Blog Archives

Watch A Wheel Get Fired Into Red Bull’s F1 Canopy At 140mph

4/30/2016

Red Bull Racing tried out its rival to the halo ‘thong’ F1 cockpit protector during first practice for the Russian Grand Prix, with its ‘Aeroscreen’ canopy hitting the track for the first time.

The team has now released some video footage of the canopy going through rigorous testing, including the device being hit by a wheel travelling at 140mph. Enjoy!

McLaren Needs This 20-Year-Old Laptop to Maintain the F1

4/30/2016

We all carry supercomputers in our pockets these days, but sometimes it's old tech that's really getting the job done. Take, for example, the ancient Commodore Amiga that runs the heat and AC for 19 different schools in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Or the 20-year-old Compaq Compaq LTE 5280 which plays a vital role in maintaining multi-million dollar McLaren F1s.

Jalopnik took a tour to McLaren's Special Operations workshop where Compaqs still slave away at their work just like they did in the 90s, when the superlative McLaren F1 was still in production. Some 100 of the original 106-car run still exist, and considering that each has a value of at least $5 million dollars or so on the low side, detail-oriented maintenance is a top priority.

But while most of the McLaren F1's mechanical elements have aged quite well, the actual electronics used to control the operation of all those components are still sort of stuck in the 90s. As such, it takes an old hand like the Compaq LTE 5280—complete with 8 or 16MB of RAM—to talk to them.

As one of the workers at the special operations workshop

"The reason we need those specific Compaq laptops is that they run a bespoke CA card which is installed into them. The CA card is an interface between the laptop software (which is DOS based) and the car.""We are currently working on an new interface which will be compatible with modern laptops as the old Compaqs are getting less and less reliable and harder to find."

It's not the most in-depth explanation, but the general shape of the problem is one you can find all over the place if you're looking for it. Some tech moves forward while other tech is stuck behind, and the bridge that connects them becomes ever more strained. For instance, the U.S. Navy is paying millions of dollars to Microsoft in order to stay on Windows XP because so much of their other software was specifically designed for it and would be a nightmare to upgrade. Britain's doomsday nuke subs suffer from much the same problem.

The problem is all the worse when bespoke hardware is involved. You can mostly accommodate old software, but the very nature of microchip production—which requires all sorts of expensive, purpose-designed machinery—makes it completely implausible to continue producing any given kind of chip once it's obsolete and no longer in high demand. You can't just make old chips

So much like McLaren F1s, there is a finite of old Compaq LTE 5280 s. They just don't make 'em like they used to.

tags: Mclaren F1 computer old Nathan Finneman cool breedofspeed Breed of Speed

Dude Straps Himself Into A Falling Helicopter To Show They Won't Actually Fall Like Bricks If The Rotors Stop

4/27/2016

Dustin from Smarter Every Day teaches us all about how helicopters actually manage to glide safely to the ground if an engine fails.

tags: #nathan finneman #helicopter #cool #amazing #breed of speed #breedofspeed

$6 Million Ford F-750 World Cruiser

4/25/2016

We all know that pickup trucks are seriously big business in the U.S. auto market right now, which is one of the reasons they’re getting so much more luxurious and more expensive these days. So, take a look at what you can really achieve with the pickup format if you’ve got too much money, too much time, and a pretty wild imagination. Step forward, the Ford F-750 World Cruiser.

With a 2016 Ford F-150 4WD SuperCrew Platinum having an MSRP of $56,120, how much do you think an F-750 Word Cruiser would cost? Obviously it’s going to be more, so $80k, $100k, $250k perhaps? Nowhere near, I’m afraid. In fact, this behemoth actually cost an eye-water $6million for Dunkel Industries to build.

This fabulously silly pickup might well end up in the collection of an Arab oil billionaire one day; at least the owner of the company that built it will probably hoping so, anyway. The Ford F-750 World Cruiser was put up for auction, but the winning bidder didn’t manage to drive away in the truck after the closing bid of $55,000 fell light years away from what the truck cost to build.

tags: Nathan Finneman finneman colorado breed of speed breedofspeed truck offroad insane amazing cool

John Capes, In WWII When His Submarine Sank He Swam 170 feet To The Surface and Swam 5 miles To Shore.

4/24/2016

Capes was lying in his rack and drinking rum when he felt the explosion. As the stern shot up over the water, he was thrown out of his make-shift bunk just as the lights conked out and plunged him into darkness.

Using a flashlight, he made his way toward the engine room to look for survivors. He found corpses, instead. Water was pouring through the rubber seals, but he kept looking until he found three injured and stunned men. He led them out of the room, sealed the door, and gave them liquid courage from what was left of his bottle.

