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November 21

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AI and the 2024 US election

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Resolved

My question is, how much did rudimentary "AI" (or what we like to refer to as AI) contribute to the outcome of the 2024 US election? I haven't seen much written about this, but if there are articles on this subject, please point me to them. Viriditas (talk) 09:21, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There's an amusing ref desk phenomenon where a questioner accidentally formulates a good search query to use for the question's title. Here's my first two results: The AI-generated hell of the 2024 election , AI's Underwhelming Impact on the 2024 Elections. Opinions differ, evidently.  Card Zero  (talk) 09:44, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ackshually, that's exactly what I was looking for. Are you a mind reader? Viriditas (talk) 10:05, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There are people (around 5–10%) who can hear what others are thinking. They're certainly not angels, but have you seen Wings of Desire? MinorProphet (talk) 19:46, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

November 23

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ClipChamp.exe and Disk Backup

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If I am backing up my C: drive (which I still think of as a hard disk, although it is a solid-state device) to an external medium (a 4TB removable device), I get various error messages that I have to Skip. One of them says that it is unable to copy Clipchamp.exe, which has size 0 bytes. I can Try Again or Skip or Cancel. Only Skip makes any sense. I have looked up what Clipchamp is, and I see that it is a Microsoft video editor tool, but that it has a web-based architecture, so that the code resides on a web site and is loaded temporarily into my computer to run the application. My first question is: If I am doing the backup in the usual fashion, by dragging a folder from C: to a folder window on F: (the removable storage device), is there any way that I can tell Windows 11 in advance to Skip errors rather than prompting me for action? Second, is there any alternate easy-to-do way to copy folders from C: to a folder on F: other than dragging and dropping that allows me to specify action on errors? Third, I see that Clipchamp, and some of the other stuff that gives me errors on backup up, are in the Users folder. Do the error messages that I am getting mean that copying the Users folder is problematic, and that I should be backing up some of its subfolders instead? Robert McClenon (talk) 04:00, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I found Robocopy, if you want a copy utility with sophisticated options. (Does figuring out a new tool save effort? Debatable.) This is built-in to Windows 11, I tried it out myself just now.  Card Zero  (talk) 04:54, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

November 24

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Telegram account deletion timing

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On the Internet I find many guides that explain how to delete a Telegram account but in none of these is it written after how long it is actually closed. Does anyone know the answer? 2.194.247.141 (talk) 21:24, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Have you trid? Do you have some reason to suppose it is not closed immediately? Most online accounts are. Shantavira|feed me 09:34, 25 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It depends. I think for a lot of more sophisticated services nowadays, deletion isn't actually instant and you generally have X number of days to change your mind. E.g. Facebook is 30 days, Microsoft is 30 or 60 days [1]. Google seems to have a window too [2] but I didn't find what it is also I think it's 20 days for their business service Workspaces [3]. Discord is possibly 14-30 days [4].

I think these arise out of fact that traditionally, deleting your account on such services may not do much. Often it just marks stuff as deleted and hides it from the front end but the data is all still there and especially in the backups such services have to try and ensure they don't lose data. So depending on whether the service was willing it was potentially possible to get your account back or at least partially back months or years later. Laws and regulations especially from the EU (GDPR) has meant this isn't so accepted any more and so such services do actually have to try and delete your data now after some time.

But with password leaks etc, compromised accounts are common and there are limited additional verification steps that might be taken depending on the details held. So if they start to remove your data instantly people are going to get annoyed when some troll or whatever compromises their account and deletes all their data. (I mean even Jim Browning had his Youtube channel deleted.) And I'm sure plenty of people just delete their accounts when there is something going on in their lives then later regret it, especially common I'm sure for anything with a social aspect like Facebook, Discord and yes Telegram. So they set a defined recovery window before they actually start to delete your data.

I didn't find anything for Telegram but Telegram is known for operating fairly outside the laws of the EU. What I did find is suggestions that the way Telegram works mean deleting your account doesn't mean the data disappears, in fact it will still be visible in the accounts of anyone you chatted with etc unless you delete it first where possible. I'm not sure what happens for stuff in your saved messages but I wouldn't be surprised if it's all still somewhere, although this doesn't mean Telegram will allow you to recover your account.

That said this suggests Discord is possibly the same. Potentially because they interpret the GDPR as meaning they've complied if they remove any connections between your account and your real life identity in their details. And if you posted in some chat "Hi I'm @deleteddiscorduser12345 . I'm John Michael Smith, born on 21 September 1970 at the Flint Public hospital, raised in Flint with my mum Jane and dad George. I attended the Flint Grade School, Flint Middle School and Flint High School then went to MIT studying Computer Science from 1988-1992. Now I'm of Detroit, Michigan and live in 1000 West Street with my 2 cats Snowy and Larry." it's tough cookies I guess. (Of course such services always have a problem when it's someone else who posted it, or if they replied in such a way they they copied part of your message.)

Nil Einne (talk) 13:20, 25 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]


November 26

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Is anyone here a Reddit moderator or do any of you know well why the automod is glitching out badly on me? It keeps autoremoving my innocent posts no matter what subreddits I post in.

