• Best Shadow-Dropped Games
    gamerant.com
    In todays world of nonstop coverage, leaks, and online retailers accidentally dropping preorder links, surprises have become increasingly rare. Whats even more challenging is keeping a video games multi-year development under wraps from eager gamers. Now imagine not only keeping a game secret but also releasing it the same day its announced. Its a bold move.
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  • This Tool Lets You Trim Videos Without Converting Them
    lifehacker.com
    Most video editing software works through re-encodingessentially, uploading the file so it can be broken apart and stitched back together. This is necessary for advanced editing techniques but has some downsides. It's slow, for one thing, and the encoding process isn't lossless, meaning videos can look worse over time. This is a particularly vexing problem when all you want to do is cut a bit from the beginning or end of a file.Lossless Cut is an open source application for Linux, Windows, and Mac that can trim videos without the need for encoding. The changes to the original file are basically instantaneous and totally lossless. It's a great tool if all you ever do when editing video is remove the bits at the start or end that you don't want. It's also potentially a great companion tool for traditional editing software, as it makes it easier to cut clips to size before importing. To get started, open the application and drag a video file to the windowit will open immediately. Use the finger buttons, located to the left and right of the play button, to mark which parts of the video you'd like to remove from the beginning and the end. When you're ready press Exportyou'll instantly have a shorter version of your video. Credit: Justin Pot There's also a button for rotating the video, and another for taking a screenshot. You can hit the Toggle advanced view button to see a few more options. My favorite is the ability to add both thumbnails and sound waves to the editing timeline, allowing you to be a little more precise with your cuts. The advanced view also lets you types times manually, instead of clicking.There's more here to play with, but not much, which is kind of the point: This is a very simple tool by design. In my testing, most of the videos I messed with worked without a hitch, though the officially support formats include MP4,MOV,WebM,Matroska,OGGandWAV files. Audio codecs supported includeFLAC,MP3,Opus,PCM,Vorbis,andAAC. Supported video codecs include H264,AV1,Theora,VP8,VP9,andH265.LosslessCut is free if you download it from Github. Alternatively, you can buy it for $18.99 from the Mac App Store or for $19.99 from the Microsoft Store. Purchasing the app from the store supports the developer, though you can also donate directly if you'd rather not give a cut to Apple or Microsoft. Give it a try next time you're cutting your own videos back to just the good parts, or trimming downloaded YouTube videos to a friendlier size.
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  • The Bose QuietComfort Headphones Are on Sale for $179
    lifehacker.com
    We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.Bose is a recognized name in audio tech and has been making capable active noise-canceling (ANC) headphones since 2016, when the company launched the QuietComfort line of devices. Right now, you can pick up the Bose's QuietComfort headphones for $179, $170 off the original price of $349. This is the lowest price they've reached, according to price-tracking tools, making them a good bet if you're looking to get a high-performance pair of ANC headphones without spending a fortune. You can get them "unopened" (which is exactly what it sounds like) from Woot for the lowest price they've ever been.Woot only ships to the 48 contiguous states in the U.S. If you have Amazon Prime, you get free shipping; otherwise, itll be $6 to ship. Bose QuietComfort ANC, Hi-Fi Audio, full EQ, 24-hour battery, multi-point connection, Aware Mode. $179.00 at Woot $349.00 Save $170.00 Get Deal Get Deal $179.00 at Woot $349.00 Save $170.00 Bose headphones are often found at the top of any roundup of the best headphones on the market and have been consistently praised for years. The Bose QuietComfort lineup in particular excels in comfort (hence the name) and ANC. If those are features you're after, these headphones are worth considering, especially at this price point. (If you're looking for earbuds, the ANC Bose QuietComfort Earbuds and open-ear Bose Ultra Open Earbuds are also at their lowest price right now.)Keep in mind that this is the lesser model in the current QuietComfort line; Bose released both the Bose QuietComfort and the Bose QuietComfort Ultra in 2023. The Ultras are more high-end and include extra functionality, but they retail for $250 more and aren't necessarily the best bet for every userif you don't care about Bluetooth 5.3 versus 5.1, immersion mode (which allows you to hear the audio as if it is coming from different directions), or other extraneous features, you can save yourself some money and go with the basic Bose QuietComfort.These headphones can connect to multiple devices at once, so you can seamlessly transition from one device to the next. They also offer a transparency mode that lets you hear your surroundings while wearing them, a customizable EQ so you can listen to your music how you like it to sound, and an impressive 24 hours of battery life, according to PCMag's "excellent" review. Also worth noting: They have physical buttons rather than touch controls, which will be a plus or a minus, depending on your preferences.
