You get what you pay for: Canada only spends 1.2% of its GDP on defense (the U.S. spends 3.5%, and NATO requires all its members including Canada to spend at least 2.0%) and doesn’t have enough fighter pilots or aircraft mechanics, and is now thinking about buying beat-up F/A-18s from Australia.
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/25050/canadian-auditors-slam-surplus-aussie-hornet-buy-describe-fighter-force-in-collapse
You get what you pay for: The F-5 fighter is cheaper but is less capable overall than the F-16.
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/25075/how-f-5s-beat-out-f-16s-for-the-navys-latest-commercial-aggressor-contract
The U.S. will help Taiwan keep its F-5 fighters from falling apart.
https://www.janes.com/article/84260/us-seeks-to-sustain-taiwanese-f-5s-alongside-upgraded-f-16s
Taiwan is now using two, American-made frigates. Both were built in 1984, but have somehow been fixed up to last another 30 years (for some reason, this makes me think of Weekend at Bernie’s).
https://www.janes.com/article/84490/taiwanese-navy-commissions-two-cheng-kung-class-frigates
Just as Britain salutes its “Little Ships of Dunkirk” that saved its army during WWII, will China someday celebrate its “Little Ships of the South China Sea” that provided critical surveillance of the U.S. fleet during WWIII?
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/flash-war-74-nearly-forgotten-south-china-sea-showdown-36107
During WWII, the British considered building a massive aircraft carrier made of “pykrete,” a blend of sawdust and ice. It might have actually worked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Project_Habakkuk
Brazil decommissions its sole aircraft carrier, capping a pitiful service record.
https://www.janes.com/article/84831/brazil-decommissions-the-aircraft-carrier-nae-s%E3o-paulo
The sad saga of Russia’s sole aircraft carriers continues.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/huge-floating-drydock-sank-and-nearly-took-russia%E2%80%99s-only-aircraft-carrier-it-35117
As does another sad saga…
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/25156/russian-icebreaker-under-construction-bursts-into-flames-injuring-at-least-two
Russia seized three, small Ukrainian navy ships in the Black Sea, and as usual, it’s impossible to get the factual details thanks to the deceit of both sides.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-26/ukraine-s-talk-of-martial-law-raises-fears-over-elections-imf
With the launching of its first ballistic nuclear missile sub, India’s “nuclear triad” is complete.
https://www.janes.com/article/84287/india-declares-its-nuclear-triad-complete
Would “orbital kinetic weapons” be better than nuclear weapons?
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/11/orbital-kinetic-bombardment-gets-close-to-nuclear-on-damage-and-cost.html
The latest iteration of the venerable “Sidewinder” missile can hit planes BEHIND the launching plane, and can home in on ground targets.
https://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/aim-9x-block-ii-the-new-sidewinder-missile-011572/
The Russian T-14 tank is better than Israel’s Merkava tank in most areas, except “situational awareness,” where it badly lags. That might be the deciding factor in a fight between the two.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/tank-attack-russias-new-armata-t-14-vs-israels-merkava-who-wins-36067
The logical endpoint of various weapon trends is guided bullets. It’s hard to build them since the G-forces imparted on the projectile as it was fired are so strong they could crush the computers, sensors and steering fins inside of it. Note that guided bullets only give you an advantage if you know where your enemy is, and for many reasons, your enemy will by default try to hide from you. This means that even in the distant future, it will be useful to saturate areas of the battlezone with “dumb” projectiles like unguided bullets and bomb shrapnel to hit any bad guys that could be concealed there.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/army-wants-bullets-do-more-hit-target-34882
During the 1918 flu pandemic, there were regional differences in mortality rates partly because of racial differences in resistance to the disease.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181120-what-if-a-deadly-influenza-pandemic-broke-out-today
Immigrants to Western countries have different gut biomes, which might explain their highest incidence of obesity and Type 2 diabetes. Interestingly, foreign-born parents pass on some of their ethnicity-specific gut biomes to their children born in the West.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/08/health/immigration-gut-microbiome.html
Vegetarians and vegans have lower bone density than meat-eaters, and vegans are more prone to breaking bones.
https://academic.oup.com/nutritionreviews/advance-article/doi/10.1093/nutrit/nuy045/5146363
Wine is made exclusively of water, ethanol, and trace chemicals. In theory, there’s no reason why an exact replica of the world’s best wine couldn’t be synthesized in a lab from cheap, common chemicals. This means average schmoes in the future will be able to drink wines only available to the rich today, and to at long last understand that price has almost no bearing on quality.
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2018/10/31/lab-made-whiskey-lab-made-wine
A $10 digital watch keeps more accurate time than a $10,000 Rolex.
https://gizmodo.com/5983427/why-a-10-casio-keeps-better-time-than-a-10000-rolex
‘The world of self-driving cars and global outsourcing doesn’t want or need [low-income Americans living in places were drug abuse and suicide are rife]. Someday it won’t want you either. ‘
https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
Graphene, the “miracle material” with amazing properties, is finally making its way into consumer goods, such as jackets and shoes. This could turn out like aluminum, which was once rarer and more expensive than gold. The discovery of simple electrolysis process to separate aluminum from common bauxite rocks changed that, revolutionizing the world.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-13/miracle-material-graphene-reinvented-as-pixie-dust
People’s faces get more asymmetrical as they age.
https://sivtelegram.media/scientists-have-found-a-surprising-fact-about-people-2/60629/
GATTACA-style human genetic selection is grows closer each day.
