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Up until the mid-2000’s, the displays on devices were mainly covered with plastic. Then in 2006, Steve Jobs asked Corning to create a durable and scratch-resistant glass, and Gorilla Glass was born. Here’s how Corning makes its money-making material.
A while back, a group of activists bought shares of Smith & Wesson to try and force the company into what they saw as a more socially responsible direction.
Of course, that’s all a bunch of male bovine excrement, but what else do we expect from anti-gunners?
What they accomplished was to push the company to conduct a study on product safety, which was supposedly a major victory.
Well, Smith & Wesson conducted the study, and it’s unlikely the activists will like it.
The group called Adrian Dominican Sisters, led by a nun named Sister Judy Byron, is part of the Northwest Coalition for Responsible Investments, an anti-Second Amendment activist group. Their latest target was American Outdoor Brands Corporation (AOBC), which owns Smith & Wesson. The company was forced to do a study, which was released late Friday, but the results likely won’t make the nuns happy.
In their report, AOBC defended itself against critics of the Second Amendment, writing, “Specific terms sometimes are used to craft a narrative in support of those agendas. For example, phrases such as ‘gun violence’ are used to create a perception that the presence of a gun, in itself, somehow creates the conditions for violence.”
Moreover, the report takes swipes at liberal groups trying to tarnish the company’s reputation and bottom line. (RELATED: U.S. Supreme Court Takes Second Amendment Challenge To A Gun Control Law)
“The Company’s reputation as a strong defender of the Second Amendment is not worth risking for a vague goal of improving the Company’s reputation among non-customers or special interest groups with an anti-Second Amendment agenda,” the report reads.
AOBC is one of two firearm manufacturers the activists bought stock in for the expressed purpose of forcing a “dialogue with the companies about what they are doing to ensure the safety of children and communities whose lives may be at risk because of their products.”
One of the areas the activist nuns wanted addressed was the idea of “smart guns,” weapons that can only be fired by one user. AOBC called this “flawed technology” in the report, saying they would continue to monitor its development.
“AOBC does not believe that current authorized user or ‘smart gun’ technology is reliable, commercially viable, or has any significant consumer demand,” the report read. (RELATED: House To Move Forward With Gun Control Proposals)
The report also points out that the activists represented a small percentage of its shareholders.
Still, they were enough to push for the study to be done in the first place, so it’s probably wise not to dismiss them entirely. Of course, this is also probably why it’s a good idea for pro-Second Amendment activists to step up and invest in gun companies. There’s no reason to allow anti-gunners to infect these companies and steer them in the wrong direction.
The anti-gunners’ victories last year, while small, was enough to embolden them and likely made some decide to join their ranks. It’s time to play a little defense and let these gun grabbers learn that there are a lot more of us than there are of them in the next corporate meeting.
The post Smith & Wesson Report Sure To Upset Anti-Second Amendment Shareholders appeared first on Bearing Arms.
via Bearing Arms
Smith & Wesson Report Sure To Upset Anti-Second Amendment Shareholders
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Google today announced the general availability of a new API for Google Docs that will allow developers to automate many of the tasks that users typically do manually in the company’s online office suite. The API has been in developer preview since last April’s Google Cloud Next 2018 and is now available to all developers. As Google notes, the REST API was designed to help developers build workflow automation services for their users, build content management services and create documents in bulk. Using the API, developers can also set up processes that manipulate documents after the fact to update them, and the API also features the ability to insert, delete, move, merge and format text, insert inline images and work with lists, among other things.
The canonical use case here is invoicing, where you need to regularly create similar documents with ever-changing order numbers and line items based on information from third-party systems (or maybe even just a Google Sheet). Google also notes that the API’s import/export abilities allow you to use Docs for internal content management systems.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
What is the best AR-15 Barrel? That is a very broad question, primarily because “best” is subjective. What’s best for the money? Best for accuracy? Exhibits the best barrel life? Has the best gas system? Best profile? I could go on. So to make things simpler, this article will cover some of the best match barrel options for accuracy.
