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April 14

Apache+PHP Data Visualization Program

In our bimonthly meeting, there was a discussion that management wants a tool on our "intraweb" that can be used to visualize our spreadsheets. IT contracting services said that the county has spent 20 years investing and building everything using Apache+PHP and that there are no commercially available visualization tools for that architecture. They want us to contract with them to completely nuke and rebuild the intraweb with all new architecture. I simply don't trust the IT contractors. Are they correct? Is there something that can be installed on the intraweb that will take data from spreadsheets or a database and allow a user to develop visualizations? 68.187.174.155 (talk) 13:07, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What is your operating system? Apparently not ChromeOS, Linux, macOS or Microsoft Windows, otherwise you could just install any of several data visualization apps – but not all will work on all platforms. Also, if you can run Python, it does not take a great effort to create a visualization tool using existing Python libraries that will meet your needs. But if you are held captive by a custom-built operating environment, you may be out of luck for the remaining lifespan of the universe. ‑‑Lambiam 09:52, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding is that my local computer's operating system does not matter because I access the intraweb using a web browser. I have Windows on my computer, but what I see looks identical to the Mac users using their web browser. There is a Linux computer that IT uses. The interweb looks identical there using their web browser. Are you stating that to add visualization functionality to a website, every user has to install software on his or her own computer? That does not seem accurate because I know that I can go to many websites where I can paste in data and view a chart or graph without installing anything on my computer. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 11:46, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Your original question did not supply enough information to define the situation. If I understand correctly, now there is a website, served by a Linux-Apache/PHP-based server (perhaps using LAMP?), that employees access via the intranet of your employer. So do you wish to upload a local file with spreadsheet data via a web form to the server to view a visualization of the data in the browser? Or is the spreadsheet data on the server and you can view this in the browser as a table of rows and colums with cells, but you want to have a more visual representation? In either case, I do not understand why this should be a problem. The software may not come prepackaged with a visualizer, but I'd think that any data visualization tool that runs under Linux, also when written in Python, can be accessed by CGI scripting in PHP. ‑‑Lambiam 23:07, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

PS. Not knowing how you want what kind of data visualized, it is not possible to recommend a specific tool out of the dozens of available data visualization tools, but very likely at least one of this recently updated list of Top 8 Python Libraries for Data Visualization will be a good fit for your organization's needs. ‑‑Lambiam 21:26, 17 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is not a request for me to do visualizations. It is a curiosity. Group A asked group B for added functionality on their website that would allow them to select data and make visualizations similar to Tableau or Power BI. Group B said that the web server is Apache with PHP and that there is absolutely no product available that would work with Apache and PHP. So, I asked if that is true or if there is a product, mainly because I don't trust group B. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 14:20, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

By "you" I did not mean you, the OP, personally, but your organization. The server version of Tableau will run on Linux, but I do not know if it can be configured to serve up web pages. Anyway, I hope that my reply has sufficiently satisfied your curiosity. ‑‑Lambiam 20:16, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What happens if a text is sent to my landline?

Could that be what is causing all these calls where no one leaves a message on my machine?— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 23:10, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That depends on your provider. I suggest you try it and see what happens. In my experience, one of two things happen:

1. Nothing and the SMS remains "undelivered".

2. The provider has a "Text to Voice" feature that calls the line and "reads" the SMS when answered.

Alien878 (talk) 07:24, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think I've had the second situation.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 22:55, 17 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

April 17

Wikipedia problem or Chrome problem?

In going to a page like Talk:China and clicking on an item in the table of contents, all used to be fine. I'd click one of the topics and it would take me to that topic. It still does that in Firefox and Opera. But in Chrome it now usually goes to the topic for a split second and then goes to the bottom of the talk page. Scroll up to the table of contents and pick a new topic and it does the same thing. If I keep going to the same topic all is well. All was fine a day or two ago. It's possible my Chrome did some update but perhaps someone here could confirm if it's me or wikipedia issues? Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:54, 17 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'll leave this here in case someone else has issues. Right after posting this Chrome did a quick auto update (now version 135.0.7049.96) and the issue seems to have been corrected. I guess a Chrome issue. Cheers. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:59, 17 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Before you go

