chromas's Friends

Avoid Forecastfox!

Posted by Hairyfeet on Tuesday March 14 2017, @07:46AM (#2259)
9 Comments

It looks like Forecastfox has been sold to spyware vendors as their latest update changes its permissions to "allowed to read and change data on all websites you visit" which for an app that is simply supposed to display data from Accuweather? yeah its been sold to malware vendors.

AGM Phone: 6,000-10,000 mAH battery, 256 GB NAND, 8 GB RAM

Posted by takyon on Monday March 13 2017, @09:58PM (#2258)
2 Comments

MWC 2017: AGM Preparing IP68 Rated Snapdragon 835 Smartphone with 8GB DRAM

While the AGM X1 is positioned by the manufacturer as an affordable rugged phone for extreme sports and other outdoor activities, but it is definitely not a phone from the premier league. In the coming months (in mid-2017) AGM plans to introduce its X2, which will be positioned as a premium smartphone and will feature Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 835 SoC (10nm, eight new Kryo cores, Adreno 540, X16 LTE, LPDDR4X, etc.). This is along with 8 GB of DRAM, 256 GB of NAND, two cameras, a ~6000 mAh battery (there will also be the AGM X2 Pro with a 10,000 mAh battery) an omni-bearing ambient sensor and so on. Based on official images of the AGM X2 (originally published by AGM and AndroidHeadlines), it is possible that the phone has four antennae and thus supports 4x4 MIMO, one of the three features required for Gigabit LTE.
The AGM X2 will be one of the first IP68-rated Snapdragon 835-based smartphones with a rugged design. Meanwhile, for AGM, this will be a debut on the market of premium smartphones that compete against Apple’s iPhones or Samsung’s Galaxy S-series. The price of the AGM X2 is unknown, but it will likely vary significantly depending on the store and the region. For example, the AGM X1 can be bought for $260 in China or for over $480 in the U.S.

I switched to CDE

Posted by NCommander on Monday March 13 2017, @02:19AM (#2257)
20 Comments

So I finally got too fedup with the modern breakage that is called desktop environments on Linux, grabbed the source code to CDE, and compiled it. I *finally* have an environment that works with multimonitor without being complete crap. After a bit fiddling with the X defaults database, it's quite usable.

Imgur Proof (warning, high resolution)

Honestly, compared to MOST of the other DEs I've used, this is damn heaven at the moment. With a bit of work to get to support XDG groups, some app fixing, and a little polish, CDE probably could wipe the floor as far as usability goes.

He will not divide us: Capture the flag

Posted by takyon on Saturday March 11 2017, @08:19PM (#2256)
7 Comments

How 4Chan's Worst Trolls Pulled Off the Heist of the Century

The folks of 4Chan have, for some time now, been systematically fucking with Shia Labeouf for his "He Will Not Divide Us" art/protest project. The project first started with Labeouf setting up a webcam in New York. It was supposed to be a permanent live feed for the duration of Trumps presidency, one where people could look into the camera and chant the saying—this obviously did not end well.
[...] The non-stop bullshit surrounding his art project seemingly got to some people and it was shut down by the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, where it was located. Shia, not to be deterred, then moved the exhibit to El Rey Theater in Albuquerque in mid-February, but the fuckery continued. The live stream was spray painted and it was eventually shut down when gunshots were reported in the area.
Still though, Shia, ever the trooper, carried on. This time the HWNDU project featured a livestream of a flag waving in the air. The stream contained only the sky and the flag as not to give away its location to the trolls. 'Yes,' Labeouf must have thought, 'there is no way they're shutting this one down. I, Big-Daddy Shia, did it.'
Big-Daddy Shia would be proven wrong once again—instead of vanquishing the trolls, he started the most intense game of capture the flag ever. The trolls using only the live stream of the flag, started, I shit you not, studying the flight patterns and contrails of the airplanes passing overhead. They mapped out what they saw and took their findings to flight radars to try and pinpoint a general area. Using the knowledge gleaned from the flight patterns they found that the location was near Greeneville, Tennessee.

(Continue at the article)

Islamic prayer ritual reduces back pain

Posted by takyon on Thursday March 09 2017, @11:07PM (#2255)
12 Comments

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170306154230.htm

Five times a day, roughly 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide, bow, kneel, and place their foreheads to the ground in the direction of the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, as part of the Islamic prayer ritual, the Salat. The ritual is one of the five obligatory elements of the faith set forth by the holy book, the Qur'an.
According to research at Binghamton University, State University of New York, the complex physical movements of the ritual can reduce lower back pain if performed regularly and properly.
"One way to think about the movements is that they are similar to those of yoga or physical therapy intervention exercises used to treat low back pain," said Professor and Systems Science and Industrial Engineering Department Chair Mohammad Khasawneh, who is one of the authors of "An ergonomic study of body motions during Muslim prayer using digital human modelling."

Islam: Relieving the Pain ~~in Your Ass~~ Adjacent to Your Rear

An ergonomic study of body motions during Muslim prayer using digital human modelling (DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2017.10002578) (DX)