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August 4

Difference between pen drive and SD cards

If I understand correctly, they are deep inside exactly the same, a NAND memory chip, but have different controllers that connect to different interfaces.

But why do SDs have more points of contact?

Are SDs and micro SD packaged in another way and that's it?

Could you just package an SD as a pen drive?

Which is more reliable for backups?

And how can SDs be much smaller, even if you don't count the pen drive box?

I assume that by "Pen Drive", you mean a USB flash drive? Overly simplified; the USB flash drive have the controller chips on the drive, while the SD card relies on controller chips in the PC / camera / media player you plug it into. That is one reason the SD cards can be smaller - another reason is that the USB stick needs a USB connector, which is physically large. WegianWarrior (talk) 15:40, 4 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note that as per the article on SD linked below, the middle part isn't correct. Both SD and USB require controllers. SD is designed primarily for one purpose and so is I'm pretty sure simpler than USB (although remember SDIO and DRM are part of the SD standard) and the controller likewise but I don't think in the modern age this is actually significant in terms of chip size required. In both cases the design can be monolithic [1] [2] [3] [4]. I imagine pretty much all microSDs are monolithic but USB flash drives may not be. (If you look at the photo in our article, you can see examples of SD cards with separate controller chips and flash chips but I'm not sure how common they are even for SD cards nowadays.) I'm not sure if there are other component required for a USB device, but I'm fairly sure the USB connector is really the biggest part required. For example I have a USB flash device very similar to this sort [5] and they are actually very common nowadays as mine was one of the cheapies from China (but one with a real capacity). You can actually even get flatter ones if you don't mind not having the whole USB plug although I suspect these aren't compliant with the USB standard. Take a look at the Pico series here for example [6] (e.g. [7] [8]. With USB type C, you can get sticks which I'm sure are fully compliant and small e.g. [9]. As per Comparison of memory cards#Technical details, SmartMedia and xD are the two formats without a controller. The first died before memory cards were even really significant. The later at least lasted long enough that I suspect you can find people who've used it easily. Nil Einne (talk) 19:19, 4 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

On the last USB drive that I bought, the USB connector appears to take up 80% of the volume and the remaining 20% is a miniature handle. The actual chip must be micro SD size and inside the USB connector. The pin configurations for SD cards are given in our article Secure Digital. Dbfirs 15:56, 4 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Are there any that make the handle as small as possible to show off? Like a needle sticking out of the USB connector with a very miniature handle at the end to hold? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 04:29, 10 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't seen any quite like that. Are you going to register the design and manufacture them? Dbfirs 05:53, 11 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A card reader interfaces to PC by USB. At its front end it interfaces several card types. The most variations can be found at SD cards and successors. Old card readers fail on compatibility to newer SD cards. All the flash memory itself is able to get read out very fast (often reaching the USB 2.0 bottle neck), but fast writing is where fake manufacturers are cheating causing the customer a lost of data. Sometimes just a ½ or ¼ of real memory is sold. Inside an old SD card, there is a PCB, a controller an the flash memory device(s). Mass demands and expired patents allow a single package production. --Hans Haase (有问题吗) 11:01, 11 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

August 5

What are the differences between JEDEC and XMP at the same data rate?

I already know that XMP is Intel's extension to store predefined overclocking settings that are known to be stable, and JEDEC is standard of some sort. XMP is an extension, and the speed/data rate is always higher than JEDEC's of the same module. From what I've heard, the advertised speed is XMP, and all DDR4 modules are 2133MT/s. But for some reason, JEDEC parameters seems to increase as time passes, and I've bought several DDR4 modules with JEDEC 1333Mhz (2666MT/s) yesterday.

