?fbclid=

This afternoon I was checking the analytics for one of my websites and noticed a strange URL which someone attempted to view on my site: https://cybersurf.io/?fbclid=IwAR15ndwImeZd0W7tUqLSa80LrSy1SJDQGZr6Ch92eAfbCIYo7WkDNISN4no

I don’t know exactly what the above gobbledygook means. Originally I thought “fbclid” might be shorthand for Facebook Client ID. This was my working hypothesis that maybe this was some sort-of new hacker exploit involving login with Facebook.

But a quick google search for ?fbclid= revealed that this actually stands for Facebook Click Identifier. I’m sort of a suspicious person, so my next thought jumped to: Is this some kind of new click fraud scheme?

However, now I think I have this mystery figured out: someone shared a link to my website on Facebook! Ding ding ding, we have a winner! So if you find yourself puzzled trying to figure out some strange traffic coming to yourself website with ?fbclid= in the URL, it’s probably a visitor coming to your site via Facebook.

 

The Free Alternative to SocialBlade: CyberSurf.io

SocialBlade.com is great. What a fantastic idea— a database of the World’s Top YouTube Channels where you can browse the rankings, see who’s rising, see who’s falling, who’s on top, discover new channels, et cetera, et cetera. Only problem? It costs money! While I’m not sure exactly how much SocialBlade costs, I know you really only get access to the Top 250 YouTube Channels, and well, that’s all you get!

But if you happen to be looking for a free alternative to SocialBlade’s database of top YouTube channels you are in luck, as I just finished launching the very first version of my new site CyberSurf.io about 5 minutes ago. If you are interested in taking a look at what I’ve got so far, please see my first post on the new site: The World’s Top 10,000 YouTube Channels

For a little back story regarding my project, this new website actually started out as an app for the Amazon Fire TV Stick that I built so I could channel surf YouTube; that’s how the whole thing got started. To build my Fire Stick app I incidentally needed to build a web crawler to discover new YouTube channels and crawl those channels for content which I featured in the app using YouTube’s shareable embeds. However, that project was quickly shut down by Amazon’s App Store which rejected the app over copyright issues. While I don’t believe I was actually in violation of copyright infringement as I simply used sharable YouTube embeds which you see all over the internet such as Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit, nevertheless, I didn’t have the resources to weather battling with Amazon’s App Store reviewers, so I simply decided to pivot to something else.

This new project I decided to call, CyberSurf. Several months ago I launched CyberSurf the mobile app but ran into some problems. Problem A: The Apple App Review Board rejected my app. Problem B: I couldn’t get anyone to download my Android app! In my opinion, the CyberSurf Android app is much better than my new website, cybersurf.io. However, I found trying to reach people and drive installs for the app was incredibly expensive and wasn’t getting any traction. Which is what brings me here now writing this blog post… I am fairly confident that a market and demand for YouTube channel rankings exists, and maybe, just maybe, a website featuring such a database will inevitably find its way to end users via Google searches. So if you happened to have read this far down my blog post, it looks like my hypothesis may be right.

Any comments, questions, feature requests for CyberSurf.io and my new YouTube Channel Rankings? Feel free to contact me (Topher Pedersen) at chris@topherpedersen.com, or shoot me a text message @ +1 (469) 261-0727.

 

How to Serve up Mobile and Desktop Versions of your Website in Flask: A Quickstart Guide to Detecting User-Agents with Python, Flask, & request

While it’s currently fashionable in web development to use front-end frameworks such as Bootstrap to create “responsive” websites which can transform themselves entirely client-side to fit either a Desktop or mobile phone screen, sometimes it’s just easier to serve up a mobile or desktop version of your website depending on the user’s device. In this quick blog post I wanted share a quick snippet of Python/Flask code which you can use to serve up desktop and mobile versions of your website. In my opinion, this often makes more sense than trying to build some kind of transformer website. The transformer concept is kind of cool, and is definitely slick, it’s quite tedious and your end users probably won’t notice all of the effort you put into your responsive design anyway.

