Samsung seems to be really intent in growing more and more independent even when it comes to its internal components. After ditching Qualcomm’s Snapdragon for its own Exynos chip, the Korean OEM is apparently now preparing a new Exynos called the M1. What’s special about this Exynos M1 isn’t simply the fact that it’s the next generation Application Processor (AP) … Continue reading
Samsung has expanded its line of Level audio offerings with two new products that will allow music fans to listen to their favorite tunes without wires. The two new products are the Samsung Level On Wireless and Samsung Level Link. The Level On Wireless headphones use Bluetooth connectivity to shed wires between your music device and the headphones. The headphones … Continue reading
Almost all mobile payment systems, perhaps except for Samsung, have one critical flaw. Most of them require the use of new NFC-enabled terminals to work. But what if you only have access to ye olde magnetic stripe PoS? What if you’re stuck with old fashioned swiping systems but still want to benefit from the conveniences of the modern world. Enter … Continue reading
Ever since Spotify announced Connect, a feature that lets you easily play music on various compatible devices, manufacturers quickly started taking advantage of it. Now, following in the footsteps of Libratone, Bang & Olufsen, Samsung and many other …
Earlier reports this month suggested that Samsung was caught unawares by the demand for the Galaxy S6 Edge which is why some customers might have a hard time getting their hands on one. Supposedly the production process of the curved glass display is also to blame for the alleged supply constraint.
However according to a report from South Korea (via G for Games) it seems that Samsung is looking to change the manufacturing process of the curved glass display which will hopefully result in a higher yield and will help speed orders along. The problem at the moment involves heating the edges of the display before curving both sides.
However the heating process is said to cause micro wrinkles in the final product which is why production yields are said to be low. To help deal with this problem, Samsung is said to have come up with a new process which supposedly just heats up on side of the glass panel first, which in turn reduces the cost of polishing and will also help improve production yield.
The company is said to have begun testing the new process in its factories in Vietnam although it is unclear when this process will be applied across Samsung’s manufacturing plants, but hopefully it will be soon and we will start seeing more Galaxy S6 Edge handsets hit the market.
Samsung Refining Galaxy S6 Edge’s Curved Glass Production Process , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use. 
In what seems like a somewhat ironic twist, popular torrent website Demonoid has reportedly begun to block users from accessing its website if it detects that the user has AdBlock installed. For those unfamiliar, AdBlock is a browser plugin that basically prevents ads from displaying across all websites and services.
However like we said it is a bit ironic especially when you consider that Demonoid is a torrent website that deals with pirated software, music, TV shows, games, and more, which many consider to be stealing. Blocking ads on the other hand is not considered stealing, at least as far as the German courts are concerned so in some ways we have to wonder if Demonoid can see the irony in their actions.
That being said, Demonoid does rely on users to donate to their website. They also rely on ads to help generate revenue which is why we can only imagine that they are rather miffed if users are trying to skirt around it through the use of ad-blocking software. Interestingly enough some of Demonoid’s users aren’t too pleased with this policy and have stated their plans to boycott the website.
According to one uploader on Demonoid, “Some of us support the site by uploading content. Now I haven’t uploaded in a while, but I still support some 535 of my past Demonoid lossless torrents with a fast connection. Torrents I uploaded some three to six years ago. For now I think I will boycott the site. The few lossless people that post only on Demonoid aren’t posting right now. So I can get content from KickAss.”
Popular Torrent Website Blocks Users Who Use AdBlock , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use. 
Amazon is probably one of the largest online retailers in the world, but over in China, its online users have access to Alibaba who is considered to be one of the country’s largest e-commerce websites where users can buy all sorts of items, just like how one can find just about anything and everything on Amazon.
However in a bid to better compete with companies such as Alibaba, Amazon has recently announced the launch of Amazon Business. The main difference here is that unlike regular Amazon which caters to all kinds of customers, Amazon Business plans to cater more towards business customers as its name would imply.
So what exactly will customers be able to buy? According to Amazon, this includes “everything from IT and lab equipment to education and food service supplies.” Customers who shop on Amazon Business will also be able to benefit from a free 2-day shipping option. Business who wish to sell products on Amazon Business will also be able to do so.
There will be features tailored to business customers as well such as multi-user accounts, business-only price incentives, exclusive products, and in some cases tax exemptions, although this will depend on your region.
