A sneaky extension for Chrome, Firefox prevents its removal, hijacks browser

Internet security firm Malwarebytes recently discovered that a pair of extensions will not only hijack Chrome and Firefox, but will block any attempts to remove them from these two browsers. The version found in Chrome is a forced extension resulting from web pages that trick visitors into installing the extension via a JavaScript-based popup. The Firefox version stems from advertisements pretending to be an official manual update requirement warning posted by Mozilla. 

“Tiempo en colombia en vivo” is the name of the invading Chrome extension. Malwarebytes doesn’t provide any specifics about what this extension actually does to Chrome but presumably, it completely hijacks the browser to push technical support scams, drive click numbers on specific websites, or completely hijack web searches. The company’s listing says it could spy on your web browsing activities too. 

It’s essentially force-installed by hijacking the browser on websites supporting the extension. If you try to leave the page, a popup appears asking to add an extension for exiting the page. If you select cancel, another popup will appear with an additional tick box that says “Prevent this page from creating additional dialog.” Check the box, hit “OK,” and the browser goes full screen with a popup revealing the name of the extension that is supposedly distributed through the Chrome Web Store. 

Thinking it’s legit, Chrome users install the extension. But the problems only get worse for there. When Chrome users attempt to access the in-browser extensions section, they are directed to a fake extension page that doesn’t list the installed, offending extension. Because this page is internal, disabling JavaScript doesn’t fix the problem. The only way to regain control is to add “–disable-extensions” after chrome.exe in the shortcut command line (which disables all extensions), or rename the “1499654451774.js” file in the extensions folder. 

Meanwhile, the Firefox extension takes a different route. Victims will see a web-based advertisement warning that Firefox requires a manual update. Taking the bait, they inadvertently install the offending extension, which prevents them from accessing the internal “about:addons” page by closing the tab. To remove the extension, you can restart Firefox in safe mode. Extensions are not active in this state, thus you can remove any add-on before restarting the browser. 

“If you are kept on a Firefox tab by JavaScript(s) that keep popping up with prompts, and you are unable to close the window in the usual way, you can terminate Firefox by using Task Manager,” the company states. “When you restart Firefox, it will not be able to restore the session for that tab.” 

Believe it or not, Task Manager is your best friend in Windows. Simply type CTRL+ALT+DEL, and you can open the Task Manager window to force-close any browser tab that refuses to close. You don’t need to install anything to escape the clutches of a malicious web page. Even more, Google and Mozilla absolutely do not send warning advertisements on web pages to manually upgrade your browser. Updates are typically performed behind the scenes. 

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Crumble-proof concrete? Fungi could help it heal itself of cracks

We’re not seasoned construction workers, but finding fungus growing in a wall isn’t good, right? As it turns out, we may be wrong on that, thanks to some pioneering work carried out at Binghamton University, State University of New York. Researchers there have developed a new fungi-based concrete that’s capable of healing itself. While it’s not ready for prime time just yet, it could one day be used for permanently repairing cracks in aging concrete, potentially helping save crumbling infrastructure.

“Our work is to explore a revolutionary self-healing concept in which fungi are used to promote calcium mineral precipitation to heal cracks in concrete infrastructure,” Congrui Jin, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Binghamton University, told Digital Trends. “The fungal spores, together with their nutrients, will be added into concrete during the mixing process. When cracks appear and water finds its way in, the dormant fungal spores will germinate, grow, and precipitate calcium carbonate to heal the cracks. When the cracks are completely filled and ultimately no more water can enter inside, the fungi will again form spores. As the environmental conditions become favorable in later stages, the spores could be wakened again.”

Jin describes the material as low-cost, pollution-free, and sustainable. It’s also potentially much longer-lasting than other solutions used to temporarily paper over the cracks in aging concrete. Particularly in applications like nuclear power plants, where concrete is used for radiation shielding, it could be of vital importance.

