Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing

Welcome to the computing section
of the Wikipedia reference desk.

skip to bottom

Select a section:

• Computing
• Entertainment
• Humanities
• Language
• Mathematics
• Science
• Miscellaneous
• Archives

Want a faster answer?

Main page: Help searching Wikipedia

   

How can I get my question answered?

• Select the section of the desk that best fits the general topic of your question (see the navigation column to the right).
• Post your question to only one section, providing a short header that gives the topic of your question.
• Type '~~~~' (that is, four tilde characters) at the end – this signs and dates your contribution so we know who wrote what and when.
• Don't post personal contact information – it will be removed. Any answers will be provided here.
• Please be as specific as possible, and include all relevant context – the usefulness of answers may depend on the context.
• Note:
  • We don't answer (and may remove) questions that require medical diagnosis or legal advice.
  • We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate.
  • We don't do your homework for you, though we'll help you past the stuck point.
  • We don't conduct original research or provide a free source of ideas, but we'll help you find information you need.

Ready? Ask a new question!

How do I answer a question?

Main page: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines

• The best answers address the question directly, and back up facts with wikilinks and links to sources. Do not edit others' comments and do not give any medical or legal advice.

See also:

• Teahouse
• Help desk
• Village pump
• Help manual

November 12

UserScript

Why does this script works only from console but not from a userscript on wikipedia websites?

// ==UserScript==
// @name         x
// @match        *://*/*
// @run-at       document-start

// ==/UserScript==
window.setTimeout ( ()=>{
if (window.location.href.includes('wikipedia.org')) {
    window.open("https://example.com/", "_self");
    // window.location.replace("https://example.com");
    // window.location.href("https://example.com");
}
}, 100);

Thank you in advance. 223.24.184.76 (talk) 04:57, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

More information needed for an answer: How do you run the UserScript? Are you using a method that Wikipedia supports or a browser addin? If you are using a browser addin, which addin?

Do other scripts that use setTimeout or access window work fine?

Also, if we run into issues reproducing the problem you have after you've answered the above, we would also need to know what browsers (and version) you have tried this in. You've also not given any information about error messages in the console, so I'm assuming there are no error messages when you check the browser console. Komonzia (talk) 20:36, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

HTTP 451 and GDPR

HTTP 451 mentions that many non-EU websites use this code when refusing traffic from EU countries, since they don't want to comply with the EU's General Data Protection Regulation. I'm confused: if you're not in an EU country, why do you have to comply with EU regulations of any sort? What can the EU do to you if you're not in the EU? Nyttend (talk) 22:06, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Impose fines and if they're not paid, impound property you happen to have in the EU. Or, if you're traveling via the EU, holding you hostage until you've paid the fines.  --Lambiam 23:48, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Not that most of that is likely for 'legit' websites, but these organisations don't want the extra overhead of even having to think about any of that, so this is the cheap way out for them. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:35, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

November 13

PNG Transparent Background

I've got some images with off-white backgrounds that I'd like to set as transparent, and I'm following the instructions at https://www.photoroom.com/blog/transparent-background-in-ms-paint. I'm left with two images. The first (after the instruction "Right-click on the protected object and select "Cut" to remove it from the image.") has the off-white background with a white hole the shape of the foreground object, the second has the foreground object with a white background. Neither shows any sign of transparency when I insert it into my target application!

Questions:

• Do .png files support transparency? My research suggests they do.
• I'm using the Paint app that comes with Windows 10. Is that the same as the MS Paint referred to?
• What am I doing wrong???

Thanks. Rojomoke (talk) 11:42, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

PNG images DO support transparency. The application you are using must support saving a PNG image with transparency. Paint is MS Paint. The instructions provided appear correct compared to other guides. There is another question you didn't ask. Does the application you are using to display the images support transparent PNG images? If not, it will display the transparent area with the color indexed at 0 in the color pallete. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 11:58, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

I do not have recent experience with paint and transparent backgrounds, but it used to be horrible. paint.net is an open source alternative that does what you want. Added benefit is that it looks just like paint does/did, so for simple stuff it doesn't have much of a learning curve (it has much more options than paint does, but those might need some practice). Note that it's also available from the microsoft store, but then it isn't freeRmvandijk (talk) 13:25, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with using MS Paint to make transparent images, but it sounds to me like the instructions you're following are having you 'cut' the foreground object out, which likely copies it to the clipboard. You should be able to paste that copied image into a new file that already has a fully transparent background, or even just erase the background from the current image and then re-paste the cut image back in. Amstrad00 (talk) 16:42, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

This webpage is promoting an app. It's an advert dressed up as advice. Eventually the advice turns into "use an app such as ours".

