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January 13

Absolute value inequality

A meteorite is 600ft from a satellite and travelling toward the satellite at 42ft/sec. At what times will the meteorite be less than 50ft away from the satellite? Write an appropriate absolute value inequality for the given situation and solve: Let|42t-600|<50 and 42t-600<50 and 42t-600>-50. Thus, 13.10<t<15.48. Afrazer123 (talk) 22:21, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

What is the question?

The given data do not specify where the meteorite is at time t = 0, and also not with which speed the satellite is moving. Your solution is based on the (not unreasonable) assumptions that the person who drew up this assignment meant t = 0 to be the initial moment when the meteorite is 600ft away from the satellite, and that the speed of 42ft/s is the speed of the meteorite relative to the satellite. Your solution assumes that the meteorite will not hit the satellite, but pass by it. Under these assumptions, the derived inequations are correct, as is your solution, although not with exact values but with numeric values rounded to two decimals.

If the meteorite hits the satellite, we don't know what happens after t = 14.29. If the satellite disintegrates, the notion of the distance between the bodies becomes meaningless.  --Lambiam 23:59, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

Please do your own homework.

Welcome to the Misplaced Pages Reference Desk. Your question appears to be a homework question. I apologize if this is a misinterpretation, but it is our aim here not to do people's homework for them, but to merely aid them in doing it themselves. Letting someone else do your homework does not help you learn nearly as much as doing it yourself. Please attempt to solve the problem or answer the question yourself first. If you need help with a specific part of your homework, feel free to tell us where you are stuck and ask for help. If you need help grasping the concept of a problem, by all means let us know.

This is additionally the Reference desk for computing and electronics-related topics, not mathematics. --Slowking Man (talk) 06:11, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

But is it homework? Homework formulates an exercise, often in the form of a problem, asking for its solution. It is not usual for homework to contain the detailed solution to a stated problem. What is then the exercise?  --Lambiam 10:32, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Maybe they forgot the rest of the problem? Or maybe it's just someone/somebot sloppily copy-pasting stuff from the Web to try and waste people's time. --Slowking Man (talk) 05:18, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

I think it's not homework. They might be sending stuff into space. Gnu779 (talk) 12:22, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

📐 Afrazer123 (talk) 21:31, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

📐 Afrazer123 (talk) 21:33, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

📐 Afrazer123 (talk) 21:35, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

The inequality problem was not school homework. I apologize for the mix-up. I was only checking my answer. Afrazer123 (talk) 21:40, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, thank me for saving you. Someone got confused. 🪐🛰 Gnu779 (talk) 09:43, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

January 15

What is this character?

Inequality (mathematics) has several characters that my computer renders as little boxes. For example:

• a <⃥͏ a (irreflexivity) — after the first italic a
• if a < b, then b <⃥͏ a (asymmetry) — after the second italic b

What are they? In both cases that I copied, the box is seemingly the same character as the lesser-than sign, since I can't highlight one without the other. I figured I could get the answer from Google (there are enough Unicode charts online), but I get just four results for the combined lesser-than-and-box: the inequality article, two Reddit pages, and something in Thai. When I put the combined lesser-than-and-box into the URL, I'm shown MediaWiki:Badtitletext, which makes sense for a title containing a standalone < character, but not for one where the < elements are part of a special character. Nyttend (talk) 20:29, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

A less-than with two combining codes:

index  chr codepoint utf8    cat  name
 0      <  U+003c    3c      Sm   LESS-THAN SIGN
 1       ⃥  U+20e5    e283a5  Mn   COMBINING REVERSE SOLIDUS OVERLAY
 2       ͏  U+034f    cd8f    Mn   COMBINING GRAPHEME JOINER

-- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 22:56, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

In other words, it's a "not less than" sign. Unicode's single character for that is hex 226E or ≮, although it uses a slash rather than a backslash ("reverse solidus") to overstrike the < sign. --142.112.149.206 (talk) 02:47, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

Latex also uses ${\displaystyle \,\nless \,.}$ The use of a forward slash, as in ${\displaystyle \,a\!\not {\!{\text{R}}}~b\,,}$ to mean ${\displaystyle \neg (a~{\text{R}}~b),}$ is standard. I can't think of a reason for using the backslashed symbol ${\displaystyle \,<\!\!\!\!\!\setminus ~}$ instead and have replaced <\ by ≮.  --Lambiam 09:27, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

January 16

Miraheze Stuff

What should I do if my wiki is approved on Miraheze? Gnu779 (talk) 12:21, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

