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March 28

Is it possible to display Wikipedia category links on mobile browser via userscript?

Wikipedia can display category links directly on desktop browsers, but not on mobile browsers. There are several broswer extensions can manage userscript, some of them works with mobile devices. So is it possible to write an userscript to display the category links? --Great Brightstar (talk) 04:32, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

On the en.m site the categories are not loaded. So you cannot make them easily appear. Via other URLs you could get it, the easiest being to click on the desktop link at the bottom. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 07:26, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Registered users on the mobile version can currently see categories by enabling Wikipedia βeta. Click the menu icon at the top left and click Settings. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:01, 29 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

finding files that exist in one directory tree and not in the other

My scenario is as following: 2 Windows machines ,Win7 and Win10, where I have 2 directory trees, I'll name them A and B. The directory tree is completely different, but most files exist in both A and B. I need to locate and copy the files that exist on A but not in B. There are far too many files (on both A and B) to do this manually.

Help will be appreciated.

אילן שמעוני (talk) 06:24, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Beyond Compare can do that - i.e. ignore the folder structure and "align" the files. Free trial. 196.213.35.147 (talk) 07:55, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Two questions:

The files are on two machines which might prove difficult to handle. Is that realistic to copy A into A' on the same machine as B, or the reverse, do the comparison-copy thing to extract the desired folder C, and then delete A'? If A or B is at most a few GB, that works, but if you are handling an enormous amount of data that will not be practical. (From your post, I would guess the problem is not the size of the files but rather their number.)
What does it mean for a file to be "in A but not in B", exactly? Is it enough to compare file names, or could there be a file in A with the same name as a file in B but with different contents, and which must be copied? Could there be multiple files with the same name in either directory tree (in different folders)?

Assuming a positive answer to the first question, if 196.213.35.147's suggestion does not cut it, ping me with the answer to #2 and I can provide a quick Python script to do it. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 13:06, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You were right to assume is the sheer number of files. there are about 150,000 of them. The comparison has to be by content - it is quite possible that two versions of the same file exist, one edited by machine A owner and the other by B's owner. Nobody used a versioning system, so both versions must coincide until someone will attend to merging both. That's not my problem. The task may run for a week straight and that is okay, though I fear some Murphy's law power failure or BSODs (A machine was handled by someone who literally installed everything he ever saw). As for a Python script - I very much appreciate the generous offer, but installing a python interpreter is beyond my limited knowledge. Any ideas? אילן שמעוני (talk) 14:40, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

So, if I understand correctly that both versions must coincide [until merged manually], what should actually be done is to check all files from A and from B; if they exist only in either directory, or in both but with the same content, copy it in the final result under the existing name (say, filename.ext); but if they both exist in different versions in A and B, copy them both (for instance, as filename-A.ext and filename-B.ext).

The fear of power failure or whatever can be soothed by keeping a log of what we are doing (see journaling file system).

I suggested Python because that's my playground, but it is not harder to install than any program, really (download the latest version and click through the installer). What you want to do can be done without fancy external packages, so there is no configuration to do either. But more importantly, I fail to see how anything else could be simpler, except if someone provides you with a compiled executable (i.e. a .exe file to run on your computer) - but that is a really, really dangerous thing to do. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 16:47, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

rsync can do this easily. I've only used the Unix version, but our article indicates that there are versions that run on Windows. CodeTalker (talk) 17:04, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Despite the directories having a different structure? Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 07:50, 29 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, everyone!. I managed to get physical access to the problematic machine, boot linux cd, copied the content to fat32 partition, took out the HD. I'll physically install it to machine B, and from there I think I have it. אילן שמעוני (talk) 16:38, 29 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Cursor movement

What do you call, the mouse cursor movement? 123.108.244.15 (talk) 14:28, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Cursor movement is cursor movement. It appears that you are trying to detect cursor movement in a program. If that is the case, we need to know what programming language you are using. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 14:40, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Some programming languages call such event onMouseOver --Hans Haase (有问题吗) 17:44, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

March 29

Google map correction

I live in Ukraine and Google ~~map~~ Maps has a small error that means that Uber taxis never take me to my door unless I explain, which is difficult because I don't speak Russian or Ukrainian. (Google maps shows buildings with number 56 on my street; one is correct but mine should be 56A. What I don't know is why Uber always takes me to the actual 56 but never mine.) It's only a problem when I have heavy groceries or something like that.

