EDAG is a German design and engineering firm that has been working with most car manufacturers for the past four decades and also built a Pontiac Solstice shooting brake because wagons rock. Their latest concept is a 3D-printed composite passenger cell that was inspired by turtles and goes beyond today’s possibilities.
Mars One, the program that is planning to create a human settlement on Mars by 2024, has received over 200,000 applications of Earthlings who are interested in leaving their home planet forever by taking a one-way ticket to Mars. This short documentary examines a few of those people’s motivation to leave everything behind.One person has a family, another has a boyfriend and some just see no reason to stay here. All of them dream about the red planet though they have different reasons as to why they want to go. The doc, which was made by VITA BREVIS FILMS, gives an interesting look at people who are ready to give everything up and start over in the unknown. It’s commendable but a little sad too.
via Meet the people who would leave Earth and take a one-way trip to Mars.
When you’re booking a flight, you don’t want to buy too far in advance—and be the guy who lost out on a price drop; nor do you want to book too late—and pay hundreds more for the convenience. When’s the best time to buy? CheapAir crunched the numbers from over four million tickets bought last year to offer some advice.
Those four million tickets add up to a database of 1.3 billion air fares. What they found, at least for domestic airfares, is there’s a “prime booking window” of between 29 and 104 days in advance when the average fare is at its lowest (so, roughly a month to three months before the flight). Taken altogether, 54 days in advance is the best time to buy, based on this data. READ MORE AFTER LINK…
via When to Buy Your Plane Ticket, Based on Data from Four Million Trips.
Scoring points is a good thing, unless it’s on your driving record. Still, if you know how your state’s point system works, you’ll have a better game plan for keeping your license —and your auto insurance rates low. READ MORE AFTER LINK…
via 10 Things You Need to Know About Driver’s License Points.
Surprise! NASA just issued a last minute asteroid notice: Today, a 100-foot (30 meter) asteroid called 2014 DX110 is going to fly by Earth closer than the Moon. The closest point will be 217,000 miles (about 350,000 kilometers) at around 4PM Eastern Standard Time.
I love how they rush to downplay these close encounters of the apocalyptic kind to calm the population: “As happens about 20 times a year with current detection capabilities, a known asteroid will safely pass Earth Wednesday closer than the distance from Earth to the moon.” When they say “current detection capabilities” they are referring to the fact that other asteroids fly by without us noticing. Like the asteroid that exploded over Russia last year, without any alert whatsoever.
via NASA announces asteroid will fly by Earth today closer than the Moon.
Comcast’s Internet Essentials program was originally supposed to wind down this June, roughly three years after its launch in the wake of the NBC merger. However, the company has had a lot of success with the initiative — enough so that it’s extending the program indefinitely. Low-income American families can continue to sign up for basic, $10 per month internet access as long as they have children who qualify for free lunches. Comcast is also providing an extra level of coverage by funding 15 Internet Essentials Learning Zones, or partner networks that will help kids stay online at school, libraries and after-school activities. These latest moves won’t completely bridge the gap between internet haves and have-nots, but they should be valuable complements to expanded school broadband efforts.
via Comcast’s internet access program for low-income families will continue indefinitely.
In a world where technology has absolutely no limitations, smartphones are gorgeously slim devices with sleek designs endless battery life. They also don’t always have antennas, as we’ve seen in a number of sexy iPhone 6 concept designs. It’s still fun to look at talented graphic designers’ various visions of the future though, and a new one that actually looks somewhat believable emerged on Monday. Sadly, it will almost certainly never see the light of day.
According to numerous reports from industry watchers, the iPhone 5c is basically a flop. Sales were far lower than Apple was expecting and it was apparently forced to cut manufacturing orders almost immediately after the phone was announced.
According to a few reports, the iPhone 5c will be discontinued later this year when the iPhone 6 debuts, and no new similar phone will launch in its place.
via iPhone 6c Photos: Concept shows colorful take on Apple’s iPhone 6 | BGR.
To help customers on Windows XP prepare to move to a new PC, we are announcing a free transfer tool that will be available beginning this month. We have partnered with Laplink to provide Windows XP users with a free data migration tool called PCmover Express for Windows XP which copies your files and settings from your Windows XP PC to a new device running Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 8.1. This tool will copy your files, music, videos, email and user profiles and settings from your old PC to your new device, transferring across your home or work network, and even enables Windows XP users to customize exactly what they want to bring over to their new device.
PCmover Express will be available for download in English starting later this week via WindowsXP.com as well as French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish coming later in March and it will be available in Korean, Chinese, Russian and Brazilian Portuguese after that. But if someone doesn’t want to wait for the tool to be released in their local language, they can access Laplink’s tool in other languages as well via Microsoft’s Download Center.
For Windows XP users wanting to transfer applications from their old computer, Laplink is also making available its software that migrates apps called PCmover Professional at a special price – see here for details.
On March 8th, 2014, Windows XP customers using the Home or Professional editions who have elected to receive updates via Windows Update will receive an official notification on their desktop screen via Windows Update informing them that support for Windows XP will end on April 8th, 2014.
via New Windows XP data transfer tool and end of support notifications.
In 1998, there was a groundbreaking study telling parents that their children were at risk of getting autism from vaccines. Parents everywhere collectively gasped. After all, they had been told for years vaccines were the best way to prevent any number of unwanted diseases. Now they find out the very treatment they thought was making their children better could potentially result in devastating consequences, at least in the case of low-functioning Autism.
The only problem was that same study published in the Lancet was later retracted. Its author, Andrew Wakefield, was shown to have falsified data. His “science” proved to be fraudulent, and riddled with conflicts of interest. His research was so void of ethics that the British General Medical Council removed him from the medical registry and he’s no longer allowed to practice medicine in the United Kingdom.
The damage, however, was done. As with so many other societal perceptions based on debunked science, vaccines causing autism is still a very real concern for many parents. In a survey published in Health Affairs in 2011, 30%-36% of parents were concerned that their children were given too many vaccines in the first 2 years of life, and that those vaccines might cause learning disabilities (like autism). 10% say they will delay, or refuse vaccinations believing it’s safer than following the recommended CDC schedule.
READ MORE AFTER LINK
The kooky folks behind the (frankly awful) i’m Watch are a mainstay at Mobile World Congress. This year they’ve got something a little more useful to show off: it’s called the i’m Tracer, and it’s the evolution of another GPS tracker the company has highlighted before. The Tracer is a wearable mashup of a GPS module and a GSM radio the Italian company hopes will help you keep tabs on your kids when it launches this summer. READ MORE AFTER LNK
via The i’m Tracer bracelet means never having to ask ‘where’s the kid?’.
It's my life, you're just along for the ride! 