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Comment Boarding and Bags (Score 1) 219

CGP Grey showed that significant delays come from people, in the form of boarding order and bags.

http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/wh...

If airplanes were willing to reduce checked-bag fees, and passengers were willing to delay boarding / disembarking, the overall process could be sped up drastically. But try to tell someone in row 20 that they have to wait to get up until someone in row 30 gets off first.

Submission + - The Pentagon Has a Big Plan to Solve Identity Verification in Two Years (nextgov.com) 2

Zorro writes: The Defense Department is funding a project that officials say could revolutionize the way companies, federal agencies and the military itself verify that people are who they say they are and it could be available in most commercial smartphones within two years.

The technology, which will be embedded in smartphones’ hardware, will analyze a variety of identifiers that are unique to an individual, such as the hand pressure and wrist tension when the person holds a smartphone and the person’s peculiar gait while walking, said Steve Wallace, technical director at the Defense Information Systems Agency.

Organizations that use the tool can combine those identifiers to give the phone holder a “risk score,” Wallace said. If the risk score is low enough, the organization can presume the person is who she says she is and grant her access to sensitive files on the phone or on a connected computer or grant her access to a secure facility. If the score’s too high, she’ll be locked out.

Submission + - 'Indoor generation': A quarter of Americans spend all day inside, survey finds (washingtontimes.com)

Zorro writes: A quarter of Americans spend almost an entire 24 hours without going outside and downplay the negative health effects of only breathing indoor air, according to a new survey claiming a new “indoor generation.”

Great Britain and Canada had similar results to the U.S., with 23 and 26 percent of its respondents saying they spend between 21 and 24 hours inside.

The countries with the highest percentage of people who spend the lowest amount of time inside were Italy (57 percent), the Czech Republic (57 percent) and the Netherlands (51 percent). This group said they only spend between zero and 14 hours indoors.

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