That should depend on the scope and goals of the wiki you have requested, which we don't know. Do you already have a small team of dedicated volunteers who will supply a non-trivial amount of relevant content? An empty wiki is not conducive to attracting new contributors.  --Lambiam 23:56, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

Does it have to do with Yangon Bus Service?  --Lambiam 00:12, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

No, my friend in interested in YBS. It's not me. He told me from a distant place that he wants a wiki. And I have another wiki personally on my kernel. Gnu779 (talk) 12:55, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Temp Files on C: Drive

I have a Dell Inspiron 3910 running Windows 11. It has a C: drive with what is shown as either 216 GB or 232,783,867,904 bytes. (So those are 216 binary gigabytes, of 2**30 bytes each.) Anyway, This PC usually shows that it has between 20 GB and 45 GB free. If the free storage becomes less than 10%, it displays a red bar in This PC. One parameter that I am familiar with that changes is the size of pagefile.sys, which starts as 12 GB and often increases as it runs up to 24 GB or even 28 GB. I sometimes see the free storage on the C: drive drop to as low as 16 GB, which doesn't bother me, even if it bothers This PC. I don't need unlimited free storage on my C: drive; I need enough free storage on my C: drive. What happened yesterday is that it began displaying that about 5.5 GB was free, much less than I have seen before. I hadn't done anything that should have filled up the C: drive, such as importing video clips from my phone. (I know that video clips are large because they are three-dimensional because time is the third dimension.) I found a few folders on my C: drive that were at least 1 GB and I wasn't using, and I moved them to the E: drive, which is a great monster of a 4TB solid-state device. I thought that might free up a few gigabytes, and it didn't change anything. At about this point Windows Update told me that operating system updates were ready to install, and so I needed to schedule a time for a system restart. After the restart, my C: drive shows as having 44.9 GB free. That is, approximately 39 GB was reclaimed during the restart. I know that approximately 10 GB of that was pagefile.sys. Where did it get more than 25GB of free disk storage from? Is there a way that I can free up this disk storage other than by a restart? I know that some of this was temporary files created by Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge and a few other standard programs. Is there a utility that I can use that frees up temporary storage without restarting Windows? Robert McClenon (talk) 18:10, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

@Robert McClenon I don't know of any program that finds temp files, but a good guideline I have in general is to use something like WinDirStat or WizTree (preferably the latter), as both show a graphical display of the biggest files on your drive, and may help in this case. TheTechie@enwiki (she/they | talk) 21:44, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, User:TheTechie. I had already been using Disk Space Analyzer Max, which showed me the directories that were using a lot of space, and that didn't help much. What I saw was that Google Chrome had a large amount of data, for instance, but I didn't know what Google Chrome data was useful to it and what was temporary. As I said, I tried moving a few directories, each of which was about 1 GB, from C: to tertiary storage, and that didn't help. I thought it would make about 3 GB free, but maybe it took Windows a while to catch on. Obviously the restart found and freed up a lot of storage. So I am asking whether there is some way other than restarting the system to get it to find and free up the storage. Maybe I am looking for something that either does not exist or is buried somewhere, like treasure. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:19, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

If it's Google Chrome that's the culprit, have you tried clearing your cache and browsing history? For me, caching and history have led to many GiBs being used in Chrome in the past. TheTechie@enwiki (she/they | talk) 23:07, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

Whoops forgot ping @Robert McClenon TheTechie@enwiki (she/they | talk) 03:01, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, User:TheTechie - That is useful advice. If I see that Google Chrome is using a lot of SSD space, I will purge its cache and browsing history. I assume that advice also applies to any other web browser. More generally, I infer that if any application is using a lot of temporary space, it can be nuked if there is an option in the application to nuke the temp storage, and, if not, it can always be restarted. Apparently a lot of applications clean up their own litter boxes when they start up. In this respect they are unlike cats. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:25, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Install WizTree (free), boom, gives you an overview of everything stored on your storage volumes. Also lets you manage said stuff.

Anything called "cache" or "temp" can be safely nuked. A cache is just copies of things stored for speeding things up and can always be regenerated. In fact I suggest just making your browser shut off disk caching, which is largely unneeded these days unless you're on a slow connection, and eats away at the lifetime of SSDs, which it sounds like your primary drive is. Web search "<name of browser> disable disk caching"

So I am asking whether there is some way other than restarting the system to get it to find and free up the storage. It's hard to give a useful general answer to this without knowing what is taking up said storage to begin with. Remember we're not there with you looking at your computer screen; we can't see what's on your drives. The most generic answer is "sure there is as long as the things taking up space aren't locked Windows system files, which require a restart in order to modify/delete them." Software can always be configured to run periodically to go through deleting stuff "in the background".