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  • Summer Game Fest returns to the YouTube Theater on June 6
    www.engadget.com
    This years Summer Game Fest livestream is set for June 6 at 5PM ET. The two-hour event will be held at the YouTube theater in Los Angeles. The organizers say gamers should expect world premieres, special guests and a look at what's next. Event steward Geoff Keighley promises lots of exciting things ahead.Summer Game Fest isnt just a single livestream, as the whole thing lasts until June 9. A Day of the Devs event will begin immediately following the end of the showcase. The following days will see the annual Play Days media event, produced by Iam8bit. This is an invite-only exhibit held in downtown LA that will feature "more than 40 of the gaming industry's top publishers."On Friday, June 6, @SummerGameFest returns to show you whats next in video games from more than 40 leading game publishers.Live from YouTube Theater in LA.Followed by SGF: Play Days from @iam8bit and a new thought-leader event in Los Angeles.All happening June 6-9. pic.twitter.com/mUWeCxz09c Summer Game Fest (@summergamefest) January 30, 2025 Beyond that, SGF is holding a brand new business-to-business event curated by former GamesIndustry.biz boss Christopher Dring. Geoff Keighley says that this forum will get into some of the key changes, challenges and opportunities facing the global video game industry. Ever since E3 took a nosedive, there really hasnt been a space for this kind of B2B-focused information exchange. We dont know if this particular chat will be livestreamed or available to the public in any way.We also dont have an exact time or date for this newly-announced element of SGF. However, event organizers promise thought leaders from gaming, entertainment and beyond, bringing multiple industries together on one stage for insightful discussions.The Play Days event may be cordoned off for members of the media, but the main showcase will be open to regular gamers. Sign up with SGF to receive more information as to how to attend in person. Tickets will be available sometime in the next few months.Thats all we know for now. There havent been any clues as to what could get revealed in June, either at the main showcase or at Day of the Devs. The buzz machine will crank up as we close in on summer.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/summer-game-fest-returns-to-the-youtube-theater-on-june-6-191516812.html?src=rss
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  • UPS plans to slash its shipping business with Amazon by half
    www.engadget.com
    UPS is continuing to withdraw from its business relationship with Amazon. By the second half of 2026, UPS said it will cut its shipping volumes for Amazon by more than 50 percent under the companies' revised arrangement."Amazon is our largest customer, but its not our most profitable customer," CEO Carol Tom said during an investor call about the shipping and logistics company's latest financials.Business with Amazon accounted for about 11 percent of UPS' 2024 revenue, which totaled $91.1 billion. Amazon was a larger share of UPS' revenue during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic; in 2020, the retailer was responsible for 13.3 percent of its annual revenue. UPS shared similar plans to cut back its business with Amazon in 2023 as its revenue from the retailer dwindled from quarantine-era levels.Although Amazon does rely on outside companies for some shipping, those relationships have sometimes turned tenuous as the retailer continues to grow its in-house options for delivering orders. In 2019, FedEx took a similar path of uncoupling its services from Amazon when it announced that it would not renew its ground-delivery contract with the big tech partner. A few months later, Amazon blocked third-party sellers from using FedEx ground-delivery services.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/ups-plans-to-slash-its-shipping-business-with-amazon-by-half-185913504.html?src=rss
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  • Wacom warns users their data may have been stolen in breach
    www.techradar.com
    Wacom is warning its customers of a recent incident that may have put data at risk.
