Salmon was born, a plane with landing gear on its tail. After development and some thinking, the plan to have a fighter jet on every ship was scrapped, because pilots couldn’t land backwards. The jet was also much slower than other contemporary fighters and was too complicated to fly.
Intruder From the Future
Imagine a bomber, designed to carry atomic bombs, that can fly at an altitude of 15 miles and three times the speed of sound. The B-70 Valkyrie was supposed to be the aviation dream from the future, but while it was developed, the improvements of high-altitude surface-to-air missiles, the change to low-level penetration bombing, the program’s high development costs, and the introduction of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBMs) led to the cancellation of the B-70 program in 1961. Two prototypes were eventually used; one of them crashed following a midair collision in 1966.
The Thunderscreech
The XF-84H was an experimental turboprop aircraft, powered by a a turbine engine that was mated to a supersonic propeller. Too many aerodynamic decencies and the fact that it was the loudest aircraft ever made; the sound of its engine starting up could be heard 25 miles away, along with blowing out eardrums and causing severe nausea among the ground crews led to its cancellation.
33 Ways To Make Your House Super Awesome!
After a hectic day, we need to go to a place which is relaxing and comfortable. We also want to have a place where our family get the best facilities. That place is called a house. We work hard in our jobs and push our careers, all to collect enough money to make our dream house. However, you need to be wise about spending this hard earned cash. Here is a collection of some wonderful engineering ideas to transform your house. Let us know your favourite in the comments below.
Glass Bathtubs
Pirate Ship Bedroom
Solar Roof Tiles
Convertible Couches
Underground Garage
Convertible Ping Pong Table Doors
Cat Transport System
Chandelier to Transform Room Into Forest
Hammock Bed
Stairs With Slide
Stairs With Book Shelves
Storage Space Under Stairs
Kitchen Garden
Spiral Bottle Storage
Backyard Beach
Lawn Cinema
Indoor Treehouse For Kids
Hammock Over Stairs
Swatch Doors
Basement Skateboard Area
Walk-in Pool
Dining Pool Table
Glass Fire Pit
Fire Pit Tables
Aquarium Bed
Sandbeach Under Table
Catwalk Around House
Indoor Slide
Backyard Office
Balcony Pool
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