According to Prentis Wilson, Vice President of Amazon Business, “We’ve heard from business customers that they love the convenience of shopping online, and want an experience at work that is similar to how they shop at home. Amazon Business delivers a new and expanded marketplace that brings the selection, convenience and value of Amazon to business customers, manufacturers and sellers with the additional selection, features and back-end integration businesses need to save time and money.”
Amazon Launches Amazon Business, Wants To Take On China’s Alibaba , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use. 
Every day, the number of options for weed edibles grows greater and greater. Gone are the days of eating your friend’s homemade, who-knows-how-strong pot brownies. Today, weed edibles have found their home in deluxe bakeries and even — wait for it — ice cream factories. (Yes, we may have squealed a little, too.) There may be no better way for cannabis users to get high than with an ice cream sundae — in states where that’s legal, of course.
Cannabis Creamery, based in California, is an ice cream factory that makes pot head dreams come true. Abdullah Saeed of the Vice Munchies show Bong Appetit spent the day with Cannabis Creamery founder Isaac Lappert, and got incredibly stoned with the help of some award-winning mint chip, an over-the-top banana split, and a bear claw ice cream sandwich. Plus many joints.
Watch the Munchies video above to witness Saeed’s journey, and for secrets on how to make a batch of THC-infused ice cream at home. But be warned: weed in ice cream hits faster than other edibles because it doesn’t take your body as long to digest. It just might get you stoned faster than you can even finish your banana split.
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BEDFORD HILLS, N.Y. — Elisia Dones, 59, gazed out the window of the bus as it passed Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, New York’s only maximum-security prison for women, and made a left turn.
The scene in front of her was familiar. Dones spent 1982 to 2003 at Bedford after being convicted of murder in the second degree. Some years, she sang in the inmate talent show, belting out Michael Bolton’s “When I’m Back On My Feet Again.” Now, she was returning to prison voluntarily — this time to perform in “The Vagina Monologues.”
Dones was one of three formerly incarcerated women cast alongside actresses and activists to perform this past Wednesday at Taconic Correctional Facility, the medium-security women’s prison across the street from Bedford. The benefit production was a local effort within V-Day’s One Billion Rising Campaign to end violence against women. Eve Ensler, the playwright and Tony Award winner who wrote “The Vagina Monologues,” accompanied the cast as a guest.
Dones, who now lives in the Bronx, said she believed the themes of the iconic feminist play would resonate with the women. “If you watch them, there will be tears that sneak out of a lot of their eyes,” she said.
Elisia Dones (left) was incarcerated for 23 years at Bedford Hills. At right, the cast has a group hug before performing “The Vagina Monologues.”
Ensler’s play, for those not in the know, is a series of monologues about the vagina, based on interviews the playwright did with more than 200 women. The work, which premiered in 1996, explores such topics as menstruation, feminine grooming, orgasms and childbirth, as well as more difficult subjects like child abuse, sexual assault and rape as a weapon of war.
“The women’s stories in ‘The Vagina Monologues’ are the stories of many women in prison,” said Elyse Sholk, who co-produced the play at Taconic. “Most are victims of gender-based violence, and more often than not, protecting themselves against this very same violence is what led to their incarceration.”
According to a 1999 report by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, 57 percent of women in U.S. state prisons had experienced physical or sexual abuse prior to their incarceration. A separate 1999 study that looked at Bedford found that 94 percent of the women studied had experienced physical or sexual abuse, 82 percent had been physically or sexually abused as children, and 75 percent were survivors of domestic violence.
Co-producer Elizabeth Mackintosh said that due to the slow-moving prison bureaucracy, it took a full year to get approval to bring “The Vagina Monologues” to the facility. “With the lack of women-centric programming at Taconic, we felt it was important to start the conversation with Ensler’s play,” she said.
Women at Taconic Correctional Facility watch a performance of “The Vagina Monologues.”
The production was held in the visiting room. With its vending machines and colorful murals of children flying kites, the room resembled a high school cafeteria. But someone looking out the window would have seen 20-foot fences topped with three rows of barbed wire.
The rate of women incarcerated in the U.S. has risen precipitously over the past four decades. In 2013, approximately 111,300 women were in U.S. prisons, an increase of 900 percent since 1977. According to the Sentencing Project, the number of women in prison is increasing at nearly double the rate of men.
With a capacity of 390 women, Taconic houses about 15 percent of New York’s female prison population. Over 60 percent of women in New York state prisons are women of color, even though they make up only 35 percent of the state’s female population. At Taconic, 43 percent of the inmates are black, 38 percent are white and 16 percent are Latina.
