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October 16

Lost Icon for Google Chrome

On my Samsung Galaxy A15, the icon for Google Chrome has disappeared from my screen. I may have accidentally deleted the icon. It is still installed. If I have launched it, I can switch to it, and on starting up my phone, I can open it by going through the Apps listing in the Settings, but I would like to have an icon for it. How do I put an icon back on the desktop of an Android phone when the app is installed but doesn't have an icon? Robert McClenon (talk) 02:59, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

There are multiple choices for the home screen on Samsung Galaxy phones. Every home screen setup is different. In some, you long-hold the icon in the apps list until the home screen appears and then drag/drop it where you want it. In others, you long-hold the background of the home screen, then select a location, and select an app to drop on that location. There are other methods for other home screens. If you can state what you are using, it is easier to give specific instructions. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 13:23, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Bitcoin friendlies needed

Disclaimer: I have $41,000 CAD in 20:1 leverage forex trading accounts and 0.3 bitcoin in a wallets.

This issue was brought up in an online bitcoin group: Talk:CNBC#2024_AFF_Bitcoin_Coverup. Somebody moved 29,000 government bitcoin two days after Trump's July 27/2024 speech to Hodl all coins.

The 230,000 bitcoin should be on the books of the Assets Forfeiture Fund. The last fiscal year for the fund was Sept 30/24. The 2023 audit seems to have been published January/2024. https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/reports/24-018_0.pdf From page 1: "KPMG reported one significant deficiency in the FY 2023 Independent Auditors’ Report, noting that improvements are needed in controls over seized property and forfeiture revenue."

Sovereign_immunity_in_the_United_States#Actions_taken_in_bad_faith "Typically if a party can demonstrate that the government intentionally acted wrongly with the sole purpose of causing damages, that party can recover for injury or economic losses."

Many in the bitcoin world are wondering who and why those with access crashed the bitcoin price, and more so, why there is no mainstream media coverage. CNBC has been pressured to at least state they will investigate. It has been reported to the FBI as either misuse for financial gain, or election tampering. A report was also filed with the Office of Inspector General (United States) which is "...charged with identifying, auditing, and investigating fraud, waste, abuse, embezzlement and mismanagement of any kind within the executive department.

The main question is: If mainstream media doesn't expose it, the FBI and the Office of Inspector General don't act, then what would be a good recourse?

References

Music Air BB (talk) 06:57, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

I must confess I understand nothing or very little of the above, but am nevertheless fairly sure that your main question is not about computing, information technology, electronics, software, or hardware. Also note that we cannot offer legal advice. If you believe you have been wronged, perhaps you should talk to a lawyer. If a whole class of people has been wronged, there is such a thing as class action. A competent lawyer should be able to determine whether this is appropriate in this case.  --Lambiam 15:58, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Cryptocurrency is a speculative investment, and is designed to be non-transparent, and to make it difficult to trace. This also makes it difficult to trace the actions of other investors that might have influenced the price. One reason why mainstream media do not report on the fluctuations in the value of cryptocurrency is that they know that it is a speculative non-transparent investment that is difficult to understand and more difficult to report on. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:26, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

The US government wallets are transparent. https://www.arkhamintelligence.com/ reported it on x, with the transactions records from the blockchain. They did the same with the German state of Saxony when they crashed the price with a very retarded move. Anyone with access to the Assets Forfeiture Fund should have known that their hoard is large enough to crash the price with any hint of movement. I can picture some fool on that fateful Monday setting up a transfer, checking their plan with the small test bit, then WHAM! lets see if A: I have the power, B: My power over the hoard can move the price, C: Will I be held to task on it, D: Will I have 15 minutes of fame hit main stream media and make me infamous. E: etc. One person could have done it, or a group decision, and both would benefit in many ways. My main query is why are only crypto groups concerned about blinded Americans that allow this blatant wrong to happen without asking why and what should the consequences be. I will contact large groups of lawyers like the Republican National Lawyers Association and its Dem equal; BlackRock legals, Microstrategy legals, etc. I could go on to list many more notable groups that would champion this. The reason I posted on this desk is for intelligent and politically neutral input.Music Air BB (talk) 00:34, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

I'll let you judge whether my input is "intelligent" or not: Most people who took Bitcoin seriously at the beginning, continue to do so with the sober realisation that people, corporations, and states, are free to manipulate the price and do so very regularly - up and down, up and down. The premise of the distributed ledger is that code is law. That said, as you pointed out, real law still exists and people can still be prosecuted for theft, misappropriation, etc. even if the code allowed them to. However, they act in the same global anarchy that allowed things like the plunder of Iraq.

