SAAB CB-90: If I won the Lottery, there would be ways to tell

 

SAAB CB-90

The boat's top speed sits in a blistering bracket of 40 to 45+ knots (approximately 46 to 52 mph), and are outfitted with twin Scania DSI14 V8 diesel engines. Combined, they produced about 1,250 horsepower (625 hp each).  A CB90 burning through diesel at 40+ knots drinks fuel at a rate of roughly 50–60 gallons per hour per engine. The engine power doesn't go to a propeller. Instead, the crankshafts connect directly to a pair of Kamewa FF mixed-flow waterjets (originally built by Kamewa, now a part of Kongsberg/Saab systems). Instead of pushing water with exterior blades, the waterjets act like massive marine vacuums. They suck water in through intake grates beneath the hull and use internal impellers to blast it out of narrow nozzles at the stern with immense pressure.

It can execute incredibly tight, banking turns at maximum speed without flipping or losing control, throwing up massive walls of spray.  To turn, the boat doesn't use a rudder. Hydraulics physically pivot the waterjet nozzles left or right, vectoring the massive thrust instantly. This is why the CB90 can cut impossibly sharp, banking turns at 45 knots.

Because there are no exposed propellers or rudders underneath the hull, the boat draws less than 3 feet of water. It can fly over hidden rocks, sandbars, and debris that would tear the bottom out of conventional patrol boats.

Splitting the front of the boat is a unique, narrow, one-man bow ramp. As soon as the boat hits the beach, the ramp drops, and a half-platoon (up to 21 fully equipped soldiers) can sprint out of the protected interior straight onto dry land within seconds

Over the exhaust nozzles sit heavy metal cups called "reversing buckets." When the pilot executes a crash-stop, these buckets drop down over the waterjets, redirecting 100% of the high-velocity stream forward underneath the boat. This acts like a massive thruster brake, bringing an 18-to-24-ton vessel to a dead stop in just over two boat lengths.

Wanna go to the beach?  As the CB90 speeds toward the shore, the crew drops a heavy anchor out of the back of the boat, letting the line trail behind them into deep water as they purposefully drive the reinforced bow straight onto the beach to let passengers step out. When it's time to leave, instead of gunning the engines and risking damage from shallow sand and rocks, a motorized winch simply reels that rear anchor line back in—using the buried anchor like a giant handle to smoothly tow the boat backward into safe, deep water.

Long Live Dark Sky (Acme Weather)

Dark Sky was universally beloved for its uncanny, hyper-local accuracy—specifically its ability to tell you exactly when rain or snow would start and stop down to the absolute minute (e.g., "Rain starting in 7 minutes").

Most weather apps (like The Weather Channel or AccuWeather) rely on massive, slow-moving government meteorological models. They tell you things like, "There is a 60% chance of rain in Boston today."Dark Sky did something entirely different. Its creators wrote a breakthrough forecasting system called nowcasting.   Instead of just reading data tables, Dark Sky’s code pulled raw, high-resolution radar images from government satellites. It used image-processing algorithms to look at the shape of the rain clouds and calculate exactly how fast they were moving and in what direction. By tracking the pixel-by-pixel movement of clouds over a map, it could pinpoint exactly when a cloud edge would cross over your precise GPS coordinates.  

Apple acquired Dark Sky in March 2020. Over the next couple of years, they systematically shut down the Android version, cut off the developer API that powered many other popular third-party weather apps, and finally removed the standalone iOS app from the App Store altogether.  

Apple integrated Dark Sky's data models and "next-hour precipitation" technology directly into its native Apple Weather app, but many longtime users felt the original magic, simplicity, and extreme accuracy of the standalone Dark Sky app were lost in translation.  

The original creators of Dark Sky actually teamed back up to launch a spiritual successor called Acme Weather to try and capture that old magic again!

Opensource Boat Block

 

Max at Reversing Entropy, has created an open source boating block because he was tired of expensive, not so strong boating blocks.  He came up with the design for a 5 in 1 "modular sailing block designed to replace snatch blocks, triples, sheeve blocks and more".  

He describes what he came up with on a YouTube video.  If you don't want to make them yourself, he has a page where you can purchase them.   Or, you can download the step files to make them yourself.  

A visual archive of the Capitol attack (NPR)

Got a crazy family member that is part of the MAGit cult?  They telling you that Jan 6 didn't happen, or that it was all Liberals that did the illegal stuff, or that they were just peacefully protesting?  (sigh). NPR has a very good rundown on the events of that day.  

What broke the Supreme Court? (The Federalist Society)

Peter Shamshiri, Michael Liroff, and Rhiannon Hamam's 5-4 Pod does a really good job at educating us on what the Federalist Society does, how they are run (very very admirably well), and how they have affected the US.  

• The Federalist Society, part 1: Immodest Origins (# 149, Jan 23, 2024)
• The Federalist Society, part 2: The Debate Club (#150, Jan 30, 2024)
• The Federalist Society, part 3: The Spoils (#151, Feb 6, 2024)