For one you mentioned pagefile.sys—the Windows page file, which you probably have Windows "managing" the size of on its own (the default). Windows likes to be generous with its size and reserve more than you probably need, which then sits there taking up space. If you have no plans to use hibernation, on a typical modern PC you can usually get away with just disabling it altogether, though you might want to leave a bit of margin and set it to half your RAM size. For this Web search: "Windows change page file size". --Slowking Man (talk) 04:12, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, User:Slowking Man. I have a disk analyzer, but will also try the one you recommend, and see which one gives me more what I want. When you say that you infer that my primary drive is an SSD, I think that you mean that my secondary storage is an , because my primary storage is my 12 GB of RAM, and my secondary storage on the C: is a 216 GB SSD, which is what was getting full. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:25, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Yeah. In computer-ese "storage", unqualified, is usually referring to persistent storage, stuff that keeps what's there without needing continual power, which excludes "RAM". And 12 GB is definitely a healthy amount; unless you're doing intensive things like 3D graphics design or playing graphics-intense 3D video games, you can get away with just disabling the page file entirely if you want. Slowking Man (talk) 01:30, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, I was about to ask how they use their computer with just 12 GB RAM. For web browsing/emails, that's more than enough. TheTechie@enwiki (she/they | talk) 02:09, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

install a specific version of OSX

Hi. I am trying to replicate the steps described here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/71241711/is-there-a-way-to-access-your-own-airtag-data-via-api

The instructions specify: "You need macOS 14.3.1 or earlier for this to work. Items.data is encrypted in 14.4 and later."

I currently do not have any Apple hardware, so I plan to purchase a "mac mini, m1, 2020" machine. After I receive the machine, I plan to factory reset it for security.

After a factory reset, is it possible to install a specific version, such as 14.3.1 onto the machine?

(My understanding that if I just use the regular "system update" path, it would it me directly to the latest OSX, which is currently 15.2.) Epideurus (talk) 21:42, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

I would presume so. Thing is though, if you give the system Internet access it'll probably keep "trying" to update you to the latest OS X version. Are you sure pursuing this line of action is the best way to go about accomplishing what you want? If you're already willing to spend money on the problem, why not just buy some different tracking device not from Apple that lets you talk to it however you want? What's the ultimate goal you're trying to accomplish here? --Slowking Man (talk) 04:22, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for the help.

I haven't spent a dollar on this project yet, so I'm very flexible. I'm also pretty open-minded and will choose any brand or solution that fits my needs. I'm basically looking for a tracker to put in my bag so that I don't lose it.

I checked out the existing tracker networks and there's basically only two major ones: Apple AirTag and Google Find My Device. The former network is much larger than the latter, at least in 2025. The size of Apple's network (number of Apple smartphones in the wild) enables my bag to be tracked accurately, without me having to ever carry an Apple smartphone.

I'm usually not a fan of closed and propriety systems, but in this case it could take years before Google's (slightly more) open system catch up in network size unfortunately. Epideurus (talk) 17:48, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Along with @Slowking Man:, I'm still very confused why you're dead set on OSX 13 and AirTags. If this is only for your personal use why does it matter how big the tracker network is? TheTechie@enwiki (she/they | talk) 18:34, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Solution A: If I put an airtag on my bag, then I can know where it is at all times, with 2 minute updates 24/7. (Regardless of where I physically am, or what phone I'm using.) This is because there are Apple devices blanketing the NA city that I live in, and they are willing to report the location of my bag to the Apple servers, without any payment or involvement from me.

Solution B: If I buy a similar device from another manufacturer, let's say Google or Samsung, then their location service would report my bag as being in my house, but with minimal location updates in the future. This is because there aren't any Google or Samsung devices in my city willing to report the location of my bag to the Google/Samsung servers for free. To improve the accuracy of the location updates, I would have to maintain a Google/Samsung device near my bag, which kinda defeats the whole point.

I hope I'm explaining it correctly. Epideurus (talk) 00:48, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

There are plenty of options, such as Tile, Marco Polo Tracking... You could throw in a cheapo device like a Raspberry Pi with a cellular module and battery. If you want to splurge, you can get something with a GPS and satellite comms connection that will work basically anywhere on Earth.

