Lowyat.NET: Latest topics by Atomars

Nokia offers a Lumia Phone

Atomars — Wed, 11 Dec 2013 19:55:47 +0800

Some customer services out there might not be doing their best to keep users happy, but there are also those who do try to help them as much as possible.

One example of inefficient customer support comes from Samsung, who did not handle very well a situation in which a Galaxy S4 smartphone caught fire while charging.

The device was still under warranty, and the company was supposed to replace it with a working unit as fast as possible.

Instead, they chose to send the user a letter in which they offered to replace the faulty unit only in the event that the user removed from YouTube a video showing the damage that the device had suffered.

Instead of doing so, and signing an agreement to never talk of the unfortunate event ever again, the user decided to make it all public. The clip caused a series of negative reactions from the community.

Nokia jumped in as well, offering a Lumia smartphone to said user to replace his Galaxy S4 handset, as mentioned in a recent tweet.

The company did not offer info on which Lumia model it will deliver, but chances are that it will be a Nokia Lumia 1020, or even a newer device.

The story has already gathered a lot of views on Reddit and it might add some more soon, which could prove to be beneficial for Nokia.

The company has started to gain some ground on the smartphone market lately, and it certainly needs great marketing to conquer the hearts of more users.

PR stunts like this one should help, especially since many users started to remember some other good deeds that the Finnish phone maker did for users and bloggers alike during the past several years.

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Do you trust password managers ?

Atomars — Sat, 07 Dec 2013 15:17:24 +0800

Hi, as you know, there are a lot of free and paid password managers out there.

Such as

http://keepass.info/
https://lastpass.com/

My question is, do you trust them ?

I'm a little paranoid and I usually write my password in a book instead.

How about you guys ?

10-year-old attacks baby

Atomars — Sat, 07 Dec 2013 13:37:45 +0800

[YOUTUBE]m2_RXREg8yo[/YOUTUBE]

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

Local police authorities in Chongqing, China are baffled as to what provoked a 10 year old schoolgirl to maul a defenseless 18 month old baby boy inside an elevator, and then throw him off from the balcony at the building's 25th balcony.

The baby boy, identified as Li Xinyuan, was with his mother inside the elevator. When the doors opened, the mother struggled with the little boy's green bike. It was already too late when she noticed her toddler son did not follow her out of the elevator and was left behind still inside it.

CCTV footage collected from inside the Chongqing apartment complex lift showed it was a matter of seconds when a schoolgirl, with long black hair and wearing a backpack and a light-blue jacket and pink neck scarf, boarded the elevator just as little Li Xinyuan's mother left it. The schoolgirl saw Li Xinyuan, visibly distressed over his separation from his mother.

The girl then slammed the toddler into the ground. She also kicked and stomped on him more than one time. Upon reaching the 25th floor, she dragged little Li Xinyuan out and then threw him roughly to the ground.

Next thing the mother knew, little Li Xinyuan was later found on the ground outside the building, unconscious and covered in blood.

Li Shuyong, Li Xinyuan's father, said they have received 58,000 yuan ($9,500) from the girl's father. He said it's not enough to pay for medical expenses.

"It costs 4,000 yuan a day and my son has been under observation for 10 days," Li Shuyong said. "Doctors said the operation will cost over 30,000 yuan."

Dan Xingming, the family's lawyer, will demand 300,000 yuan from the girl's parents, adding a local court has accepted the case.

In a report by Beijing News, the girl's father denied allegations his daughter threw out the toddler on purpose. He said hurting the toddler was just her way of "expressing her feelings".

"[By beating the boy] she just wanted him to smile to her and to be friendly to her," the father was quoted as saying.

He then admitted that the girl's parents often beat and scold her.

Source

Woman offering £100K to help her get pregnant

Atomars — Wed, 04 Dec 2013 14:55:20 +0800

China : Jin Sung, who has been married for 10 years - has been driving around the country in a car with a sign offering the huge sum in exchange for some much-needed assistance in her quest to conceive a child.