Because of that, and the fact that it would be difficult to actually attribute, in a court, the price movement to the suggested causes, I think the effect of legal action would be tepid. Maybe the same energy should be focused on making sure the government in question, is more transparent in the future about why it issues cryptocurrency transactions, each time it does. Komonzia (talk) 21:04, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

File:Trump DOJ BTC chart2024 Q3Q4.jpg

The government in question, should more transparent in the future about why it issues cryptocurrency transactions, each time it does. This is called open and transparent democracy and not global anarchy. The Asset Forfeiture Program was illegally abused on Monday, July 29. People around the world lost money because of it and the price has still not recovered. Most countries have access to the FBI toll free numbers and should be demanding an investigation or at least a reason/excuse. A simple phone call to the DOJ from an FBI agent would clarify if any wrong doing was done and result in a statement by anyone in government as to why. Music Air BB (talk) 18:51, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

I mean, I agree, but the fact that many 'question-mark' points on the above graph are of a similar order of magnitude to the area where the crypto was moved demonstrates my point that correlation is not causation. Although, people in the US are being prosecuted and convicted for market manipulation in crypto markets, so if the rule of law is still a thing, one would expect it can at least make it to a court. It wouldn't be the first time that a deputy US Marshal acted in their own interest.

By the way - I never said bitcoiners are in favour of global anarchy. Just observing that, like the tenacious honeybadger, the hardcore ones stick with it regardless of what manipulation they think is going on, and while being fully aware that it may sometimes halve / quarter in price because of something specific that doesn't affect the fundamental integrity of the protocol, or just randomly. From this point of view, people who think they lost money should have had the same expectations.

To further avoid misunderstanding, when I said "they" act in global anarchy, I meant the state.

With each reply, this thread gets more off topic. So would kindly suggest taking the question to a different website entirely because I can't think of an appropriate venue on this one. Komonzia (talk) 19:06, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

• OP is a sock evading a block. Suggest this be archived. Girth Summit _(blether) 16:52, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Microsoft Access Database Sharing and Lockout

I have four Microsoft Access databases on my Windows 11 desktop computer, and have sharing set up with my Windows 11 laptop computer. After I had been using one of the databases on my laptop computer, I went to my desktop computer and tried to open it. I got the message: Microsoft Access The database has been placed in a state by user 'Admin' on machine 'GANESHA' that prevents it from being opened or locked.

That obviously means that the laptop computer (and my computers have mythological names) has locked the database for exclusive use. I walked over to the laptop computer and closed the database. I have had the databases open by Access on both the desktop computer and the laptop computer at the same time in the past without a locking conflict. So my questions are, first, what actions that I do on one computer will cause it to lock the database exclusively so that the other computer cannot open it? Second, once this happens, is there anything that I can to unlock it other than closing the database? (I know that isn't difficult when the computers are in adjoining rooms. I know. I know.) Robert McClenon (talk) 18:28, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

October 17

Search field is tiny and auto suggestions not working

This morning my browser (Chrome) crashed for some unknown reason. I reinstalled it and everything in every application is behaving normally, except here on Wikipedia, the "Search Wikipedia" field in the upper right corner on the Legacy Vector skin is very small now. The field for entering categories on WP:HotCat are also small now. The edit window however and the subject field above this edit window I'm typing in now, are all normal.

Also when adding edit summaries the "auto-suggestion" (not sure the correct term?) does not work at all now. When I start typing, there is no suggestion filling in from previously typed edit summaries. It's not just the old one were lost, new ones are not being regenerated.

As far as I can tell, these problems seem to be only happening on Wikipedia. Search fields on other websites I checked seem to function and look normal. For example, on YouTube, my previous searches start popping up as soon as I start typing, just like it always has.