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  • Old-school and new-school tech in Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
    beforesandafters.com
    Will Becher, supervising animator and stop motion lead at Aardman, on Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl and the tech used in the film.Today on the befores & afters podcast, were chatting to Will Becher, supervising animator and stop motion lead at Aardman, about Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, which is directed by Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham. Now, if youve read the latest animation issue of befores & afters magazine, youll see that Will was featured in that issue discussing the tech used by Aardman in the film. I thought the conversation was a really fun one, so Im also presenting it here as an audio podcast for you. Here we talk about 3D printing, motion control, CG, using clay, cameras, and all sorts of other stop-motion tech related things. This episode is sponsored by Suite Studios. Ready to accelerate your creative workflow? Suites cloud storage is designed for teams to store, share, and edit media in real-time from anywhere. The best part? With Suite, you can stream your full-resolution files directly from the cloud without the need to download or sync media locally before working. Learn more about why the best creative teams are switching to Suite at suitestudios.ioThe post Old-school and new-school tech in Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl appeared first on befores & afters.
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  • Trump blames DEI initiatives and Democrats for deadly D.C. plane crash
    www.fastcompany.com
    President Donald Trump on Thursday questioned the actions of the army helicopter pilot and air traffic controller ahead of a deadly midair collision in Washington and quickly veered into politics to speculate that Democrats and diversity initiatives shared blame for the deaths of 67 people.As Trump spoke, a federal investigation into the crash was just getting started and first responders were still working to recover bodies from the wreckage of the commercial jet and army helicopter that crashed into the Potomac River near Reagan Washington National Airport Wednesday night.Speaking from the White House just over three miles from the scene Trump at points acknowledged that it was too soon to draw conclusions as he encouraged the nation to pray for the victims. But he moved nonetheless to assign blame.Trump said we are one family as he expressed condolences for the crash. He then proceeded to attack political opponents and unleash grievances about diversity initiatives.The FAA is actively recruiting workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agencys website, Trump said. He added that the program allowed for the hiring of people with hearing and vision issues as well as paralysis, epilepsy and dwarfism.Trump said air traffic controllers needed to be geniuses. They have to be talented, naturally talented geniuses, he said. You cant have regular people doing their job.Trump said he had no evidence to support his claims that diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and hiring preferences played a role in the crash, allowing that it just could have been. He defended doing so because I have common sense.The plane crash marked the first major disaster of Trumps new term, and his response evoked his frequent and controversial briefings on the COVID-19 pandemic. His handling of the pandemic helped sour voters on him as he failed to win reelection in 2020.Trump said we do not know what led to this crash but we have some very strong opinions. Then he proceeded to hold forth at length about what happened, at one point wondering if the helicopter pilot was wearing night vision goggles.Trump declared that you had a pilot problem and the helicopter was going at an angle that was unbelievably bad. And he questioned why the Army pilot didnt change course, saying that you can stop a helicopter very quickly. He also mused about the air traffic controller, saying of the two aircraft, for whatever reason they were at the same elevation, adding they should have been at a different height.Vice President JD Vance, newTransportation Secretary Sean Duffyand Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth all lined up behind Trump to praise his leadership and echo his concerns about DEI programs and hiring.When you dont have the best standards in who youre hiring, it means on the one hand, youre not getting the best people in government, Vance said, But on the other hand, it puts stresses on the people who are already there.Trump complained specifically aboutPete Buttigieg, who served as transportation secretary under former President Joe Biden, calling him a disaster.Hes run it right into the ground with his diversity, Trump said.Complaining about the previous administration, Trump continued, their policy was horrible and their politics was even worse.Buttigieg responded in a post on X, calling Trumps comments despicable. He added: As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying.Trump made a point to tell Duffy, who was sworn in on Tuesday as Buttigiegs replacement, Its not your fault. Duffy took the White House podium alongside Trump and declared, When Americans take off in airplanes, they should expect to land at their destination. Duffy added, We will not accept excuses.Despite the crash, Trump said he would not hesitate to fly.Zeke Miller and Chris Megerian, Associated Press