Competitive shooting means consistently making the tightest group possible. ARs have successfully crossed into the ½ MOA world and are starting to touch ¼ MOA. That’s impressive, and that’s what this list will focus on.
I won’t be touching on specifics like ideal twist and barrel length either, just high-end manufacturers that really know what they are doing. The kind of companies that can steer you in the right direction if you don’t know enough to know exactly what you want.
Knowing a few good manufacturers gives you a great starting point for getting exactly what you’re looking for. All prices and info listed below are related to 5.56 NATO/.223 Remington/.223 Wylde match grade barrels with mil-spec M4 feed ramps. Other options are definitely available, but 5.56 is more or less what I looked for in terms of pricing here.
Krieger is a well-known and popular barrel manufacturer for custom guns when someone is looking for that competitive edge to help them win. Krieger barrels are single point, cut rifled and double lapped with twist rate options in 1:6.5, 1:7, 1:7.7, 1:9. The barrels come in either stainless steel or chrome moly vanadium.
They offer some great services too, like setting headspace to a JP bolt and fully assembling the upper if you send it to them. Not for free, of course.
The barrels themselves start around $350. Since most of you reading this won’t be reaming and crowning your own barrels, add $100 for that. That brings the cost to $450 for a chambered and crowned barrel with a barrel extension that is headspaced to a (not included without more money) JP Bolt. Also not including a gas block or gas tube. Those too can be purchased through Krieger.
It’s hard to talk about AR accuracy without mentioning JP. This company has been a leader in AR development for years and is, in many ways, the gold standard. Case in point: many companies, like Krieger, us JP bolts as their standard for setting headspace because of their high quality and consistency.
If you dig through their forums a little, you’ll find anecdotes of people reporting ¼ MOA accuracy, sometimes even better. Although this is with their rifles, not just their stainless steel barrels, JP’s barrels are still high very quality. They are button rifled and primarily come in 1:8 twist rates, with a couple 1:7 sprinkled in.
Barrels are sold complete with the gas system installed for roughly $479 and are made from 416R stainless steel.
Bartlein is another titan of the custom quality barrel industry. You’re likely to find a Bartlein on many winning rifles. Like Krieger, they offer single point cut rifling that is double lapped. Unfortunately, they don’t offer drop-in AR barrels.They do, however, endorse Compass Lake Engineering and Cradock Precision as they both have barrel options that start with Bartlein blanks (as well as Krieger and a few others).
Compass offers 20-inch barrels for $495. That doesn’t include a gas system.
They also offer their CLE chambering, as opposed to the common .223 Wylde chambering. They claim that the CLE chamber will decrease group sizes by 23 percent. Cradock offers complete barrels for roughly $597. Both companies only seem to offer 1:7 or 1:7.7 twist rates. Bartlein makes exceptional barrels, you just have to find the right company or gunsmith to turn them into exceptional AR barrels.
White Oak manufactures precision barrels focused primarily around the NRA’s High-Power competitions. They don’t rifle in house, their button rifled blanks are supplied by Wilson Arms. They also offer barrels that are rifled by companies like Krieger and Shilen.
The White Oak brand (Wilson Arms) barrels start around $300 without a gas system. They definitely seem to have more twist rate options like 1:7, 1:7.5, 1:7.7 and 1:8. Some anecdotes claim group sizes as small as .2 at 100. Your mileage, of course, may vary.
Lilja barrels are pull button rifled and hand lapped. Dan Lilja started the company in 1985 due to his passion for bench rest shooting. Since then the company has racked up several Olympic gold medals and national match victories (well, their barrels were on rifles that were used to win).
Either way, Lilja is another top-notch manufacturer of precision AR barrels. Not unlike the other options here, their barrels start around $500 without a gas system. Lilja also seems to have the widest range of rifling options, by far; 1:7, 1:8, 1:9, 1:10, 1:12, 1:13, 1:14, 1:15 and 1:16, plus different groove options like 3-groove, 4-groove and 6-groove. All groove options aren’t available for all twist rates, but there are still a lot of options there.
