Good bye Google Chrome, hello Chromium

Google dropped the support of its Google Chrome browser on 32-bit Linux operating systems.  This is very unfortunate, but not deadly.  This change doesn’t affect the Chromium browser – the Open Source project behind Google Chrome.

Chromium-vs-Google-Chrome

The two are very compatible.  In fact, if you use the Google Sync in Google Chrome to synchronize your passwords, bookmarks, settings, etc. to Google, then Chromium will just pick them all up from there, once you login.  All your extensions will get installed and will continue working as well.

Here’s a link for those Fedora users who want to perform a manual installation.  Using dnf is probably easier:

dnf copr enable spot/chromium
dnf install chromium

Hopefully, 32-bit Linux Chromium will survive much longer…

Update:  Here is how to bring back Flash plugin, for those who need it:

wget http://mirror.yandex.ru/fedora/russianfedora/russianfedora/nonfree/fedora/updates/23/i386/chromium-pepper-flash-20.0.0.306-1.fc23.R.i686.rpm
file-roller --extract-here ./chromium-pepper-flash-20.0.0.306-1.fc23.R.i686.rpm
mv usr/lib/chromium/PepperFlash /usr/lib/chromium-browser/

Restart chrome after that and verify that you have the Adobe Flash Plugin on the about:plugins page.

Single Sign-On with SugarCRM and RoundCube Using Multiple PHP Sessions

I am currently involved in an interesting integration project at work.  As part of it, we need to create a single sign-on process between SugarCRM (version 6.5.20) and RoundCube (version 1.1.4) webmail application.  RoundCube webmail is being displayed within the iframe inside the SugarCRM user interface, so it would help if users didn’t have to login to RoundCube since they are already authenticated in SugarCRM.

Once the user is authenticated in the SugarCRM, a PHP session is created with, among other information, authenticated user ID.  Using that ID, we can fetch the full user record and get his IMAP credentials, necessary for the RoundCube login.  While this wasn’t too difficult, there were a couple of road bumps that I’d like to document here, so that next time I won’t have to work it all out from scratch again.

Continue reading Single Sign-On with SugarCRM and RoundCube Using Multiple PHP Sessions

Visualization of the European refugee crisis

refugees

The flow towards Europe project provides a vivid visualization of the refugee migration.  It is an interactive map with breakdowns by country, and with a timeline covering the years 2012-2015.

Europe is experiencing the biggest refugee crisis since World War II. Based on data from the United Nations, we clarify the scale of the crisis.

VPN Comparison Chart

Reddit user ThatOnePrivacyGuy compiled this Google sheet with comparison of 130 VPN services.

vpn

It covers a whole lot of metrics for each – from pricing, encryption and configuration options to additional services, activism and jurisdiction. Enjoy!

Updated (May 22, 2017): If you want to learn more about different VPN providers, have a look at Anonymster.com.