Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2017 March 28

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March 28

iTunes data extraction

I have 18 340 tracks in iTunes and have been working to improve the Composer fields: standardize the names, fill in dates whenever possible. It would be convenient to export a list of Composers to a text file so that I can, for example, tell how many distinct entries there are. Is there a way to do that? —Tamfang (talk) 01:13, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

You used to be able to just copy and paste them, from the iTunes song list to a text document or spreadsheet. Not sure if that's still the case. - X201 (talk) 15:56, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Ah – File → Library → Export Playlist; choosing Plain Text gives a tab-delimited file, from which I took the third column. —Tamfang (talk) 23:11, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Resolved

When you edit the fields, iTunes should save this within the ID3 tags for each MP3 file. So these tags can by read by other software. eg try Mp3tag. It can read all of the tags, then export as a CSV file. --Fuaran buidhe (talk) 17:16, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

How do Google and Bing control search results?

I typed "suicide" into Google to check out what kind of result I'd get. And I got a big headline at the top that pointed to suicide prevention hotline. Bing? Same thing. Then, I talked into Siri, and Siri asked me if I wanted to connect to a suicide hotline. I said no. How do Google and Bing control the search results so that anti-suicide messages are shown at the top so that suicidal people can't find what they are looking for and will be directed elsewhere? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 03:35, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

strstr()? Asmrulz (talk) 06:38, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

That's not an automatically generated result. Their algorithms haven't decided by themselves to react this way. Google (as well as Bing, Siri, and others like Yahoo, AOL, and Facebook) decided that the standard answer to the search for 'suicide' (or related searches like 'suicide methods') is to offer a link to a suicide prevention hotline. --Hofhof (talk) 13:02, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Today's search engines list the search hits sorted on what could be relevant for Your or what they want You to see, depending on Your searches before. Expect a User profile is being created, based on Your search words an the time You click the search. Expect all this data is being aggregated with data of other users. A more detailed search will return better hits an build a more complete user profile.--Hans Haase (有问题吗) 10:06, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

There is a real possibility that Google et. al. used tons of machine learning to find out who is a suicide risk and who is not, and this may get much better than just a "bad keyword list" as Hofhof seems to imply. The relevant articles are artificial neural network and links from there; a good example of application is this anti-vandalism bot (reading the bot's user pages taught me about this stuff). I could imagine that Big Brother learnt (without a human teaching it) that the succession of searches for "high cliffs in Arizona", "pain killer" and "writing a will" means the user should be shown the suicide hotline. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 15:12, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Maybe they have a broad set of phrases obtained through ML. However, I am not sure how we could tune such a ML algorithm. After all, how to know what users actually committed suicide after researching about it? Testing Google, I see that "The Virgin suicides" search does not trigger the link to the suicide hotline, but the same is true to "suicide painful", "suicide not more", "suicide when", "better dead", "suicide where" (which appear to me to be quite reasonable indications). Hofhof (talk) 19:28, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

• Sorry folks, but the correct answer is "Magnets". Better luck next time. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:25, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Animated Solar System Wallpaper

Could someone help please? 116.58.201.127 (talk) 15:44, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Help how? Help you get rid of the wallpaper you found? Help you find such a wallpaper? Help you design one from scratch? ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:48, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Googling "Solar System Wallpaper" brings up plenty of suggestions.--Mrs Wibble-Wobble (talk) 16:57, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

There seem to be plenty decent looking results if you google for "planetarium animated wallpaper". --Kharon (talk) 21:51, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Phone wi-fi connection going dormant after a while?

