I get your point, and agree to an extent.
Unfortunately, the F35 fails at increasing our abilities in any way, because it doesn't work.
As to the $100 hammer, most if not all of what you talk about is also done by companies NOT working for the Fed. They have systems to track their own spending and production. It does add to costs, but is not the major driving force of costs by any means. It's maybe 5%, not 95% of cost, normally. The $100 hammers and such are in large part a creation of fraud and/or a way to fund off the books items/missions.
The F35 has had exponentially more issues than other projects, due in large part to spreading it's manufacturing around the country so no state will vote against it in congress.
I think you're overboard on all the 'steps' required to change a software value. I also note that most of those steps could be done by 2 people total, one engineer and one paper pusher. It COULD be spread out among 20 people, but there's no reason it must be. If that were the case in every instance, we would be flying bi-planes and shooting bolt action rifles. Other items are making it through the pipeline, so the contention that oversight always stops progress is not born out in reality. If it did, we certainly wouldn't have a drone fleet today that's improving monthly.

This really depressed me, so i wrote this to feel better:

Wearily i shed
This heavy prison of steel
My spirit soars free

I was made to roam;
Do not mourn mere nuts and bolts,
They subjugate me

That's Ursine Bolt isn't it?

The prop, yes.
The gearbox....there ISN"T ONE!!! These motors are usually direct drive to the flywheel, no gearbox at all. It's a motor with a shaft welded/bolted directly to the flywheel and a prop on the end of the shaft. You take it out of 'gear' by lifting the prop out of the water. (no reverse)

Wow...dad needs to tighten the bolts on the passenger seat badly! If he wrecked, that seat would just flop forward and crush his kid. MAINTENANCE, people...it matters!!!!

Hmm... looks like they skipped one or two steps you would normally want taken (like bolting it in and hooking up all the lines).

*length=115

what sucks is when you try to get them out of the house, those babies bolt everywhere so its just easier to spay them than try to get it out.

It was quoted by an engineer in a documentary from the 90's, I doubt it's on youtube... It doesn't mean they actually tried to bolt one on and test fire. The "who" was some military guy who didn't quite conceive of how fast this plane would actually go.

Next time bring a bolt cutter.
Nothing says amateur more than a thief without the right tools.

I'm a Comp Sci grad who spent a great deal of time doing 3D coding so yes, I've got some idea what is involved here.

Best case scenario here is you have to track down an existing 3-D model that matches the object you want to manipulate close enough to do well. You also need that model's texturing to match close enough to look good. They don't clearly show how you map that model to a portion of your 2d image, but if they have made that relatively simple it is the 'big deal' portion they are showing off because that is very hard, and most likely has some finicky bits to it.

Also, the first bit of finding a good matching 3-d model is the killer. Armed with a well matched 3-D model, something like Blender already let you do this relatively easily. Finding that model is the hard part and for anything living it's simply not going to exist in 90% of cases, so your gonna just not do it, or do what the movie guys are already doing and build your own model.

I'm not saying there's not good work here, but I am sceptical of the fact that the real nuts and bolts of what would make this a 'big deal'(the UI mapping) isn't being shown. Furthermore, the animated origami clinches my skepticism. Sorry, but 3-D animation of 'some object' in your 2d image has NOT been made easy or IMHO been changed at all by their product. 100% of the effort there is the 3-D animation of the object, which you still have to get somebody to do artistically, full stop.

It's not some law of nature that lightning only strikes the tallest spot or goes for the path of least resistance. I think there's a video that has an ultra slow motion capture showing how lightning works. Before the actual bolt strikes, you can see these little "finger" looking things coming down. Once they touch something that gives it a path to the ground, the lightning is discharged. Basically it strikes what it finds first, which generally is something tall, but if it happens to find something else first, like you, it's going to strike that instead.

To be fair, I can't really decide what I'd do in that situation. Assuming the tornado was just suddenly upon them with no warning, there aren't a lot of options. Staying in the trailer is a bad idea. In the truck or under the truck aren't great ideas. They did appear to make an attempt to drive away, which may have been the best bet, but then they stopped... there would be a lot of danger of hitting panicking pedestrians, but at least you have more options than just sitting in an immobile truck.

I suppose, if I were living there for any length of time, and nobody was going to build a tornado shelter, what I'd do is buy a very sturdy steel drum and secure it to the ground with with some big, long steel bolts and then fashion a solid latch for the top that could be opened from both the inside and the outside (not forgetting the breathing holes, of course). Perhaps pile some sand bags around it for good measure.

What about just digging a trench, five or so feet deep... maybe with a sturdy well secured roof of some time? Being underground, I suppose flooding might be a concern.

Meh, I dunno. I guess when it comes down to it, even in tornado alley, the odds of actually getting hit by a tornado are still pretty small. And, if you are actually *directly* hit by a tornado there probably isn't a whole lot that will save you except maybe a main battle tank or a concrete bunker.

Yeah, was almost screaming here "GTFO!" just letting people pass on that right lane, i'd just bolted away to the shoulder. Small fender bender wouldn't be that bad as getting sucked in that hole..

Engineering a way to prevent picking (or at least make it VERY hard -- never say never) is cool. But, the fact that it remains weak against all the other ways to circumvent a lock (grinder, bolt cutter, hacksaw, hammer, whatever) would mean that I wouldn't want to pay very much for one even though the design is impressive.

I figure that 95%+ of the purpose of a lock is to prevent "casual" theft/entry. If someone *really* wants in there, it doesn't much matter how good your lock is.

Much too loud. Even a small bolt cutter will make short work of it.