If you remember, about a week ago, Google gave Chrome OS the ability to run Android apps through the "App Runtime for Chrome." The release came with a lot of limitations—it only worked with certain apps and only worked on Chrome OS. But a developer by the name of "Vladikoff" has slowly been stripping away these limits. First he figured out how to load any app on Chrome OS, instead of just the four that are officially supported. Now he's made an even bigger breakthrough and gotten Android apps to work on any desktop OS that Chrome runs on. You can now run Android apps on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
The hack depends on App Runtime for Chrome (ARC), which is built using Native Client, a Google project that allows Chrome to run native code safely within a web browser. While ARC was only officially released as an extension on Chrome OS, Native Client extensions are meant to be cross-platform. The main barrier to entry is obtaining ARC Chrome Web Store, which flags desktop versions of Chrome as "incompatible."
Vladikoff made a custom version of ARC, called ARChon, that can be sideloaded simply by dragging the file onto Chrome. It should get Android apps up and running on any platform running the desktop version of Chrome 37 and up. The hard part is getting Android apps that are compatible with it. ARC doesn't run raw Android app packages (APKs)—they need to be converted into a Chrome extension—but Vladikoff has a tool called "chromeos-apk" that will take care of that, too.
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Teleporters be teleportin’. Sort of. (Marriott)
The hotel company will install the new “Teleporters,” which include Oculus Rift technology inside and sensory elements like wind, heat and mist, reports CNBC.com.
So what’s the point? Clearly standing in an immobile structure is not the same as traveling to a place (unless that place is Narnia) — this is just a way for Marriott to explore VR technology, and use it to check out different places they might like to go before they actually book a trip.
Or hey, maybe you’re sick of wherever you are and want to be anywhere but standing at that Marriott.
“It can inspire their decision of where they want to go and it could also be used to enhance their stay,” Michael Dail, vice president of brand marketing for Marriott Hotels told CNBC.
The first location to get a Teleporter is in New York City, but the booths will travel around the country, Dail said. But physically, not by stepping inside another booth. Inception. Whoa.
Marriott’s leaps into virtual-reality vacations [CNBC.com]
The best part is the one featuring Leonardo (TMNT.) Just watch it.
[Source: Dorkly]
From the New York Times:
A Russian beverage company said on Thursday that it was acquiring the Pabst Brewing Company, which makes the Pabst Blue Ribbon beer popular with barflies and hipsters alike and other brands like Colt 45 and Old Milwaukee.
The company did not disclose terms of the transaction, but people briefed on the matter said the price was more than $700 million in cash.
The buyer is Oasis Beverages, a Russian brewer and beverages distributor. Backing Oasis is TSG Consumer Partners, an American private equity firm focused on consumer goods, which will take a minority stake.
Submitted by: (via NY Times)
The Dauphin hotel is a complete loss after suspected arson. All residents escaped before the collapse, but a cat trapped inside made its escape after the building had fell.
Submitted by: (via CTV News Winnipeg)
Pizza and fries. They’re two of the best-selling offerings at fast food joints and for good reason: they taste great and they’re fattier than they should be. People have a habit of combining their favorite stuff to create something twice as awesome, and the folks at Foodinese recently accomplished that with their pizza with a crust made from french fries.
If you love pizza and fries as much as the average person, then chances are you’ve already attempted to make your own french fry crust. The crust fell apart for most people, so what’s the secret? For the recipe from Foodinese, it’s cheese – and lots of it. Making it sounds like a lot of work but the end result is more than worth it.
You can check out the recipe here.
[via Geekologie]
Jack Amiel and Michael Begler co-created The Knick, a medical drama starring Clive Owen and directed by Steven Soderbergh. We have a lengthy interview with Amiel and Begler; here are four highlights.
I asked the guys about the restrained depiction of nudity and sex on the show. Here's part of their response:
Michael Begler: [We] felt that this is about a hospital, first and foremost, and this is about medicine, and it's about the progression of medicine, and it's about racism, and it's about sexism, and those social issues were more important to us than just having a bunch of naked bodies.
Clive Owen in an opium den / Mary Cybulski/Cinemax
In the context of a discussion about setting the show in the year 1900, Jack Amiel said:
Jack Amiel: [1900] is a time of amazing technological advancements, and you also have a country that is looking towards medicine for the same advancements. Suddenly you have X-rays. Suddenly you have electricity that can be used within medicine. Suddenly you have ether that can safely put someone under, and safely wake them up. You understand germ theory now, so you can at least try to mitigate infections. All of these modern advances were allowing doctors to try new things and experiment—new understanding of drugs, of chemistry, and pharmacology were allowing you to have new treatments as well. So we thought, "Wow, what an amazing confluence of events that were all coming together at this exact time."
The Knick was directed, shot, and edited by Steven Soderbergh. This is not typical for a TV show, but it has major benefits:
Jack Amiel: We cross-boarded it, which means instead of shooting episode one, then episode two, then episode three—which isn't terribly efficient—you could shoot scenes from four different episodes in a day if they all happen to be in one location. [It's] much harder on the actors, but it's a very efficient way of shooting, and so that was how we shot.
Andre Holland in the operating theater / Mary Cybulski/Cinemax
Amiel and Begler worked with Dr. Stanley Burns, The Knick's medical advisor, whom we interviewed a few weeks back. Burns's collection of medical photography is impressive:
Michael Begler: The first time we went to see Dr. Burns...his brownstone is covered from the basement to the roof with photographs. He has something like a million photographs from this era. I mean, he's the world's most specific hoarder. He showed us a photograph from the turn of the century of a black surgeon in Paris, who was the lead surgeon in a surgical theater, and he's surrounded by an entire white staff of doctors and nurses. This is basically the only photograph in existence of this, but it affirmed what we had created.
We have a full interview with Amiel and Begler touching on various aspects of The Knick, its creation, writing a period drama, and working with Steven Soderbergh. (We also have an interview with Dr. Burns.) The show airs Fridays at 10pm on Cinemax.
These are the Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un cat scratching posts sold by The Pussycat Riot, an advocacy group of cats against cyber censorship created by the folks at HideMyAss.com, which provides virtual private network services for online anonymity. And as cool as either one would be to have, they cost £4,500 (~$7,400) apiece, making it far cheaper to print out a picture of Putin or Jong-un's face from the internet and tape it to an existing cat post. Thankfully, they also sell £3 (~$5) litter boxes with the faces of various internet censorship friendly world leaders printed on the bottom so your cats can shit all over them. All money will be donated to charity. ALLEGEDLY. It's easy to say you're GOING TO donate money to charity, it's a lot harder to actually DO it. "We're going to -- we want to stop internet censorship." And not just line your own pockets with money? "Correct." Seriously?! "YES." Okay I'm still waiting for you to wink at me.
Keep going for shots of the Kim Jong-un one.
To celebrate their new donut delivery services (WAIT -- WHAT?!) in the U.K. (dammit!) Krispy Kreme baked up a special double hundred dozen box of their original glazed donuts. That's 2,400 donuts. And apparently one lucky company is going to win all these donuts, although hopefully sooner than later because the half-life of a donut is like 8 hours. One time I ate a 4-day old donut from Dunkin' Donuts. Never again. Fine, I'd do it again, but I'd have to be just as hungover and the box would still have to be mostly closed like when I dug it out of the trash last time.
Keep going for one more shot.