I ~~tired~~ tried submitting a correction online but nothing has changed. Can anybody give me advice? (Apart from learning to speak Russian or Ukrainian?) Hayttom (talk) 17:54, 29 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Hayttom: Do other mapping programs (Apple maps or whatever) get it right? If so, you could show the drive the correct location on your phone from that app. RudolfRed (talk) 16:17, 30 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@RudolfRed: I have heard that Apple maps do get it right, but I can't show the driver an Apple map because I use Android. And the main goal here is to be able to specify my door in the Uber app, which uses Google Maps. Hayttom (talk) 10:26, 31 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

In some places 56A would not be a different building from 56, but maybe a specific way into the building. I used to live in a building where 141A meant Apartment A in the building at 141. Maybe someone programmed Google Maps to ignore letter suffixes? --69.159.62.113 (talk) 21:40, 31 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I fairly doubt Google Maps doesn't support number-letter addresses at all. For example 7A Stone Hill Road, Springfield Township, NJ, USA seems to work. As do 56A Troy Drive, Springfield Township, NJ, USA; 56a Broad Street, Newark, NJ, USA; 56B Suburbia Drive, Jersey City, NJ, USA; 56B Henry Avenue, Palisades Park, NJ, USA etc. It may be address letters were ignored for certain locations for whatever reason. Nil Einne (talk) 07:21, 1 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, @RudolfRed:, for your logical suggestion. Actually I agree with @Nil Einne: that this is not the case, at least, here in Ukraine, but I'm grateful for your help.

You mentioned you tried submitting a correction. Does that mean you only tried submitting a correction to Google Maps and never contacted Uber? Because while the former was worthwhile, the later seems the other obvious step considering that Uber is a massive company and it's their service that is really the main issue for you. It's also what Uber suggested here [1] It seems easily possible either that they have more experience getting corrections onto Google Maps than you or the Uber app has support for Uber adjusted locations (i.e. the fact that they're using Google Maps doesn't have to mean everything would work exactly as Google Maps).

Also, are you sure you can only specify exact addresses? While apparently you can't specify GPS coordinates [2], various sources like Uber themselves [3] seem to suggest you can drag the drop off pin to adjust it. While apparently drivers hate this and so may ignore it, at least in the US [4], it's worth trying especially since I wouldn't be completely surprised if drivers in the Ukraine are perhaps more used to the addresses being problematic. Admittedly I'm not sure if this feature is supported everywhere [5]), the previous blog post seems to be from India which is another country where I wouldn't be surprised this features is needed.

Anyway while not really a solution to fixing the incorrect address, if the explanation is not very complicated and so shouldn't require two way interaction, you could just record a friend, or alternatively get a written out message which you can play back with text to speech software to tell the driver. Also is 56 the best address for where you're going? I suspect it would be, but consider whether there is a different address that is closer so you don't have to walk so far even if it's still the wrong address.