A red banner on her BMW car reads the same. It was reported that Jiu Sung has been trying get pregnant since getting married and is seeking for help

Despite having no luck so far, the 37-year-old woman is determined to have a baby one day.

She explained: ''I am sure if I look hard enough I will succeed.''

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The most terrifying tyre commercial ever made

Atomars — Wed, 04 Dec 2013 10:27:28 +0800

Autoway Tires came up with the ad to show how the company's tyres can peform in treacherous and dangerous conditions, The Daily Mail reports.
It even starts with a health warning which reads: "Not for the faint of heart."

The ad - which is reminiscent of the Japanese horror film The Ring - shows the view from a car windscreen as the driver heads down a lonely laneway.

In the distance, the figure of a lone girl appears. As the car approaches, the girl's ghoulish face looms.
What happens next has left viewers jumpy, shaken and horrified, with one viewer taking to Twitter saying: "The most terrifying ad you will ever watch!"

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

*Watch at your own risk. Not for the faint of heart.

[YOUTUBE]jGFWEoCGhi8[/YOUTUBE]

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This realistic portrait of Morgan Freeman

Atomars — Tue, 03 Dec 2013 21:57:54 +0800

A UK artist has posted video online showing the photo-realistic portrait he drew of actor Morgan Freeman using nothing but his finger and his iPad.

Kyle Lambert spent more than 200 hours working on the digital painting, starting with a simple series of broad brushstrokes and getting more and more detailed.

A time-lapse video he made shows the intensely time-consuming process of mastering wispy facial hair, freckles, tiny beads of sweat and the moisture in the Oscar-winning actor's eyes.

By the end of the video we are looking at an image that looks far too detailed to be anything but a photograph.

Lambert told ninemsn that the painting was a very long process.

"I get very involved in my process so spend a lot of time each day on the painting," he said.

"I was spending 9-10 hours some days if a certain area I was working on was complicated."

Lambert trained as an oil painter at university but transitioned to digital painting about five years ago.

He has been using an iPad to paint since the first version was released in 2010.

Lambert was motivated to create something entertaining, inspiring and educational, and Morgan Freeman seemed like a good choice of subject.

"I've found with past videos people are more engaged when the subject is familiar to them," he said.

"I think I must have been watching the movie Oblivion when the idea of Morgan Freeman came to mind."

The whole painting took Lambert a month to complete.

[YOUTUBE]uEdRLlqdgA4[/YOUTUBE]

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Five-year old boy badly injured

Atomars — Sun, 24 Nov 2013 13:50:03 +0800

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

KOTA SAMARAHAN: A five-year old boy was injured when he fell down a moving escalator while horse-playing with her older brother at a shopping complex here today.

In the 7pm incident, Javier Koh Bo Han and his eight-year old brother were on a shopping outing with his uncle and his family, and their grandmother.

According to his uncle who declined to be identified, they were resting at the benches near the escalator on the second floor of the building and the boys were amusing themselves with some rough and rowdy playing nearby.

"I have reminded them to stop and sit down but they refused and continued, and we were just talking when we suddenly heard him screaming.

"We believed the boy touched the escalator's rail and was dragged down. He fell and tumbled down the moving stairs," he said.

The Civil Defence Department team later came and gave first aid treatment to the boy before sending him to the Sarawak General Hospital.

Source

Dead baby wakes up before cremation

Atomars — Thu, 21 Nov 2013 15:48:44 +0800

A Chinese baby boy who had been declared dead was saved from being cremated alive when he started crying at a funeral parlour, media reported Thursday.

The parents of the critically-ill boy, who was less than one month old, had agreed to end his medical treatment at Anhui Provincial Children’s Hospital in eastern China, hospital sources told Xinhua state news agency.

A death certificate was issued before the baby was sent to a funeral parlour in Hefei, the provincial capital -- only for staff there to be alerted by crying on Wednesday.

It was unclear how long he had been at the funeral parlour, or when his cremation had been due.

