“Grown-up” Chinese Jedi Elsa

Holy moly … CellSpex has the best, most eloquent (scathing) review of Disney’s live-action Mulan. Period. It starts with a hilariously satirical summary and goes on to dissect the maelstrom of bad decisions the film displays with its story adaptation (both from the folk tale as well as the Disney animated movie), characters, themes, style and production. I agree with each and every point.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONVyLTBPz8E

iFlame 6S

I was mildly asleep as around 6am in the morning “someone” turned on a very bright light. There was a weird hissing sound. I woke up quite annoyed after around 10 seconds. But what I saw was beyond belief.

There was a roughly 30cm flame burning on my wife’s nightstand. I immediately went over and saw her iPhone on fire. I tried slapping it a few times which made the flames smaller so that I could disconnect the charging cable. I tried picking up the phone, but the case around was melting which burned my fingers. I then knocked it onto the ground (maybe not the smartest move), but I wanted to get the flames away from the lamp shade, plants and wall paper.

It seems the combination of disconnecting the charger and hitting the floor temporarily extinguished the flames. I immediately grabbed the phone at a point that seemed like it was not melted, ran to the kitchen and threw it into the sink. I let the water run over the phone for around a minute. I then filled a bowl with water and put the phone into it to make sure it doesn’t flare up again.

ٱلْحَمْدُ لِلَّٰهِ رَبِّ ٱلْعَالَمِينَ we got off lightly 😅 … the whole situation could have turned into a huge disaster. ☠

Tony Abbott and Tap Water

What could go wrong if-as a joke-your being asked if you could hack the former prime minister of Australia Tony Abbott? Well Alex Hope has documented it. Finding pictures of boarding pass he could log into the booking system of the airline (without additional authentication). Then he found out that the systems leaked sensitive information (passport number, telephone number, airline-internal comments about the passenger). He then went through the whole charade of finding someone in government responsible for concrete data security issues. 😵

There’s even an interesting section on when he finally gets through to Tony Abbot and they talk on a very personal level. Given the reason they were talking in the first place it also revolved about how complicated technology seems to be and how you learn how it works.

This lead Alex to reflect about how he started learning things and how you have to change your thinking when you are “hacking.” He gives a great example which he summarizes with:

In conclusion, to be a hacker u ask for tap water.

😂