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  • The U.S. desperately needs icebreaker ships. The one it has is a design failure
    www.fastcompany.com
    This story was originally published by ProPublica.The icebreaker Aiviq is a gas guzzler with a troubled history. The ship was built to operate in the Arctic, but it has a type of propulsion system susceptible to failure in ice. Its waste and discharge systems werent designed to meet polar code, its helicopter pad is in the wrong place to launch rescue operations and its rear deck is easily swamped by big waves.On its maiden voyage to Alaska in 2012, the 360-foot vessel lost control of the Shell Oil drill rig it was towing, and Coast Guard helicopter crews braved a storm to pluck 18 men off the wildly lurching deck of the rig before it crashed into a rocky beach. An eventual Coast Guard investigation faulted bad decision-making by people in charge but also flagged problems with the Aiviqs design.But for all this, the same Coast Guard bought the Aiviq for $125 million late last year.The United States urgently needs new icebreakers in an era when climate change is bringing increased traffic to the Arctic, including military patrols near U.S. waters by Russia and China. That the first of the revamped U.S. fleet is a secondhand vessel a top Coast Guard admiral once said may, at best, marginally meet our requirements is a sign of how long the country has tried and failed to build new ones.Its also a sign of how much sway political donors can have over Congress.Edison Chouest, the Louisiana company that built the icebreaker, has contributed more than $7 million to state and national parties, to political action committees and super PACS, and to members of key House and Senate committees since 2012. Chouest spent most of that period looking to unload the vessel after Shell, its intended user, walked away.Members who received money from Chouest pressured the Coast Guard to rent or buy the Aiviq from the company. One U.S. representative from Alaska, where the ship will be stationed, told an admiral in a 2016 hearing that his services objections were bullshit.And there would be even tougher pressures to come.Its now been a dozen years since the Aiviq set out on its first mission to Alaska, long enough for its troubles to fade from public memory.The ship, though owned and operated by Chouest, was part of Shells Arctic fleet, designed for a specific role: as a tugboat that could tow Shells 250-foot-tall polar drill rig, the Kulluk, around the coast of Alaska and help anchor it in the waters of the Far North. At its christening ceremony in Louisiana, attended by Shell executives, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, it was named after the Iupiaq word for walrus.As a journalist, Id been following the oil companys multibillion-dollar play in the warming Arctic with interest. One June morning in 2012, I got word that Shell was on the move near my Seattle home, so I sped to a narrow point in Puget Sound with a good view of passing traffic. It was sunny, the water calm. The Aiviq bobbed past with Kulluk in tow. The icebreakers paint blue at the time was fresh, its hull shiny. It looked capable.The problems began once the Aiviq was out of view. A Coast Guard report said that while the ship towed the Kulluk northward through an Arctic storm, waves crashed over its rear deck and poured into interior spaces, which investigators determined may have caused it to list up to 20 degrees to one side. The water damaged cranes, heaters and firefighting equipment, and the vents to the fuel system were submerged.On its way back from Alaskas Beaufort Sea two months later, the Aiviq suffered an electrical blackout, and one of its engines failed, necessitating a repair in Dutch Harbor in Alaskas Aleutian Islands.Then the Aiviq and Kulluk set out on a wintertime voyage back to Seattle. The National Weather Service issued a gale warning predicting 15-foot seas and 40-knot winds. The sailors aboard the Aiviq and Kulluk exchanged worried messages.The cable with which the Aiviq was towing the Kulluk came free two days later when a shackle broke. The icebreakers captain made a U-turn