Note that none of the above barrels have chrome lining, a nitride finish or other treatments. Those treatments are not conducive to accuracy.
Also, note that none are cold hammer forged. Hammer forged barrels are beaten up in the manufacturing process and come out angry. They are full of stress that prevents them from having the high level of consistent accuracy we are talking about here.
There is so much that goes into a rifle’s accuracy and the barrel is just one part of the equation. If you’re debating whether or not you need a barrel from one of these makers, then you probably don’t.
A good rule of thumb is to buy a barrel in the price range similar to the ammo you shoot. If you’re constantly hunting for the cheapest deals, trying to get 5.56 for 9mm prices, then ignore this list and buy the cheapest thing that will work in your rifle.
If you care enough about accuracy to spend $20 or so on a box of 5.56 ammo, then splurge for a barrel from a good maker like Faxon Firearms, Ballistic Advantage, X-Caliber or something similar. Unless the rest of your gun is junk, those barrels should get you into the 1 MOA realm with decent factory ammo.
If you hand load your own ammo and obsess over fine-tuning your loads to your rifle in pursuit of single-hole 10-shot groups at 100 yards, then spare no expense on the barrel you buy. Go with a barrel from one of these makers and know you’ve bought one of the best.
Matt Sandy is an Arizona-based gunsmith who competes in both USPSA and PRC matches.
Xinova, a Seattle-based invention network, and Arc, a New York-based fund management firm, are teaming up to launch a new online capital marketplace that lets investors fund innovation projects on one platform across borders without the need to issue traditional securities or use manual transaction methods.
The new joint venture is called Arcnet, which the companies describe as the world’s first open-investment network that uses blockchain and distributed ledgers to automate processes related to early-stage innovation projects such as authentication, compliance, and accounting.
Xinova, which spun out of Seattle-based Intellectual Ventures in 2016, operates a network of more than 12,000 inventors and helps match their ideas with customers that need related solutions. The company, which employs more than 100 people globally, will help build out the technology for Arcnet while Arc will offer its financial expertise.
Brad Roberts, global head of network platform at Xinova who joined Intellectual Ventures in 2010, will lead Arcnet as CEO and co-founder. Roberts said there is a “massive failure to properly fund innovation,” calling out the narrow scope of investment vehicles such as venture capital or private equity, and the corporate interest of traditional R&D projects. That’s what led Xinova to creating its own capital network in partnership with Arc.
“It will both service the type of innovation projects Xinova is working on, but also bring about a major change in the way you can finance a transaction across project funding, across the innovation space, and globally as you cross borders,” Roberts said.
Arcnet brings the role of a bank, exchange, and broker into one decentralized platform. Brian Wisk, CIO at Arc who is co-founder of Arcnet, said the model “un-tethers us from structural mandates” associated with traditional investment processes.
“The universe of investable ideas is limited by things like the life or the liquidity terms of these various investment vehicles,” he said. “We hope to not necessarily replace those, but open up a whole new horizon where we can tailor the structure of the investment vehicle to appropriately match the life of the investment and not have some thick structure that was created to make it easier for consultants and dealers to sell product.”
One of the first listed projects on Arcnet is a venture that invests in fleets of zero-emission buses throughout Latin America. Arcnet is bringing together various stakeholders who want to pool assets for the bus project and managing the financing in one place with distributed ledgers and blockchain tech.
“Even though citizens and government alike see immense value from a zero-emission solution, no individual stakeholder could solve the problem alone,” Adam Sherman, partner at Arc, said in a statement. “So, we built a consortium of electric vehicle stakeholders spanning four continents to assemble the fleet and related infrastructure.”
Arcnet makes money off advisory and transaction fees while also having the option to take equity in projects. Roberts said that by keeping everything within one regulatory framework and using a general ledgering system, those fees are reduced from what’s traditionally charged today.