Nil Einne (talk) 07:13, 1 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Nil Einne:, SPLENDID answer. Yes, I had only tried submitting a correction to Google Maps but I have just now tried telling Uber, via the app your link led to. (I haven't yet tried adjusting the drop-off location pointer they way you suggest, but will try next time. Meanwhile "56" is in fact the best address I can submit, but your idea of using a better proxy was also excellent.) NOW THERE'S MORE: I just noticed that when I click on my actual apartment building (that is labeled as '56') it pops up a window specifying that I have clicked "Another Street, 56", where "Another Street" is about 75 metres away (and the two do not intersect). (This would be analogous to Mr Trump's house being shown in the right location, but tagged as "1600 Virginia Ave NW".) I've explained this to the Uber page, have received a note saying "Thank you. We've received your message and will be in touch as soon as possible.", and will wait as patiently as I can, and I will try to learn how to tell the drivers what I need. Already I can say "please turn right" to normal taxi drivers in Russian, but to request a left turn I have to go clockwise around a block, turning right three times. Hayttom (talk) 09:54, 2 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Uber just wrote back to me, completely missing my point of course. Next time I ride Uber home, I will experiment by specifying the address string which is incorrect for my building's address, but which is pointed exactly at my building's location, and see what happens. Hayttom (talk) 14:59, 2 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Z-fighting effect on STL models

Hello!

I created a few STL files below and found that artifacts appear in the Wikimedia viewer and occasionally the thumbnail. I've checked that the direction of facet vertices is anticlockwise, the normals are sensible and polygons are not duplicated. It seems to happen more where the polyhedron is thin. All these polyhedra render correctly on http://viewstl.com . Would anyone know how to fix these artifacts?

Thanks,
cmɢʟee⎆τaʟκ 19:20, 29 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Severe artifacts
Severe artifacts
Severe artifacts
Major artifacts

March 30

Can you hack in to idle wireless

If i have a pc or a mac in this case, and its wireless is on but not attached to anything, can someone break into it through the wireless? Assume no firewall is active, im thinking theoretically. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1003:b116:ca40:64d1:acc0:3ee7:8273 (talk) 30 March 2018

If your wifi is on it's not generally 'idle'. Even if it's not connected to anything, being 'on' most likely mean it's actively looking for access points. After all, that's how it can connect to access points in the first place. So with bugs, yes this process can be vulnerable to being compromised. E.g. Broadpwn [6] [7]. Even if it wasn't actively participating i.e. was just listening to stuff it received, this would generally mean there was some interpretation of what it was receiving so this could also be vulnerable although the more complex the process, the larger the attack surface is likely to be. Nil Einne (talk) 06:43, 1 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. Also 'not attached to anything' is unclear. Mostly OSes have abandoned automatically connecting to unknown public wifi hotspots although it can still be an option. But even if it's not connecting to unknown hotspots, it's easily possible either someone could spoof one of the known ones (i.e. Evil twin (wireless networks)) or the real known one could compromise you. In other words, 'not attached' can be a fleeting thing if the OS is set-up to automatically connect to some known hotspot. (Spoofing a WPA2 protected hotspot is a lot harder since you need to know the PSK, and if you've obtained that there's a fair chance you'll either be compromising the AP or compromising the device while connected to the proper AP.) Nil Einne (talk) 17:11, 1 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Bizarre TV/monitor behaviour

We have a TV at the office that we use as a screen during meetings. It's a Vizio D65u-D2 4K TV and we all connect via an HDMI cable. It's been working fine for months, but over the last little while, people's laptop's have stopped being able to connect. Like, you unplug from a laptop where it's working fine, plug it into another laptop and the screen just stays blank. At first, everybody's laptops worked fine, then a few started experiencing this problem, and now several people have the same issue. We've reset the TV, tried different ports and different cables. We've all got Dell laptops of approximately the same vintage. I've tried Googling, but all I get is people with issues of Wifi connection (which works fine for us). Any pointers or suggestions? Matt Deres (talk) 21:52, 30 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Python Unicode Madness