My laptop (MacBook) I don't even remember how old it is now; well, I've already bought a new one. So if this is not an easy fix, I'm ditching this ancient machine. --DB1729^talk 00:04, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Some questions to help understand/resolve the issue:

• Do you have any Chrome extensions, what are they?
  • Try making a brand new Chrome profile, see here for steps: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2364824 -- Don't sync it with any Google account. The new profile would normally have separate settings and extensions to your main one.
  • Try Wikipedia as an anonymous IP editor on your fresh profile, test the issue, then log in, test the issue again.
  • If the issue doesn't happen at all, it was probably a setting in Chrome or an extension you had. Even if you reinstall Chrome, some settings may have been left behind or sync'd from Google.
  • If the issue only happens after you log into Wikipedia on your fresh test profile, that means it's something related to your Wikipedia settings, such as your skin or scripts.
• If that doesn't help, can you post a screenshot of the issue? You can use imgur or imgbb or some other service you already know.

Regarding MacBooks - you could consider putting Linux on the older MacBook if it is out of support (apparently they support them for 7 years), to get some more use out of it without disposing of it. Komonzia (talk) 18:26, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

October 18

Removing a tab-related toolbar from Firefox

I have used Firefox on Linux for years, and I hate tabs and never deliberately use them. Previously I set up a userChrome.css file with

  #tabbrowser-tabs { visibility: collapse !important; }

to eliminate the toolbar that displays open tabs even if I only have one of them. But now that I have Firefox 131, I find a new tab-related toolbar taking up space. Specifically, at the top of my Firefox window I see a title bar (good); then a menu bar with File, Edit, etc. (good); then this new toolbar; and then the location bar (good). The new toolbar contains nothing but a single icon, and hovering over this produces the explanation "List all tabs".

How can I get rid of this new toolbar? I tried using "Customize Toolbar" and dragging the one icon out of it, but this had no effect at all.

Thanks for your attention. --142.112.141.16 (talk) 05:42, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Does this Mozilla support thread help? It suggests #TabsToolbar-customization-target { visibility: collapse !important; }.  Card Zero  (talk) 14:39, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

That makes it go away even if I do have tabs (for example if I do Tools -> Add-Ons and Themes), but I can live with that. Thanks. --142.112.141.16 (talk) 07:11, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure if these do exactly what you want, but there are also plenty of browser extensions for Firefox that let you add/modify all manner of browser behavior including tab behavior: get em at "AMO" as it's often abbreviated (this is the same place the browser pulls stuff from when you go to "Extensions"/"Addons" in Firefox's hamburger menu or in the old-school titlebar menu or browser's Settings screen). For stuff for working with browser tabbing search for "tab". Tab Mix Plus is one of the oldest and most venerable Firefox extensions—in fact it long predates WebExtensions, the original version being tightly-coupled into Firefox's source code, which no longer runs on modern Firefox builds, though the WebExt "alpha development version" is available for you to give a whirl if inclined --Slowking Man (talk) 15:40, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Disabling 2FA

I have 2fa enabled on my android smartphone and need to disable it on one phone and renewable it on a new phone. I have access to the authenticator on the old phone and have access to the codes . My old phone is dying and need to enable it on the new phone. Can someone help change it to the new phone? fr33kman 16:57, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Which authenticator app are you using? Depending on the generation method and the app in question, it might be possible to export the seeds used to generate the codes. Otherwise, you'll have to log in to each account (?) that has 2fa enabled and switch them over to your new phone individually. FifthFive (talk) 17:51, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

October 19

Unformat: Why doesn't Windows let undo the "format" (or "quick format") command, although it was possible in MS-DOS?

HOTmag (talk) 19:28, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

In DOS 6, if you were using a FAT formatted drive, the FORMAT /Q command would not actually format the disk. It would copy the file allocation table to an unused area of the disk and replace it with an empty file allocation table. As long as you don't use the drive at all, you can unformat the disk to copy the file allocation table back. When Windows 95 was released, the unformat command was dropped. At that time, and now, there are many data recovery tools available and the Windows mindset is to only go into areas where it can be "the" market. If there is too much competition, Microsoft puts effort into other things. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 19:55, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

As long as you don't use the drive at all, you can unformat the disk to copy the file allocation table back. Do you have any practical suggestion of undoing a "quick format" in Windows? HOTmag (talk) 20:54, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

(programmer here with some OS/FS knowledge) MS-DOS used FAT, a very rudimentary file system (as did microcomputer OSes generally at the time, when processing power and disk space were so limited). In that simple FS, there's just that allocation table, and...not much else. Simply copying an area of the disk to another is easy—I mean, that's a basic function a filesystem does whenever you copy a file. (PS this makes it easy for the FS to get trashed, potentially losing all your data, as happened to many people) Modern Windows uses NTFS, a more "modern", advanced, and thus complex FS (which also is much better at not losing your data and doing various advanced things like shadow copy, online backups, RAID distributed volume clusters etc etc).

