ioSafe put its new Rugged Portable Thunderbolt hard drive to a lightning test. (Photo: CNET) ioSafe, a company that makes “disaster-proof” hardware and touts its technology as like a “little black box” for hard drives, has conducted some pretty extreme demonstrations to showcase the beating its products can withstand. CNET reports that for the last three years at the Consumer Electronics Show, ioSafe has put its Rugged Portable devices to the test , but this year was, shall we say, shockingly unlike the others. To unveil its Rugged Portable Thunderbolt hard drive, ioSafe felt it had to stay true to the product’s namesake and test it with a 1 million volt Tesla coil. Watch the raw footage of the test from CNET here: Here’s a cleaner cut demo provided by ioSafe to MSNBC: Read more: Can This Hard Drive Withstand Electrocution From 1 Million Volt Tesla Coil?
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Can This Hard Drive Withstand Electrocution From 1 Million Volt Tesla Coil?
The Obama administration has been taking heat for some time now regarding the bankruptcy of solar panel company Solydra, which received $500 million in loans from the U.S. government. Claims from President Obama were that some failures were bound to happen, such is the risk of business : “We knew from the start that the loan guarantee program was going to entail some risk by definition,” Obama said, adding that the “overall portfolio has been successful.” That may be true. What he failed to mention was where t hey were successful . Vice President Joseph Biden heralded the Energy Department’s $529 million loan to the start-up electric car company called Fisker as a bright new path to thousands of American manufacturing jobs. But two years after the loan was announced, the job of assembling the flashy electric Fisker Karma sports car has been outsourced to Finland. … “There was no contract manufacturer in the U.S. that could actually produce our vehicle,” the car company’s founder and namesake told ABC News. “They don’t exist here.” Alright, so maybe the jobs that were expected as a result of the government funded $97,000 luxury electric cars (of which only 2 have been delivered so far, as the company is a year off schedule), but at least this company will work to make sure the taxpayer money is repaid. Right? That remains an open question. One which the Government Accountability Office is not so sure we’ll like the answer to. Yet an audit this year by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, criticized the Energy Department for not keeping close enough tabs on its fleet of auto loan s — including those to Fisker and Tesla — to ensure they meet benchmarks. The funding was issued under the $25 billion Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing loan program, one piece of a giant umbrella of DOE loans and loan guarantees going out the door. “DOE cannot be assured that the projects are on track to deliver the vehicles as agreed,” said the GAO report examining the department’s ATVM program. “It also means that U.S. taxpayers do not know whether they are getting what they paid for through the loans .” [emphasis mine] Well, that’s reassuring. Tesla, mentioned in the quote above, is yet another electric car manufacturer which received a cool $465 million for their efforts. No word yet on where the manufacturing jobs for that company will land. But the similarities to Solyndra don’t end with hundreds of millions of dollars and questions of success. As was the case with the failed solar panel company, Tesla and Fisker may have been awarded their loans because they were uniquely connected to the right people. Fisker is backed by California VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, of which one Al Gore happens to be a senior partner. More incriminating, Kleiner Perkins execs are Democrat donors and partner John Doerr serves on Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness . Tesla has even more questionable connections: Tesla brings political pull, as well. A former Tesla board member, Steve Westly, is an Obama bundler who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the president in 2008 and for his 2012 re-election campaign. His Westly Group was also a financial supporter of Tesla Motors until Tesla went public in 2010, and Westly continues to back the company. Tesla’s founder and CEO, Elon Musk, is a hearty political contributor who has primarily backed Democrats, including Obama. According to published reports, another Tesla investor is Nick Pritzker, a donor to Obama and a cousin of Penny Pritzker, the national finance chair of Obama’s 2008 campaign. This is crony socialism at its finest. While the Obama administration pushes EPA regulations like MACT , which will destroy the competition for green energy ( coal ), they simultaneously funnel billions of dollars to unproven companies run by donors, bundlers, and friends. In 2009, Joe Biden, discussing the $500 million loan to Fisker, had this to say: “Folks, we’re making a bet,” Biden said on Oct. 27, 2009. You weren’t making a bet Joe. A bet involves putting your own money at stake. This was a heist. Follow @Ben_Howe
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Donors, Bundlers, and Obama Allies Secure $1 Billion in Loans, Export Jobs to Finland
[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here . Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.] You really have admit Obama has serious chutzpah to say this one. He was addressing efforts to combat so-called climate change and the like when he said this : Obama addressed rising gasoline prices at the San Francisco event Benioff hosted, even while acknowledging that donors at the $35,800-per-plate event weren’t personally struggling with costs at the pump. “Right now we’ve got $4-a-gallon gas, and most of the people under this tent don’t have to worry about that. But for the average person who has to drive 50 miles to work and can’t afford to buy the Tesla, it’s hammering them. It’s hurting them,” Obama said, according to a White House transcript that notes the Tesla comment drew laughter. Tesla Motors is a California-based company that makes an electric sports car that sells for more than $100,000, while the sedan Tesla plans to make available next year is about half that price. Obama added: “So there’s a huge economic imperative. There’s a national security imperative, as well, because we see what’s happening in the Middle East and we understand that a finite resource that is primarily located in a very unstable part