What are the differences between a JEDEC 2133 (XMP 2666) module and a JEDEC 2666 module? The obvious thing I can see is that the JEDEC 2666 one works flawlessly out of the box with 4 single rank DIMM installed on my Ryzen 1200 (which only supports 2133-2400 with all 4 DIMMs populated). I've had a hard time to manually get the XMP 2666 modules to work at 2400 with 4 DIMM installed. -- Livy (talk) 05:02, 5 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The old specification I have found applies to DDR2 memory modules. At the old DIMMs were hardware encoded in operating voltage, a frequency, RAS, and CAS wait states for timing are read out from the I²CEPROM, an 8-pin device on each DIMM, containing this information, called SPD. Intel has developed an additional standard giving more information, called XMP. It allows multiple specifications for the same memory module. It also allows a wider usage of the RAMs, soldered on the memory module. RAMs are selected by voltage and frequency. Tuning them means increasing the speed and sometimes rising the operating voltage to make the rams operate fast enough for the given speed. XMP enables the manufacturers to give more than one operation conditions of the module like save and reliable working at one voltage up to one speed, and a higher voltage in an faster or same speed. The limits are the heat drop on the module, power consumption above, and below the lowest possible voltage he RAMs can operated reliable on high temperature. If there are no other possibilities, the SPD data and the XMP data are identical. This causes one operating condition, only. So XMP can allow the use of cheaper RAMs, dropping voltage an frequency to save power. On the other hand it can allow overclocking and make manufacturers try to offer too hard optimized products which is a less reliable performance for the customers computer. Most of all the overclocking fails due bad performance of the passive parts that fail to stabilize the operating voltage. When overclocking, have the first look on these parts. --Hans Haase (有问题吗) 10:46, 11 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Privacy Policy Concerns

Hi,

To begin I have been noticing strange activity on some devices, and do not have the knowledge to determine a legitimate process/action from a malicious one. To list strange events:

-apps stating that they cannot run because the privacy policy doesn’t list what it will do with my faceid.

-many debug logs stating there are blank spaces at end of code.

-leanplum folder on devices (no idea)

-shadow socks (not much idea)

-blurry pictures being saved as cookies, possibly including code

-the list goes on...

Can anyone point me to help, and I would also like to learn how to keep these ad companies and others from tracking everything.

Thanks

Dragon Reborne (talk) 16:00, 5 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Dragon Reborne: For future reference, state upfront what device you're talking about. I'm guessing from your reference to leanplum and pictures that you're talking about a mobile phone, and to Face ID confirms an iPhone.

Leanplum is a "mobile marketer," which means you've got adware (I don't care if they want to pretend they're anything else, anything they touch is automatically adware). It probably came bundled with something else.

Shadowsocks is for evading internet censorship in China. Did you buy the phone directly from Apple or from a trusted retailer (e.g. Best Buy), or did you buy it through a third party (a seller on Amazon, or a kiosk in the mall)? Because if you bought it from a third party, this opens the door to some potentially concerning possibilities. If you didn't buy the phone from a third party, then some app you installed is up to no good. For now, I'm just going to assume that your iPhone was not hacked before you even bought it:

1) Go through your apps (ignoring the ones that came with the phone) and uninstall ones that you don't use at least five times a week. Again, if you think it came with the phone, leave it alone. If you think it might be a system process, leave it alone (although I'm guessing Apple won't let you uninstall that stuff without jailbreaking but that's at your own risk). Free games and novelty apps are really bad about including adware.

2a) Following these instructions on How To Geek, check the permissions for the remaining apps. Think about why they would need that permission. An app for say, Frogger or Pong, would not need access to your camera (and that might be a sign you need to uninstall that app).

2b) This usually gets rid of most of these problems. If not, you may need to back up everything that you might want to keep, do a factory reset, and the restore your data.

2c) If 2a and 2b do not work, you're going to need to take it to an authorized Apple repair center.

Whether you're reinstalling apps after 2b or 2c, or you're installing new apps after 2a, pay attention to the permissions an app wants before installing it -- if it wants something weird that has nothing to do with the app's intended purpose, find something else. Ian.thomson (talk) 18:24, 5 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the info, and yes it’s iPhoneX purchased on launah from AT&T, but it’s not the only device. Today I encountered even more disturbing events. I found logs that my router has been Telnet into, from the MAC address of my phone. Also http:// is added in search bar no matter what I enter, and url= the L is an I(i). At this point it seems security flaw past my knowledge, and need to wait for the devs who rarely own up to it, patch these things. Apple will tell you the device cannot be remotely accessed but the next update will state it fixes precisely that haha. Anyway I do appreciate the reply.