Alternately if you think the Airtag is a good fit for your purpose why not just just get a cheap used iDevice™, if all you want is the Apple Find thing? I will point out that two things here are at odds: wanting to do things on-the-cheap, vs wanting constant real-time location updates. If you can relax one or the other that makes it a lot easier. Perhaps you don't really need 120-second interval location updates? --Slowking Man (talk) 01:24, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

I don't know Epideurus's specific reasons, but one I could understand would be a desire not to reward Apple for its walled-garden business model. That's why I've passed on Apple TV in spite of some reportedly good content. (That may be a little behind the times; I think it may now be possible to get some of those shows without Apple hardware, but I'm foggy on the details.) --Trovatore (talk) 19:56, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

That said, in my observations, fast tracking is not really anything that's really the case much with Find My anymore as sometimes my device's locations will be reported as their location from 2-5 days ago with Find My refusing to update. (Note: I'm still on iOS 18.2 so it might be fixed in 18.2.1.) Even when it used to be fast, it would only ping when you opened Find My, and would not auto-update for 5-7 mins. TheTechie@enwiki (she/they | talk) 05:51, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

duplicate tab in Firefox

In Firefox (on MacOS) I sometimes accidentally hit a combination of keys that makes a new tab, same as the current tab, appear at the right. Naturally I have not been able to reproduce this behavior intentionally, nor find it in a list of Firefox keyboard shortcuts. Am I dreaming? —Tamfang (talk) 21:54, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

Right click tab, select "Duplicate Tab"? TheTechie@enwiki (she/they | talk) 22:50, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

ctrl and drag on the tab will duplicate it; I've done that by accident; I can't see a non-mouse way of doing it. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 22:51, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

And it is not which apparently means delete page to Misplaced Pages! Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:46, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

Alt-↵ Enter with the address bar highlighted will open its contents in a new tab, which is often functionally a tab duplication. So maybe you wrangled a Ctrl-L, Alt-↵ Enter? (Sorry, not exactly sure what these map to on MacOS.) Emberfiend (talk) 09:08, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

January 17

Opera

Any tips or tricks recommended? Serial (speculates here) 18:42, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Avoid? -- Seriously, what do want to know? --Wrongfilter (talk) 18:53, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Isn't Opera run by a Chinese company now? TheTechie@enwiki (she/they | talk) 19:32, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Chinese Opera?  --Lambiam 23:36, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

No, they are owned by Kunlun Tech Co., Ltd. Which should already raise privacy bells. TheTechie@enwiki (she/they | talk) 23:39, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Meh. So, worse comes to the worse, the Central Committee get to see my browsing history. In a few days, your government gets owned by Putin. Swings and roundabouts, komrade. Serial (speculates here) 23:48, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

You can't say I didn't warn you. You didn't have to bring US politics into this. This is the computing reference desk, not politics. TheTechie@enwiki (she/they | talk) 23:53, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Then feel free to answer the questions without editorializing, if you can; your time will be spent far more productively, I assure you. Serial (speculates here) 11:41, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

January 19

Twenty Year Society of Misplaced Pages editors

How accurate a reflection is Category:Members of the Twenty Year Society of Misplaced Pages editors of the number of editors still active who have been here for 20 years or more?

Is there a better way to measure editors who either:

1. Made edits at least 20 years apart
2. First edited over 20 years ago and are still (for some value, say: edited in the last three months) active?

Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:37, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

I believe you have to do some database querying to get the report you want. See WP:Quarry: if you have some SQL chops you can do it yourself, otherwise people there might be helpful. You might be interested in mw:Manual:Database schema. (If the query is too "intensive" and times out you'll have to run it on Labs or else download the database and query it locally.) --Slowking Man (talk) 23:53, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

January 20

ttps//

I have received a spam that has links to ttps://is.gd . What is ttps: ? It isn't the same as https: .

I see that is.gd is an address-shortener.

I read, analyze, and report a fair amount of email spam, and I don't think that I have seen a link with ttps. What is it? Robert McClenon (talk) 02:44, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

I would assume probably a typo. Alpha3031 (t • c) 03:22, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, User:Alpha3031. If so, that is stupid, and we know that spammers are stupid. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:59, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

That may be the case for most spammers, but I wouldn't rely on it.  --Lambiam 13:37, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

No. Some of them are smart enough and devious enough to fool intelligent people. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:32, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

is.gd is usually a shortened link generated by Apple Shortcuts. TheTechie@enwiki (she/they | talk) 23:58, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

Also, ttps is probably a dumb typo by the scammer. TheTechie@enwiki (she/they | talk) 00:00, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

January 24

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