“Nowadays, concrete has been the key construction material for reactor containment and biological shielding structures, which are essential components of the nuclear reactors in service worldwide for power generation,” Jin said. “In addition, cementitious grouts, mortars, and concrete are also often used to provide shielding and encapsulation of various radioactive waste materials from military, research, and power-generation applications. Some waste isotopes, as well as their decay products, will become a serious radiation hazard for hundreds of thousands of years, which requests exceptionally durable storage. Self-healing concrete is [therefore] particularly useful in such applications.”

A paper describing the research was recently published in the journal Construction and Building Materials.

Editors’ Recommendations

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• Our latest weapon in the fight to save dying coral reefs is … a concrete pod?
• A fracture-resistant cement could make mile-high skyscrapers possible
• Cracked screens may be a thing of the past with this self-healing glass
• Meet the tech that revealed a hidden chamber inside Egypt’s Great Pyramid

Xiaomi Mi A1 review

If you’ve been tempted by Xiaomi’s often well-designed smartphones, but put off by the custom MIUI “theme” layered over the Android software; then the Xiaomi Mi A1 is the answer to your problems. There are no software tweaks from Xiaomi because the Mi A1 runs Android One — the Google operating system designed for low- and mid-range phones. It promises regular software and security updates, like a Google Pixel smartphone, plus all the usual Google apps including the Google Play Store pre-installed. In our Xiaomi Mi A1 review, we explain how it’s not just the software that’s a winner, but the hardware too.

There is one glaring flaw we should mention first: The lack of 4G LTE support in the U.S. The Xiaomi Mi A1, even the so-called Global version, won’t connect to GSM 4G networks in the U.S., meaning you’ll have to make do with 3G speeds. Buyers in the U.K. and much of Europe will be fine. We’ve had ours running on the O2 network in the U.K. without issues.

Great specs, low price

With that out of the way, let’s talk about how good the Mi A1 is. First, it costs 210 euros from the Mi Spain store, or somewhere around $210 to $250 if you use an online retailer in China. That makes it slightly cheaper in Europe than one of our current absolute favorite budget phones, the Honor 7X (the Mi A1 is a tad more expensive in the U.S.). For that you get a sleek, smooth metal body that’s 7.3mm thick, a 5.5-inch LCD screen with a 1,920 x 1,080-pixel resolution, a fingerprint scanner, and a dual-lens 12-megapixel camera on the back. It’s all powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor, with 4GB of RAM.

Exactly what we want from a mid-range phone.

The Mi A1’s style is reminiscent of the Xiaomi Redmi 4X, and identical to the Mi 5X. It’s simple but attractive, and could be easily mistaken for the OnePlus 5  or an iPhone 7 Plus as well. It’s comfortable to hold, and super light at 165 grams. We carried it around while on vacation in Japan, along with several other phones, and it happily slipped into a pocket or bag without a fuss.

The build quality is good, although the volume rocker audibly rattles when you put it down on a table. There is a fingerprint sensor on the back of the phone, far from the camera lenses, and it is accurate and quick to respond. On the bottom is a USB Type-C charging port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Simple software, timely updates

Battery life is solid, with the phone easily lasting a day with its 3,080mAh cell. This is undoubtedly aided thanks to the Android One software and its uncluttered, and simple approach. Thanks to the Google software, the phone also delivered on timely security updates. Since using the phone, we’ve received October, November, and December’s Android security patch updates, along with another update fixing bugs and improving the device. It felt almost unnatural, having so many important software updates in such a timely manner on an Android phone. It’s the way things really should be.

There are a few pre-installed Xiaomi apps, including Mi Remote to use with the IR blaster, plus the Xiaomi camera app. The Snapdragon 625 processor isn’t that fast, and although scrolling and moving around Android isn’t slow, wading through some apps can be. We noticed hesitation and less-than-smooth scrolling in the Google Play Store, YouTube, and apps like Twitter. It’s not bad, but it’s noticeable, especially if you’re coming from a higher-performance smartphone.

We ran the Mi A1 through a few benchmark tests:

• AnTuTu 3D Bench: 59883
• Geekbench 4 CPU: 4200 Multi-Core/867 Single-Core
• 3DMark Sling Shot Extreme: 463

The results almost match what we saw from the Honor 7X, a phone which uses a Kirin 659 processor and also has 4GB of RAM. Ultimately for everyday tasks, with a little gaming thrown in, the Mi A1 is a perfectly usable and surprisingly capable companion.

Capable camera

That’s all before you start using the camera, which is excellent for such a low-cost phone and a solid competitor to the Honor 7X, and other similarly-priced dual-lens camera phones. The two lenses have 12 megapixels each, an f/2.2 aperture, and a 2x optical zoom feature. The front camera has 5 megapixels, as well as a portrait mode.

It takes vivid, natural, and interesting pictures in normal light, but the cameras struggle a little with noise when the light is poor. The dual-lens system for adding a blurred background for portraits works surprisingly well — it’s easy to use, fast, and produces some good results. We were very happy with the photos taken by the Mi A1 considering the price, especially for sharing photos on social media. The portrait mode adds plenty of fun, and is a feature many phones don’t share at this price. The video camera even has a slow-motion mode for extra creativity.

Downsides? Apart from the 4G LTE problems in the U.S., the Mi A1 doesn’t have NFC, so it can’t be used for Android Pay. We also found the gold rear panel scuffs easily just from sitting in a bag or pocket, so a case may be in order here. Also, compared to the minimal bezels around the Honor 7X’s screen, the Mi A1 doesn’t look quite so modern. Still, we vastly prefer Android One over Huawei’s EMUI user interface on the Honor phone. It ultimately comes down to what’s more valuable to you — timely software and security updates, or style.

Choose the Mi A1 and you will be very happy. It’s exactly what we want from a mid-range phone — no software clutter, a good camera, a pretty screen, a simple design, and a low price tag.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Snap the best picture you can by mastering the Xiaomi Mi A1’s camera
• Bezel-less Mi Mix 2 and Android One Mi A1 lead Xiaomi’s European charge
• Why 2017 was the best year for smartphones ever
• Honor 7X vs. Moto E4 Plus: Big-screen budget battle
• Honor 7X vs. Nokia 6: Can Honor beat the Finnish veteran?

Twitter is notifying anyone who followed a Russian spam account

Last week, Twitter missed the deadline Congress set to turn over information on Russia-backed meddling in the 2016 election. Today, the social media company posted a public update on their internal investigation. First, they found thousands of additional accounts associated with the Russian government-linked Internet Research Agency (IRA). But most importantly, Twitter is emailing notifications to everyone in the US who inadvertently followed one or retweeted or liked one of their messages — which is some 677,775 people.

In effect, that’s a simple measure of the impact that the IRA’s accounts had. Twitter identified 1,062 additional accounts, bringing the total to 3,814; In the ten-week period before the 2016 election that the company studied, those IRA accounts posted 175,993 tweets. Only 8.4% were related to the upcoming elections, but that’s still a wide impact that the Twitter platform unwittingly amplified.

Twitter also identified 13,512 more automated Russian-linked accounts that tweeted election-related material during the period, bringing that total to 50,258. In the company’s blog post, it also reported better security techniques detected 60 percent more suspicious accounts last month than it did in October 2017. They’re getting better at noticing automated activity, Twitter claims: Near-instant replies to tweets, too-regular Tweet timing and coordinated engagement are all red flags.

Twitter will invest more in machine-learning to spot and impede fake and automated accounts, the blog post stated. But popular multitasking overlay programs like Tweetdeck might suffer as the social media company may limit coordinated actions across multiple accounts ‘in Tweetdeck and via the Twitter API.’ To counter that, they promise to expand the developer onboarding process for those building atop the platform’s API. (Twitter acquired Tweetdeck in 2011 and still runs it.)