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Please check out my account; what is it about my account that causes the automod to malfunction and keep autoremoving my posts?: https://www.reddit.com/user/AWrride/

My post karma is in the thousands and comment karma is in the hundreds so they're not getting removed for low karma, so why are they getting removed then? How do I stop getting bothered by the automod like this?

Also, most pleas in the subreddits' ModMails go unanswered. It's as if the mods don't read my pleas.

So could someone here please help me resolve the glitching automod problem so that I can get their automoderator to please leave me alone? Thanks. --2600:100A:B030:9399:A4B7:A7C4:A534:6D53 (talk) 17:36, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Automod is controlled by the moderators of the subreddit for each one, and is not something users can control. Sorry about it.
Take my honest suggestion though: It might be a good idea to abandon the subreddit if this keeps happening. TheTechie@enwiki (she/they | talk) 04:06, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

USB mouse stops working after running Beautiful Soup from bs4 with requests and lxml in PyCharm

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starts working again after I put the laptop in sleep mode and sign back in, any idea what is causing this? Therapyisgood (talk) 21:33, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]


November 28

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Linking several WhatsApp numbers to a Facebook business account.

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It is possible to link several WhatsApp phone numbers to a Facebook business account. One of them has to be set as the primary number: It will be contacted when someone writes a WhatsApp message to the business account. But what is the use of the other linked WhatsApp numbers? Do they just serve as spares, or do they have an actual, immediate use? --KnightMove (talk) 13:40, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Most commonly, they are used for different departments, different countries/target markets, or for specific campaigns being run by the company. "One of them has to be set as the primary number". Not really. One can be listed as the primary PER Facebook page, but a business account can have hundreds of FB pages (and instagram accounts, and as you noticed WhatsApp numbers). —TheDJ (talkcontribs) 21:37, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, thanks. But we agree that one needs to be set as the primary number per page, and others can still be linked to that same page. Do they play any active role? If yes, which one? --KnightMove (talk) 09:07, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]


November 30

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Search by image on a USB flash drive

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Is there a way to search for repeating (identical) images on a USB flash drive in Windows 10? Checking by eye becomes tedious for me, as I'm back-uping many of them and don't want to transfer identical jpg images with different file names. Brandmeistertalk 20:52, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sorting by size would make it easier. If two images look the same but have different file sizes, there's probably a difference in quality or a filter has been applied, and you probably want to take a closer look to determine which is worth backing up.-Gadfium (talk) 21:36, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Using a compressed image format like jpeg, it's indeed very unlikely that two different images have the same file size, but if there are thousands of images of a few megabytes each, you'll probably have some collisions. See birthday problem. Also, two identical images may still have different file size if there's a difference in their metadata. For example, one may have a caption added. Still, sorting by file size would be a good start. Only if you're dealing with a huge number of pictures it's worth finding a more advanced method. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:27, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see any real reason to use something as crude as exact filesize instead of file contents i.e. hash or checksum which is almost as trivial for any duplicate detection tool and even on a USB flash drive shouldn't take that long. E.g. Dupeguru definitely can and it sounds like Czkawka can as well although at least for Windows there must be thousands and even going by only free hundreds and I expect at least tens FLOSS. I mean you might occasionally have images which are basically duplicate but have some minor changes in the metadata or whatever which you'd miss by using contents, but it's still the better choice IMO. Dupeguru and Czkawka also have similar image functionality although I've never used such functionality since I've only ever been interested in removing exact dupes. This isn't a problem for images but if we're talking large files and you're concerned about time and you're fairly sure you don't have corruption etc, I think some tools allow only hashing a part of the file to speed things up. (OTOH, if you're worried about malicious damage/changes, make sure you choose a tool with a secure hash although this isn't a common concern.) Nil Einne (talk) 14:53, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What exactly is making it difficult? Is it because the duplicates could be in different folders? How exact a duplicate do the images have to be to be considered a duplicate? If everything is in one directory, sorting by filesize would work, as others have mentioned. If I was doing the task, I'd sort by size and switch the view to large thumbnails or whatever. If pictures are in multiple directories, things get more complicated. When I had a similar task to do, I actually made use of the command line's DIR function to get me a list of every file in every directory and import that into Excel where I could easily check for duplicate file names, file sizes, creation dates, and so on. Matt Deres (talk) 16:52, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 1

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Does the Reddit Automod know that I access an account on DuckDuckGo?

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Is a connection to Reddit via DuckDuckGo pretty sus to the Automod? Is it why the automod has been autoremoving all of my legit posts?

What are other users' experiences like using a Reddit account on DuckDuckGo? --2600:8803:1D13:7100:BBC6:2B3:625A:265B (talk) 12:23, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Reddit automods produce a reason why posts are removed. You haven't provided us with the reason the posts were removed. If you don't know, you need to look at the change update and instead of quickly deleting it or clicking 'read' on it, read it. I have never ever seen any hint of any automod that looks to see if the user is using a DuckDuckGo web browser. It is far more likely that you are posting something that is not allowed and the automod is removing it and you are not reading the reason why it was removed. It can be trivial. For example, I asked a question on one Reddit page and it was immediately removed. The reason for removal explained that a different Reddit page was the correct place to ask the question, so I asked it there instead and it wasn't removed. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 15:25, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 5

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