I'm writing a small script that extracts two columns from a CSV file with UTF-8 text, formats them, and prints them back. I use Python 3.6.3 and the csv module. So far all is well. I get a reader, and iterating over it gives me a list of strings for each row. Now these strings can contain Unicode characters, but Python is content and thinks they are type class 'string'. But when I try to print them, I get "UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character '\xfc' in position 35: ordinal not in range(128)". So I use str.encode("utf8") on them, and get objects of type class 'bytes'. Those I can print, but it is printed with the leading b and quote marks, and I can't e.g. use format() on them. So I try to use bytes.decode(), and I'm back where I started - and very unhappy. I finally gave up using nice string functions, and just opened the output file in binary and used file.write() to write the raw byte strings. But there must be a better way! I thought that the CSV part would be hard, but not that I would spend 5 hours digging through stack exchange, Python tutorials, and the documentation to find out how to print Unicode strings - in particular since in Python 3 all strings are Unicode strings. I suspect my problem has something to do with the fact that the csv.reader() returned the raw UTF8 bytes as a string. The decode() turns should turn it into a unicode string, but it turns it into a byte stream...please explain what is going on and how I can escape this labyrinth! --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:11, 30 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Stephan Schulz: I found [8] It says csv.reader() does not handle Unicode, but it gives an example wrapper "unicode_csv_reader" that allows for reading Unicode and also a UnicodeReader class. RudolfRed (talk) 22:25, 30 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. That, unfortunately, applies to Python 2.7.4 - the Python 3 version here does no longer contain this discussion, and I think it does not translate - the problem is the Python 3 distinguishes strings and byte sequenced, while Python 2 used string for both (I think). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:45, 30 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Assuming your opening the files with utf8, it should work:

#!/usr/bin/python3

# create sample data
with open("data.csv", 'w', encoding='utf-8') as outfile:
    outfile.write("1\t[ˈʏfsɪlɔn ɪː]\n")                # IPA
    outfile.write("2\t彼女たちの神託\n")                 # jp
    outfile.write("3\t그중 1명 이상은 사\n")             # ko
    outfile.write("4\tית, ולקיים בדיקת חמץ וביעור חמץ\n")  # he
    
# read it back in and display it
import csv
with open("data.csv", 'r', encoding="utf-8") as infile:
    for row in csv.reader(infile, delimiter='\t'):
        print ("#".join(row))

(language is grabbed out of the various ??.wikipedia homepages, apologies if it's inadvertently nsfw or something). -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 01:36, 31 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

#!/usr/bin/python3

# create sample output
with open("data.csv", 'w', encoding='utf-8') as outfile:
    outfile.write("id\ttext\n") # header
    outfile.write("1\t[ˈʏfsɪlɔn ɪː]\n")                    # IPA
    outfile.write("2\t彼女たちの神託\n")                   # jp
    outfile.write("3\t그중 1명 이상은 사\n")               # ko
    outfile.write("4\tית, ולקיים בדיקת חמץ וביעור חמץ\n")  # he
    outfile.write("5\t⠰ ⠲ ⠳ ⠴ ⠵ ⠶ ⠷\n")                    # braille
    
# read it back in, mess around with it, and write it to a new CSV
import csv
with open("data.csv", 'r', encoding="utf-8") as infile, open("new.csv", 'w', encoding="utf-8") as newfile:
    reader = csv.DictReader(infile, delimiter='\t') 
    writer = csv.DictWriter(newfile, delimiter='\t', fieldnames=reader.fieldnames)
    writer.writeheader()
    
    for row in reader:
        if int(row['id'])%2==1: # only do the odd ids
            row['text'] = row['text'][::-1] # reverse
            
        writer.writerow(row)

-- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 02:01, 31 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks - I think that is what I'm doing...here is the heart of my code:

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import csv
from sys import stdout

def printPaper(authors, title):
    resfp1.write(authors)
    resfp1.write(b": \"")
    # [ more hand-wringing here ]

resfp1=open("bla.txt", "wb")
resfp2=open("bla.html", "wb")

with open('IJCAR-2018_review_summary_2018-03-30_nu.csv', "r", encoding='utf8') as csvfile:
    reader = csv.reader(csvfile)
    paperlist = [row for row in reader]
    for row in paperlist[1:]:
        printPaper(row[1].encode("utf8"),row[2].encode("utf8"))

resfp1.close()
resfp2.close()

