Many new and most older USB drives are still USB2 because that's all that they need to be - storage mediums for backups, media and so on. You don't need fast hard drive for that, so they usually use cheap 5200rpm 3.5" drives in enclosures that contain the drive and an SATAUSB (in case of older drives, IDEUSB) adapter.

I own one of those, and use it mainly to back up things like windows installs on my desktop/laptop. Sure, I could buy a USB 3 drive that is quite a bit faster, but why would I do that? It's more costly and at no real life advantage since back ups go during the night meaning as long as backup is fast enough to finish during the night, I don't care if it takes two hours or eight. It's also fast enough to do things like media playback and other similar uses.

Storage drives are not meant to be impressive in terms of speed. That's what you have SSD for.

Your comment is about as smart as raging that a delivery truck isn't as fast as a racing car.

If I'm recalling correctly, SMS standard doesn't even allow for this. You have to send message as MMS, which is much more expensive. Doing this silently while making user believe that he's sending a SMS is a big problem with some phones (iphone, I'm looking at you).

Suspect? They know it. No need to suspect. When you're a small country stuck in the middle of many evil empires who want to rob you as efficiently as possible, you know that every deal you sign comes with poison in the envelope.

This moaning is about getting Western populace prepared for the propaganda of the next Cold War. You won't see too much crying about Chinese spying outside those territories. If anything, it's generally viewed as a good counterbalance to rampant one-sided Western action over last two decades.

Remember: our system was built to be good for us, and bad for others to be enforced at gun point. That's why we're fabulously wealthy by the world average standards.

I like how you choose to completely disregard human history in favor of super-optimistic drivel.

I think you're misunderstanding the concept of government bond debt and private debt. One does not come to collect government bond debt in a traditional sense. It's paid out against bonds at time specified in the bond. The term "collection" generally refers to ability to pressure the debtor into payment. As described above, such scenario does not exist with US bonds - the pressure comes from economic needs that are irrelevant to any individual bond or bond holder.

As a result, as long as China holds the bonds, and as long as the time of payment is one stated in the bond, when China "comes to collect" as you put it, US will in fact be forced to pay. There is very little doubt about that due to factors stated in previous post.

It's worth noting that one of the reasons for severe decline of lions has been slowness evolutional response to human hunting factor (they seek mainly alpha males). Essentially every time one dies, the entire pride suffers a bout of infanticide, which is the key reason for decline of lions in the areas where they are hunted. If it was just alpha male deaths caused directly by humans, lions as species would have far less problems.

It's a pretty good microcosm of small tribal community and is somewhat relevant to humans as well.

I'm surprised that you are an accountant who can make such sweeping and incorrect claims. Government bonds have very strict terms on repayment and that is for a reason - they need to be exceptionally predictable and reliable to function in their primary role of being reliable bonds.

Trying to postpone or alter terms of debt would be viewed as limited default, as has happened in Greek case. I.e. perhaps the insurance events would not be triggered, but markets would most certainly dump the bond en masse demolishing its value both in terms of cost and trustworthiness.

Finally there is an issue of financing. US needs to finance its government and it needs to finance its private sector. As of writing this a large portion of this financing comes from China for a very simple reason - China gets a lot of money from exports. That money has to go somewhere. As a result, it's investing everywhere, including US debt, both public and private. Sudden cessation of this investment would be a massive shock to the system, and while it would likely not be as fatal as default event on bonds, it would be a severe shock to the system for two reasons: one is the direct need to finance the portion that used to be financed by Chinese, and other in the fact that bonds would have to have increased yields to sell both due to less investors as well as the fact that one of the biggest if not the biggest current investor in the world suddenly ceasing its investments and shifting them elsewhere would have many analysts consider actual downgrading and possible limited dumping of the bond.

All of above events would cause severe harm to US, and by extension world economy, which is why they are unlikely to occur. We are effectively in a state of financial MAD in credit system.

I'll make this one easy on you. Currently one of the main cornerstones of US economy is that its dollar is world's main reserve currency and that its debt obligations are considered very stable and reliable bonds.

Defaulting on even a small amount of debt to China would collapse this system and US and world economy would not survive the fallout. Even if you completely eliminated the Chinese problem by some hypothetical means that will not have economic impact, US economy would collapse on itself within months due to lack of ability to borrow and massive international sales of US bonds and obligations which would make importing necessary equipment for basic functionality of the country essentially impossible. You would be looking at a total societal collapse, which considering the influence of the US bonds and US dollar would likely be felt worldwide.

As Somalia shows very well, when central government becomes too weak to maintain control, warfare simply moves down to tribal/criminal/corporate level.

Here in Finland, official "hot" figure for weather is at 27C. And yes, when it's 27C, it's exhausting hot.

On the other hand, -27C is nice weather to go out and ski/skate. And most buildings do not have A/C because there's no real reason to - the season during which you would need it lasts days if it ever comes at all.

True, however as pointed out above, the real issue isn't the aircraft but the missile bay size coupled with severe issues with AIM-120C adapted for F-22 (it essentially had its wings clipped to fit into the internal bay).

The missile has already been known to have severe issues with maneuverability when fired at meidum-to-long range, which is main engagement range for stealth F-22 due to issues with how thrust is generated. It will not have enough onboard fuel to generate new acceleration run if target evades first approach and it has severe problems turning without losing massive amounts of speed to match maneuverable target it's racing head on which has been obviously worsened by clipping of wings.

Essentially it's a missile that has very bad performance against maneuverable target at medium-to-long range as it simply lacks ability to maneuver at speeds.

Russians recognized the same problem and completely reworked rear control surfaces on their "head on" R-77 missiles. For some reason, US has not done the same (yet?).

Like welfare queens, femnazis ruin it for all of us.

The crucial point is that this is Britain - which together with US is the homeland of sexual puritanism coupled with extreme deviance when it comes to violence.

I don't think the rest of the world has anything to fear from this particular twist. They're just following their voters and their culture. This is a very democratic move on which most people clearly agree. He wouldn't be pushing for it this aggressively otherwise. He has voters to please after all.

Well, except maybe other countries that inherited that particularly nasty streak of puritanism.

While we don't know that, the story doesn't talk about surface PRO, which suggests that these are selling.