in heavy swells to hook up an emergency tow line, and water again poured over its deck and into the fuel vents. The Aiviqs four diesel engines soon began to fail, one after another.Although a Chouest engineer later testified that an unknown fuel additive must have caused the failures, Coast Guard investigators believe the likely cause was fuel contamination by seawater. They said the fuel systems design, which they described as substandard, made contamination more likely.The Aiviq and Kulluk were reattached but now, and for the next two days, adrift. Storms pushed them ever closer toward land.By the time the engines were repaired, it was too late. The Kulluk ran aground at an uninhabited island off Kodiak, Alaska, on New Years Eve. Shells Arctic dreams began to unravel. The oil company sold its drill rig off for scrap. (It did not respond to a request for comment.)And the Aiviq? A month after the accident, I visited Kodiak to report on what went wrong. I saw it anchored in the safety of a protected bay, an expensive, purpose-built ship now stripped of its purpose.Shell formally abandoned its Arctic efforts in 2015, after failing to find oil. The Aiviq eventually steamed back south. Chouest began looking around for someone to take the troubled icebreaker off its hands. The Coast Guard, which had criticized the ships role in the Kulluk accident, now became a potential customer.Traffic in the warming Arctic has surged as countries eye the regions natural resources, and it will grow all the more if the storied Northwest Passage melts enough to become a viable route for freight in the decades ahead. The number of ships in the High North increased by 37% from 2013 to 2023.Its the U.S. Coast Guards job to patrol these waters as part of an agreement with the Navy, projecting military strength while monitoring maritime traffic, enforcing fishing laws and rescuing vessels in distress. Although surface ice in the Arctic Ocean is shrinking on average, it can still form and move about the ocean unpredictably. A Coast Guard vessel needs to be able to cut through it to be a reliable presence.But the U.S. icebreaker fleet is deteriorating. The Coast Guard began raising alarms about the problem decades ago, starting with a study published in 1984. Russia, with its extensive northern coastline, now has over 40 large icebreakers, and more under construction. The United States has barely been able to keep two or three in service.An urgent Coast Guard report to Congress in 2010 highlighted what has become known as the icebreaker gap: If we didnt quickly start building new ships, our existing icebreakers could go out of commission before replacements were ready. The study called for at least six new icebreakers. Subsequent Coast Guard analysis has called for eight or nine. To date, the United States has built zero.Congress dragged its feet for years on funding icebreaker construction. But the Coast Guard also slowed progress with overly optimistic timelines, fuzzy cost estimates and a tendency to keep fiddling with new designs, according to a 2023 Government Accountability Office report. More than a decade in, construction on the first of the new ships has finally just begun. The Coast Guards latest cost estimate is $1 billion per icebreaker, while the Congressional Budget Office last year put it at $1.6 billion to $1.9 billion.Icebreakers have been the penultimate studied-to-death subject for 40 years, said Lawson Brigham, a former Coast Guard heavy icebreaker commander who has a doctorate from Cambridge University and has researched polar shipping since the 1980s.The longer the Coast Guard failed to build the ships it did want, the more pressure it faced to settle for one it didnt. Chouest seized the opportunity. The company invited Coast Guard officers to tour the Aiviq as early as 2016 and soon sent over a lease proposal.Canada rejected similar overtures that year. A middleman for Chouest promised Canadian lawmakers a fast-track polar icebreaker the Aiviq at less than one-third of the price of the permanent replacement. Also on offer were three smaller, Norwegian-built icebreakers. Canada bought those instead.The U.S. Coast Guards problem with the Aiviq, retired officers told ProPublica, was the ships design. Originally built for oil operations, it had a low, wet deck and a helipad near its bow, where it would be ill suited for launching rescue operations. Its direct-drive propulsion system was both less efficient and more likely to get jammed up in ice than the diesel-electric systems the Coast Guard used.I mean, on paper its an icebreaker, Adm. Paul Zukunft, the then-commandant of the Coast Guard, told Congress in 2017. But it hasnt demonstrated an ability to break ice. (Years later, in 2022 and 2023, the Aiviq would make two successful icebreaking trips to Antarctica under contract with the Australian government.)The