The baby was immediately sent back to the hospital, several news outlets including the Beijing News reported on Thursday.

"Because the baby still had life signs, we continued to give him transfusion to maintain his life for humanitarian reasons," a hospital staff member told Xinhua.

The baby was born with a "congenital respiratory system malformation", the report added.

The baby was receiving treatment at the hospital late Wednesday, reports said.

A doctor was suspended, a nursing worker laid off and an investigation launched into the incident, the hospital said, according to Xinhua.

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Microsoft now sells

Atomars — Thu, 21 Nov 2013 09:59:58 +0800

Microsoft’s anti-Google “Scroogled” campaign has been quietly attempting to convince consumers to avoid Google services for the past few months, but it’s back today with a vengeance.
Microsoft has dedicated an entire section of its online store to selling anti-Google mugs, hats, t-shirts, and hoodies.

The prices vary, but for $7.99 you can pick up a mug that advises you to “keep calm while we steal your data.
It’s a surprisingly brazen approach from Microsoft just in time for the holidays, and another direct and odd attack at Google.

Microsoft has previously parodied Google’s Chrome ad, attacked Gmail, and launched an anti-Google Shopping site.
The campaign is the work of longtime Democratic political operative Mark Penn, best known for running the presidential campaign for both Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Anti-Google mugs and t-shirts aren’t the usual products we’d expect in the Microsoft Store, but we suspect you won’t be finding any of these on Google's holiday shopping list.

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New Snapdragon 805 mobile CPU

Atomars — Wed, 20 Nov 2013 22:42:24 +0800

Qualcomm has announced a new, more powerful processor in its Snapdragon 800 family, which will allow smartphones and tablets to play back 4K Ultra HD footage rather than just record it.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 is described by the company as the next generation for its mobile processors. It is designed to deliver the highest-quality mobile video, imaging and graphics. It also comes with a new Adreno 420 graphics processor which is claimed to be up to 40 per cent more powerful than the last generation.

The Krait 450 quad-core CPU is the first mobile CPU capable of running at speeds of up to 2.5GHz per core. It also has memory bandwidth of 25.6GB/s so will benefit the speed of running apps and browsing the internet.

It has advanced 4K rendering and is capable of playing Ultra HD content on a device itself or to a compatible TV. Of course, the former will depend on manufacturers adding native support in their mobile screen technologies, something we don't expect for a while yet.

It is also the first chip to introduce hardware support for 4K HEVC (H.265) decoding.

"Using a smartphone or tablet powered by Snapdragon 805 processor is like having an Ultra HD home theater in your pocket, with 4K video, imaging and graphics, all built for mobile," said Murthy Renduchintala, executive vice-president of Qualcomm Technologies.

"We're delivering the mobile industry's first truly end-to-end Ultra HD solution, and coupled with our industry leading Gobi LTE modems and RF transceivers, streaming and watching content at 4K resolution will finally be possible."

Commercial devices powered by the Snapdragon 805 processor are expected to start appearing in the first half of 2014.

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Obesity and children

Atomars — Tue, 19 Nov 2013 16:36:00 +0800

I had a conversation with my friend about this just now and decided to ask people in this forum.

What do you think of a parent who let their kids eat anything that they want and become chubby (or even fat) sooner or later ?

In your opinion, do you think it is OK for children to become chubby ?

If you are a parent or older sibling, how do you get your children or younger sibling to eat heathy ?

The Large Pixel Collider

Atomars — Tue, 19 Nov 2013 14:37:27 +0800

Nothing delights us more than building a nice computer. Except for, well, building an irresponsibly powerful one. Today we'd like you to meet the Large Pixel Collider, the most inspiring, dangerous, and liver-damagingly potent PC we've ever built.

We’ve assembled the LPC not as a quiet monument, but as an instrument that we'll use to produce cool content. It's our Excalibur, our Mjölnir, our Magic School Bus. At the heart of the system are four GTX Titans, which we’ll use to capture gameplay video with every visual setting turned up. With 2560x1440 as our starting point, we'll ramp up in the coming months to 4K, 5K, and beyond. You'll be able to watch all of our footage and experiments on the PC Gamer YouTube channel.