He took several Davis Submerged Escape Apparatus sets (life vests with oxygen masks and goggles) and distributed them among the men, but there was a problem. They were designed for only up to 100 feet from the surface while the depth gauge said they were 270 feet below.

Though the gauges turned out to be wrong and they were only 170 feet below, it was still too deep. Theyâ€™d be without oxygen for the remaining 70 feet, but they had no choice. Nor could they just open the escape hatch since the pressure outside kept it shut. Capes had to flood the compartment by turning the starboard bilge valve, but it wouldnâ€™t budge.

So he tried the sluice valve where they fired flare guns to the surface, instead. Water poured in and rose around them. When the internal and external pressures had equalized, he undid the hatch bolts with a spanner. When it finally opened, Capes led the others out and swam up after them.

And now they faced another problem: the bends. Due to rapid pressure changes, gasses in the body bubble up and cause intense pain, paralysis, and even death. Terrified, he tried to slow his ascent, but it did no good. Pain slammed his chest â€“ he didnâ€™t think heâ€™d make it.

Somehow he did, but he was the only one. Seeing white cliffs in the distance, he swam toward them for 6 hours, made it to the beach, and then passed out. He had made it to the island of Kephalonia, again at the worst possible time.

Greece was under Axis control, and its resources were being plundered while its people were being starved to death â€“ those who werenâ€™t killed outright. Itâ€™s estimated that 13% of the Greek population died from hunger alone, so those who found Capes rebelled in the only way they could.

They hid him, even though they put their entire families at risk by doing so. He was kept hidden in caves, moved from house to house, and given what little food they had left to spare. To blend in, he dyed his hair black and lost 70 pounds.

This went on for 18 months till he was finally smuggled out on a fishing boat and taken to Smyrna in neutral Turkey. He found shelter at the British consulate that finally sent him to Alexandria.

Capes died in 1985 with a pall of suspicion hanging over his allegedly heroic deeds.

It took Greek archeologist, Kostas Thoctarides, to validate Capesâ€™ story. On 26 December 1997, Thoctarides led a dive team that discovered the remains of the Perseus.

They found the open aft escape hatch, the open sluice valve, and the rum bottle on a torpedo rack â€“ proof that Capes deserved his medal.

tags: submarine nathan finneman breed of speed breedofspeed colorado finneman hero ww2 amazing

This Guy Bought A Problematic BMW M3, Then Saw His Car Had Been Abused By Top Gear

4/22/2016

No matter how careful you are when checking a used car’s history, it’s impossible to know exactly how difficult its life has been. For example, just because your car has been regularly serviced, it doesn’t mean it was never drifted around an airfield by a bloke who had literally no interest in being careful since he got to give the keys back at the end of the day. At least, that would be impossible to know, unless, say, it was drifted around an airfield by the bloke who hosts the world’s most watched television show.

Rob Willis, 27, encountered exactly this problem recently, after buying himself a lovely looking Yas Marina Blue BMW M3. The IT operations manager.

“When I bought it, I was told it was an ex-demo which one of the managers had been driving. The brakes were constantly squeaking and the steering wheel made a clunking noise every time I came off the motorway.”

Then, about a month after picking up the car, Rob was watching an old episode of Top Gear, when his girlfriend spotted that the M3 being hooned by Clarkson was wearing the same number plate as the car he’d just bought. Obviously unimpressed by the fact he’d been sold a car that had been abused in such a way without disclosure of that fact, Willis took his M3 back to his local dealership: “The dealers told me it was a mistake and the car should never have been sold as it was unfit for the road.”

The life of a press car is a rough one. The cars are handed around from publication to publication, and driven by people who grow no sense of attachment to the car. Most of us are careful to treat cars properly, but there will always be those who use and abuse their privilege. Furthermore, making cool content often involves driving these cars hard, repeatedly for the camera; no matter how careful you are, that’ll take its toll - and occasionally these cars come with delivery mileage, and we simply don’t have time to get the engines run in before enjoying them. So when these cars exit service and are sold off, it’s no surprise that occasionally they might seem a little rough around the edges.

Fortunately the cars are looked after and serviced by dedicated teams, so there’s very little chance of people encountering an issue like Rob has. Still, I’m not entirely sure I’d want to drop big money on a car the likes of Chris Harris or Jeremy Clarkson have had on camera, no matter how carefully it’s been serviced in the meantime.

tags: nathan finneman colorado breed of speed breedofspeed abused m3 bmw m4 top gear funny

Botched Airdrop Sends Military Humvees Plummeting To Their Doom

4/20/2016

Somebody screwed up at the United States Army Garrison (USAG) in Hohenfels, Germany the other day because I am relatively sure that an airdropped Humvee is not supposed to move towards the ground quite that quickly. Someone in the 173rd Airborne Brigade probably has some explaining to do.