So without further ado: How to Serve Up a Mobile Friendly Version of your Website in Python with Flask

from flask import Flask, Response, render_template, request
app = Flask(__name__)
@app.route('/', methods=['GET', 'POST'])
def index():
user_agent = request.headers.get('User-Agent')
user_agent = user_agent.lower()
# In your templates directory, create a mobile version of your site (mobile.index.html).
# Likewise, add your desired desktop template as well (desktop.index.html).
if "iphone" in user_agent:
return render_template('mobile.index.html')
elif "android" in user_agent:
return render_template('mobile.index.html')
else:
return render_template('desktop.index.html')
 

How r/wallstreetbets is Manipulating the Stock Market to Pump & Dump Worthless Meme Stocks

Today I made my second post on the red hot subreddit r/wallstreetbets about my new position in Cash App parent company Square, Inc ($SQ). And just like my first post, it was taken down and deleted after 15 minutes. Having had my first post immediately deleted, this time I made sure to follow all of the subreddit’s community guidelines etc. However, the post was still taken down even though it followed all of the guidelines. Then I had a realization: The people who run WallStreetBets don’t want people posting about good companies with strong prospects. WallStreetBets is simply a vehicle for a select few to pump and dump garbage stocks like GameStop ($GME) and Blackberry ($BB) which are going to $0.

So here’s how the scheme works: The moderators on r/wallstreetbets identify bad companies with poor prospects, purchase options for cheap on these companies, then relentlessly pump these companies on their r/wallstreetbets subreddit. Think about it, you can’t buy options for cheap on good companies with strong prospects such as Square. You can only buy options on the cheap for trash companies like GameStop and Blackberry.

Anyway, that’s my rant for the day. Maybe everyone already knew this, but this was sort-of a big awakening moment for myself. I was experiencing quite a bit of FOMO recently about wallstreetbets and really wanted to get in on the action. But now I know the truth: r/wallstreetbets is just a pump and dump scheme, and their moderators only want suckers piling into shit. It is not a place for legitimate investors making legitimate investments.

UPDATE (June 11th, 2021, 1:56PM): I could be wrong about WallStreetBets. I posted a similar post on r/investing and it was immediately removed as well. It could be that Reddit in general is highly manipulated by moderators who decide who is allowed to post and which posts will be pushed to the top. I know that r/bitcoin was notorious for censoring people back in 2017/2018 during the great block size wars, so maybe Reddit in general kind of sucks.

UPDATE (June 11th, 2021, 4:07PM): Maybe disregard my last update. Check out this Hacker News post I stumbled upon this afternoon. According to user PragmaticPulp, “/r/WallStreetBets has devolved into a pump-and-dump echo chamber…” and that “[WallStreetBets is] heavily moderating the sub to only allow posts and comments that glorify $GME. The only allowable content is that which insinuates anyone who buys $GME is about to get extremely wealthy, or that everyone buying $GME is sticking it to Wall Street.

 

Nested Enums in TypeScript

Today at work I was asked to re-factor some code in our organization’s app that involved replacing a bunch of strings with nested enums. For example, we have a bunch of strings that look something like “ActivityCode.Foo.A” and one of the tech leads wanted me to replace all of these strings with enums. However, you can see from my example string that it isn’t formatted like an enum. An enum would look something like ActivityCode.Foo. But how do you write ActivityCode.Foo.A where there is some nesting going on? The tech lead specifically requested that I use an enum, not an object, which brings us to this blog post: How do you create a nested enum in TypeScript?

Well, the short answer is: You can’t create nested enums in TypeScript.

However, there is a little hack you can use where you can create an object (ActivityCode), which contains a bunch of enums and essentially achieve the same effect. So if you need to write something like ActivityCode.Foo.A using enums, you can write something like:

enum Foo {
A = "ActivityCode.Foo.A",
B = "ActivityCode.Foo.B",
C = "ActivityCode.Foo.C",
}
enum Bar {
A = "ActivityCode.Bar.A",
B = "ActivityCode.Bar.B",
C = "ActivityCode.Bar.C",
}
enum Baz {
A = "ActivityCode.Baz.A",
B = "ActivityCode.Baz.B",
C = "ActivityCode.Baz.C",
}
const ActivityCode = {
Foo,
Bar,
Baz,
};
console.log(ActivityCode.Foo.A);
view raw nestenum.ts hosted with ❤ by GitHub

So there you have it! Pseudo nested enums in TypeScript.

 

[SOLVED] Xcode quit unexpectedly: How To Get Xcode to Open Your App When it Keeps Crashing Every Time You Try to Open Your Project

Xcode quit unexpectedly. Click Reopen to open the application again. This report will be sent to Apple automatically…

Oh boy! So Xcode is refusing to open your project and keeps crashing over and over again everytime you try to open your workspace. Well you’ve come to the right place.

For me, this issue started happening on my machine when attempting to open two different versions of the same app located in different directories. However, I’m unsure on what the cause of this issue is, and I’m sure lots of people likely run into this issue for all sorts of different reasons. Maybe you received an error dialog like the one shown above, or maybe Xcode simply doesn’t respond at all when you try to open your project. Regardless, here’s the quick fix you need that was passed down to myself by one of my co-workers:

Instead of trying to open your workspace/project with Xcode, open up your project’s directory using your Mac’s Finder application, then just double click on your app’s .xcodeproj file or .xcworkspace file depending on what you normally open. And that’s it! Sort of silly, but this trick is absolutely essential! So if you find yourself in a situation where Xcode doesn’t want to open your project, open it with Finder instead, and you’ll be back in business in no time.

 

React Native Navigation + Redux

Last week after work I was working on one of my side projects, and wanted to install Redux into a new app I’m working on which is using Wix’s React Native Navigation. However, I quickly realized that the old Redux boiler plate code that I normally use for my React Navigation based apps (not to be confused React Native Navigation from Wix) wasn’t going to work. I assumed that React Native Navigation would have a section about Redux on their site, but I wasn’t able to find anything. In fact, I actually wasn’t able to get installed in my after work coding session and pushed this work off to the weekend, which brings me here to you now writing this blog post!

Okay so here is what I’ve found: React Native Navigation used to have a helper function called registerComponentWithRedux that you could use. Unfortunately this function has since been deprecated. But the good news is, the Wix team left an excellent comment in their source code with instructions on how to install Redux into your React Native Navigation app:

registerComponentWithRedux is deprecated and will be removed in the next version! Please use Navigation.registerComponent instead. Visit the docs for more information https://wix.github.io/react-native-navigation/api/component#registering-a-component-wrapped-with-providers

https://github.com/wix/react-native-navigation/blob/b53f13c60fe6498ad1690adf1dfd7509f602965c/lib/src/Navigation.ts

Then if you head on over to the React Native Navigation docs you can check out the section on Registering a component wrapped with Providers. The code snippet they provide demonstrating how to do this looks something like:

// Source Code by Wix Published into the Public Domain
import { Provider } from 'react-redux';
const store = createStore();

Navigation.registerComponent(`navigation.playground.MyScreen`, () => (props) =>
  <Provider store={store}>
    <MyScreen {...props} />
  </Provider>,
  () => MyScreen)
);

Boom! There you have it. Simply wrap your screens with Redux s in your registerComponent declarations and you’re good to go. Then I assume you just need to make sure to pass the same store to all of your screens which you are registering, and your Redux store should be available all throughout your app.

 

A Working Example of React Native Navigation External Components

Today I happen to be taking another stab at experimenting with External Component’s for my organization’s React Native Navigation app, and I found myself digging through my GitHub repos for the working example app I created demonstrating how to add External Component’s to a React Native Navigation app. So I thought maybe I should write up a quick blog post on the topic for my own personal reference or to possibly help someone else out there trying to figure this out.