service estimated it would take years and hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade the Aiviqs features to near-standard for a Coast Guard icebreaker. Even then, it wouldnt be able to move forward through ice thicker than about 4.5 feet. The Coast Guards most immediate need was for heavy icebreakers, burlier ships that can handle missions in the Arctic as well as supply runs to the U.S. research station at McMurdo Sound, Antarctica.So how would the U.S. Coast Guard use the Aiviq beyond flag-waving and general presence in the near Arctic? According to Brigham, the former icebreaker captain and polar-shipping expert, No one that I know, no study that Ive seen, no one Ive talked to really knows.But it wasnt for the Coast Guard alone to turn down Chouests bargain offer. Members of Congress had their own ideas.The late U.S. Rep. Don Young represented Alaska, a state thousands of miles from Chouests home base in Louisiana. But as of 2016, when Chouest was looking to sell the Aiviq, Young had taken in hundreds of thousands of dollars in political contributions from the company so many donations in one year that he had once faced a congressional ethics investigation concerning Chouest money. (He was cleared.)Young became the most vocal of many congressional critics to publicly dress down the Coast Guard for resisting Chouests offering of the Aiviq.At a House hearing that July, he began grilling the Coast Guards second-in-command, Adm. Charles Michel, about a privately owned ship with a tremendous capability of icebreaking power.I know you have the proposal on your desk, he scolded Michel. It is an automatic no. Why?Sir, the admiral said, that vessel is not suitable for military service without substantial refit.Michels response sparked derision from Young.That is what I call, Young muttered, a bullshit answer.Michel, now retired, declined to comment on his exchange with Young.According to the representatives former chief of staff Alex Ortiz, Youngs frustration stemmed from the fact that the Coast Guard lacked the money to build an icebreaker from scratch but showed an unwillingness to accept the realities of that. Young and many other lawmakers also supported getting new icebreakers, but perfect had become the enemy of the good the Aiviq had to offer right away. I genuinely dont think that he was advocating for leasing the vessel just because of Chouests support, Ortiz said.Chouest, Youngs benefactor, is based in Cut Off, Louisiana. Its led by its founders billionaire son and has long provided ships for the oil and gas industry. At the time of the 2016 hearing, Chouest was relatively new to Coast Guard contracts. One of the companys affiliates would later take over the contract to build new heavy icebreakers, in 2022, making Chouest the supplier of both a ship the Coast Guard desired and the one it resisted.Chouest did not respond to questions for this article.More than 95% of Chouests $7 million in political contributions since 2012 has gone to Republicans, according to OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that tracks money from family members, employees and corporate affiliates.But when it comes to lawmakers who oversee the Coast Guard, Democrats also have been major recipients. The late Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, head of the House Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation for five years, received $94,700 in the decade before his 2019 death. Rep. John Garamendi of California, a longtime committee member, started taking Chouest donations in 2021 and has since received a total of $40,500.(Garamendis office acknowledged the recent donations but issued a statement saying he has for many years pushed the Coast Guard to build icebreakers expeditiously, particularly given the aging fleet and the national security imperative.)Alaska politicians are particular beneficiaries of Chouests largesse, second only to those from Louisiana. Chouests interests in the 49th state, beyond icebreakers, have included a 10-year contract to escort oil tankers through Alaskas Prince William Sound. Federal Elections Commission records show that Young, before his death in 2022, collected a career total of almost $300,000 from the company. Sen. Dan Sullivan has taken in at least $31,500, Sen. Lisa Murkowski $84,400.The year after Young swore at the Coast Guard admiral in public, Rep. Duncan D. Hunter of California brought up the issue once more at a different House hearing featuring a different admiral, Zukunft. Hunters total from Chouest would be $58,800 before he pleaded guilty to stealing campaign funds and stepped down in 2020.Icebreakers, Hunter said. Lets talk icebreakers.Hunter was backed up by Rep. Garret Graves of Louisiana, whose Chouest contributions now total $240,500. Admiral, I think every time youve come before this committee, this issue has come