Consumer Reports provides some guidance on using Healthcare.gov (Obamacare), Cookie Mess

Who do you trust trying to use Healthcare.gov (Obamacare).  President Obama's reassurances?  Media covering the efforts?

How about Consumer Reports?  Here is a post they put last week.

Let’s jump to the advice that will get you thinking.

Clear your cookies.

Your next hurdle after creating a functioning user name and password is to reach the identity verification section. If you log in to Healthcare.gov and get nothing but a blank page, what’s likely happening, Simo says, is that in your previous visits to Healthcare.gov, your browser got loaded up with lots of cookies, bits of data and code that are implanted for later retrieval and use by Healthcare.gov. The problem is that the cookie files are bigger than what the website can accept back (yes, a design error). Result: a blank page. Solution: either delete the Healthcare.gov cookies from your browser (typically found in the “privacy” settings in Preferences), or log back in from a browser you’ve never previously used to access Healthcare.gov. That advice rang especially true to me because that's how I finally got an identity verification screen: by switching from my usual Safari browser to another that I rarely use.

If all this is too much for you to absorb, follow our previous advice: Stay away from Healthcare.gov for at least another month if you can. Hopefully that will be long enough for its software vendors to clean up the mess they’ve made. The coverage available through the marketplaces won’t begin until Jan. 1, 2014, at the earliest, and you have until Dec. 15 to enroll if you need insurance that starts promptly.

What is hysterical is the unique ID is the reference ID, a 128 bit unique.  Which is good from a technical standpoint, but not when you use it as the users reference number.

Three weeks may be a short time in government software development, but it is a very long time in Internet time. If you call support, I wish you a good connection as you try to read that 36-character reference ID over the phone.

 

...

A GUID is actually an integer type - it's a 128 bit integer (16 bytes).

It's often represented as a string of 36 characters - but the actual value is a 128bit integer value.

Obamacare's Healthcare.gov operations is the new IT spectator sport, a bunch of us are having good laughs

President Obama got on TV to assure us the Healthcare.gov website will be fixed and if you want to skip the web site you can call a 1-800 number.  Uh, the 1-800 number has problems too.

There was only one problem: the Obamcare toll-free phone number was overloaded and immediately crashed. According to Lou Dubois of NBC News, "Call centers now appear overloaded due to volume. 'Please call back.'" Dubois wasn't the only one reporting the new glitches. Annie Lowrey of The New York Times added, "For the record, just called 1-800-318-2596, got a busy signal." Kasie Hunt of NBC News: "Just called the number. They said there's too high call volume and call back on the weekend. 'We're sorry for the inconvenience. Goodbye.'"

The author goes on to point out a flaw in using the 1800 phone system.

There was only one problem: the Obamcare toll-free phone number was overloaded and immediately crashed. According to Lou Dubois of NBC News, "Call centers now appear overloaded due to volume. 'Please call back.'" Dubois wasn't the only one reporting the new glitches. Annie Lowrey of The New York Times added, "For the record, just called 1-800-318-2596, got a busy signal." Kasie Hunt of NBC News: "Just called the number. They said there's too high call volume and call back on the weekend. 'We're sorry for the inconvenience. Goodbye.'"

The Washingpost focuses on the damage control and Obama's speech pretty much ignores the significance of the problems.

"Hasn't worked as smoothly as it was supposed to work" is an understatement. "Hasn't worked" is closer to the truth.

But you wouldn't have known that from Obama's speech. Most of it was dedicated to the good the federal health-care law is already doing. The president emphasized that the Affordable Care Act "is not just a Web site." It's a Medicaid expansion, and it's got consumer protections, and delivery-system reforms, and all of those are ongoing.

The Washingpost highlights that the website operation is critical for the legalize and success of Obamacare.

The problem is that much of the law is a Web site. When the White House defined what it would mean for the Affordable Care Act to be a success, that definition ran right through the Web site. And Obama knows the Web site needs to be fixed. "We've had some of the best IT talent in the entire country join the team," he promised. "And we're well into a tech surge to fix the problem. And we are confident that we will get all the problems fixed."

I don't know about you, but a bunch of my friends are getting some good laughs.

As we all know developing solutions that need to scale to millions of users is really hard.  The US government has never had a system that has millions of users regularly using a website as individual users.  

In the end despite all the posturing by Obama, and the Best IT talent in the country, we'll see if Obamacare succeeds or not.

In the end, though, Obama's speech doesn't matter. Either the Web site will be fixed in a reasonable time frame, and the law will work, or it won't be fixed and the law will begin to fail. The Affordable Care Act is no longer a political abstraction. It's the law, and it will be judged not on how well politicians message it, but how much it does to improve people's lives.

Google missed in EPA Green Power Leadership Awards - Apple, Cisco, Dell, Intel, Microsoft

The EPA released the Green Power Leadership Awards.

This was a good chance for the technology vendors who go Green to highlight their achievements.  Apple, Cisco, Dell, Intel and Microsoft are on the list.  What happened to Google?  They are not on the list.

Apple Inc.
Apple Inc., one of the largest information technology companies in the world, became an organization-wide Green Power Partner in 2013, increasing its green power use from 2012 by more than 285 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) to an annual total of more than 537 million kWh. Apple is pursuing a net zero energy strategy for its data centers, corporate facilities, and retail stores worldwide, and currently has achieved 85 percent green power for all its U.S. consumption. An important component of the strategy is creating new, Apple-owned renewable energy projects – utility-scale if necessary – located near the company's centers of energy demand.