We also want the LPC to continually express what’s possible on Our Dear Platform. We’ll swap in new parts whenever we believe we can increase performance, and we’ll haul it with us to trade shows like PAX for you to see, hug, and take photos with like some sort of shopping mall Santa Claus* that can run Battlefield 4 at 7680x1440. We've even built a special lair for the system at www.pcgamer.com/LPC, where we'll track the progress of the build.

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

http://lpc.pcgamer.com/

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Man buys clay iPad

Atomars — Tue, 19 Nov 2013 12:27:56 +0800

Colin Marsh, 47, bought the tablet at Tesco in Whitstable as a present for his ten-year-old daughter Maddie.

However, the family was shocked to discover that the inside of the box contained clay instead of the tablet.

He stormed back to the supermarket to demand a refund but was instead thrown in a cell for three hours.

‘I took it back to Tesco, but they said they couldn’t give me a refund and would need to carry out an investigation,’ he said.

‘Two days later, I got a call at about 8pm from the police asking if I could come down to the station to answer some questions.

‘I just thought they wanted to know what had happened, but the next thing I know I’m being bundled into a cell.’

‘I’ve run my own successful businesses for 22 years, and I own my own house. Why would I want to scam Tesco out of a £470 iPad?’

He remained on bail for almost two months until police discovered that the tablet was activated under a different name in Wales.

The father-of-two has since got his money returned to him and had his bail cancelled but has been spared an apology. No further action was taken against him.

‘You just can’t treat people like that. It’s absolutely disgusting,’ he added.

Though he still sometimes goes into Tesco, he told the Kentish Times: "Even now when I go in there I feel uncomfortable because I think the staff are looking at me and thinking 'he did it.'"

Source

Robot commits suicide

Atomars — Thu, 14 Nov 2013 20:22:48 +0800

A cleaning robot 'committed suicide' by climbing on to a kitchen hotplate where it was burned to death.

According to local reports, the Irobot Roomba 760 robot is thought to have rebelled against its chores and decided enough was enough.

Firemen were called to the blaze at Hinterstoder in Kirchdorf, Austria, and say they found the remains of the machine on the hotplate.

Fireman Helmut Kniewasser said: "The home-owner had put the small robot on the work surface to clean up some spilled cereal.

"Once the robot had done its job it was switched off but left on the kitchen sideboard. The 44-year-old house owner together with his wife and son then left the house and were not home when the robot set off.

"Somehow it seems to have reactivated itself and made its way along the work surface where it pushed a cooking pot out of the way and basically that was the end of it."

He added: "It pretty quickly started to melt underneath and then stuck to the kitchen hotplate. It then caught fire. By the time we arrived, it was just a pile of ash.

"The entire building had to be evacuated and there was severe smoke damage particularly in the flat where the robot had been in use.

"I don't know about the allegations of a robot suicide but the homeowner is insistent that the device was switched off – it's a mystery how it came to be activated and ended up making its way to the hotplate."

The family are now reportedly homeless because their apartment is no longer habitable thanks to the smoke damage.

Homeowner Gernot Hackl, 44, said: "I intend to sue to get compensation. It has ruined my home as everything is smoke damaged.

"Everything is black. It's not possible to live here at the moment. I would never buy one again, you buy them to keep the place clean, not almost burn it down and ruin everything."

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Man dies mysteriously

Atomars — Wed, 13 Nov 2013 22:08:39 +0800

Mystery surrounds the death of a man whose heart stopped after he opened “Pandora’s Box”.
Jason Airey, 37, was found unconscious by his parents in his bedroom at their home in Carlisle, Cumbria in May.
Next to him was a box bearing the phrase “Pandora’s Box” in red letters.