“Having been through a series of audits and transaction management fees, it is incredibly painful to see how much time and energy goes into overhead that is just antiquated,” he said. “It’s exciting to talk about how we can wash away a lot of that pain.”
Arcnet is targeting investments ranging from $50,000 to $100 million per project and plans to fully launch the platform in 2020.
via GeekWire
Intellectual Ventures spinoff Xinova launches new online capital marketplace to fund innovation projects
Have you ever deleted a production database? Deleted an incorrect row? Had a server crash and corrupt the DB? Or ran the wrong code against the wrong database?
If you’ve been in the industry long enough, you’ll either experience something like this, or you’ll hear the horror stories from your peers.
It doesn’t have to be this way, and Servers for Hackers launched a new MySQL Backups course to teach you how to guard against accidents.
The course includes 43 separate videos and over 6 hours of content. Some of the stuff you will learn include:
Improve your backups, learn how to prevent data loss, and undo bad queries. The MySQL Backups course is $99 and available now.
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Mark Wycislik-Wilson, writing for BetaNews: Last year, developer Felix Rieseberg released Windows 95 as an Electron app to let 90s computer users relive their younger years. Now he’s back with a second version of the Windows 95 app, and it’s even better than ever — gaming classics such as Doom and Wolfenstein3D are now included, for starters! Based on the Electron framework, Windows 95 2.0 is written in JavaScript, and is essentially a 500MB standalone virtual machine. The original release was lacking in a number of areas — such as no sound or internet access. This second release is described as a "big update" and includes a web browser in the form of Netscape Navigator 2.0.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
via Slashdot
Developer Releases Windows 95 OS as an App For Windows 10, macOS and Linux
If you’re hanging heavy pictures, mirrors, or shelves, you need to know where your wall studs are—and the best tool we found for the job is the C.H. Hanson 03040 Magnetic Stud Finder. After 30 hours of research and testing against five other magnetic stud finders, we found the C.H. Hanson to be reliable, durable, and accurate, and because it doesn’t need batteries or any kind of calibration. While the other magnetic stud finders in our test group have only one magnet, the C.H. Hanson has two, which doubles the scanning area and reduces the time it takes to get a hit. It’s also the most durable model we looked at, by far—from what we can tell, breaking it would take some serious effort.
via Wirecutter: Reviews for the Real World
The Best Stud Finder for Home Use
Laravel Translation Sheet is a package by Nassif Bourguig for translating Laravel language files using Google Sheets. What I love about this idea/package, is how easy it makes the process of collaborating on language translations with a standard tool like Google Sheets.
Related: Building a Laravel Translation Package
The way that you interact with Google Sheets is through a series of artisan commands and the Google Sheets API:
# Setup and prep commands
php artisan translation_sheet:setup
php artisan translation_sheet:prepare
# Publish translation to Google Sheets
php artisan translation_sheet:push
Once the translations are ready to go, you can use the pull command to pull the translations from the spreadsheet and write to the language-specific files in your Laravel application:
php artisan translation_sheet:pull
Using the pull command syncs the translations from Google Sheets the configured language translation files. You are free to do a diff on them through version control, test them out, and finally commit them to your application.
Once you receive translations and have pulled them into your application, you can lock the sheet to avoid conflicts:
# Lock the sheet to avoid conflicts
php artisan translation_sheet:lock
You can learn more about Laravel Translation Sheet on GitHub at nikaia/translation-sheet. To learn how to install and use the package, check out the project’s README file.
via Laravel News
Translate Laravel Languages with Google Sheets
Dewalt has announced the recall of two corded drills, DWD110, and DWD112, due to a potential shock hazard where internal wiring can contact moving parts.
About 122,000 units are affected, including another 8,000 sold on Canada. The drills were sold at Home Depot, Lowes, Amazon, and other hardware stores and online retailers.
The affected drills were sold between September 2017 and November 2018, and have date codes 2017-37-FY through 2018-22-FY.
If your drill is included in this recall, STOP using it immediately and contact Dewalt to schedule a free inspection and repair.
More Info(via US CPSC)
Contact Info:
