Everyone Who Whines About Tax Dollars Going To NASA Should See This

Tech Company Proposes Replacing Jetliner Windows With Live Video Screens

Vague, over-wing cloud photos are a staple of vacation albums across the Internet, but a British technology incubator wants to do away with them completely. You’ll still be able to see the sky, though. The Centre for Process Innovation is proposing the elimination of airplane cabin windows to make room for floor to ceiling wraparound screens showing continuous footage from outside the plane. The goal of the proposal is to reduce how much commercial aircraft bodies, or fuselages, weigh thereby also reducing fuel consumption, costs, and carbon emissions. Windows add weight to aircraft cabins because of both the materials used to make them, and the additional components that must be added to the hull to strengthen and secure it.

Salt-Water Powered Car Gets Approval In Europe – Yes It’s Real

It works just like a hydrogen fuel cell except that the liquid used for storing energy is saltwater. This isn’t far from the water powered car, an idea labelled as a conspiracy by many despite the massive amount of evidence behind it. You can read more about that here.

In this case (saltwater) the liquid passes through a membrane in between the two tanks, creating an electric charge. This electricity is then stored and distributed by super capacitors. The car carries the water in two 200-litre tanks, which in one sitting will allow drivers to travel up to 373 miles (600km). Overall, the four-seater is 5.25 metres (0.4ft) long, 2.2 metres wide (7.2ft), the 1.35 metre (4.4ft).

“After making its debut at the 2014 Geneva Motor Show (pictured) in March, the saltwater technology has now been certified for use on European roads.” (source)

Nanoflowcell AG is the company behind the design, and they are currently preparing the technology for mass production.

‘We’ve got major plans, and not just within the automobile industry. The potential of the NanoFlowcell is much greater, especially in terms of domestic energy supplies as well as in maritime, rail and aviation technology” - NanoFlowcell AG Chairman of the Board Professor Jens-Peter Ellermann.

This is huge news, and is another example out of so many that clearly show how we have so many ways to do better here. Although money remains an issue, it doesn’t have to be.

All cars should be required to be made from this type, or other similar types of clean green energy. A few years ago, if you told somebody it’s possible to fuel a car by pouring saltwater into it, they would have called you a conspiracy theorist.

Tech ‘surge’ to tackle Obamacare websites

The Obama administration Sunday said it’s called on “the best and brightest” tech experts from both government and the private sector to help fix the troubled website at the root of the Obamacare enrollment problems.

The unusual Sunday 600-word blog post from HHS was the first update in more than a week on the many failings of an expensive website that HHS itself described as “frustrating for many Americans.” But it didn’t specify who the administration had called in, or when the American people would see clear-cut results on Healthcare.gov.

“We’re kind of thinking of it as a tech ‘surge,’” an HHS official told POLITICO.

The Health and Human Services statement didn’t explain everything that’s wrong, or give technical details about the repairs underway. It outlined some steps being taken to fix the site, including updates with “new code that includes bug fixes.” The department also says it’s installing monitors to catch parts of the website that are proving the most troublesome for consumers. And it also said it had seen some improvements in wait times and consumer access to the website, the online portal to health insurance exchanges or marketplaces the federal government is running in 36 states.

The administration said one essential component — the federal data hub — is working as hoped. That hub is crucial. It links federal agencies to determine an applicant’s eligibility for Obamacare coverage and subsidies. States running their own exchanges have to be able to draw on that data as well, and some of them have been doing so successfully.

The HealthCare.gov glitches are not just a high-profile embarrassment; delays could make it harder for the administration to reach its enrollment goals for Obamacare, a centerpiece of the Obama presidency. And they provide even more fodder for the intense GOP opposition to the health law which led to the government shutdown.

President Barack Obama is holding a health care event Monday, and House Republicans are opening hearings into the rough Obamacare rollout later this week. Some Republicans have called on HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to resign or be fired.

Sen. John McCain on CNN Sunday said the whole Obamacare rollout has been “a fiasco”

“Send Air Force One out to Silicon Valley, load it up with some smart people, bring them back to Washington, and fix this problem. It’s ridiculous. And everybody knows that,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

HHS didn’t mention Silicon Valley — or Air Force One— but implied it was doing something along those lines.

“Our team is bringing in some of the best and brightest from both inside and outside government to scrub in with the team and help improve HealthCare.gov,” HHS said.

“We’re also putting in place tools and processes to aggressively monitor and identify parts of HealthCare.gov where individuals are encountering errors or having difficulty using the site, so we can prioritize and fix them,” it added. “We are also defining new test processes to prevent new issues from cropping up as we improve the overall service and deploying fixes to the site during off-peak hours on a regular basis.”

HHS says the updates are improving the shopping and health plan enrollment experience. Consumers have to go through many steps online — creating accounts, logging into the system, getting their identity verified, seeing and comparing health plan options, getting subsidy and cost quotes, and finally choosing a plan and signing up for it.

People have encountered problems at every step of the way — if they even get past the first step.

“The initial consumer experience of HealthCare.gov has not lived up to the expectations of the American people,” HHS said. “We are committed to doing better.”

HealthCare.gov has received more than 19 million unique visits since the Oct. 1 launch, according to the updated numbers released Sunday. As of Saturday, about 476,000 applications have been filed in state-run and federal-run health insurance exchanges — but that’s just applications, not actually getting covered. About half of those applications came from the 36 states where the feds are running the exchanges.

Those numbers, however, don’t indicate how many people have successfully completed enrollment. The administration won’t release those numbers until next month — and it’s likely to be much smaller than the numbers of who have started the application process.

The HHS blog post didn’t provide a timeline for when the administration expects major problems to be resolved. A CMS official said the administration plans to do regular fixes to the system during off-peak hours on a regular basis.

Has anyone else seen a D Box movie?

I saw the last Harry Potter movie when it came out. It was really cool once you got used to it.  Would like to see something else at some point. 

Find a theater near you here!

Below is a video that gives you some idea of what the experience is like but this is in an actual movie theater. This is just a demo outside.