Dragon Reborne (talk) 06:02, 6 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This is definitely something specific to your device - like Ian said, probably a bad app you installed. It's not just going to get "patched away." You really need to actively deal with this somehow. If it's an iPhone X you bought at launch, is it still under Apple Care? If so the Apple Store might help you. If not, call up your most technically-able friend, pony up the cash to get it fixed, or backup your important information and factory reset the phone. -Elmer Clark (talk) 21:43, 9 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

August 6

Counting IP addresses

Imagine two IP addresses, 123.456.78.000 and 123.456.81.255. How many addresses are in the range defined by those two? [I just picked random digits; if there's something special in this particular range, please ignore it.] I'm guessing 1,024, since it's 000-255 for .78, .79, .80, and .81, but I've never understood ranges well; in particular, the bit at mw:Help:Range blocks about only two can be assigned to a computer has always confused me. Nyttend backup (talk) 15:47, 6 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That's not a very helpful description for a page about range blocks. If I can generalise a bit, in terms of network design the top and bottom addresses are used for network-related things, hence in a block of four only the middle addresses would be used by clients. The lowest IP ('network address') is used for finding the network, and the highest IP ('broadcast address') is used for broadcasting to everything on the network. But as a Wikipedia sysop you couldn't care less how the network is designed, so you'd include them all. In your example you'd be better off using 123.456.0.0 and 123.456.3.255 as that's a simple /22 range containing 1024 addresses of which at most 1022 are going to be used to edit. But you'd block them all. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 18:33, 6 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

^ This. It is usually poor form to answer "how to do X" by "do Y instead", but here I really do not see why you would want to count "real" IP addresses (if even you can do this from outside the network). Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 18:44, 6 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Re "why" — it's a real-life situation unrelated to a rangeblock; I brought in rangeblocking only because that help page is the only place where I've ever seen an explanation of IP ranges. I'm just trying to figure out the raw number of addresses: that's why zzuuzz's penultimate sentence is helpful. Nyttend backup (talk) 20:07, 6 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You might find this useful. I have generalised a bit - you might find the network actually contains a few smaller networks, or is part of a larger network. That's to say, there may be none or many network and broadcast addresses which won't be used, but you'd still probably count them all as part of the network. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 20:15, 6 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

In this old-style IP number system, each of the four parts can be from 0 to 255. So in your example it is 1 x 1 x 4 x 255 = 1024. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 17:42, 7 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Minor nitpick: the example IPv4 address given in the OP (123.456.78.000) is invalid because the second component is larger than 255. (Also the final component would normally be written as just "0" rather than "000".) But ignoring those quibbles, the OP's original guess and Bubba73's identical response are correct. CodeTalker (talk) 20:20, 7 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Not-so-minor nitpick: 1 x 1 x 4 x 255 is 1020, not 1024. Another way of doing this is to utilise the "geolocate" link at the bottom of the IP's contribution page. For 123.45.67.89 the "Decimal" is 2066563929. For 123.45.68.125 the "Decimal" is 2066564221. Subtracting the one from the other, the difference is 292 IP addresses. 95.150.52.197 (talk) 14:25, 8 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Presumably Bubba73 meant 1 x 1 x 4 x 256 since there are 256 numbers from 0 to 255. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 15:46, 8 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

We can call it a TV IPv4 address. (I noticed a long time ago that IPv4 addresses in TV shows always seemed to be invalid generally because they had one number greater than 255. I thought this was funny but it later occurred to be it was likely generally intentional the same way Fictitious telephone numbers are often 555 (telephone number) in US TV shows.) Nil Einne (talk) 14:10, 9 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