As posted on the U.S. Army WTF Moments Facebook page and highlighted by Foxtrot Alpha, the botched airdrop lead to the free fall and subsequent destruction of three Humvees. You can watch all of them absolutely crater below, but just brace yourself for some colorful language as the cameraman cheers on the vehicular carnage: poses a few possibilities as to what might have caused the accident, which include high winds or improper rigging attaching the parachutes to the Humvees, which it supposes is the most likely cause. But you don't need to know exactly what happened to see that the results are, well, WOOF.

tags: nathan finneman breed of speed breedofspeed colorado finneman cool army humvee fail airdrop fail amazing parachute accident

Ferrari Is Planning to Build a Theme Park in North America

4/20/2016

Bloomberg is reporting that Ferrari is planning to build a new theme park somewhere in North America. Currently, the Italian company has a park, Ferrari World, on Abu Dhabi’s Yas Island and another under construction in Spain, with a third scheduled to pop up in China.

As it stands, the North American location remains unknown, or possibly undecided, but don’t be surprised if the new Ferrari park winds up in theme park meccas Los Angeles or Orlando.

Regardless, expect the park to feature similar racing-themed attractions, including roller coasters, vertical acceleration towers, and virtual test tracks, much like the aforementioned Ferrari World in Abu Dhabi.

Stay tuned for more on the new North American Ferrari theme park.

Boaty McBoatface wins poll to name polar research vessel

4/17/2016

Forget the EU referendum. The major test of modern democracy has fallen into the hands of the Natural Environment Research Council – over the naming of a boat.

As the polls finally closed for the naming of its new polar research ship, the NERC confirmed that the votes were overwhelmingly in favour of RRS Boaty McBoatface.

The suggestion, which sent the competition viral last month, received 124,109 votes, four times more than RRS Poppy-Mai – named after a 16-month-old girl with incurable cancer – which came in second place.

The chief executive of the NERC, Duncan Wingham, with whom the final decision lies, now faces the dilemma of choosing between the credibility of his organisation – and its £200m arctic explorer – and the overwhelming burden of public opinion.

If Wingham does bow to the Boaty McBoatface campaign, it will mark something of a departure from previous royal research ships named in honour of arctic explorer Ernest Shackleton and naval officer James Clark Ross.

The name was first put forward by former BBC radio presenter James Hand, who expressed surprise at the furore Boaty McBoatface has caused.

“This is actually nothing to do with me,” he said. “I made the suggestion but the storm that’s been created – it’s got legs of its own. I just feel it’s a very British thing, which a lot of people have pointed out.”

Hand added that while he stands by Boaty McBoatface as a “brilliant name” for the research ship, he actually voted for RRS David Attenborough, which came in fifth with 10,284 votes overall.

Tweeting after the poll closed on Saturday, Hand said it had been “a crazy few weeks”.

The NERC thanked everyone for their suggestions on its website, posting: “We are no longer accepting suggestions to name our ship as we have now reached the closing date of 16 April.

“We’ve had an extremely high volume of suggestions and will now review all of the suggested names. The final decision will be announced in due course.”

The research council received more than 7,000 entries during the month-long competition period, including RRS Onion Knight, RRS I Like Big Boats & I Cannot Lie, and RRS Capt’n Birdseye Get Off My Cod.

The Boaty McBoatface saga is not the first time online polls have gone awry. Greenpeace launched a campaign to name a humpback whale in the South pacific in an attempt to keep them from being poached by the Japanese. The poll prompted a voting frenzy after Mr Splashy Pants was put forward – and ended up winning 78% of the vote.

Similarly in 2012, soft drinks brand Mountain Dew was forced to abandon a poll to name its new apple-flavoured drink after it was hijacked by message board 4chan who ensured that “Hitler did nothing wrong” won the vote.

The city of Austin, Texas, also learned the perils of public voting after a poll to rename the Solid Waste Services Department ended up with an overwhelming number of votes to call it The Fred Durst Society of the Humanities and Arts as an ode to the Limp Bizkit singer.

Despite an endorsement from Durst himself, the city shunned democracy in favour of Austin Resource Recovery.

