http://www.breaknenter.org/projects/inception/
Yes, that is actual working technology.
I hate to be overly pedantic, but what shell would that be? There is no such thing as the Linux shell.
> sync && time sh -c "dd if=/dev/zero of=foo bs=1M count=10000 && sync"
Then just divide 10000 (or whatever value you choose) by the number of seconds elapsed and you should get a much closer approximation of the sequential write speed, taking into account completely flushing the buffer to disk.
It seems more a marketing ploy to get attention to the great service chromatic.io is providing?
Annoying for sure, though if you are doing a big install you'll probably need another switch and you can just make it a POE one.
Still love them though.