How does a web site give you a list of topics you might be interested in when clicking on "Back" should take you to where you were before the web site, not to a list of topics on that web site?— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 22:57, 17 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So which website/webpage in which browser? Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:45, 18 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Any website can insert one or more web pages into your history using the history.pushState function. So, when you visit one of the web sites, they insert a page into your history. When you click 'back', you go back to the previous page in your history, which is the one that was inserted. There is nothing stopping them from stuffing your history with thousands of pages to keep you from going back other than general ethics. I do not know of any options in web browsers to stop the annoyance. Apparently, using a private or incognito mode disables your history all together, which prevents it. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 14:24, 18 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Private browsing actually doesn't change anything.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:10, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There's also a function (similar in experience, but different programmatically) where moving your cursor to the top left or top right of your screen (i.e. towards either the back button or the close window icon) initiates the site's "before you go..." content. The people who create such actions will be some of the first against the wall when the revolution comes and none but their mothers will weep for them. Matt Deres (talk) 16:11, 18 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Web site developers alter default behavior of the browser. They handle DOM events, and provide additional features to users. They do it because they notice it in the analytics data that some users actually use such feature.

See DOM event#Stopping events and DOM event#Canceling events manya (talk) 06:03, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

April 18

Why does referer spoofing no longer work in 2025?

our article referer spoofing still says "Several software tools exist to facilitate referer spoofing in web browsers. Some are extensions to popular browsers such as Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer, which may provide facilities to customise and manage referrer URLs for each website the user visits." however I can't find any on the Mozilla extension catalogue. so why doesn't referer spoofing work in 2025 and is it still possible to referer spoof? also should the quote be removed from the article? Therapyisgood (talk) 21:20, 18 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would suspect a lack of extensions likely means less that it's no longer possible and more that Mozilla does not want to encourage it, so it's probably removed from the extension catalogue for ToS violations or the like. Sesquilinear (talk) 03:01, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I found this extension for Firefox that allows you to do it. I haven't tried it so install at your own risk. Pinguinn 🐧 04:56, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I looked at a few old and discontinued extension products. Putting the notes together, it appears tha the idea is pointless because the big search engines don't use it. Instead, they track you using cookies. If you go from site A to site B and try to spoof it claiming you went from site C to site B, the tracking cookies will accurately show your real activity. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 14:16, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That seems to be the case. However, it's also fairly trivial in most browsers to block third party cookies, and many now do it by default. That would probably be the referer spoofing equivalent of 2025. Pinguinn 🐧 20:22, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

April 22

Blue Sky terms and conditions

Hello, does the Blue Sky social network terms and conditions allow to post a feed of new drafts made in Wikipedia about a particular topic - say I would like to highlight effort of a particular Wikiproject, or a developer who makes tools for wiki editing?

And what about posting feed of an ebay user with links to items they put for sale today?

Thanks Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 21:22, 22 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Courtesy link: https://bsky.social/about/support/tos (I'm sure someone will have a legal opinion whether its allowed or not, but that's not what we do here.) 196.50.199.218 (talk) 05:04, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Gryllida When anyone publishes anything (inclding a draft) on Wikipedia, they are informed (directly above the "publish" button) that "By publishing changes, you agree to the Terms of Use, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC BY-SA 4.0 License and the GFDL." So there should be nothing on the Blue Sky page or website that contradicts that. Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:45, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

i mean not in copyright sense but in "is this allowed here" sense Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 11:33, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Context is everything. Let's be social media platform agnostic for a moment. I could conceivably post a link (on my app of choice) to YOUR user page on Wikipedia. No problem there. I've seen your page. However, if you were receiving some financial gain or promoting disinformation (or any of a 1000 reasons) I think the moderators would be all over you in a flash. What would a reasonable person do? 41.246.129.103 (talk) 18:47, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My platform moderators would be all over me too. 41.246.129.103 (talk) 18:52, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

April 25

Which DBMS is the fastest of these three for frequent CRUD queries, MS SQL Server, MySQL or Postgres?