Apple supplies all of its data centers with 100 percent renewable energy though its own projects or through grid-purchased renewable energy. For its largest data center, in Maiden, North Carolina, it has committed to more than 60 percent Apple-owned generation and achieves this by having constructed the nation’s largest end user-owned, solar photovoltaic array — a 20-megawatt (MW) facility on 100 acres of land — and a 10-MW fuel cell installation supplied by directed biogas, the largest non-utility fuel cell installation operating anywhere in the country. These projects produce 125 million kWh of green power a year. A second 20-MW solar photovoltaic array is installed and will be operational in October, increasing total green power generation at the data center to 167 million kWh a year, which is substantially beyond their 60 percent goal.

Many of Apple's other facilities also operate on 100 percent renewable energy from a combination of green power purchases and Apple-owned renewable projects, including its data center in Newark, California; its two newest data centers in Reno, Nevada and Prineville, Oregon; and corporate facilities in Cupertino, California; Elk Grove, California; Austin, Texas; and several overseas facilities.

By developing its own on-site projects, Apple ensures that it provides renewable energy that supports the company’s load and provides power to the local grid, and that this energy comes from new projects that would not have been built without Apple's involvement.

In the future, as its facilities and data centers grow, Apple plans to increase its green power use to keep pace with growth and pursue its goal of using 100 percent clean, renewable energy.

If you think you should be on this list you can submit here.

Application Process

Awards

• Green Power Leadership Awards
• Application Process
• 2013 Award Winners
• Past Award Winners
• Renewable Energy Markets Conference

EPA’s Green Power Leadership Awards recognize exceptional achievement among EPA Green Power Partners and among green power suppliers. Green Power Partners and green power suppliers may apply for an award, or another party may nominate them. EPA recognizes eligible organizations and suppliers in the award categories listed below:

• Purchaser Awards
• Supplier Awards

Google Green has their content here.

Which East Coast Data Center will run out of diesel fuel first?

The East Coast Data Centers are ready for Hurricane Sandy. 

With Sandy on horizon, East Coast data centers on high alert

Providers test generators, staff up facilities, ensure fuel deliveries

29 October 2012 by Yevgeniy Sverdlik - DatacenterDynamics

 

   

 

 

 

 

Satellite image of Hurricane Sandy by the US NOAA

Data center operators on the US East Coast are bracing for Hurricane Sandy’s landfall, expected by meteorologists on Monday evening.

Providers with substantial data center presence in the region, including Equinix, Savvis, Telx and Sungard Availability Services, have taken the basic steps to make sure their facilities are prepared to keep operational through prolonged power outages.

The basic steps all data center providers that have responded to our inquiries have taken are testing back-up generators, making sure onsite fuel-storage tanks are full, getting in touch with fuel vendors to ensure in-time deliveries in case fuel stored at the data center sites runs out.

The President has declared Emergency situations in 9 states.

The President's action authorizes FEMA to coordinate all disaster relief efforts which have the purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population, and to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures, authorized under Title V of the Stafford Act, to save lives and to protect property and public health and safety, and to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in all counties in the State of New Jersey.

Specifically, FEMA is authorized to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency.  Emergency protective measures, limited to direct federal assistance, will be provided at 75 percent federal funding. 

For those who have run data centers through Federal Emergency conditions they know that a contract with a fuel vendor is not worth much when the Federal gov't has established control of critical resources to address the emergency.

Elizabeth Turner has been named as the Federal Coordinating Officer for federal response operations in the affected area. 

FEMA's mission is to support our citizens and first responders to ensure that as a nation we work together to build, sustain, and improve our capability to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate all hazards.

Depending on how bad the power outages are, how refineries are impacted, diesel fuel could be extremely scarce.   And, a data center could run out of fuel even if it has multiple contracts with fuel vendors.

There is a way to get fuel during a FEMA managed event as a smart data center guy asked this question over a year ago, and we talked about how to solve this problem.  I found a guy who has been in the fuel business for years supplying airlines and remote power plants with petroleum fuel, and he has been thinking for who you could make sure you get fuel.  

BTW, one of the easier ways to get fuel during a disaster is to have your facility be defined as critical infrastructure by gov't agencies.  But, that also brings a huge amount of oversight and regulation.

Asia Pacific Nations agree to cut duties on Green Technologies

Reuters has a post on an agreement between APEC nations.

Will slash tariffs on environmental technology by 2015

* U.S.-led regional free trade talks to push ahead

* Pacific rim trade forecast to grow rapidly

* APEC leaders hold summit at weekend

By Douglas Busvine

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia, Sept 7 (Reuters) - Asia-Pacific nations have made a breakthrough in promoting trade in 'green' technology, and the United States is pressing ahead with efforts to carve out a regional free-trade zone, a senior U.S. official said on Friday.

I can't find the exact list of technologies, but there are 54.

Ministers agreed on a list of 54 green technologies that will be subject to import duties of 5 percent or less from 2015, following through on a commitment made by leaders at the last APEC summit in Honolulu a year ago.