I'm sure this problem is googlable but I'm not quite sure what the terminology is. On my phone, a Samsung Galaxy S5, many wi-fi networks (but not all) that I'll connect to will work for perhaps a half hour or an hour, and then randomly cease working despite still showing that I'm connected on the status bar up top. Upon disconnecting and going back to 3G/LTE, I'll receive an influx of notifications that had accumulated while my wireless connection was dormant. I'll reconnect to the same network again and it'll work as it should, until ~30 minutes later of course. Anyone know what's up? Thank you! ReferenceDeskEnthusiast (talk) 16:55, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Many companies, like restaurants, hotels, supermarkets, car parks, etc., offer free wifi. But of course nothing is free of charge and unlimited at the same time. Most free wifi networks have time or bandwith limits, or both. A free lunch just doesn't exist. Jahoe (talk) 19:39, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Honestly, that sounds like an issue with your phone. You should be getting notifications even while connected to wifi. I don't know if there's a setting that can be changed, or if something's broken, but it certainly doesn't sound like normal phone behavior. (My current phone, which is a knockoff of the galaxy called the ZTE Lever doesn't do that, nor did my Galaxy S2 when I had that one). ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 19:47, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Googling samsung wifi disconnecting finds a suggestion to turn off the setting Settings > Network Connections > Wi-Fi > Smart Network Switch. Try if that helps. 91.155.195.247 (talk) 13:44, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Maybe but probably not. Smart Network Switch turns off the Wi-Fi for various reasons and uses the mobile network instead. This can cause problems like people going over the data limit if they don't expect it, or sometimes it seems to turn on and off too fast so can drain battery (when it's supposed to save it). But ultimately the Wi-Fi should actually go off and the phone should use the mobile network for a time. The OP's description suggests the Wi-Fi is never actually disconnected at least as far as the phone is concerned and it does not use the mobile network until the OP forces a disconnect. Actually turning on Smart Network Switch may help here since the phone in theory should detect the Wi-Fi isn't working as expected(that's one of the purposes of the feature) and turn it off. So at least it will use the mobile network and messages etc relying on the internet will be received, although data usage will be higher. Nil Einne (talk) 10:25, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

This isn't an extremely strict power save feature is it? I wouldn't suggest it usually but my partner had something similar and wasn't able to receive Whatsapp messages at all until he opened the app because it wasn't allowed to do anything in the background. Since WiFi uses battery could this be connected? Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 10:40, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Maybe with some weird Chinese phones but probably not with the S5. Also it depends what the OP means by 'and then randomly cease working'. The OP mention the accumulate notifications thing. My assumption is they also tested the wi-fi, for example by trying to load a website multiple times or be sending a message over some internet based messaging service or preferably both which are always a good idea if you're trying to test the internet connection. If one or both of these were tried, it makes is fairly unlikely it is a power saving feature. Even with cheap Chinese phones the internet is generally supposed to work when you're trying to use it in the foreground even with such power saving features. At most you may have to wait for it to reconnect if it actually disconnects from the wi-fi. Nil Einne (talk) 11:45, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Well, it appears to be a common bug from a Google search: links. It appears to affect multiple networks. Has OP considered a factory reset? Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 15:30, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

I didn't look that well, but most of those don't sound like they are the same thing as the OP's problem. They seem to be referring to a case where the wifi keeps disconnecting and reconnecting (or at least disconnects) whereas the OP seems to refer to a case where the wifi is consistently connected, but stops working. Far as I can tell, the wifi never actually disconnects for the OP by itself. The wifi only disconnects when the OP forces it to and then it will start working again if they re-enable wifi but only for a short time again. Nil Einne (talk) 09:52, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

I have a Galaxy S5 and have the same problem reported by the OP. When I connect to my home wifi (strong signal), I am notified of any waiting Gmail emails. If the phone is then left running on the shelf, notifications come for awhile as new emails arrive, but then as time passes, I get no notifications despite later finding new emails when logging in on my laptop. I was interested in the above link, as I assumed the phone's wifi connection would never drop. If that's not the problem, one answer could be that there's an activity timeout, especially if the phone is left with gmail running backgrounded. The problem may be with the gmail app, not the phone. I have no power saving feature enabled. It's a very unsatisfactory situation. Akld guy (talk) 22:00, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Take a look at the bottom option here. Does this sound like your problem? Are you using the Gmail app or something else? Is your phone rooted or running a custom rom? Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 08:33, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Doesn't appear to bear any relation. I'm using the Gmail app, and in Settings/Accounts/Google/ all sync tickboxes (such as app data, calendar, Chrome, contacts, docs etc) are ticked, including Gmail. Phone is stock standard and bought from a very reputable Telco, with all updates to date. I never use the Smart Network Switch, it's always wifi or nothing. Akld guy (talk) 11:03, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

• As a test, when I retired for the night around midnight, I left the phone running with wifi enabled. I received a beep-beep notification at 5.50 am this morning but didn't touch the phone in order to see what would happen as new emails arrived. Received no beeps whatsoever from then onwards. After 3.00 pm, I checked the phone and there were quite a few emails, including one at 5.50 am and one as recent as 2.53 pm. That was with Gmail backgrounded, and no other apps open. So it looks like after beep-beeping on the first email, no further beep-beeps are emitted, although the blue LED winks off and on. The designers' philosophy seems to be to alert audibly once, and then rely on the LED to draw attention. Which presumes that the user is always going to be within visual distance of the phone. Tough if you're not, or are sleeping and waiting for an important email. Akld guy (talk) 02:42, 1 April 2017 (UTC)