up, Graves said. We need to see some substantial progress.Weeks later at yet another hearing, Rep. John Carter of Texas, whose single biggest donor the previous election cycle was Edison Chouest at $33,700, pressed Zukunft again. Theres this commercial ship that has been offered Carter began.In the end, the advocates for Chouests ship prevailed. The Alaskans played a particular role.In 2022, after Youngs death, Sullivan helped author the Don Young Coast Guard Authorization Act, which included an approval for the service to buy a United States built available icebreaker.Sullivan, who would later be praised for leading a revolt against his Senate colleague Tommy Tubervilles blockade on promotions of military officers, also engaged in some quiet hardball. Until the country can complete a long-delayed near-Arctic port, icebreakers have been based in Seattle, where there are working shipyards and experienced contractors to do maintenance. But as a recent press release describes it, Sullivan put a hold on certain USCG promotions until the Coast Guard produced a long promised study on the homeporting of an icebreaker in Alaska.Last year, Sullivan, Murkowski and former Rep. Mary Peltola of Alaska announced that Congress had finally appropriated $125 million for the Aiviq. The Coast Guard took possession of the ship last month. (Murkowski and Peltola, along with Hunter, Graves and Carter, did not respond to requests for comment.)In a statement to ProPublica, a Sullivan spokesperson wrote that the senator has long advocated for the purchase of a commercially available icebreaker of the Coast Guards choosing but has never advocated for the purchase of the Aiviq specifically. The way Congress wrote the specifications for a United States built icebreaker, however, ensured there was only one the Coast Guard could choose: the Aiviq.The icebreakers new home based on the findings of the Coast Guards urgently completed port study will be Alaskas capital, Juneau. The city is facing what the Juneau Empire has called a crisis-level housing shortage, and it remains unclear how it will manage an influx of hundreds of sailors and family members. Juneau also lacks a shipyard. For repairs and upgrades, the Aiviq will have to travel hundreds or thousands of miles out of state.Former Coast Guard icebreaker captains were reluctant to criticize the purchase of the Aiviq when contacted by ProPublica, in part because it has taken impossibly long for the service to build the new heavy icebreakers it says it needs.Is the Coast Guard getting the Aiviq a bad thing? No, said Rear Adm. Jeff Garrett, a former captain of the Healy icebreaker. But is it the ideal resource? No.To reach the Arctic from Juneau, Garrett noted, the Aiviq will have to regularly cross the same storm-swept stretch of the Gulf of Alaska where it once lost the Kulluk.Lawson Brigham said he had questions about the Aiviq since its our tax dollars at work, but he granted that its bringing some capability into the Coast Guard at a time when were awaiting whenever the shipbuilder can get the first ship out, which is still unknown.Zukunft, who retired in 2018, stands by his past opposition to the Aiviq.I remain unconvinced, he wrote in response to questions from ProPublica, that it meets the operational requirements and design of a polar icebreaker that have been thoroughly documented by the Coast Guard. By acquiring the Aiviq, the Coast Guard runs the risk that those requirements can be compromised.In a statement, the Coast Guard described the purchase of the Aiviq as a bridging strategy and said the ship will be capable of projecting U.S. sovereignty in the Arctic and conducting select Coast Guard missions.The fuel vents that flooded during the Kulluk accident have since been raised, a Chouest engineer has testified. The Coast Guard did not respond to questions about the Aiviqs fuel consumption or whether its waste systems will comply with polar code. It did not say whether its helicopter deck will be moved aft for safer search-and-rescue operations. It confirmed that there will be no changes to the propulsion system. Initial modifications to the vessel will be minimal, the statement reads. The Aiviq will be put into service more or less as is.Last month, an amateur photographer spotted the Aiviq at a Chouest-owned shipyard in Tampa, Florida, and posted images online. It had been repainted, its hull now a gleaming Coast Guard icebreaker red.New lettering revealed that the ship has been renamed the Storis, after a celebrated World War II vessel that patrolled for 60 years in the Bering Sea and beyond. From a distance, the icebreaker looked ready to serve.The question is, said Brigham, What is this ship going to be used for? Thats been the question from Day 1. What the hell are we going to use it for?McKenzie Funk, ProPublica
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