First, I must say that I didn’t actually write this example app! For the most part, the code all comes from Wix’s “playground” app contained in the main React Native Navigation GitHub repo. However, I found that Wix’s documentation for how to add External Component’s wasn’t really all that helpful, and I couldn’t get the actual “playground” app to compile on my machine. Thus the need for this blog post and my example app.

So pretty much what I have is a fairly bare React-Native app that I created using react-native init. Then, I referenced Wix’s “playground” app’s source code and added the logic to my example app. This was how I was able to get all of this to work. So if you also are having a hard time getting External Component’s to work by referencing the docs, and also can’t get the playground app to compile, check out my example app on GitHub: RNNExternalComponentApp

UPDATE (Friday August 5th, 2022): I had to do this again today for work, but this time I needed to be able to register the external component using Swift. If you need to do this using Swift, you can create an Objective-C function and then export it back to Swift if you need to register an external component from Swift. Here is my HOW TO on doing this:

I figured out how to do this. Instead of converting the code snippet from Objective-C to Swift, you can wrap the code snippet in your own Objective-C function, then export that function back to Swift. In case anyone else runs into this issue, here is my code:

In your bridging header (yourapp-Bridging-Header):

#import "RNNUtility.h"

RNNUtility.h

//
// RNNUtility.h
// yourapp
//
// Created by Christopher Pedersen on 8/5/22.
// Copyright © 2022 Super Sweet Co. All rights reserved.
//
#ifndef RNNUtility_h
#define RNNUtility_h
void registerExternalComponent(NSString *componentName, UIViewController *viewController);
#endif /* RNNUtility_h */
view raw RNNUtility.h hosted with ❤ by GitHub

RNNUtility.m

//
// RNNUtility.m
// yourapp
//
// Created by Christopher Pedersen on 8/5/22.
// Copyright © 2022 Super Sweet Co. All rights reserved.
//
#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>
#import <ReactNativeNavigation/ReactNativeNavigation.h>
void registerExternalComponent(NSString *componentName, UIViewController *viewController) {
[ReactNativeNavigation
registerExternalComponent:componentName
callback:^UIViewController *(NSDictionary *props, RCTBridge *bridge) {
return viewController;
}];
}
view raw RNNUtility.m hosted with ❤ by GitHub

YourCode.swift

let externalComponentName = "YourComponentName"
let viewController = YourViewController()
registerExternalComponent(externalComponentName, viewController)
view raw YourCode.swift hosted with ❤ by GitHub
 

Running React Native Apps in Release Mode on iOS with Xcode

Today, my boss asked me to try running our organization’s React Native app in release mode, something I had never done before. In all of my personal projects I would always run my React Native apps in debug mode, never actually testing a release version exactly. I would just follow the steps to create a release build and publish, never actually testing the release build until it appeared on the App Store.

So if you find yourself in a similar situation, here are some quick and easy steps to running a React Native app in release mode. Assuming you have Xcode configured to run the app on your personal iPhone:

  1. Plug your iPhone into your Mac
  2. Select your iPhone as the device run target
  3. With Xcode open, press/hold: COMMAND > SHIFT > COMMA on your keyboard
  4. A window should appear where you can select RUN > INFO > BUILD CONFIGURATION … and change DEBUG to RELEASE in the dropdown window (see screenshot below)
  5. Last, close the window and run your app

Note: If you are working on a large enterprise grade application, you may also need to change a config setting to point at your companies development servers if you want to test the release version of your app using development servers on the back-end with fake users and test data. Here’s a screenshot (mostly for my own personal reference) on how we do that at my organization:

 

zsh: permission denied: ./gradlew

Having trouble running $ ./gradlew clean on your Mac with the new zsh terminal? Here’s what you need to do to fix this issue; simply run:

$ chmod +x gradlew

Then try and run ./gradlew clean again:

$ ./gradlew clean
And you should be back in business!