...originally without the encode()s - if I then try to print the keys in printPaper(), I get the error. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 07:09, 31 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It sounds like you had a version where resfp1 wasn't opened in binary mode. Can we see whatever was closest to working in that case? --Tardis (talk) 21:21, 31 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

What I've posted so far is the hack I hacked to hack around the issue. Below is a reconstruction of the original version:

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import csv
from sys import stdout

def printPaper(authors, title):
    print(authors, ": ", title)

with open('minimal.csv', "r", encoding='utf8') as csvfile:
    reader = csv.reader(csvfile)
    paperlist = [row for row in reader]
    for row in paperlist[1:]:
        printPaper(row[1],row[2])

...and here are input:

#,Authors,Title,Decision,"Average
total
score","Total
score","Overall
evaluation","Reviewer's
confidence"
3,"An Author",A Title,ACCEPT,0.7,"0,1,1","0,1,1","4,4,4"
4,Max Müller, Something about Logic,ACCEPT,1.3,"1,2,1","1,2,1","4,4,4"

...and depressing result:

An Author :  A Title
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./accepted_hack2.py", line 13, in <module>
    printPaper(row[1],row[2])
  File "./accepted_hack2.py", line 7, in printPaper
    print(authors, ": ", title)
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character '\xfc' in position 5: ordinal not in range(128)

Thanks! --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:53, 1 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Your code works fine for me (Python 3.6.3 on Linux). I have to wonder - what do you see if (at the command line) you say file * - you should see (as I do)

 foo.py:      Python script, ASCII text executable
 minimal.csv: UTF-8 Unicode text

-- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 21:33, 1 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I do:

accepted_hack2.py:         Python script text executable, ASCII text
minimal.csv:               UTF-8 Unicode text

Maybe I should have mentioned I'm on a Mac (though the error shows in both Mac Terminal and in xterm). I now suspect that Python thinks it need to print the output to an ASCII terminal, and hence to convert it to 7 bit ASCII (at least my terminals don't show Umlauts even if I cat files). It might be a problem with the environment, not Python. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:46, 2 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/918294/python-unicode-in-mac-os-x-terminal -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 11:03, 2 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have access to a Mac to verify, but on Linux if I run Python with env PYTHONIOENCODING=ascii python3 then sys.stdout.encoding is indeed ascii, and so

print("абвгд")

generates the 'ascii' codec can't... error you get. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 11:12, 2 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks - that is at least a workaround! setenv PYTHONIOENCODING utf-8 makes it work (the characters look funny on the Terminal, but I wanted to redirect things to a file, anyways. I really do think this is broken behaviour - Python should always send the same bytestream to the terminal, and it's the terminal's job to interpret it. Separation of concerns and all that! --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:49, 2 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

April 1

WIFI/ethernet audio device

What I was after was something like a sound card that could be shared over my LAN, but was surprised that no such thing appeared to exist. I wanted a convenient way that I could wirelessly link my computer to my speakers, and settled for a bluetooth solution instead. Why does a WIFI version not exist? --Leon (talk) 15:26, 1 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

There are certainly wi-fi audio systems. Ruslik_Zero 20:39, 1 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but they're not really equivalent to sound cards at all. They can stream audio from files, but if I want to e.g. play a game, they're totally unsuitable.--Leon (talk) 13:46, 2 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

See this. Ruslik_Zero 19:55, 2 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Stacking servers that belong in a server rack

Is hardware intended to be mounted in a server rack also stackable without a rack? At least, across units from the same manufacturer, can they be fitted neatly one upon the other? --Hofhof (talk) 15:27, 1 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Not reliably. Are you talking about one machine, or a stack of several (which might fall over). It also depends how they're designed - older equipment was at least in an enclosed case. More modern kit avoids top and bottom panels for better airflow.

