China ... they can fake anything
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Even "titanium"!
F.A.A. Investigating How Counterfeit Titanium Got Into Boeing and Airbus Jets
The material, which was purchased from a little-known Chinese company, was sold with falsified documents and used in parts that went into jets from both manufacturers.Some recently manufactured Boeing and Airbus jets have components made from titanium that was sold using fake documentation verifying the material’s authenticity, according to a supplier for the plane makers, raising concerns about the structural integrity of those airliners.
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The falsified documents are being investigated by Spirit AeroSystems, which supplies fuselages for Boeing and wings for Airbus, as well as the Federal Aviation Administration. The investigation comes after a parts supplier found small holes in the material from corrosion. -
Counterfeit products from China are an ongoing problem. A few years ago, counterfeit electrical circuit breakers branded as major brands were showing up in the market. I recently saw a YouTube video revealing counterfeit lithium batteries for power tools that came from China. They were very hard to distinguish from genuine batteries from the tool manufacturers without testing them and totally dismantling them to look at internal components. Some of the potential consequences of these counterfeits are not just disappointing, but downraight dangerous. There is no foolproof method to avoid them.
Big Al
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What @Big_Al said.
Even short of outright counterfeiting, there is definitely a problem with using inferior materials to cut costs. The company that Mr wtg worked for opened a manufacturing plant in China probably 20 years ago. They were making a product that the company had been making for more than 50 years. The product specs called for a particular type of steel that is more expensive. They started seeing failures of the product during testing and traced it back to a substitution the China plant had made, using a cheaper type of steel. "But it's cheaper doing it this way."
They weren't faking anything. Just cutting costs.
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A family elder (and that happened a long time ago) was once tasked to set up textile production in mainland China, and very quickly learnt that the mainland Chinese (at least at the time) didn’t have much respect for product specifications or performance according to contracts — they just couldn’t get products that meet quality standards.
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I think I posted about buying our new water heater. Well all the reading I did at the time was just so depressing, about how appliances etc. just don’t last as long as they used, either because of inferior materials or cutting corners in the manufacturing process. It’s very disheartening.
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In China, AI transformed Ukrainian YouTuber into a Russian -
https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/china-ai-transformed-ukrainian-youtuber-into-russian-2024-06-21/Shortly after launching a YouTube channel in November last year, Loiek, a 21-year-old from Ukraine, found her image had been taken and spun through artificial intelligence to create alter egos on Chinese social media platforms.
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Her digital doppelgangers - like "Natasha" - claimed to be Russian women fluent in Chinese who wanted to thank China for its support of Russia and make a little money on the side selling products such as Russian candies.
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What's more, the fake accounts had hundreds of thousands of followers in China, far more than Loiek herself.
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