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2018/11/validation-of-simultaneous.html
A Chinese geneticist has claimed (without presenting proof) that he used IVF and CRISPR to create the first genetically engineered humans–twin girls with a genetically enhanced resistance to HIV. I agree with the criticism that human genetic engineering is unethical now because our gene editing techniques are so crude that the risk of accidentally damaging a zygote’s DNA during the attempt to enhance something is too high.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/organizers-gene-editing-meeting-blast-chinese-study-call-pathway-human-trials
‘The aim [of the Earth BioGenome Project] is to create an entirely new inventory of life on Planet Earth by reading the genetic code of every organism belonging to a vast group known as eukaryotes…’
Something like this will inevitably succeed, and there will be a database with the genomes of quadrillions of individual organisms, including billions of humans.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46046494
Satellites can be used to count whale populations from space. If a global surveillance network is created, it might prove more efficient to watch things from the air and space than to put many sensors at ground level.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46046264
WiFi can be used to “see” through walls and doors.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612375/using-wi-fi-to-see-behind-closed-doors-is-easier-than-anyone-thought/
Facial recognition software is being used to identify men in Civil War photos. Imagine what else the technology could reveal if used on all vintage photos.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6399039/The-facial-recognition-software-identify-thousands-faces-Civil-War-photographs.html
“Digital night vision” cameras are extraordinary. Some even display color.
https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2018/11/15/digital-night-vision-is-it-worth-while/
Samsung plans to unveil a folding smartphone in 2019. I’ve long predicted such a device. It will render phablets and mini-tablets obsolete.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/11/07/samsungs-next-phone-folds-up-like-book/
This website is an extraordinary compendium of articles, analyses and drawings of future spacecraft designs that are bound by the known laws of physics. For some reason, they’re all oblong (no “Borg cubes”), and if there are any major protrusions perpendicular to the nose-rocket cone axis, they are for heat radiators or rotating human habitat modules.
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/
Impressive footage of the recent explosion of the Russian Soyuz space rocket.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/11/dramatic-footage-of-soyuz-accident-shows-rocket-booster-collision/
‘[The notion of sending rockets into space is] utter bilge. I don’t think anybody will ever put up enough money to do such a thing.’
–Richard van der Riet Woolley, Britain’s leading astronomer, 1956
https://fabiusmaximus.com/2017/12/26/arthur-c-clarke-about-predicting-technology/
“The odds on a Trump impeachment or a Nixon-style resignation are now quite high…It would likely come by the spring of 2018, or whenever Republicans come to believe that Trump is jeopardizing their re-elections in 2018.”
–Dr. Allan Lichtman, 11/1/2017. He became briefly famous when his computer model correctly predicted Donald Trump’s victory when all major pollsters predicted the opposite.
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/politics/656473/donald-trump-impeachment-odds-president-allan-lichtman-russia-investigation
Will robots have senses of humor someday? How much better would our lives be if we had companions that constantly cracked jokes tailored to each person’s sense of humor? How many stressful or hostile daily situations would be defused?
https://www.1843magazine.com/technology/a-robot-walks-into-a-bar
Greg Brockman thinks it’s possible an AGI could be built “in the near-term.”
https://youtu.be/YHCSNsLKHfM
Our brains are in our heads thanks to genetic path dependence and the slowness of information transmission through organic nerves. If you weren’t bound by those constraints and wanted to make a human-sized robot that could deal with its physical environment as well as humans, the best body layout might be a headless humanoid with its computer brain located inside its torso. Distributing the mental functions among separate, redundant computers throughout the robot’s body might be even better.
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/qxljr/why_is_our_brain_in_our_head_and_not_our_chest/
‘The average life expectancy of a dam is 50 years, and 25% of the dams in the Army Corps of Engineers National Inventory of Dams are now more than 50 years old. This number is projected to increase to 85% by the year 2020. ‘
http://web.mit.edu/12.000/www/m2012/finalwebsite/problem/dams.shtml
England is thinking of converting its natural gas (methane) pipes to carry hydrogen gas. H2 gas can (currently at great cost) be made without releasing emissions and is clean-burning. I wonder if it would be better to just get rid of gas pipes altogether and to switch everyone to electric appliances that got energy from clean sources like nuclear or solar.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/11/natural-gas-distributors-outline-proposal-to-convert-home-heating-to-hydrogen/
Chevrolet will discontinue three sedan models, including the Volt hybrid car (I remember it being launched a few years ago to great fanfare), thanks to poor sales, and the company will focus on building more SUVs and pickup trucks.
https://qz.com/1474677/gm-kills-the-chevrolet-volt-as-plug-in-hybrids-lose-market-share/
“5D” etched quartz glass could be used as a data storage medium that would not degrade for billions of years. I think the “window of vulnerability” to civilization collapse and/or the loss of most knowledge will close sometime in the next century when machines have created a self-sustaining space infrastructure. Von Neumann probes loaded with all known, useful knowledge will be sent to other star systems and dispersed throughout our own Solar System for the purpose of rebuilding things as they were should civilization be wiped out.
https://earther.gizmodo.com/the-time-capsules-that-will-outlast-the-apocalypse-1830653288