S/H server racks are cheap. You can often find them on eBay, Gumtree etc. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:33, 1 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Or for a minimal cost option, google "Ikea Lack Server Rack" - people have discovered a cheap coffee table has internal dimensions that fit equipment designed for mounting in a 19" rack [9]

April 2

Translator

I'm unable to find something similar to "Google Translate" translator available for android phones as an app, an off-line dictionary for PC. Could you help me please. 119.30.35.242 (talk) 09:17, 2 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@119.30.35.242: but there IS a "Google Translate" app available and it even works off-line; I think if you go here in Android you'll see a download link. Or search for "Google Translate" in the Play Store. I hope I have not misunderstood your needs. Hayttom (talk) 10:38, 2 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Parse a Google Drive directory page into a Google Sheet

I am trying to automatically parse a Google Drive directory page into a Google Sheet. (I don't want to include the actual URL here, but I hope readers can understand that it is a familiar type of page containing columns of Google Drive file names, Owner names, 'Last Modified', and File size (which always seems to show '-').)

I thought IMPORTHTML would work, but the data does not seem to be a real HTML table or list.

IMPORTDATA doesn't work as my URL is not a table. Similarly IMPORTRANGE would need my URL to be a Google Sheet.

Can what I need to do be done? Hayttom (talk) 10:15, 2 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

UPDATE

A friend showed me the 'Extract Drive Links' Google Sheets ad-on. It's very un-endorsed by Google, and you have to agree that you're risking your life / data before you can use it, but it does what I need.

I'll leave this here for a day or so, then mark my question 'resolved' if there are no better contributions. Hayttom (talk) 14:56, 2 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If you're worried about trusting an add-on that you can't see the internals of, you could do similar yourself in Google Apps Script, or find an example online (that you could look at the code for to satisfy yourself it wasn't going to cause any harm) and modify that. For a minimal example, see below. davidprior ^t/_c 23:41, 2 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

 function folderContentsToGsheets(folderId) {
   //setup variables
   var folder=DriveApp.getFolderById(folderId)
   var folderList='File/Folder','Name','Owner','Last Modified','File Size'
   var myEmail=Session.getActiveUser().getEmail()
   
   //step through each subfolder
   var subfolders=folder.getFolders()
   while (subfolders.hasNext()) {
     folderList.push(fileOrFolderToRecord("folder",subfolders.next()))
   }
   
   //step through each file
   var files=folder.getFiles()
   while(files.hasNext()) {
     folderList.push(fileOrFolderToRecord("file",files.next()))
   }
   
   //copy to a new spreadsheet
   var title="Contents of folder "+folderId
   var spreadsheet=SpreadsheetApp.create(title)
   spreadsheet.getSheets()[0].getRange(1, 1,folderList.length,folderList[0].length).setValues(folderList)
   
   //sent myself a link to the spreadsheet
   GmailApp.sendEmail(myEmail,title,spreadsheet.getUrl())
   
   //function used to return the 4 key details shown in the web view of drive, plus an additional
   //  one (passed straight from the params) for whether it's a file or folder)
   function fileOrFolderToRecord(fileOrFolder,object) {
     var owner=object.getOwner()
     if (owner.getEmail()==myEmail) {
       var ownerName="me"
     } else {
       var ownerName = owner.getName(
     }  
     return [fileOrFolder,
             object.getName(),
             ownerName,
             object.getLastUpdated(),
             object.getSize()]
   }
 }

Thanks, @Davidprior: clearly you could, but I don't think I could. Hayttom (talk) 17:29, 3 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Engineers tuning an OS for a specific laptop

Besides the obvious mention of Macs, does any company tune an OS to a specific hardware? Or is an autonomous setting and configuration program all you can get from an OS installation? Does this make any difference in terms of stability, speed and so on? Hofhof (talk) 19:16, 2 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Mysterious key on Microsoft All-In-One Media Keyboard

Dear Wikipedians:

Shown here is a mysterious key from my Microsoft All-In-One Media Keyboard. I don't recognize the logogram other than it being similar to Ubuntu's logo (but not quite Ubuntu's logo). I am wondering what this key does. (Of course I'm aware what the F6 key does, my question is what the function represented by the logogram does)

Thanks so much for all your help!