of the world is not good for our long-term future.” Well, at least this time he knows that if you can’t afford gas, you probably can’t afford a new car , either. That’s a start. Still, the reason why it takes serious nerve to say it is because he already told us he wants us to pay more at the pump. Remember this bit? (Thanks to Dustin for finding this for me a few weeks ago.) The youtuber who posted that has this transcript of the key moment: Sen. OBAMA: Well, I think that we have been slow to move in a better direction when it comes to energy usage. And the president, frankly, hasn’t had an energy policy. And as a consequence, we’ve been consuming energy as if it’s infinite. We now know that our demand is badly outstripping supply with China and India growing as rapidly as they are. So… HARWOOD: So could these high prices help us? Sen. OBAMA: I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment. The fact that this is such a shock to American pocketbooks is not a good thing. But if we take some steps right now to help people make the adjustment, first of all by putting more money into their pockets, but also by encouraging the market to adapt to these new circumstances more quickly, particularly US automakers, then I think ultimately, we can come out of this stronger and have a more efficient energy policy than we do right now. And this was not a one-shot. He said something similar on his cap-and-trade approach to energy ( via Hot Air ): High gas prices are not an unintended consequence. They aren’t a bug. They are a feature. The environmentalists want higher gas prices, because they are trying to force you to consume less gas. They want you to look at this*… …and say, “Holy crap, I need a hybrid.” So high gas prices are not an unintended consequence of their policies: it is the means by which they will accomplish their goal. And this president has done many things to keep gas prices high, from blocking any attempt to drill in ANWR, to the illegal drilling moratorium in the gulf. He came in with the promise to raise your energy prices and energy prices have risen. And now he is pretending to be upset about it? Give me a break. At most he is upset that they might threaten his chances of reelection. Hat tip: Doug Powers at Malkin’s place. Update: Thanks for the link from Reaganite Republican , who has some potentially helpful advice. Yes, a coupon for a gallon of gas is becoming more valuable by the day. Sigh. ————————- * That image is a little old and therefore that particular gas station has probably raised its prices even more since then. You can read the article I ripped it from, here . But for me, that is about where prices are in my area, last I looked. And from what I have heard, that price is a little on the low side. [Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]
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Obama Cries Crocodile Tears Over High Gas Prices
Good evening RedStaters. I spent all weekend battling a monster cold, so I’m still a bit thrown off, and so didn’t even try to get tonight’s installment of Tech at Night in before midnight Eastern. In fact it’ll be a reach to get this done before midnight Pacific, but such is life. RedState diarist ladyimpactohio (follow her on Twitter at @ladyimpactohio ) already scored one big win by peeling the Gun Owners of America from the Free Press radical Net Neutrality coalition, but the right is already at work on the next target: the Christian Coalition . Dick Armey and FreedomWorks are leading this fight, and I’m glad of it. Way back when I started covering this issue, I said there were three names on the Save the Internet (Free Press front group) list that bugged me: Gun Owners of America, Christian Coalition, and Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds. If we can peel off at least two of three, I’ll be happy. Meanwhile, Verizon is trying to sell the White House on the joint Google-Verizon Net Neutrality proposal, saying that their compromise would fulfill the letter of Obama’s campaign promise. I like that tactic, and it has to make some people tense over at Free Press. The radicals already lost allies in most Democrats in Congress, Google, and Gun owners of America. If they lose the White House, then the pressure on the FCC to back down might be unbearable. And if we didn’t have enough reason to watch Free Press’s Net Neutrality push closely: ACORN’s relationship with Free Press is now being questioned widely , again thanks in part to RedState community members. Of course with Google switching sides, we needed a new villain, and it looks like we’ve got one: the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) wants to piggyback on Net Neutrality to get new subsidies. They’re going to shroud themselves in the mantle of property rights and copyright, and paint their opponents as child molesters (literally), but they’re going to ask for government regulations and requirements that benefit them at everyone else’s expense, and that’s just wrong. That’s just socialist central planning of the economy. Let them figure out how to sell more CDs or iTunes tracks on their own dime. Besides, last I checked, they don’t need us to worry for them ’cause they’re all right (yeah, I used one of their own songs against them in open parodic fair use, take that). Go ahead with your own business, RIAA, leave us alone. And one more point for tonight, that isn’t even Net Neutrality related. Bayshore Networks has an analysis of Intel’s acquisition of McAfee . This is, as Bayshore points out, an odd thing because McAfee is purely a software company, selling end point security, while Intel primarily sells hardware. But it is clearly a “vote of confidence” in the industry as they say, and could lead to more acquisitions. What I think Bayshore is missing though is one big reason to make such acquisitions: this all comes in the context of a drumbeat from the Democrats on the need for new laws to deal with “cybersecurity” nationally. Given the rewards that have fallen on GM and Tesla as members of a favored industry, I think it makes sense to pick up a cybersecurity company in the hopes that massive government subsidies will be pushed out to them before Republicans can clamp down on spending next year. I’m told many in business prefer to ignore politics, but this is one case where the political environment has to matter, I believe.
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Tech at Night: Net Neutrality, FreedomWorks, Christian Coalition, RIAA, Copyright, Cybersecurity, Intel, McAfee
