Android: Why this photo is bricking some phones
Dozens of Android phone owners are reporting on social media that a picture featuring a lake, a cloudy sunset and a green shoreline is crashing their handsets when used as wallpaper.
How could such a serene image cause a phone to crash? Basically, its too much for the phone to handle. The developers never thought about an image that has too much information in its ‘colour space’ .
“There are different ways of defining the colour space. Some spaces have specialist uses in graphic design, so sometimes you’ll see images that aren’t in the usual ‘Standard RGB’ format. It’s also possible to deliberately create images that have more colour information than some devices can handle.
“What’s happened here is that the way some phones deal with these cases has gone wrong.
“The phone crashes because it doesn’t know how to deal with it correctly, and the software developers probably hadn’t considered this might happen.”
How to quit VIM
A recent post on Reddit says: “2.1 million people visited the page ‘How do I exit the Vim editor?’ according to stack overflow survey”
This is very understandable. Let me answer this.
:Q! — exit without saving
:Q — exit / close window
:w — write / save file
shift-ZZ — exit (attempt, save if needed)
There you go. All of the wonderful and intuitive ways to exit VIM
Zoom launches as screensaver in linux SOLUTION
This has been irking me for the past couple of days. I would come back to my laptop (Lubuntu) after a period of time away and I would find Zoom (the video meeting app) open. I use Zoom for work, so I just dismissed it as a screen that I had forgotten to close. After seeing this for a couple of days, I realized something was wrong.
Luckily, some brilliant genious has tracked this issue down. Basically Zoom is also the name of a screensaver and is in your XScreensaver conf. For ubuntu I had to edit the etc/X11/app-defaults/XScreenSaver file, do a search /zoom and remove that line. Done!
For other flavors of linux, read the article above.
Hope this helps!
Instagram AR Filters
Instagram AR Filters are taking over. Wheather you are wondering what Disney princess you are or what type of Taco Bell item represents you, there is an AR filter out there for you.
How do you use them?
AR Filters can be found on a user’s “Story”. The title of the filter will be in the upper left corner. If you tap on it then you will be given the option to download it and use it as well. This is a clever, viral way of pushing these plugins. No messy website or download page to go to, just natural organic clicks as the user flows through stories.
How do you make them?
The first thing you need is Spark AR Studio. This is only available for Windows or Mac, sorry Linux users. From there just hop onto youtube and you will find tons of walk-thru’s and guides like this to get you going. That’s about all I’m going to cover here.
Are there any risks involved with these?
There are a couple of concerns with these filters as far as I am seeing. For one, in Oct. of 2019 Instagram removed filters that promoted “cosmetic surgery, amid concerns they harm people’s mental health”. Basically, on a platform geared towards teens and younger, altering your image — or encouraging research into what you would change about yourself is harmful. On one hand, this seems a bit of an over-reaction, but then you get filters named “Fix Me” and understand the response. In terms of exploits it seems that for now, we are safe.
tmux and Vim for PHP Programmers
This month’s issue of Php[architect] magazine features my article on using
55 Classic Computer and Video Game Magazine Covers
Paleotronic has a fascinating article highlighting 55 of the best Christmas computer video game magazine covers. Hold on to your nostalgia, this one might hit you right in the feels.
xkcd Password Generator
I had a conversation with my in-laws this past week we got into a conversation about their wifi password. Basically, they have an ATT router setup where the password is on the underside of the modem. This password is something like “7%b6c9m4k”. No one can ever remember it. The best you can do is take a picture of it and keep it on your phone to show people when they need it, just don’t post it to FB or IG! This all brought me back to the brilliant XKCD comic that offers a better solution.
xkcd Password Generator
Now not everyone can think of such wonderfull passwords such as “cheese plus income in” or “job each sitting perfectly” but the xkcd Password Generator is here to save us all!
‘Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: A new shortcut for iPhones can automatically record the police
This is quite interesting and I’m pretty amazed it has taken so long for this to be created.
(via businessinsider.com)
tl;dr
- A big new feature for iPhones this year is Shortcuts, an app that lets you write scripts for the iPhone.
- One widely shared shortcut is called Police, which records police interactions and texts a predetermined contact that you’ve been pulled over.
- It also sends a video of the encounter to your contact.
- The creator says the shortcut can be adapted for other situations.
Once the shortcut is installed and configured, you just have to say, for example, “Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over.” Then the program pauses music you may be playing, turns down the brightness on the iPhone, and turns on “do not disturb” mode.
It also sends a quick text to a predetermined contact to tell them you’ve been pulled over, and it starts recording using the iPhone’s front-facing camera. Once you’ve stopped recording, it can text or email the video to a different predetermined contact and save it to Dropbox.
you can get Shortcuts from the App Store and the Police shortcut is available now.
Night lunch Wagons
Before the trend of food trucks and street food, night lunch and food wagons were all the rage. From Atlas Obscura:
“IN 1893, BOSTON WAS BUSTLING, especially after the sun went down. “Night owls of all classes” roamed the streets, wrote the Boston Daily Globe, including “workers, idlers, pleasure seekers, spendthrifts, tramps and bums.” At some point, all of these people would want something to eat. The wealthy could get their quail on toast at any hour, observed the writer. For everyone else, there were the night lunch wagons. While they served inexpensive eats, the wagons themselves could be as fancifully decorated as music boxes on wheels. “
Before Food Trucks, Americans Ate ‘Night Lunch’ From Beautiful Wagons
“It wasn’t just journalists who stayed up late, though. Night shift workers wanted a meal when they punched out, and party-goers wanted grub when they emerged from the bar. But most restaurants closed at 8 p.m. Scott’s innovation—serving sandwiches, pie, and coffee from a horse-drawn wagon as a “night lunch”—soon spread. In 1884, Gutman says, a cousin of an imitator of Scott’s moved to Worcester, Massachusetts, and made the first lunch wagons that customers could sit inside.”