There is no "file allocation table" in NTFS. Instead there's a "Master File Table" which is a relational database storing the fundamental info about the FS. But simply copying this is not enough to "restore" the FS if anything has been done to it in the meanwhile (The computer has no way of knowing whether or not this is the case. Note this was true of MS-DOS as well, it just played fast-and-loose with your data and decided if it thought it was fine "well, looks okay, you might wanna run chkdsk to be sure though")

The MFT does not store the location of all the data making up files in the FS. It only stores enough info to look up the "head nodes" of the B-tree graph data structure, which is how the data in the FS is organized. Looking up a file's data involves walking the graph structure to look up the clusters containing the file data. (These could even be on multiple different physical storage devices like in clustered volumes, frequently used in "enterprise computing". Remember when your bank lost all your money and account info because their hard drives crashed and they lost their data and their computer systems were offline for days? No?) Yeah this kind of stuff is the sort of stuff theoretical computer science is about—applied math such as graph theory is one big aspect of it.

All "modern FSes" (ext4, XFS, ZFS, btrfs, APFS etc) use various techniques and structures along these broad lines. Much faster, flexible and extensible, conserves space reliable all that jazz. But the tradeoff is more complexity. The MFT doesn't "know" itself where all the data is located for all the files (unlike the FAT in, well, FAT). It just has a "map" for how to get started looking up that stuff. But now imagine a bunch of that stuff is moved without the MFT being updated about it. Now you have to basically go through the entire FS checking that it's in a "consistent" state and repairing it if it isn't. And the computer has no idea whether or not this happened...so it has to do that regardless to be sure. And that's why things are a little more complicated than "just copy this one thing back and forth". Similarly, bringing an Airbus A380 back to "ready-to-fly" status after having it parked in a hangar for a while, is a little more involved than for a Cessna.

PS if you care at all about your data (if you would be upset if I deleted it right now then that means you care about it) back it up, frequently, to multiple places. Set up automatic backups, but periodically make manual ones too. Storage is so cheap these days there's no good excuse not to. If you have only one copy of something you reallt have zero copies of that something. You can't go back in time after you lose something and then make sure you saved it. (This doesn't have to be from hardware/software failure necessarily. "Are you SURE you want to overwrite this file?") --Slowking Man (talk) 03:49, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for this thorough answer. A bit disappointing one, though, because I haven't backed up my disk... But of course you deserve a barnstar for your professional reply.

To sum up, practically speaking, do you think you can suggest any advice to a user who wishes to undo a recent "quick format" she has carried out (in Windows OS), if nothing has been done to the disk for the time being? HOTmag (talk) 09:10, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Somehow this helped me understand why a partition on my disk was still accessible (sort of) the same after something started wiping it (it could be viewed and accessed from another partition after some attempts to restore the MFT) AND why trying to fix the MFT didn't fix the partition in question (it never booted again), even though we never figured out what was exactly wrong. Weird closure 10 to 12 years later. - Purplewowies (talk) 02:40, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Sure, this is a frequent one. (To save yourself time, just ask that to begin with, instead of for info about how you think you might go about doing a thing. Maybe that way will turn out to not be the best way to go about accomplishing the thing.)

Necessary pre-note: if these steps seem too complex and you're unconfident in your ability to follow them, and the data is anything you don't want to lose, the best course of action really is to find a professional and pay them to apply their expertise to your problem, sorry. If you needed to replace an electrical outlet or do an oil change on a vehicle, and didn't think you were capable of doing so correctly per instructions, you'd hire a professional to do it for you, right?

Expanding on Data recovery § Four phases of data recovery here. Ideal first steps:

1. If the drive is still plugged into anything, unplug the cables to the drive temporarily. If that can't be done kill the power to the entire thing the drive is in (with a "hard" shut down eg by holding down the power button or yanking the power cord from the wall, not something like hitting "Shut down" in Windows). Yes, trust me on this one. If the drive is still "seen" by a running computer system, that system might be doing things in the background to it you aren't even aware of, overwriting some of your precious data! Then the parts which got overwritten really are lost forever, sorry.
2. "Clone" the drive (or partition/volume) onto another physical device with disk cloning software. Making a copy. Clonezilla is nifty and simple and can be "livebooted" directly, but you'll need something like a USB flash drive and a running computer to copy Clonezilla to that USB drive. Diskgenius is powerful if you want something in a Windows environment though it's not the most user-friendly (geared towards "computer people"). Ideally do this multiple times to different devices! Further operations are done on this copy, so that the intact original master copy is still there safely untouched, to be gone back to if necessary.

