Daily Archives: March 22, 2010

Foil impressioning lockpicking

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The way the tool works is that you first take some aluminum foil and make a ‘U shaped’ form using the special tool to do so and make small incisions on pre-determined positions. Next thing you do is put the foil over a special blank that already has the profile of your target lock. The clever thing about this tool is that the ‘U shaped foil tube’ is wrapped around some sort of needle, and the foil can not be pushed in when entering the lock! Once the key is inserted, the needle is taken out from the back of the tool, and the pins are now resting on the foil. Because of the cuts in the foil, each pin will stand on it’s own ‘island’ of foil, and when it is pushed in will not disturb the neighboring pin!

This technique will open most locks and you can buy a kit for around $58,- or a simpler model for $21,-

via Advanced foil impressioning « Blackbag, Barry’s weblog.

Speed Up Windows 7 Taskbar Navigation with a Registry Hack – Windows Tip – Lifehacker

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Launch regedit.exe

HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Explorer AdvancedGo to Edit->New->DWORD 32-bit ValueName the value LastActiveClick

Hit enter to assign the value and change it to 1Restart Explorer and you're good to go.

via Speed Up Windows 7 Taskbar Navigation with a Registry Hack – Windows Tip – Lifehacker.

F-35 price hiked by 90%

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Not only is the F-35 underperforming and overpriced, it’s also not an air dominance fighter. It’s a point defence fighter with the same limitations of the F-16 when it first came out. If you want to play with the big boys, you gotta have a big stick, and the F-35 just isn’t it.
Now it’s flayaway price is estimated at $135m, a lot more than the $60-$90m projected and a whole lot more than a new F-16 or even a latest model F-18.
Dump this programme, get F-22 back on the rails (if you’re American) or buy Eurofighter / Rafale / Gripen (if you’re European).

Last year, the US Air Force reported incremental unit procurement cost to buy one more F-22 in Fiscal 2010, assuming a 20-aircraft multi-year contract. The cost was $138 million.At the time, the F-35 seemed like a bargain by comparison. The official cost estimate, unchanged since 2007, pinned the average procurement cost for the F-35 between $60-$90 million, depending on the variant.Those assumptions for the F-35 now look almost ridiculously rosy. The Department of Defense released a document today revising the F-35 cost estimate by up to nearly 90% [read full story].We now know the F-35 will cost between $114 million to $135 million, adjusted for inflation. That average cost assumes the US Air Force will still buy 1,763 F-35As despite plans to draw-down to a total of 2,000 fighters, including 186 F-22s already on order.

via F-35 sticker shocks the $138 million F-22 – The DEW Line.