PNGs support transparency. They also support an alpha channel which allows degrees of transparency, to smooth jaggy edges. You may need to select the option to include an alpha channel when saving the PNG. We have a Comparison of raster graphics editors, which includes a column for the ability to use the alpha channel. I hear Krita spoken of favorably lately, I haven't tried it.  Card Zero  (talk) 19:23, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

November 17

Jiggly computer game characters

For want of a better word, there's a trope used in the depiction of creatures (humanoid or other) depicted in video games where the characters are constantly jiggling about. I can guess several reasons why this might be the case. Is there a name for this sort of depiction? Does it have an interesting history perhaps? --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 00:58, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

That's rather vague, can you give an example? Are you thinking of the spasms sometimes afflicting puppets due to ragdoll physics? Or something simpler, like the jerkiness of two-frame animation?  Card Zero  (talk) 09:52, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

If you've played any video games in last decade, you'll have seen it; here is an example. Has nothing to do death throes (unless that's where the trope started.) It doesn't seem to have any purpose other than visual; it's not denoting actual motion or anything vaguely realistic. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 16:05, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

The name of that type of depiction is idle or idling animation, as indicated on that page. Shantavira|^{feed me} 17:48, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Idle animation. Thank you, that's what I was looking for. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 18:34, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Two-factor authentication and repeated codes

One form of two-factor authentication (or 2FA for short) uses six-digit codes. So, how likely will one encounter a code that one has already seen before? If a six-digit code is generated 1,000,001 times, then the pigeonhole principle guarantees that at least one of them must be repeated. So, if a six-digit code is generated every 30 seconds starting from the beginning of a year, then there must inevitably be a repeated code by the end of the year. GTrang (talk) 15:34, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes, and? The codes don't need to be unique. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 16:40, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

The likelihood of encountering a code that one has already seen before (which appears to be your question) depends entirely on how many you have seen before. Shantavira|^{feed me} 17:52, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Let $n$ stand for the number of possible outcomes of a discrete random variable with a uniform distribution. For a fair standard die, $n=6;$ For the six-digit codes with range 000000–9999999, $n=1,000,000.$ Assume that each next turn is independent of the history. Let $q(t)$ denote the probability that the first $t$ turns gave $t$ different outcomes – no repeats (yet). Obviously, $q(0)=1.$ For turn $t+1$ to be different from the earlier $t$ turns, the outcome has to be one of the still remaining $n-t$ outcomes that have not yet occurred. The probability, independent of the past, is ${\frac {n-t}{n}},$ so

$q(t+1)=q(t){\frac {n-t}{n}}={\frac {n}{n}}{\frac {n-1}{n}}{\frac {n-2}{n}}\cdots {\frac {n-t}{n}}.$

For $t>n$ this has a factor ${\frac {n-n}{n}},$ so then $q(t)=0.$ Otherwise,

$q(t)={\frac {n!}{(n-t)!\,n^{t}}}.$

When $n=1,000,000,$ you already have $q(1178)\approx 0.49981\,,$ less than 50% chance of repeat-free survival. See also Birthday paradox.  --Lambiam 19:19, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Everyone is told not to re-use passwords, but that doesn't apply to one-time singleton keys such as are typically used in 2FA.

• If I somehow know that last year your regular password was "gzornnplatz", and I'm trying to hack into your account, "gzornnplatz" is a reasonable thing to try; it's considerably more likely to still or again be your password today than some other 11-character string.
• But if I'm trying to guess a 2FA code, and I know that some time ago the generator randomly generated 123456, that tells me nothing about what code it's likely to use today. During any given authentication session, every one of those 1,000,000 codes is equally likely. The security rests on the assumption that there's no way you can possibly try more than a tiny fraction of the codes in that space before the authentication session times out and starts over with a new code (or locks you out for a while).

—scs (talk) 01:20, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

November 18

Follow up to Can high memory usage make the Internet not work?

Referring to this question, a man came to my house this morning and replaced the phone line. He said it was old and just barely working. They've been talking about that for quite some time. When I was told I could get a faster speed at no charge, the men who came didn't do anything because there was no way to do it without drilling a hole in the wall. I said it was fine if they didn't. I thought they were going to do it behind some heavy furniture where the outside equipment was. The last time anyone came to my house nothing was done inside and there was no talk about replacing the phone line. But the man this morning wanted the line to go in the house near my computer, and there was nothing heavy to move.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 18:51, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Electronically notarize a plain text file