Source: Twitter blog

‘Skullgirls’ relaunches on mobile as developer ditches publisher

Stylized fighting game Skullgirls came out for mobile in May of last year. It was developed by Autumn Games and initially published by Line. Now, the developer has decided to part ways with the publisher and go back to being independent. As a result of this transition, the developer launched a new version (basically Skullgirls 2.0) and shut down the old one (now called LINE Skullgirls) on the App Store and Google Play.

The title’s relaunch brings a bunch of new updates, including extra Daily Log In loot, double fighters and moves for single gacha-style hero acquisitions, official ultra widescreen support for iPhone X and select Android phones like the Samsung S8, improved Relic coloring (so you know how rare a fighter is) and several bug fixes. In addition, the developer has promised a greater transparency around loot drop rates, along with a guaranteed random generation of loot itself. “While other games may ‘cook the books’ to create the illusion that loot rates are better than that actually are (to encourage spending),” the developer wrote in a forum post, “ours are 100% RNG (random number generator), with plenty of in-game methods to earn them directly without having to spend a dime. We plan to add more layers of granularity and visibility to these loot tables in future updates.”

As a result of its newfound independence from Line, Autumn Games also promises a ton of new characters, modes, social features and content over the next year. If you’re already a Skullgirls player, the developer says that all your data will move to the new app, as well, so you won’t lose any progress from the previous version.

Source: Autumn Games

Apple CEO Tim Cook: I Don’t Believe in Overuse of Technology

Apple this morning announced the expansion of its “Everyone Can Code” initiative to 70 educational institutions across Europe, and following the announcement, Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke at Harlow College in Essex, one of the schools that will adopt the new curriculum.

The Guardian shared several of Cook’s comments, which covered overuse of technology and boundaries for children.

Cook said he believes there are concepts that can’t be taught using technology, and in many courses, technology shouldn’t dominate.

“I don’t believe in overuse [of technology]. I’m not a person that says we’ve achieved success if you’re using it all the time,” he said. “I don’t subscribe to that at all.”

“There are still concepts that you want to talk about and understand. In a course on literature, do I think you should use technology a lot? Probably not.”

According to Cook, Apple cares about children out of the classroom, a topic that’s notable as Apple investors recently urged Apple to do more to protect children from smartphone addiction.

Apple in early January said in a statement that it thinks deeply about how its products are used and the impact they have on people, including children. Apple takes its responsibility to protect children “very seriously,” and has promised more robust parental controls for iOS devices in the future.

Though he does not have children of his own, Cook says in his own personal life, he “put some boundaries” on his nephew. “There here are some things that I won’t allow; I don’t want them on a social network,” he said.

On the topic of learning to code, Cook spoke passionately, as he has done several times in the past. Learning to code, he says, is more important than learning a foreign language.

Cook said: “I think if you had to make a choice, it’s more important to learn coding than a foreign language. I know people who disagree with me on that. But coding is a global language; it’s the way you can converse with 7 billion people.”

Cook’s full commentary, which covers diversity, coding at an early age, and the importance of the press, can be read over at The Guardian.

Tag: Tim Cook
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Honor 9 Lite: Hands-on and first impressions

With Honor 9i, Honor 7X, and Honor View 10 launched within last few months, Honor is on a spree of sorts. But the company is in no mood to take a break (or lets us take one!). After an eventful December that saw the launch of Honor 7X and Honor View 10, within the first month of 2018, Honor has launched another mid-range smartphone – Honor 9 Lite.

While the highlight of the Honor 9 Lite is that it packs quad cameras, like we first saw on the Honor 9i, the refined glass design with mirror-like effect at the back is the first thing you’ll notice about the phone.

I spent a few days with the smartphone before the launch, and here are my first impressions of the same.

Design

It’s very unlikely one will not be impressed by the Honor 9 Lite design on the first glance. It reminds you of the iPhone 8 Plus with the mirror-like glass finish at the back, and that’s not a bad thing at all.

