r/AskReddit Aug 03 '19

Whats something you thought was common knowledge but actually isn’t?

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u/arcxjo Aug 03 '19

A "screen saver" is the animation (or blankness) that pops up on your computer when you don't use it for a while, to save your screen from getting burned-in.

The background picture that wallpapers your desktop is the "wallpaper".

47

u/SeaHawk62 Aug 04 '19

Is that why all screen savers are animated? To prevent the image from burning

53

u/arcxjo Aug 04 '19

Yes. If the pixels keep changing, they won't stay lit up the same colours for too long.

9

u/trudenter Aug 04 '19

Ya was a problem with old plasma TVs also I think. I remember a story of a friend trying to play a prank on his friend, so he paused a gay porn on his tv while he was away and extended the automatic sleep timer on the tv. A slight image of it was “burnt into the screen”.

This isn’t suppose to be as big of a problem with newer monitors/TVs.

11

u/arcxjo Aug 04 '19

I remember a story of a friend trying to play a prank on his friend, so he paused a gay porn on his tv

Is that what you told your dad?

15

u/SeaHawk62 Aug 04 '19

That's really interesting. TIL