zlacker

[return to "'Text bomb' is latest Apple bug"]
1. rspeer+fy[view] [source] 2018-01-18 18:13:06
>>Harvey+(OP)
Anyone got any information on how the text rendering bug actually works (not just hand-waving it away as "oh it's UTF-8")?

I can see that the file alternates between segments of:

- Repetitions of the glyph "t̴́̍̒", which is a lowercase t with a combining tilde overlay, an acute accent, a vertical line above, and a turned comma above

- Random-looking ASCII characters with lots of apostrophes (spelled as ' in the HTML)

- Short sequences of spaces, non-breaking spaces, and zero-width joiners

- Occasional emoji

The "t̴́̍̒"s manage to slow down my terminal and glitch its rendering a bit. Is it that they're unexpectedly tall? But we've had zalgo-text for a while and it hasn't actually crashed devices.

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2. EGreg+FR[view] [source] 2018-01-18 20:10:14
>>rspeer+fy
This reminds me of the AOL "punters" we used to make back in the day.

When I was 13 I built a program called "BorG" that did a lot of fun stuff and animations (but the effects didn't freeze people for very long) and chatbots - and I charged $3 as shareware. Or $5 if you really liked it. I got about 100 people mailing me envelopes! And I used to grab some of that money when I wanted to buy pizza or food to hang out. Those were the days.

I wonder if anyone here used it? :)

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