Does anyone know of a use case for electronically notarizing a plain text file in the United States or country with similar laws? The reason is that rules for notaries public are being developed in my state that, depending on how they are written, might make notarizing such files more difficult because they might require the notary's signature to be present as a graphic image (JPEG or the like) which is not supported in somes kind of computer files. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:58, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Because laws don't keep up with technology, a company I used to work for used a workaround. They printed out a large hash of the text files (mainly computer code) and notarized the hash. So, the file itself was not notarized, but the hash of it was. So, in court, if the file has the same hash you can state that the hash the file has is the hash that was notarized. There is a minor limitation. It is possible to alter a file while not altering the hash. It isn't common, but with hashes, there is always an issue of collision. That wasn't a big enough issue for the needs of the company. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 13:31, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

@12.116.29.106: I was aware of that approach, which is why I said that not supporting graphic images in a file merely made it more difficult to notarize. While respecting everyone's privacy, can you describe why it was necessary to indirectly notarize computer code and the other files? Jc3s5h (talk) 22:50, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

It is one thing to create a sequence of bytes matching a given hash. It is another thing to do this such that the sequence of bytes is not gibberish, and not even just something meaningful, but something meaningful that conveys an intended message.  --Lambiam 13:41, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Why did we have to notarize computer code? Darl McBride went a bit crazy and claimed that his company had a copyright on all computer code. In court, he was required to state exactly what code other companies had that violated the copyright. He said all of it. It went back and forth and at one point the company I worked for had to send his company source code. We had to notarize what we sent and it was important to do it in a way that our lawyers could tell the court if Darl's company altered the code to make it look more like theirs, which they did. Then, luckily, I retired before it got real silly. Basically, if you are mixing law and programming together, you have to find a legal way to protect the programming. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 13:29, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

November 19

Windows.old

My desktop computer is a Dell Inspiron 3910 running Windows 11, and has 12 GB of RAM and 216 GB of solid-state storage as the C: drive. I recently moved some folders that I don't need to a removable disk. I also have a great monster external drive with 4 TB that I use for backup. As of 9 November 2024, a folder called Windows.old has appeared on my C: drive. It occupies about 27 GB on my C: drive, and now I am getting red warnings in the This PC screen for low remaining disk storage, but not actually running out of disk storage. It appears to contain copies of some of the contents of the Windows, Program Files, and Program Files (x86) folders. My first question is why it has appeared on my computer. I didn't do anything intentionally that I thought would create it. It is possible that the cat did something random. She's a cat, and sometimes walks on the keyboard. My second question is whether I need it, or whether I can safely move it to the monster. Is anyone familiar with the creation of this backup folder? Can I move it to a different device? Robert McClenon (talk) 06:34, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

This file appears when a Windows upgrade is performed. I've an idea it is used in a system restore. If everything is running fine, you can delete it by running a disk cleanup and ticking clean up system files. It is probably worth having a look through the folder before you delete it. TrogWoolley (talk) 07:34, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Your computer likely got the Windows 11, version 24H2 update. The system files from the old update were moved in Windows.old to allow you to temporarily roll back if there's any problem. You can try running a disk cleanup (I remember Windows once asking me to delete this folder because of free space shortage), or it will be eventually removed on its own. You definitely don't have to back it up in an external storage medium. Ian P. Tetriss (talk) 00:57, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

User:Ian P. Tetriss, User:TrogWoolley - Thank you for the explanation. I had already backed up the Windows.old folder to an external device and then had disk cleanup delete it before I read your advice that it is not necessary to back it up. So I will move it from the disk drive to the 4 TB drive. I will also check to see if my laptop computer has a Windows.old file, and do disk cleanup on it. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:24, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

My laptop computer does not have a Windows.old file. It is old, older than my desktop computer, and so may not be one of the computers that Microsoft has updated to 24H2. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:34, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

November 21

AI and the 2024 US election

Resolved

My question is, how much did rudimentary "AI" (or what we like to refer to as AI) contribute to the outcome of the 2024 US election? I haven't seen much written about this, but if there are articles on this subject, please point me to them. Viriditas (talk) 09:21, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

There's an amusing ref desk phenomenon where a questioner accidentally formulates a good search query to use for the question's title. Here's my first two results: The AI-generated hell of the 2024 election , AI's Underwhelming Impact on the 2024 Elections. Opinions differ, evidently.  Card Zero  (talk) 09:44, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Ackshually, that's exactly what I was looking for. Are you a mind reader? Viriditas (talk) 10:05, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