The Honor 9 Lite feels more premium than any other metal unibody phone in its price segment and stands out in a crowd. The build quality is impressive with elegant finishing, and the minimalist finesse is evident.

With a 5.65-inch display in a 6-inch body and around 7.6 mm of thickness, the Honor 9 Lite is quite compact and fits well in the hand – although one-hand operation with the tall display is still a stretch. At 149 grams, it’s also easy on the wrist.

The glossy back is highly reflective and is almost a mirror – good enough to check your hair before you enter in a meeting. Amongst the three color variants on offer, the blue one looks incredible, but also tends to attract a lot of smudges. These are easy to get rid of, but a compromise for a slick looking smartphone.

Display

Apart from dual cameras, the other trend that went mainstream in 2017 was 18:9 displays and by the end of the year, it was almost a hygiene factor to have a taller display and minimum bezels.

Honor 9 Lite packs in a 5.65-inch IPS LCD with 18:9 aspect ratio and a resolution of 2160 x 1080 gives it a high pixel density of 428ppi. The resolution can be dialed down to 720p to save battery if you so prefer. The display is vibrant, and offers sharp text and pretty good color reproduction, although the viewing angles are limited.

Hardware

The Honor 9 Lite is powered by the same chipset that we saw on the Honor 9i and Honor 7X – the HiSilicon Kirin 659. There are two variants – one with 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of internal storage and the other one with 4 GB and 64 GB.

In the early, limited usage, the performance of the phone is commendable. While EMUI, Honor’s proprietary layer over Android, is not the lightest skin around, it breezes through nicely for anything thrown at it. Of course, we’ll know better once I take the phone for a deep dive for the review that’s coming up soon.

The Honor 9 Lite comes with a 3,000 mAh battery and supports the company’s fast charging technology, dubbed as Super Charge. Although, the choice of microUSB port instead of USB Type-C in a 2018 smartphone is slightly bewildering.

Software

Big props to Honor for launching Honor 9 Lite with Android 8.0 Oreo right out of the box even when other smartphones launched in January 2018 continue to come with Android Nougat (Bah!).

Of course, there’s the EMUI 8.0 layer on top of it, which is an awkward successor to EMUI 5.1. The company has chosen to fast forward the version number of Emotion UI to align it with Android version numbers. Makes sense, yes. There’s also the usual bunch of bloatware that we keep seeing on Honor devices.

Camera

The Honor 9 Lite packs in dual camera setup up front and on the rear. There’s a 13 megapixel lens for the heavy lifting along with a 2 megapixel lens for capturing depth information (yes, those bokeh shots are a go). The 2 MP camera also helps improve low-light performance, like one expects on a dual camera smartphone.

In my limited testing, the camera didn’t really shine – especially in the low-light. In broad daylight though, the color reproduction is mostly accurate, which also means that the photos are not very saturated yet have good white balance. The details are fine too but some noise creeps in randomly. I’ll have to reserve my judgement till I manage to do exhaustive testing in diverse lighting conditions.

Summary

The Honor 9 Lite is an affordable mid-range smartphone that covers all the bases – stunning design, latest Android, front and rear dual cameras, and an 18:9 display. That alone makes it a well-rounded package and the fact it fares well across the board only makes it a compelling 2018 smartphone. We’ll, of course, know more when we take it for a comprehensive spin for a detailed review.

Federal regulators file fraud charges against three bitcoin operators

Following an already rough month for bitcoin, three U.S. virtual currency operators have been charged with fraud by the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The CFTC alleges that CabbageTech, Entrepreneurs Headquarters Ltd., and one unnamed bitcoin operator have engaged in fraud, misappropriation of funds, and misrepresentation, causing significant financial harm to investors.