A post-mortem examination found Mr Airey’s heart had stopped, which had caused his organs to fail. But tests were unable to establish why.
Pandora’s Box is an artefact taken from Greek mythology. The box, given to Pandora, was said to contain all the evils of the world.

Mr Airey’s father Dennis, 64, told the inquest in Cumbria that his son had been in a happy mood when he returned home on May 2.
“He was just his normal self,” he said. “I think he had enjoyed himself in town. He had been shopping and said he was going upstairs to get changed.”
However his wife Anne, 69, got concerned when he failed to come back downstairs. She went upstairs to check on him but found him unconscious.

Paramedics tried to revive Mr Airey, but he never regained consciousness and died at the Cumberland Infirmary two days later.
Dennis Airey told the inquest he found “a little packet” inside ‘Pandora’s Box’ and thought it was cannabis but “it didn’t smell”.

“I thought [the box] had just been opened,” Mr Airey said.
“It was a packet but had not been used. It was on the bed right beside him.
“He hadn’t taken any drugs after having a bad experience with ecstasy 13 years ago.”

Coroner Robert Chapman said toxicology tests had found no trace of drugs in Mr Airey’s system and ruled that he died of natural causes.
“His heart stopping caused the death of his brain which caused multiple organ failure,” he said. “We don’t really know what caused his heart to stop.
“There is a possibility that he had a fatal cardiac arrythymia – a change in his heartbeat.”

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Woman shaves her facial bone

Atomars — Thu, 07 Nov 2013 13:41:35 +0800

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

A 26-year-old woman in Taiwan reportedly shaved the bone structure of her face after she was nicknamed ‘big pancake face’.

The woman’s face, according to an Asiaone report, swelled up to the size of an inflated balloon following the surgery but it became normal after 45 days. The new face became distinctively sharper after the operation.

She, however, advised other women not to go overboard in pursuit of perfection, the report said.

The doctors involved in the surgery said it was a complicated operation than other surgeries because the risk of complication is pretty high.

Quoting the doctors, the report said that little carelessness could have paralysed chin or damage the lower branch of the facial nerve that controls the lower lip.

Highlighting the importance of finding a good surgeon, the physician said that just a little carelessness may lead to chin paralysis , an inability to open and close the mouth properly, facial nerve disorders and other problems.

In chin reduction surgery there is always a small chance of damaging the lower branch of the facial nerve that controls the lower lip, said Dr William Portuese, MD, a Seattle facial plastic surgeon.

When damaged, patients experience loss of sensation and motor function in the affected area and if this nerve is cut, it can result in a temporary or permanent lower lip asymmetry.

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How to free up drive space on your Mac

Atomars — Thu, 07 Nov 2013 10:25:34 +0800

Hello guys, I want to share some useful tips on how to free up drive space on your Mac.

1) If you use iPhoto to import pictures and if you already dragged/saved the imported pictures to another folder/storage media, you may want to delete pictures that you just imported in iPhoto.
This is because when you import pictures in iPhoto and already dragged/saved them to e.g: your desktop, you will end up with duplicate pictures (one in iPhoto and one on the desktop).
So it is better to delete the one in iPhoto because they will eat up storage space.

To do this, "delete the pictures in iPhoto that you already saved > then go to Trash tab in iPhoto > click Empty Trash > go to Trash on desktop > click Empty."

2) In iMovie, after you completed your project and don't use the Event anymore, you can also delete it to gain more space.

To delete, "go to iMovie Library > right click file and click move Event to Trash > go to Trash on desktop > click Empty."

3) If you import music to your iTunes, you can also delete the music source file/folder because if you don't, you will end up with two similar music files (one inside iTunes Library and another one in wherever you keep it on HDD/SSD).

To ensure that the music has been imported to iTunes Library, "go to Finder > Music > iTunes > iTunes Media > Music."

4) Delete unused iOS apps in iTunes to gain more space as you can always download them again in iTunes Store.

5) You can delete old and unused applications. For an example, if you have two versions of iMovie (old and new), just delete the old version if you plan not to use it.