November 23

ClipChamp.exe and Disk Backup

If I am backing up my C: drive (which I still think of as a hard disk, although it is a solid-state device) to an external medium (a 4TB removable device), I get various error messages that I have to Skip. One of them says that it is unable to copy Clipchamp.exe, which has size 0 bytes. I can Try Again or Skip or Cancel. Only Skip makes any sense. I have looked up what Clipchamp is, and I see that it is a Microsoft video editor tool, but that it has a web-based architecture, so that the code resides on a web site and is loaded temporarily into my computer to run the application. My first question is: If I am doing the backup in the usual fashion, by dragging a folder from C: to a folder window on F: (the removable storage device), is there any way that I can tell Windows 11 in advance to Skip errors rather than prompting me for action? Second, is there any alternate easy-to-do way to copy folders from C: to a folder on F: other than dragging and dropping that allows me to specify action on errors? Third, I see that Clipchamp, and some of the other stuff that gives me errors on backup up, are in the Users folder. Do the error messages that I am getting mean that copying the Users folder is problematic, and that I should be backing up some of its subfolders instead? Robert McClenon (talk) 04:00, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

I found Robocopy, if you want a copy utility with sophisticated options. (Does figuring out a new tool save effort? Debatable.) This is built-in to Windows 11, I tried it out myself just now.  Card Zero  (talk) 04:54, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

November 24

Telegram account deletion timing

On the Internet I find many guides that explain how to delete a Telegram account but in none of these is it written after how long it is actually closed. Does anyone know the answer? 2.194.247.141 (talk) 21:24, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Have you trid? Do you have some reason to suppose it is not closed immediately? Most online accounts are. Shantavira|^{feed me} 09:34, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

It depends. I think for a lot of more sophisticated services nowadays, deletion isn't actually instant and you generally have X number of days to change your mind. E.g. Facebook is 30 days, Microsoft is 30 or 60 days [1]. Google seems to have a window too [2] but I didn't find what it is also I think it's 20 days for their business service Workspaces [3]. Discord is possibly 14-30 days [4].

I think these arise out of fact that traditionally, deleting your account on such services may not do much. Often it just marks stuff as deleted and hides it from the front end but the data is all still there and especially in the backups such services have to try and ensure they don't lose data. So depending on whether the service was willing it was potentially possible to get your account back or at least partially back months or years later. Laws and regulations especially from the EU (GDPR) has meant this isn't so accepted any more and so such services do actually have to try and delete your data now after some time.

But with password leaks etc, compromised accounts are common and there are limited additional verification steps that might be taken depending on the details held. So if they start to remove your data instantly people are going to get annoyed when some troll or whatever compromises their account and deletes all their data. (I mean even Jim Browning had his Youtube channel deleted.) And I'm sure plenty of people just delete their accounts when there is something going on in their lives then later regret it, especially common I'm sure for anything with a social aspect like Facebook, Discord and yes Telegram. So they set a defined recovery window before they actually start to delete your data.

I didn't find anything for Telegram but Telegram is known for operating fairly outside the laws of the EU. What I did find is suggestions that the way Telegram works mean deleting your account doesn't mean the data disappears, in fact it will still be visible in the accounts of anyone you chatted with etc unless you delete it first where possible. I'm not sure what happens for stuff in your saved messages but I wouldn't be surprised if it's all still somewhere, although this doesn't mean Telegram will allow you to recover your account.

That said this suggests Discord is possibly the same. Potentially because they interpret the GDPR as meaning they've complied if they remove any connections between your account and your real life identity in their details. And if you posted in some chat "Hi I'm @deleteddiscorduser12345 . I'm John Michael Smith, born on 21 September 1970 at the Flint Public hospital, raised in Flint with my mum Jane and dad George. I attended the Flint Grade School, Flint Middle School and Flint High School then went to MIT studying Computer Science from 1988-1992. Now I'm of Detroit, Michigan and live in 1000 West Street with my 2 cats Snowy and Larry." it's tough cookies I guess. (Of course such services always have a problem when it's someone else who posted it, or if they replied in such a way they they copied part of your message.)

Nil Einne (talk) 13:20, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

November 26

Is anyone here a Reddit moderator or do any of you know well why the automod is glitching out badly on me? It keeps autoremoving my innocent posts no matter what subreddits I post in.

Please check out my account; what is it about my account that causes the automod to malfunction and keep autoremoving my posts?: https://www.reddit.com/user/AWrride/

My post karma is in the thousands and comment karma is in the hundreds so they're not getting removed for low karma, so why are they getting removed then? How do I stop getting bothered by the automod like this?

Also, most pleas in the subreddits' ModMails go unanswered. It's as if the mods don't read my pleas.

So could someone here please help me resolve the glitching automod problem so that I can get their automoderator to please leave me alone? Thanks. --2600:100A:B030:9399:A4B7:A7C4:A534:6D53 (talk) 17:36, 26 November 2024 (UTC)