The above steps really are the best things to do and not doing them is taking more risks with that data. (If you don't care about the data, why even bother trying to recover it to begin with? Other than for "fun"/self-educational experience perhaps.) You accept the risks if not following them, caveat emptor and all.

3. Fire up some data recovery software and point it at that copy of the disk or volume. DMDE, Recuva, MiniTool are some of the best ones w/ a Windows GUI. SystemRescue is great stuff, bootable Linux-based system. Photorec is good, command line interface however ...Hey, speaking of command line Microsoft released their own file recovery tool finally, good on them, like I said command line only.
4. Anything that stuff can't recover, is gone forever assuming there's no copy of it elsewhere, just as if something existed only as a single paper copy and then got chucked into a volcano. Software isn't magic, it's just instructions to a machine.

Final step: set up automatic backup of stuff you care about. Remote cloud storage is cheap these days. Ideally also make "physical backups" onto other storage devices. Set a schedule for yourself. (With a bit of work and resources you could also set up a "live" "backup appliance" server for yourself to do automatic backups in the background.) If you have physical objects precious to you, you likely do something like buy a safe or rent a safe deposit box for them right? Personal "cloud" recommendation: pCloud, Swiss company, great pricing and features. (Not a huge ad budget.) It's difficult to have too many copies of stuff you care about unless you get really crazy. --Slowking Man (talk) 18:14, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Ah, also, as the file recovery article mentions, if a file's data is merely partially overwritten but not fully, the not overwritten stuff often can be recovered. Difficulty: sometimes automated tools (like the ones mentioned) can handle it and that's all you need. But if it's absolutely necessary that every last byte which can be, is recovered, the real hard cases can require understanding the fine details of computer data and storage and file formats, binary or hexadecimal arithmetic, dropping into a hex editor and manually "bit-twiddling" to repair corrupted files all that fun exciting stuff. Familiar with the terms big-endian and little-endian? (Another thing pros can take care of, though the ones who do understand that stuff and do it well tend in the pricier direction. Need someone with a bit more expertise than a youngster with a laptop who knows how to pop open a copy of Acronis and click the buttons.) Slowking Man (talk) 18:26, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanksss, I will try it tomorrow. and will report the results. For the time being, I've only carried out the first step, because it seems to be the most urgent one. HOTmag (talk) 19:07, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

I previously noted that "unformat" isn't a thing anymore. File recovery is not "unformat". It allows you to collect files. Often, the file names are lost, but you can still get the files, rename them, and place them on another drive. It simply isn't unformatting. You are not unformatting the hard drive. You are finding files that are still intact on the previously formatted drive and copying them. My experience is that people do not want that. They don't want a long list of every file they had on their computer (all the dll files and exe files and tmp files...). They want to literally unformat the hard drive and have it be exactly as it was before they formatted it. For that reason, I stated that unformatting does not exist. What I do when a person finally gives up on unformatting is I look for all docx, xlsx, pdf, etc... files and place them on a USB drive. They aren't happy about it, but at least it gets them their files back. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 15:41, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

With some of the most widely-used "Unix-style FSes", such as ext2/3/4, if you're lucky and the superblock simply got stomped on somehow (like something writing to the start of the volume (triple-check those dd commands before executing, folks)), you can just copy one of the backup copies from the intact part (or from a FS backup copy!) which could be thought of as a kind of "unformat" (in fact e2fsprogs has a command to do this). (And then fsck for good measure in fact I think the fs code might force this when mounting.) And F2FS is a log-structured FS so all the FS metadata that didn't get overwritten is there intact, just repair the FS to a consistent state and good to go.

The reason that doesn't work on NTFS is the core "map" to the file data on-drive, and a lot of file metadata including file names, is centralized in the MFT. Unless the MFT is at least partly-intact and can be rebuilt, *boop* all that's gone. In a "Unix FS" by contrast, file metadata incl names is stored in the directory files. For /foo/bar, the root directory file contains the file metadata entry for foo (of the "directory" type), then foo's file data contain the metadata entry for bar giving you what inode number the "bar" link points at. ("Low-level", a file, to the FS, exists as an inode and the data the inode points at. The inode # is the unique ID. File names are just "link" entries in dirs that point at inodes. Hence why a file can be ref'd by multiple hard links: they just point to the same inode #.) The sblock just defines the basic fs layout (for ex block size).

