Meltdown and Spectre are two vulnerabilities present in hardware making it potentially possible for programs to steal information, like passwords etc.
Meltdown affects only Intel processors while Spectre, which is more complex, also partly affects AMD and ARM based processors.
It is not yet known if these vulnerabilities has been exploited by anone. It can affect personal computers, servers, tablets and mobile phones, i.e. more or less any device containing a processor.
Check your operating system for updates the upcoming weeks (this is normal good security practice, but make sure you do it frequently)
Install and update your virus protection. Even if the antivirus program can’t protect you from the attack it might be able to inform you that your device has got malicious code onboard
https://media01.nerdia.net/uploads/nerdia-logo-340x156.png00Stefan Helanderhttps://media01.nerdia.net/uploads/nerdia-logo-340x156.pngStefan Helander2018-01-04 10:11:112018-01-11 10:28:53Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities – what to do?
In order to position a background image inside a div I tried to use the CSS3:
background-position: right 10px center;
The goal was to position the background image to the right of a div container, 10px from the right edge and vertically centered. This worked fine in most browsers. However, in the Android devices using the native Mozilla browser the background was positioned at 0,0 (i.e. left top).
The solution was to use:
background-position: right center;
and edit the background image where I added 10 px of extra transparent space into the image.
https://media01.nerdia.net/uploads/nerdia-logo-340x156.png00Stefan Helanderhttps://media01.nerdia.net/uploads/nerdia-logo-340x156.pngStefan Helander2015-12-01 15:01:472015-12-01 15:01:47CSS background-position not working on Android Mozilla
I was developing a php script that should send emails to a receiver. It worked great with a number of email services, like gmail for example. But with Outlook.com, aka Hotmail.com or Live.com the emails I sent to an account was only visible when logging in to the account through the web. If the same account was configured in the Android app Outlook.com the emails never showed up.
After some headscratching I found the reason. The problem was that my php script sent the emails using only html (Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8 in the email headers). When the script was changed to send it as a multipart message, both html and text, the message showed up in the Android Outlook.com application also. Even though the Android app had no problems displaying the html-version of the email, it was just ignored if it wasn’t a multipart message with both html and text.
https://media01.nerdia.net/uploads/nerdia-logo-340x156.png00Stefan Helanderhttps://media01.nerdia.net/uploads/nerdia-logo-340x156.pngStefan Helander2015-02-15 23:22:052015-02-15 23:22:05Incoming mail to Outlook.com / Hotmail.com / Live.com is visible in the webmail but doesn’t show up in the Outlook.com for Android app
A girlfriend to one of my friends recently decided to leave the dark side and replace her iPhone with an Android (good decision!). However when she was using the iPhone she also had enabled the iMessage texting.
After switching to her new Android phone her friends, that still was using iPhones, tried to text her. Because her iMessage account was still enabled the texts ended up in the Apple void and didn’t reach her. To disable it the SIM-card had to be put into an old iPhone 3 in order to turn the iMessage off. The iPhone she replaced was using micro-SIM but the Android had normal SIM:s so she had a new larger SIM that wouldn’t fit in her old iPhone. The iPhone 3 works with normal SIM cards so that is why a iPhone 3 had to be used to disable it.
So, if you decide to convert from iPhone to another brand, remember to turn iMessage off in the iPhone first!
https://media01.nerdia.net/uploads/nerdia-logo-340x156.png00Stefan Helanderhttps://media01.nerdia.net/uploads/nerdia-logo-340x156.pngStefan Helander2012-10-20 15:40:522012-09-27 15:47:07Switching from iPhone to another brand – don’t forget to turn off iMessage first!
I use a HTC Desire HD android mobile. My 8 GB SD card was getting full so I removed photos and videos that had already been copied to my PC. But I became a bit curious because of the 8 GB, the images and videos where not consuming the entire space.
To investigate further I connected the android phone using USB to my PC and used the PC:s explorer to dig into the SD-card.
I found out that the mail program stores images and other parts of emails in the Downloads folder on the SD card. After 1,5 years of use there where a significant amount of files there.
After deleting them i noticed there was a folder called .Mail (i.e. Downloads/.Mail) which contained >21.000 files consuming some 700 MB of space. The filenames began with "token". After some Googleing it seemed by the discussions I found that these are temporary files created each time a message is pushed to the phone. I decided to take a shot and delete them.
After deleting all files in the .Mail folder I opened the mail app on the phone. For a short moment a text was displayed "Preparing SD card". Then my inbox showed up and everything worked normal with the only difference that the mail app seemed a bit quicker now.
My conclusion is that it is probably safe to delete the content of the .Mail folder once in a while to free up some space.
https://media01.nerdia.net/uploads/nerdia-logo-340x156.png00Stefan Helanderhttps://media01.nerdia.net/uploads/nerdia-logo-340x156.pngStefan Helander2012-10-15 15:32:212012-09-27 15:34:52Android mail token files fills up my SD card
The arrival of the smartphone (iPhone, Android) etc is a blessing for the true nerd who now can be constantly online and up to date with important things (aka the Internet). On a professional level it is a way of giving good service to your customers be being able to quick reply to emails etc.
The problem with the smartphones are battery capacity. With a couple of apps running and checking things now and then you can easily be drained in 2-3 hours. For an upcoming trip abroad I started to investigate solutions. I looked at solar cell chargers which turned out to be quite big in order to supply sufficient current. They also have built in batteries. Since I will not be hiking in the himalayas I figured the thing I really needed was extra battery capacity. I will after all stay in hotels where there is possibility to recharge over night.
My choice fell on a 5 Ah PowerPack from Kjell.com. One thing to investigate thoroughly before choosing the pack is that it can deliver enough current to charge the smartphone. It will require at least 1 A and there are power packs on the market with lower current ratings supposed to be used only with MP3 players and similar. If you want to do this stunt with an iPad you need even more current (2 A).
First I tried to use up my phones battery and then hook it up to the powerpack to recharge it. This wasn’t a good idea since a dried out smartphone will consume too much current which the powerpack can’t deliver. So instead, already in the morning when leaving my hotel, I hooked the smartphone up to the powerpack and run it on both the internal battery and the powerpack. This way my power lasted for the entire day.
When abroad I don’t have data roaming (otherwise the charges would be sky high). There is a little smart Android app called WeFi. It runs in the background and scans for open hotspots and connects to any it finds, no matter if it has an SSID that is not already known by your device. Once hooked up it verifies if it has Internet connection and plays a little sound. Then your phone pulls down new emails etc. Just walking by for example a McDonalds and you’re all up-to-date again 🙂
https://media01.nerdia.net/uploads/nerdia-logo-340x156.png00Stefan Helanderhttps://media01.nerdia.net/uploads/nerdia-logo-340x156.pngStefan Helander2011-08-11 08:46:552011-08-11 08:52:56A nerd’s survival kit – extra power for your smartphone