L33th4x0r (talk) 19:56, 2 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It means share media. Source: Microsoft --Hofhof (talk) 20:59, 2 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Hofhof for all your help! L33th4x0r (talk) 13:48, 4 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

April 3

Whether good for screen printing

Is this transparent [10] paper good for drawing stencils for screen printing ?124.253.1.22 (talk) 08:31, 3 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It's not paper, it's polyester. It doesn't specify what the surface is, but OHP film is usually clear and shiny, not matte like tracing paper. You can do a lot with this stuff, including screen printing onto it - but success will depend on the types of ink you're using. Water-based inks are unlikely to work well.

Ask the ink makers what they're usable on, including smooth polyester (aka Mylar). Andy Dingley (talk) 09:50, 3 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe I'm misreading, but it seems more likely that they mean to use the material only as the stencil. The ink would actually adhere to the t-shirt or whatever they're printing onto. Having the ink not adhere to the stencil material would actually be a bit of a benefit as it would allow for easier re-use. Matt Deres (talk) 16:44, 4 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

April 4

digital textual analysis

You want to search the other similar instances or slightly modified versions of a given piece of text from digital text available online from various sources. Like a statute on proportional representation, where hundreds of statutes written all over the English speaking world has clauses which are very similar or exactly alike. The purpose could be that you want to remove some corruption some clause has acquired over years or through various statutes. Or it could be to see if some thing has been plagiarised from some source. It is not exactly non-linear reading. It is more than that. What do you call this process? --Skillguru (talk) 12:25, 4 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Some of the links in the article-section Plagiarism_detection#Approaches, might bring you close to what you're looking for. Hope this helps. ApLundell (talk) 17:20, 4 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Also look at Semantic similarity and links thereof. --Hofhof (talk) 17:26, 4 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed the link. I wish the Wiki software would automatically figure these out. ApLundell (talk) 20:01, 4 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Pivot tables in Excel

When you create a pivot table, there is an option you can check that will "Add this data to the Data Model" (it's unchecked by default). Among other things, if you check that box, the resulting pivot table can then perform "count unique" functions, at least as of 2013 and later versions. I have a situation I'm trying to resolve and I can think of two possible ways to address it, but neither seems to be working for me. I've got a functioning pivot table (made with that option un-checked) that I then grab data from using GETPIVOTDATA. I need to do the exact same thing, but to a pivot that includes a "count unique" column.

a) Is there a way to "update" an existing pivot table so that it acts as if the box was checked at creation? I can't seem to find a way and it's difficult to search on because it doesn't have a specific term for it.

b) If I forget about trying to update my pivot table and just make a new one with the box checked, the GETPIVOTDATA formulas I use no longer work; I just get #REF! error messages. I can re-target the formulas however I like, I can delete the old pivot tab first, I can rename stuff; it just doesn't seem to matter - I can't avoid that error message.

Any thoughts? I can't help feeling like there's something really obvious I'm doing wrong (I don't often use GETPIVOTDATA), but I'm stymied. Matt Deres (talk) 19:07, 4 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

What's included in phone data download charges?

I have a Samsung Galaxy S6 and my wife has an S5. The provider is Verizon. I'm unsure what is counted as part of the metered "data download." Does it make a difference whether I have WiFi on?

In other words, am I charged for everything that comes through the phone? What about phone calls themselves, and text? text with pictures? Does it cost more if no WiFi is available? Thanks for clarifying. --Halcatalyst (talk) 23:51, 4 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]