(If an ext4 fs was reformatted w/ default opts but never mounted, only the sblocks and group descriptor tables will be "re-initalized". The inode structures are initalized "lazily" in the bkgr by the kernel, post-mount. With a little FS surgery it's possible for someone who knows how to reconstruct the vital parts of the prior sblock, and e2fsprogs will take care of the rest) --Slowking Man (talk) 00:50, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

October 21

Debian version

I have a laptop that until an hour ago was running Debian 10 aka Buster, which is two versions before the current "Bookworm" release. I updated it to Debian 11 (Bullseye), rebooted, then updated the Bullseye to Bookworm. That seems to be working fine. But when I looked at the version numbers of all the installed programs, it sure looks to me like the Bookworm upgrade actually installed the current unstable/testing version aka Trixie. For example, typing "python3" says 3.11.2, and so on, per here.

Any idea what is going on? I'm less upset than I am puzzled. I thought that version updates of individual packages only was supposed to happen at new Debian releases.

Output of "uname -a" is:

Linux boxname 6.1.0-26-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.1.112-1 (2024-09-30) x86_64 GNU/Linux

I wrote "boxname" instead of the box's actual name. Also, /etc/debian_version says 12.7 which is what I expected. Thanks.

2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:8FFA (talk) 04:55, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

I have recently upgraded to trixie and now have python 3.12. /etc/debian_version says trixie/sid. There are a number of inconsistencies in those release notes: bookworm was already at python 3.11, trixie now has gcc 14.2.0 and perl 5.28.2, both higher than what is stated on that web page. And uname gives 6.10.11-amd64. I think you are fine. --Wrongfilter (talk) 05:15, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, I might check when Bookworm was released, but I expected that back then, gcc, python3, etc. would be on earlier versions than what I see now in 12.7. Trixie Stable is probably some months a way so I plan to stay on Bookworm for now. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:8FFA (talk) 00:32, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

1-bit music

In the 1980s, Tim Follin created a lot of 1-bit music. It can be heard here.

Our chiptune article lacks technical details. Though 8-bit music redirects there, the meaning isn't explained. Presumably each sample has an amplitude from 0 to 255. That characteristic alone wouldn't cause music to sound very distinctive, though, just low-quality, so perhaps "chiptune" is indeed a better name.

But anyway that isn't 1-bit music. I presume that in 1-bit music, each sample has 1 bit and thus is either fully on or fully off. This could produce square waves of different frequencies, and by mixing them, chords.

What puzzles me is how Tim Follin apparently modulates amplitude. For instance, the piece "Agent X 2" (the music for the game Agent X II: The Mad Prof's Back, and apparently the only good thing about it) ends with a fade out. How is that possible?  Card Zero  (talk) 06:57, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

On an original Spectrum, all one could do is turn on and off a single (rather inertial) output line. Exploiting that inertia, one could turn the relevant control bit on and off quickly enough, making a sound of a given frequency. But there is no control over amplitude. I think that webpage is rather disingenuously presenting its audio samples - it's talking about the 1-bit audio, but I think those sounds (at least the Agent X 2 track you're asking about) are played on a Spectrum 128k (or more likely, a modern software emulation thereof) which had a General Instrument AY-3-8910 sound chip - a real sound chip with proper oscillators and multiple channels (info). Compare the version on the page you linked to this youtube clip which appears to be a real original Spectrum playing the same music on "beep speaker". It sounds much worse, much noisier, and there's no fade at the end.

For a pretty detailed discussion of how audio was synthesised on the original Spectrum, I do recommend this video. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 11:16, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

October 22

Levenshtein Edit Distance and String Length

I've noticed that Levenshtein edit distance tends to favor similarly length strings to best matches from a human point of view. For example, a human would say that Don and Donaldx are very similar. The edit distance is 4. But, A better match is Sam because the edit distance is 3. Instead of favoring Donaldx that has the original string Don with 4 extra letters, it favors Sam because it is the same length. Is there a popular alternative to Levenshtein edit distance that handles this issue? I have been researching and I feel it may be better to use Smith-Waterman because you get a local alignment with the edit distance of that alignment. It would align Don with Donaldx for a local alignment distance of 0 and align Don to Sam with a local alignment distance of 3. So, it would prefer Don to Donaldx. But, that algorithm is specifically for DNA sequences, not for words, so I feel that I would be misusing it in this case. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 13:24, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Donovan, surely (Donald has only 3 extra letters). I've seen it pointed out that the distance from "Unit" to "Turkmenistan" is 8 edits, while the distance to "United States" is 9. You may prefer Jaro–Winkler distance, which respects prefixes.  Card Zero  (talk) 16:58, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out the miscalculation. I added an 'x' to Donald to make it an edit distance of 4 and I am now looking at Jaro-Winkler distance. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 17:43, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