The complaint goes on to allege that Patrick K. McDonnell and his company, CabbageTech, doing business as Coin Drop Markets, made false promises to investors. The CFTC alleges that Coin Drop Markets promised bitcoin trading advice to investors as well as bitcoin purchasing and trading on investors’ behalf. The complaint goes on to allege that Coin Drop Markets never delivered on those promises, and investors never saw their money again after handing it over to Coin Drop Markets.

“The Defendants here preyed on customers interested in Bitcoin and Litecoin, promising them the opportunity to get the inside scoop on the next new thing and to benefit from the trading acumen of a supposed expert,” a statement from the CFTC reads. “In reality, as alleged, customers only bought into the Defendants’ fraudulent scheme.”

The second complaint, filed against Dillon Michael Dean and his company, Entrepreneurs Headquarters Ltd., alleges a more complicated Ponzi-type scheme using cryptocurrencies. The CFTC alleges that Entrepreneurs Headquarters Ltd. solicited bitcoin from investors with promises that their investments would be pooled and traded. Instead, the complaint alleges that the company took more than $1.1 million in bitcoin from over 600 investors and promised high rates of return which the company never delivered on. Instead, the company allegedly used investors money to pay other investors, like a high-tech Ponzi scheme.

“Potential pool participants were solicited to invest with Defendants by false claims of trading expertise and promises of high rates of return. The Complaint further alleges that, rather than convert customers’ Bitcoin to fiat currency to invest in binary options contracts, as promised, Defendants misappropriated their customers’ funds, including by using the funds to pay other customers, in the manner of a Ponzi scheme,” a statement from the CFTC reads.

These are the first such actions the CFTC has filed since it initially authorized bitcoin futures trading on December 18, 2017.

Editors’ Recommendations

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• Major investment firms are now offering Bitcoin futures
• Bitcoin’s latest boom sends it scorching past $9,000
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Razer’s Project Linda could arrive alongside the Razer Phone 2 this September

Just over two months after making its debut, the Razer Phone is already feeling pressure stemming from the dreaded rumor mill. Recent reports claim that the second-generation model may appear in September, possibly during the International Franchise Association 2018 show in Berlin. The secret “internal source” at Razer also suggests Project Linda will make its debut at the show as a retail product donning an as-yet-unrevealed new name. 

Razer turned heads in November with the surprise launch of its first smartphone. The company is best known for its gaming peripherals targeting consoles and the PC, and its gaming-grade laptops. Razer previously dipped its toes into the wearable market with the notification-based Nabu wristband, but the company clearly wanted to take its brand to the next mainstream level with a gamer-focused smartphone. 

In case you missed the announcement, here are the specifications: 

Screen size: 

5.7 inches 

Screen type: 

IGZO 

Resolution: 

2,560 x 1,440 @ 120Hz 

Processor: 

Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 

Graphics: 

Adreno 540 

Memory: 

8GB LPDDR4 @ 1,866MHz 

Storage: 

64GB
1x Micro SD card slot supporting 2TB 

Cameras: 

2x 12MP (back)
1x 8MP (front) 

Audio: 

2x facing speakers
Dolby Atmos and THX-certified audio 

Connectivity: 

Wireless AC
Bluetooth 4.2
NFC
4G LTE 

Battery: 

4,000 mAh 

Operating system: 

Android 7.1 

Dimensions: 

6.24 x 3.06 x 0.31 inches 

Weight: 

0.43 pounds 

Price: 

$699 

As the specifications show, the only features missing from Razer’s smartphone is a laptop-sized screen and port complement. It essentially serves as an Android-based PC that fits into your pocket, and the company expanded on this vision by introducing a concept device that turns the Razer Phone into an actual laptop. 

More specifically, Project Linda includes a 13.3-inch screen supporting touch input and a 2,560 x 1,440 resolution at 120Hz. It’s backed by a built-in keyboard supporting the Razer Chroma illumination platform, and the phone itself, which plugs into a slot where you typically see the touchpad. The phone actually serves as the laptop’s “intelligent” touchpad, which loads a special-yet-familiar Android-based Sentio Desktop interface. 