The top five suggestions are:

RRS Boaty McBoatface – 124,109
RRS Poppy-Mai – 34,371
RRS Henry Worsley – 15,231
RRS It’s bloody cold here – 10,679
RRS David Attenborough – 10,284

• This article was amended on 17 April 2016. Fred Durst is the lead singer of Limp Bizkit, not Linkin Park as originally stated.

tags: nathan finneman Nathan Finneman cool boaty mcboat face boat express funny UK boat name breedofspeed breed of speed

Russian Su-27 interceptor performs Top Gun stunt over U.S. spyplane

4/17/2016

An “unsafe and unprofessional” intercept over the Baltic Sea.On April 14, a U.S. Air Force RC-135U Combat Sent electronic intelligence gathering aircraft flying a routine mission (in international airspace) over the Baltic Sea was intercepted by a Russian Su-27 in “an unsafe and unprofessional manner,” Navy Capt. Danny Hernandez, U.S. European Command spokesman told the CNN.

According to EUCOM, the Flanker began the barrel roll from the left side of the U.S. RC-135 and went over the top of it to end on the right side of the aircraft, an aggressive maneuver (not compliant with the international standards) that brought the Russian jet dangerously close to colliding with the Combat Sent.

The episode comes few days after Russian Su-24s performed several low passes over a U.S. destroyer in the Baltic Sea,and it’s only the last in a long series of tense close encounters between American spyplanes and Russian fighters in the skies across the world.

On Jan. 25, 2016 a U.S. RC-135 intelligence gathering jet was intercepted by a Russian Su-27 Flanker fighter jet over Black Sea: during the interception, the Su-27 made an aggressive turn that disturbed the controllability of the RC-135.

On Apr. 7, 2015 another Su-27 flew within 20 feet of an RC-135U, over the Baltic Sea.

On Apr. 23, 2015 a U.S. Air Force RC-135U Combat Sent performing a routine surveillance mission in international airspace over the Sea of Okhotsk, north of Japan, some 60 miles off eastern Russia was intercepted by a Russian Su-27 Flanker that crossed the route of the U.S. aircraft putting itself within 100 feet of the Combat Sent.

Actually, some “reckless” intercepts on U.S. spyplanes have been conducted by Chinese pilots as well.

In 2014, a Chinese Flanker made a barrel roll over a U.S. Navy P-8 maritime surveillance plane 135 miles east of Hainan Island, a spot of a far more dangerous close encounter of another U.S. electronic surveillance plane with the Chinese Navy back in 2001.

On Apr. 1, 2001, a U.S. Navy EP-3E with the VQ-1, flying an ELINT (Electronic Intelligence) mission in international airspace 64 miles southeast of the island of Hainan was intercepted by two PLAN (People’s Liberation Army Navy) J-8 fighters.

One of the J-8s piloted by Lt. Cdr. Wang Wei, made two close passes to the EP-3 before colliding with the spyplane on the third pass. As a consequence, the J-8 broke into two pieces and crashed into the sea causing the death of the pilot, whereas the EP-3, severely damaged, performed an unauthorized landing at China’s Lingshui airfield.

The 24 crew members (21 men and three women), that destroyed all (or at least most of ) the sensitive items and data on board the aircraft, were detained by Chinese authorities until Apr. 11.

Anyway, not only have U.S. aircraft been harassed during intercept missions. Here are just a few examples.

On Sept. 13, 1987, a RNoAF P-3B had a mid-air collision in similar circumstances with a Soviet Sukhoi Su-27 Flankerover the Barents Sea.

In Apr. 2012, whilst flying over the Barents Sea on a routine mission, a Norwegian P-3 Orion almost collided with a Russian Air Force Mig-31 Foxhound that had intercepted the patrol aircraft.

On Jul. 16, 2014, between Gotland and Latvia, a Russian Su-27 Flanker, armed with 6 air-to-air missiles, intercepted one of the two Swedish ELINT jet, and flew as close as 10,7 meters of the spyplane.

tags: nathan finneman Nathan Finneman russian low pass on US fighter jet world war 3

<<Previous

Watch A Wheel Get Fired Into Red Bull’s F1 Canopy At 140mph

McLaren Needs This 20-Year-Old Laptop to Maintain the F1

Dude Straps Himself Into A Falling Helicopter To Show They Won't Actually Fall Like Bricks If The Rotors Stop

$6 Million Ford F-750 World Cruiser

John Capes, In WWII When His Submarine Sank He Swam 170 feet To The Surface and Swam 5 miles To Shore.

This Guy Bought A Problematic BMW M3, Then Saw His Car Had Been Abused By Top Gear

Botched Airdrop Sends Military Humvees Plummeting To Their Doom

Ferrari Is Planning to Build a Theme Park in North America

Boaty McBoatface wins poll to name polar research vessel

Russian Su-27 interceptor performs Top Gun stunt over U.S. spyplane

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