It is easy to define other edit distances. Select a (parametrized) set of "elementary" edit operations, assigning a positive weight to each operation. If it is possible to transform string A into string B by some sequence of elementary edits, define the path length from A to B as the lowest sum of the weights of the operations of such a sequence, taken over all sequences that perform the transformation. If impossible, define the path length as +∞. (If this set includes the operations of deleting or inserting a single character, then any string can be reached from any other string, so path lengths are then always finite.) The path length, thus defined, satisfies the directed triangle inequality. In general, the path length from B to A is not necessarily the same as the path length from A to B. If each elementary edit operation has an inverse operation with the same weight, we obtain symmetry.

The set of operations of deleting or inserting a single character, or replacing one character by another, each with weight 1, results in the Levenshtein distance. If you want an edit distance that corresponds better to our human intuition of similarity, include common types of spelling errors, such as tranpsosition of two adjacent characters, which gives you the Damerau–Levenshtein distance. To make this even better reflect typical human typos, the set should be extended to such typos as erronneously doubling a character, or conversely omiting one of two equal characters. Going further, deletion of say a word tail of N characters could be an elementary operation whose weight is only √N, instead of a sequence of N deletion operations of a single character whose path length is N times the weight 1. I am not aware of an actual effort in this vein to define an edit distance that corresponds better to human intuition – which will be both language-dependent and culture-dependent.  --Lambiam 19:40, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Metaphone (for Approximate string matching) is somewhat like that, trying to predict people's pronunciation-based guesses at spelling.  Card Zero  (talk) 05:51, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

October 24

What payment processors integrate with Visanet wallet other than Stripe and authezritone.net?

What payment processors integrate with Visanet wallet other than Stripe and authezritone.net? 156.202.43.34 (talk) 22:00, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

AI wording help needed

I need help wording an AI question. 'Since the Gaza war and ETF hype climbs of Oct/2023; excluding factors such as whales moving/selling coin, interest rate hype volatility, rocket attack volatility, election volatility, carry trade volatility, etc. Do the bulls or bears make more profit during normal New York trading days?' Music Air BB (talk) 23:19, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

The following is the answer with close to that wording:

"Excluding extreme factors such as whale movements, geopolitical crises, interest rate changes, or volatility caused by events like elections or attacks, both bulls and bears can find opportunities in Bitcoin trading on typical New York trading days. However, the profit outcomes can depend on market conditions and strategy.

-Bulls generally profit during uptrends, where Bitcoin's price increases over time. In normal trading conditions without large external shocks, Bitcoin tends to see periods of gradual price increases driven by institutional demand, positive news around adoption, and accumulation phases by long-term holders. Historically, Bitcoin has been in an overall bullish trend, with traders profiting from buying dips and holding during these rises.

-Bears profit during price corrections or downtrends, often shorting the asset or benefiting from market panic. Even on normal trading days, Bitcoin experiences regular volatility (its intraday movements can be 2-5%), and bears can capitalize on these corrections or local downtrends. Bears might fare better during market uncertainty or technical breakdowns where resistance levels are tested and fail.

-Since the Gaza war and ETF hype in late 2023, Bitcoin has experienced surges in volatility, but during "normal" trading conditions, bulls tend to profit more in long-term trends. However, short-term corrections or consolidation periods may provide bears with short-term opportunities. The daily volatility, even in relatively calm conditions, allows for both bullish and bearish trades to be profitable based on strategies like swing trading or day trading.