QUOTE

Software below can also help you free up drive space on your Mac.

http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/
http://www.omnigroup.com/more
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/disk-diag/id672206759

Lady Gaga to sing in outer space in 2015

Atomars — Thu, 07 Nov 2013 08:45:26 +0800

No one ever said she was down-to-earth. In early 2015, Lady Gaga will become the first artist to sing in outer space, Us Weekly can exclusively reveal.

The "Dope" performer, 27, is set to blast off in a Virgin Galactic ship and belt out a single track during the Zero G Colony high-tech musical festival in New Mexico.

She has to do a month of vocal training because of the atmosphere, says a source, who adds that the diva's glam squad will join her in the shuttle.

Zero G Colony is a three-day hi-tech festival set to take place at Spaceport America in New Mexico that features world-class entertainment and cutting-edge technology.

Gaga's performance in space is planned to take place on the third day at dawn, which is approximately six months after the first Virgin Galactic commercial flight.

A source says the historic event will be like nothing the world has seen before.

And just in case the force isn't with the pop star, a source tells Us, Gaga has taken out a ridiculous life insurance policy.

Us Weekly

CoD: Ghosts (PS4) faces frame-rate complaints

Atomars — Thu, 07 Nov 2013 01:53:38 +0800

Reviews of the latest Call of Duty video game have reported problems with the graphics on the PlayStation 4 edition of the title.

Testers said that its frame rate dropped at several points during the game causing a stutter-effect.

The PS4 version of CoD: Ghosts is the only console edition that renders its images in 1080p high definition.

Although the PS4 version of the game is already on sale, Sony's console itself will not be released until 15 November in North America and 29 November in Europe.

That potentially gives Activision time to release a software patch if the issue can be fixed.

Earlier this week, the head of Activision's Infinity Ward studio - which developed the newest title - told the BBC that his team had made delivering smooth animations a priority.

"One of the key pillars of Call of Duty has been 60 frames per second... and ensuring that was of utmost importance, and the resolutions that appear are geared around that," said Mark Rubin.

Elsewhere he suggested that the different way the new consoles handled memory had contributed to a decision to support 1080p graphics on Sony's machine but not Microsoft's.

However, some reviews have suggested the PS4 version does not maintain a consistent frame rate as desired.

"The PlayStation 4 version... has noticeable technical issues, sometimes slowing to a crawl, particularly during set-piece moments with multiple effects," reported Joystiq.

"Frame rate hitches happen throughout the campaign on PlayStation 4 and, in a series known for its Hollywood-inspired bombast, it detracted from the experience."

Now Gamer added that it was particularly concerned about the issue occurring during the title's online multiplayer mode.

"It's rare - it only happened once every few matches - but it is definitely present," it said.

"It's not something we've seen in any Call of Duty multiplayer before, so it stood out as particularly odd and unfortunate, given the frame-rate stutter is significant enough to let targets escape to safety or see you killed during the general mayhem."

Although Activision has yet to provide a statement, Mr Rubin had previously acknowledged: "There's enormous amounts of work ahead of us in perfecting our game engines on both [Sony and Microsoft's] platforms."

Sony has not commented on the subject.

BBC

Meet Sweetie, the girl catching online predators

Atomars — Tue, 05 Nov 2013 22:49:21 +0800

[YOUTUBE]0SvKPJ3Yi6I[/YOUTUBE]

Dutch researchers say 1,000 men from around the world made contact with a 10-year-old CGI girl in the Philippines during a 10-week investigation, many of whom wanted to pay her to take off her clothes in front of a webcam.

Children's rights organisation Terre des Hommes set up the fake profile of a girl named Sweetie in an online chat room and its specially trained researchers were astounded by the avalanche of responses.

One researcher described it as 'petrifying' but said the real worry now was the number of girls from developing nations getting access to the internet and parents and criminals trying to make money out of them.

The information gathered during the investigation will be passed to Interpol.

The BBC's Angus Crawford was invited to a secret location to see how the work is carried out.

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