BTW regarding the point about explanation above, it's covered in Classless Inter-Domain Routing although it may be a little technical if your understanding of the subject is close to zero. Nil Einne (talk) 14:10, 9 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This is fascinating. How do IP addresses feature in TV shows? A Sussex lady had the misfortune to be targeted by Donald Trump in a case of mistaken identity [10]. 109.180.237.248 (talk) 18:30, 9 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I found we have a Fictitious Internet resource which mentions IP address. Another trick mentioned is evidently to use unassigned or private IP address. I probably should have mentioned I'm not just thinking of TV shows but also movies although I don't really watch that many movies. Nil Einne (talk) 07:22, 10 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

CD pipeline to use with multiple CI providers

What continuous delivery pipeline tools are capable of integrating with both Travis-CI and AppVeyor for the same product, either directly or by exposing multiple web hooks -- one for each provider -- to be called after all tests pass? Are any of them available as hosted services, with a free tier for open-source projects? Neon Merlin 18:35, 6 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

August 7

A question about a formula in Microsoft Excel 2016

I have a question about a formula in Microsoft Excel 2016. Cell A-1 has "Tuesday, August 7, 2018" as a person's birthday (today). Cell B-1 has "Saturday, August 7, 1948" as the person's actual date of birth. These cells are both formatted in "Date" format. I want Cell C-1 to calculate the person's age. The age is 70 years old. I want the cell to say "70" (formatted as a number with no decimal points). The formula that I use is Cell A-1 minus Cell B-1. This gives me the value of 25,567. This represents how many days old the person is. I take that value and divide it by 365.25, to (approximately) change the units from "days old" to "years old". And my result is 69.9986311 years old. How can I get the program to determine that the person is exactly 70 years old? As I said, I want to produce an exact value of 70 (formatted as a number, with no decimal points). I do not want to take the "odd value" of 69.9986311 and perform any type of rounding or truncating or such. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:17, 7 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

In my older version of Excel, I just format the result as yy, though this doesn't work for people over 100 years old, and you might like to add a day because of our convention of giving people an integer age even if they don't really reach that age until later on their birthday. The other method that I've used is a lookup table taking account of leap years. Dbfirs 20:36, 7 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. So, doesn't Excel have an "easy" and "straightforward" method for determining such an example? Namely, that the span of time between August 7, 1948, and August 7, 2018, is precisely 70 years? Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 21:05, 7 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Well, saying that that interval is "precisely 70 years" depends on a definition of a "span of time" that is not at all straightforward or easy to define. For example, the span of time between August 7, 1948 and August 7, 2018 is different than the span of time between August 7, 1946 and August 7, 2016, but I suppose in your application you would want to say both of these are precisely 70 years, even though they differ by 1 day. CodeTalker (talk) 22:24, 7 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@CodeTalker: Well, yeah, of course. I don't think there would be any controversy or disagreement to state that the time span is "precisely 70 years" (in my August 7, 1948, to August 7, 2018, example). Who would (or could) argue with that fact? The other time-span that you indicate is also precisely 70 years, even if it has an extra day in there, due to a leap year. There is a difference between the definition for "number of days" versus the definition for "number of years". A "day" is just that – a day. A period of 24 hours. A "year" is well-known to sometimes contain 365 days and to sometimes contain 366 days. I don't think it's a controversy or a disagreement to emphatically state that August 7, 2018, to August 7, 2019, is precisely one "year" (whether or not it overlaps with a leap year, and whether or not that "year" contains 365 or 366 days). Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 23:53, 7 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You can use the YEARFRAC() function.[11][12] It suggests =INT( YEARFRAC( B1, TODAY() ) ) for keeping it up-to-date. I'm guessing it would still have an issue if the birth day or current day was in a leap year. If the birth day wasn't in a leap year, but the current year was, and it is before leap day. It would divide by 366 for leap years so the percentage would be smaller before leap day. People born on February 29 would have to wait until March 1 on non-leap years. Another issue for born in a leap year and current (non leap year) year's day is after February 28. An alternative would be look at the month and day-of-the-month separately (much longer formula). StrayBolt (talk) 23:43, 7 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