-The key takeaway is that both bulls and bears can profit depending on the timeframe and market conditions, though historically, the market tends to trend bullish long term due to increasing adoption, institutional interest, and the overall bullish bias of Bitcoin over the years."Music Air BB (talk) 00:44, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

You tell us you need help, but what is your question?  --Lambiam 08:15, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I am just wondering if that is the best wording. I have also been asking for prices at different market hours etc. She says that most Fridays, the biggest dips are after NYC closes about 4pm. Many of us in a BTC IRC are trying to profit better. We are still wondering why the dive caused by the DOJ on July 29-30 hasn't been addressed by mainstream media. If I were American, I would be spamming emails of every politician demanding transparency. Music Air BB (talk) 14:05, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Please be aware that generative AI chatbots make up responses to factual questions that sound plausible but generally bear no relationship to reality. Only when an issue has been described multiple times in a sufficient number of sources can you expect a response to conform to the consensus of experts. The correct answer may be obvious from generally available facts, but if the obvious conclusion is not stated as such in the sources but requires some inference, current AI programs are not up to the task.  --Lambiam 19:43, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

I uploaded an image with most of the big dives labelled with causes. The price always seems to recover except for the DOJ fail on July 29. I think the bears make the dips compound and this creates cascading margin calls. I learned to load up on capital to avoid margin calls. The bears and bulls should have learned from the Oct 16/23 rumour spike that caused over $100 million in margin calls (long and short), in less than one hour. This shows that bulls and bears can both make money, and lose it. I should re-word it to 'which should be more cautious with expected events that can affect the price of bitcoin?' or 'which upcoming events are expected to affect the price and which direction?'. The US election is a pump and dump, but many may not expect a Dec 10 pump and dump when Microsoft shareholders vote on buying shedloads of coin. Music Air BB (talk) 21:28, 26 October 2024 (UTC) File:Trump DOJ BTC chart2024 Q3Q4.jpg

Given the current state of chatbot technology, it is entirely possible to refine a question until you get exactly the 'answer' you are looking for, regardless of whether this answer has any connection with reality. The 'best wording' thus entirely depends on what you are trying to achieve. Personally, I wouldn't consider current AI to have any merit with regard to predicting future bitcoin prices, beyond its utility as a means to lose money as quickly as possible. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:43, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

The exact answer we want is the the most accurate one. We can adjust the question weekly, daily, and even hourly. Through backtesting we can refine to the best questions to ask. Does Iran have enough rockets left to create FUD, are any doom beak-offs trying to sell books this week. We should ask all the billion dollar AI companies to put up money for a contest. Best question and most accurate answers for bitcoin price for the next day/week/hour. We could also have an AI notifier that continuously spews 'Buy now! or Sell now!' Many think AI will not profit for at least 2 years. By then they will need to sell subscriptions for at least $10 a month. The best AI will get the best income, and then Amazon will buy it; and offer it free on Prime. The WMF has many worthy contests and should create one for 'AI question of the day' The judges will be AI companies that have to pay each winner $1,000 for each daily contest. My newest point is AI can help, but ask the right question.Music Air BB (talk) 22:44, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

How can you know that the question you are asking is the right question? I think you are deluded, at least when it comes to the present state of the art of publicly accessible AI programs. They do not analyze the data, but only regularities in textual patterns.  --Lambiam 08:02, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Through backtesting we can refine to the best questions to ask.Music Air BB (talk) 09:18, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Then do so. You have asked a question (of sorts). It has been responded to. This is not a forum for speculation about the predictive powers of AI. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:47, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

October 29

Late '90s/early 2000s MIDI generator?

Hello, I'm sure I've asked this before, at least once and likely twice or more, several years ago, but I've lost track of the answer in the interim so I'm asking again.

I'm looking for a procedural MIDI generation software that existed probably by the year 2000. I do not remember what the name was; it was something similar to, but not, 'DirectMusic Composer'. It was relatively limited, but easy to use. When using it, you could pick from a selection of styles; for each style, you could select from a list of instrument sets, and a list of 'moods' that were available for that style, and you could move the instruments around on a 2D square to make them quieter, louder, or more towards the left or right side; you could set the song length, and enable or disable intro and outtro; and you could export the results to MIDI.

The program was used to create some part of the music for the turn-of-the-millennium MMO "Graal Online"; consequently, examples of what the MIDI music output could sound like can be found here (played with the default Windows soundfont) and in this playlist (played with a different soundfont).

Can you help me figure out what this program was, please?

2600:6C55:4A00:A18:A1E5:7EDB:844:C2C4 (talk) 23:49, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Found it. Microsoft Music Producer. Thank you! 2600:6C55:4A00:A18:A1E5:7EDB:844:C2C4 (talk) 00:05, 30 October 2024 (UTC)