The cast included three formerly incarcerated women, as well as several actresses and activists.
Some of the monologues were particularly apt for the incarcerated population. One of the skits, “My Angry Vagina,” describes the dehumanizing aspects of gynecological exams.
“Why the scary paper dress that scratches your tits and crunches when you lie down, so you feel like a wad of paper someone threw away?” the actress says. “Why the flashlight all up there like Nancy Drew working against gravity… the mean cold duck lips they shove inside you?”
A recent report that looked at reproductive health care for incarcerated women in New York,concluded that women are frequently given substandard OB-GYN care and face “assaults on their basic human dignity.”
Still, despite the seriousness of much of the play’s subject matter, the overwhelming reaction from the audience was laughter. Throughout the show, the women dissolved into fits of giggles and chatted among themselves privately.
“Thank you,” said one woman during a Q&A session after the show. “I don’t know the last time I laughed.”
The audience found the play very funny at times.
After the show, the cast introduced themselves. When the audience learned that Dones used to be incarcerated, they applauded wildly. “It gives us hope!” one woman yelled. “God bless you!”
Another woman said she was moved by how the play tackled the diversity of the vagina. “It touched me,” she said.
Josie Whittlesey, an actress who runs a theater program for incarcerated youth in New York City, said that in her experience, simply bringing outsiders into prison facilities can help those on the inside feel better. “Incarcerated populations are incredibly isolated,” she said. “Anything that can be done to facilitate human connection is rehabilitative and can be healing.”
Eve Ensler, who wrote “The Vagina Monologues” in 1996, stood with the cast of Wednesday’s performance.
Ensler offered some closing remarks at the urging of one of the inmates.
“We are here today to say ‘We see you, and you mean something to us,’” she said. “When you are in here, clean out the stuff that’s in you. Write, paint, start a dialogue with yourself. When you get out, it’ll be easier.”
Ensler told The Huffington Post that she hoped the play could help the women break the silence on sexual violence in their own lives.
“Violence — once it’s happened to you, you are a prisoner of it. As a survivor, I didn’t feel my life was my own. Things were just happening to me. I didn’t have control,” she said. “I think the path to transformation and liberation is to articulate what has gone on in your life and bring some consciousness to what happened to you.”
She said that she does not support the prison system at all. “We have systems that don’t look at the origins of crimes,” she said. “I don’t see how brutal structures of incarceration are doing anything but creating more violence.”
Sharon Richardson (left) sits next to Rhonda Covington.
On the bus ride home, Sharon Richardson and Rhonda Covington, who had both performed that day and who had each spent more than 20 years in prison, reflected on the experience. Richardson said it felt good to entertain the women and take their minds off the reality of incarceration for a few hours. “Being inside, it’s like being cut off,” she said. “But in that moment [witnessing a performance], you are back to a time where you are not in prison.”
“It was amazing to see the excitement on the women’s faces,” Covington said. “It was more amazing that we were able to walk out.”
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The thick, slimy brown ribbons are notorious for tangling the ankles of beachgoers and rotting in pungent piles. But kelp, according to its growing fan base, could also prove potent in protecting the health of oceans — and us.
“We’ve got some bad water heading our way,” said Betsy Peabody, founder and executive director of the Puget Sound Restoration Fund. In April, Peabody’s small organization in Bainbridge Island, Washington, won a $1.5 million grant from the Paul Allen Family Foundation to investigate how cultivating the seaweed might help lessen the impacts of ocean acidification.
Other research has hinted at the sea plant’s potential to prevent toxic algal blooms and provide habitat for marine life, as well as even generate sustainable energy and food while preserving scarce fresh water for humans.
“Kelp is a game-changer,” said Bren Smith, owner of the Thimble Island Oyster Co., which grows a vertical farm of oysters, scallops, clams, mussels and kelp in Long Island Sound. “It is so resilient, fast-growing and does all of these powerful things.”
Smith, too, referenced kelp’s capacity to sweeten souring seas.
Rising levels of carbon dioxide are not only altering the global climate, but also changing ocean chemistry. A quarter of the greenhouse gas belched by coal and other fossil fuels is soaked up by seas. The result is increasingly acidic water that carries fewer carbonate ions, critical building blocks for the skeletons and shells of many valuable and vulnerable sea animals such as clams, crabs, lobsters, shrimp and sea butterflies.