When you say cells A1 and B1 are in Date format, what do you see in the formula bar when you click on these cells? It should show in MM/DD/YYYY format. If that's not the case, then you may need to re-enter the data such that the actual date as seen in formula bar is in MM-DD-YY format (7/7/2018) and it's display format is whatever you need (like 'Tuesday, August 7, 2018). Then formula YEARFRAC(B1, A1) returns 70 as you expect. manya (talk) 04:43, 8 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Ranemanoj: Hi. Thanks. The "output" (what I see in my spreadsheet) is "Tuesday, August 7, 2018" for Cell A-1. In the formula bar up above, it says: "08/07/2018". So, I typed in "08/07/2018" into Cell A-1. I then wanted to format the output the way I like. So, then, I clicked "Number". Then, I clicked "Date". Then, I selected the "sample" that says "*Wednesday, March 14, 2012". As a result, my output (what I see on my screen in my spreadsheet) is: "Tuesday, August 7, 2018" for Cell A-1. Similar for Cell B-1. Does this post make sense? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 05:35, 8 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Have you tried DATEDIF? In cell C1 enter =DATEDIF(B1,A1,"Y") & " Years, " & DATEDIF(B1,A1,"YM") & " Months, " & DATEDIF(B1,A1,"MD") & " Days" and see if that's what you're after. Matt Deres (talk) 22:12, 10 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

August 8

What does it mean to tap a credit card?

Referring back to this question, I seem to have found a new definition for the word tap and want to make sure it is covered in Wikipedia somewhere, including the disambiguation page.

I saw a commercial where someone hit a device with a credit card. I didn't get a good enough look at the device but it looks like it might be the one where I swipe the card if I can or insert it if it accepts a chip.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:58, 8 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

See Contactless payment - tap-and-go. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:51, 8 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That might be something for Wiktionary, not Wikipedia: [13], and a question for the language ref desk, not computing. Anyway, 'tap' as a transitive verb meaning "to strike lightly" is not a neologism. --Doroletho (talk) 13:54, 9 August 2018 (UTC) in[reply]

I disagree. What you do with a credit card needs to be mentioned somewhere, and apparently it is.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 14:42, 9 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

August 9

update GPS and google unique security code

I got a new GPS today and I wanted to update it. The device showed up as D: but when I used Firefox 61.0.2 to go to the update website, it didn't see the GPS device. I called support and they took over my computer and looked at some things. They said that security was missing (which it isn't). They said that I needed to go to the store and buy a Google unique security code for $50 or $100. This sounded suspicious to me, so I ended the call.

Could this be a scam? Right now I have a scan running.

(Now I went to the website on Chrome and it works.) Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 23:56, 9 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Where did you get the customer service number that you called? If you didn't get it from the packaging materials that came with your product or from the company's official web site, but just googled for it, it's quite likely it's a scam. Scammers set up fake customer support numbers for a variety of products and get them to appear in search results. When you call it, the result is pretty much exactly what you described, they ask to take remote control of your computer and/or try to convince you to pay them for some kind of support. More info here CodeTalker (talk) 17:27, 10 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I got it googling the GPS company's name - I'm pretty sure it was this. It came up top or near the top. First I did online chat to tell about the problem and they had a technician call me in about 1 minute. They wanted me to get the "Google unique security code" with a Google Play card. Likely they would have wanted me to give them the card number. Of course, I ended the call. My scans finished and reported no problems.

Sorry to hear you had these problems. I'm still worried by you saying, "They took over my computer and looked at some things". There might be some residual issues. StrayBolt (talk) 03:12, 11 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Do you not have a record of the number that you called on the phone you used? Nil Einne (talk) 10:31, 11 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

August 11

Adobe Premiere Pro CS6

I possess the entitled software. I am unable to retrieve the same .mp4 quality thereafter creating a whole file. The following steps I've taken in order to modify an .mp4 file i.e.:

After opening "Adobe Premiere Pro CS6", click/select "New Project" option, "New Project" window appears, pass through the window(s) to "New Sequence" window – I believe the problem rest in this window…

Issues found, disturbance in image/video quality and slow frame rate.

How do I get exact quality and the exact frame rate?

119.30.35.10 (talk) 15:52, 11 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]