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Reminds me that "military grade x.y.z" is usually vastly inferior to what you get from tech company for the general public.
by Thaxll 5y ago
Reminds me that "military grade x.y.z" is usually vastly inferior to what you get from tech company for the general public.
- colechristensen 5y agoThis is not always the case. Military grade means things like “works for outside air temperatures between -40 and 120 F” and “will still work being vibrated to hell for decades”. On the other hand modern tech is like “my cat knocked my Apple Watch on the floor and shattered the screen” and things are generally extremely fragile. They’re also old. You want things that work for decades, not UIs that change every few months.
- bombcar 5y agoThis is what people don't get - military grade is not James Bond spy gear that can do a million things in a small package - military grade is something that still has a semblance of working after being beat to shit in storage for twenty years, manhandled by a bunch of gorillas who don't give a damn about it, and blown up and shot at.
- colechristensen 5y agoA lot of what makes military grade what it is boils down to “we specified every goddamn thing down to how you dot your i’s so soldiers won’t get screwed over by the lowest bidder cutting corners”. Yes, there is a military specification for (generic) pop tarts which covers how much filling, what’s in it, and how much frosting is applied.
- bombcar 5y agoThose specifications come in very important when suddenly you have everyone making pop tarts - or IBM making machine guns.
- QuarterReptile 5y agoOr crashed into an underwater mountain without any interruption to the nuclear power plant.
- rurp 5y agoGod I would love to be able to buy consumer tech that has a stable UI and can survive the impact of a light breeze. Unfortunately I suspect military purchase prices are a wee bit outside of my price range.
- seventhtiger 5y agoThat means the only consumer electronics that can honestly be called military grade are the Nokia cellphone and the Nintendo GameBoy.
- navbaker 5y agoOne of my favorite TV tropes is hearing "they're using military grade encryption!!!"
- f1refly 5y agoI'm still waiting for the movie where the computer character exclaims "Oh no, they appear to have employed a crypto nerd and given him free reign for the last decade! Their systems are so hardened we couldn't get in even if they where to help us!"
- f1refly 5y agoI once read a comment chain on this website that went like > I generally feel like military equipment is of higher quality and will last longer > I've been involved in military contracts for a long time and the stuff they buy is generally consumer grade, but they have some standard and forced manufacturer for every tiny screw used on the vehicle, driving cost up tenfold without any gain. I don't see the appeal > so you're telling me there is a standard And that day I understood why overstock military stuff is so attractive to many buyers: It doesn't change. If you read good receptions about a military backpack or some kind of tooling, you can be dead sure that if you decide to get it, it will be just as nice as the thing in the reports. Because they make sure every pice will be exactly the same, no surprises.
- LorenPechtel 5y agoYup. Military ammo cans on many of the nearby peaks--they hold the logbooks and survive the conditions. One peak that doesn't have an ammo can--every time I've been up there I've found the logbook in a different container.
- LorenPechtel 5y agoMilitary grade = beefy. It doesn't mean high tech.