Ignore licensing costs. Félix An (talk) 03:13, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect this would depend heavily on your server details, exact workload, configuration, etc. Sesquilinear (talk) 05:30, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The current version of Comparison of relational database management systems never uses the word 'fastest'. Probably for good reasons. -- Verbarson ^talk_edits 21:07, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It may depend on who does the testing, or how they do it. That said, here are some findings:

"While more recent benchmark tests show that other RDBMSs like PostgreSQL can match or at least come close to MySQL in terms of speed, MySQL still holds a reputation as an exceedingly fast database solution."^[1]
"If you need a highly scalable database management system that is optimized for high-speed read and write operations, MySQL or MS SQL Server may be the better choice."^[2]
"Performance: MySQL is designed for high-performance data processing and can handle high traffic websites and applications with ease. SQL Server offers good performance but requires more system resources and hardware to achieve the same level of performance as MySQL."^[3]
"Performance — Both SQL Server and MySQL provide the same level of performance and speed. They utilize indexes to sort data and accelerate performance and can host several databases on a single server. However, according to an analysis performed by IJARCCE, the SQL server performed better than MySQL regarding response time. Other than INSERT queries, it was consistently faster for other tests. SQL server also scales faster than MySQL."^[4]

It seems that one may tentatively conclude that among these three RDMSs, MS SQL Server and MySQL are the main contenders, and that MySQL will be faster if INSERT operations predominate amongst the CRUD.

Is there a reason for not including MonetDB^[5] in the comparison? ‑‑Lambiam 13:51, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

AI refusing to add singers to animated image

In Deevid.ai, I've recently tried to add Freddie Mercury to a would-be animated photo of two people and instead got some random dude added. Rewording the prompt was unsuccessful. Then I tried Pollo.ai and for some reason got the message about sensitive and harmful content. Also tried to rephrase the prompt like "add Queen's frontman" and got the same. Then I tried to add Elvis Presley, also unsuccessfully in both websites. Any idea why this is happening?

On top of that, ChatGPT, when asked to add Freddie in the background to the same photo, redrawed the entire photo in a cartoonish style, despite being clearly prompted not to retouch the rest. Brandmeister^talk 07:55, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like deepfake prevention. Aaron Liu (talk) 11:23, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

First create an image yourself that combines a photo of the late Mr. Mercury on one side with your photo of the two people on the other side. This can be done with almost any image editor. Upload it and beseech your artificial interlocutor to merge the left and right sides of the photo to a single-scene image in a specified way (photorealistic; the three people sharing the stage; the three side-by-side / one or the other more to the front / ...; ...). ‑‑Lambiam 12:29, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, could be a bypass. Adding Freddie manually via Photoshop looked tedious for me. Brandmeister^talk 08:31, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

April 26

If I’ve a small Smalltalk program, how do I turn it into an image ?

Simple question : let’s say for example I’ve an Hello World to a text file, I know this isn’t very smalltalkish but how do I turn the code into an image I can run ? 2A01:E0A:ACF:90B0:0:0:A03F:E788 (talk) 15:17, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Can you please clarify? I don't understand how you can "run" an image, but a screenshot will turn the code into an image. Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:28, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

One of the meanings of image is "executable". ‑‑Lambiam 10:23, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What is your OS? For example Dolphin Smalltalk claims it can produce standalone Windows executables. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 12:08, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

April 27

How are old songs available in 4K resolution on YouTube?

How are music videos released or uploaded before YouTube's July 2010 announcement of 4K support, such as Justin Bieber's "Baby" (released Feb 2010) and Mariah Carey's "Honey" (uploaded Nov 2009), now available in 4K resolution on the platform? HarryOrange (talk) 17:23, 27 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

YouTube has actually allowed them to go back and replace the original video with a new one. Normal users can't do that, but both Carey and Bieber use Vevo, so I have to assume YouTube has offered a special method of doing that just for them. Another example of this kind of reupload taking place was with Thriller, where it was replaced with a fully remastered version from the original film reels. The official Michael Jackson site links to the original music video when it announced this in 2023, but YouTube still says that video was uploaded in October 2009. So clearly in 2023 the original video file was switched out, but the views, comments, and upload date remained. Pinguinn 🐧 06:06, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

April 28