No larger than a grain of sand, the latter snail-like creature is a staple in the diet of marine animals, including sea birds and salmon, around the world. Off the Pacific Northwest coast, about half of sea butterflies carry partially dissolved shells, deformed fins and other impacts of ocean acidification that affect their ability to swim and avoid predators and infections. Researchers project that three-quarters will be affected by 2050. A 10 percent drop in sea butterfly numbers translates into about a 20 percent drop in the body weight of mature salmon.
“Salmon are food for orcas, seals and sea lions. Salmon are food for us,” said Peabody, adding that sea butterflies are also an indicator of how ocean acidification may impact other species. “We need to fully understand what is in our tool box and what isn’t to mitigate these effects.”
She and other scientists recognize the urgency of the situation. The world’s oceans are already 30 percent more acidic than than they were at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, and are predicted to be 150 percent more so by the end of this century. The increasingly corrosive conditions can also kill coral reefs, scramble fish behavior and make many sea creatures less resilient to pollution.
The Puget Sound, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean, is currently one of the most acidic water bodies in the country. Experts warn that it is also a harbinger of things to come elsewhere, especially along shorelines where more acidic water naturally upwells from the sea floor.
With the help of federal, state and university scientists, Peabody and her team are now preparing to deploy three acres of twine seeded with budding sugar kelp in Puget Sound’s Hood Canal. Once the array is submerged, they will begin using sensors on boats and buoys to test the acidity of water before it enters the site, and then again as it leaves. They should have results by 2019.
Walt Dickhoff, division director at NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center, a member of the grant-funded project team, likened the strategy to creating green spaces in cities. Trees, lawns and seaweeds like kelp all act as natural sinks for carbon dioxide.
“This is the first attempt to actually counteract ocean acidification,” said Dickhoff, noting that if the pilot project is successful, native kelp species could be enlisted to protect vulnerable coasts around the world. “As ocean acidification gets worse, which is the direction it is going, can we do something to mitigate it, at least in local places?”
Of course, ocean acidification is a far bigger problem than can be simply solved by rafts of seaweed, warn experts. Cuts to emissions remain critical.
“In the Asia Pacific, a lot [of seaweed] is used in food and is thus simply respired to carbon dioxide in a short time span, so it does not contribute to carbon dioxide mitigation,” John Beardall, an expert in seaweed and ocean acidification at Monash University in Australia, wrote in an email to The Huffington Post. “However, if converted to biofuel or used to make chemicals that would otherwise be derived from fossil fuels, then we could reduce our fossil fuel consumption and thereby mitigate some of our carbon dioxide problems.”
Dickhoff noted that his team, partially in an effort to make the strategy economically sustainable, will look into harvesting the kelp for products such as food, fertilizer, animal feed and biofuel.
Growing kelp could pay off in other ways. Harmful algal blooms, for example, are estimated to cost the U.S. $82 million or more per year. The toxins they release kill fish, cause neurotoxic shellfish poisoning and contaminate drinking water. But macroalgae, which includes kelp and seagrass, can harbor bacteria that fend off the growth of toxic algae, explained Vera Trainer, program manager of the Marine Biotoxin Group at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle. She recently completed a study, not yet published, that found areas of Puget Sound that have generally escaped harmful algal blooms are also rich in seagrass.
“There’s chemical warfare out there in the biological world,” she said, adding that more research needs to be done to determine the relative algae-defeating potential of different types of macroalgae.
Seaweeds such as kelp can also absorb nitrogen, which runs into waterways from lawns, farms and septic systems, and feeds algal blooms. Meanwhile, ocean acidification itself has been show to increase the frequency and toxicity of harmful algal blooms, added Jan Newton, an oceanographer at the University of Washington and another member of the team.
“We’re trying to turn a negative into a positive,” she said. “There could be a lot of benefits coming out of kelp.”
Among those benefits, according to Smith, is also a cheap, healthy and delicious food that is easy to grow and resilient to climate change. He predicts kelp could become the “new kale.” (He noted that the kelp farmed to remediate pollution — including heavy metals — would not be put into the food system.)
“Kelp requires no feed, no fertilizer, no arid land and no fresh water,” added Smith, who once caught factory-fished for McDonald’s and now calls himself an “ocean gardener.”
He pointed to the devastating drought in California, where irrigation for land-based agriculture accounts for 80 percent of the state’s water use.
“Ocean greens just don’t require it,” he said.
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