The screen and keyboard are packed into a CNC aluminum chassis measuring just 0.59 inches thick. The only ports you’ll find is a single headphone jack, a USB-A 3.1 Gen1 port of the right, and a USB-C 3.1 Gen1 port on the left that’s also used for charging. Project Linda comes with 200GB of storage, and a built-in power bank that charges the phone while it is docked. 

But Project Linda is still a concept and it could either change before it eventually becomes a real product, or never see an official release. RazerCEO Min-Liang Tan recently hinted that the company intends to release Project Linda as an official product this year. When that will happen is up in the air, for now. 

As for an updated phone, September is seemingly too soon, but not out of the question. It will likely be based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 processor and other upgraded components. And given Microsoft recent collaboration with Qualcomm, a second Windows 10 Mobile-powered phone isn’t out of the question, either.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Razer Project Linda Preview
• Razer Phone review
• Razer Phone vs. LG V30: Can Razer topple a smartphone giant?
• Razer Phone vs. Samsung Galaxy Note 8: A new challenger approaches
• Android flagship throwdown: Razer Phone vs. Google Pixel 2 XL

A crash course in how to make your own memes

If you’re on social media, you should already know what an internet meme is. A meme is a funny picture that goes viral on the web, and it typically has a visual element and focus. It comes in various forms, though most of them feature photos emblazoned with witty text. But what if you want to make your own meme? There are websites that will allow you to quickly customize your own from a host of existing ones. All you need to do is to choose a image template, type in your desired text, and share away. However, if you want to create a whole new meme of your own from scratch, it’s not exactly tough.

Step 1: Do your research

Know your memes — It’s good practice look at memes out there that have gone viral already, especially current ones. These can provide inspiration — maybe there’s a certain meme theme that’s popular at the moment, for instance — and allow you tell you if somebody’s already tried your idea.

The above image, for example, has been re-appropriated into meme-dom on multiple occasions.

Keep a watchful eye on trends — As we’ve already said, keeping current can be a big source of inspiration. Facebook and Twitter are great for spotting trends, and entertainment topics are usually a win. Take note of what makes you laugh the most and what gets the most responses.

For example, as of the writing of this article, Hillary Clinton’s reaction to pyrotechnics at the 2016 Democratic National Convention was spreading like wildfire on the internet. Probably because it’s comedic gold.

Also, Game of Thrones has been a source of inspiration for many a meme as of late because, well, who doesn’t love Game of Thrones?

Choose a subject you can relate to — If you’re not a sports fan, you might have a hard time selling a sports-themed meme. Cute animals are always a great go-to when you are tapped out of ideas, but if you really want to push the envelope, choose a public figure you can easily imitate. If you’d like to use a personal experience as the center of your meme, choose one that’s easy to relate to.

Decide on a medium — The easiest medium to use is a photo, but if you can be funny on camera, you might want to venture into video.

Step 2: Compose your content

Collect your materials — Before going any further, this is the point where you decide if you’re going to come up with your own stuff or recycle things you’ve found online. If you’re doing a photo meme and you want to use existing content, grab the appropriate screens from the videos you want to use. You can also surf the web for images you’d like to use as pegs, or hit up Imgur’s meme generator.

Keep it short and simple — Keep  in mind that the attention span of the typical internet user is pretty short, so you want to make an immediate impression. Come up with a catchphrase that uses simple and memorable language.

Find the right expression to convey — Make sure your visuals match the sentiment you’re trying to portray.

Step 3: Find the necessary tools

If you’re creating a photo meme, it might be wise to get Photoshop or use Pixlr Editor, the latter of which is a free image editor that offers similar functionality. You can also look up meme-generator sites like Imgur, which let you upload your own photo to use as the background. Lastly, you can install photo apps directly on your phone that allow you to add text to your images.

If you’re creating a video meme, the easiest apps and sites to use are Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube.