Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2018 July 30

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July 30

Google Play Store

Is there anyway whatsoever, I could pay for apps with my calling balance? 123.108.246.67 (talk) 19:35, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Some providers definitely support it with (postpaid) accounts [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. I strongly suspect some support it with prepaid accounts although the cost structures and other factors may make it less common. Nil Einne (talk) 21:15, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

A quick search found [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] which do appear to support direct carrier billing with prepaid accounts. I suggest you search the websites of Bangladeshi providers and see if any provide this option. Note that this is almost definitely only going to be with money balances, not with minute balances or anything of that sort. There could also be certain money balances which don't allow it for various reasons. Nil Einne (talk) 21:22, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

My country (Croatia) added this last year or so. You might be in for a bit of a wait in Bangladesh. 78.0.231.46 (talk) 21:24, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

I had a look and couldn't find any mention of direct carrier billing in Bangladesh. While having a look in India and Pakistan, I found that they both seem to have it although I have no idea whether this is only for (postpaid) accounts or it works with prepaid [11] [12] [13] [14]. Maybe more interestingly, I realised I should stop ignoring Google itself. This page [15] lets you select country and you can find which providers, if any, support direct carrier billing although not the details of whether you need an (postpaid) account or what. While Bangladesh isn't on the list, Cambodia, Ghana and Tanzania all are and a quick check shows all 3 do show direct carrier billing (called "Mobile phone billing") with at least one provider. (The details I didn't look at.) Bear in mind that in some ways this sort of thing is actually more in demand in countries where debit and credit cards aren't common and where prepaid/gift cards for Google Play may not be popular for the occasional transaction. While this likely includes a number of developed countries (where people also tend to have more money to spend on these sort of things), it also includes developing countries. (In a somewhat similar fashion, many have much more developed Mobile payment systems than a lot of the developed world. Often simple things like SMS based.) So it probably depends a lot on how much potential Google sees in the market, how willing (or desperate) the telcos are, and of course government regulations. Nil Einne (talk) 02:52, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

In some countries, you can buy Google (and Apple) store gift-cards from large supermarkets. They can be bought with cash. They have a code, which you enter into the Google/Apple app store, and it credits your store account with that amount of money. LongHairedFop (talk) 15:45, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

GCC question

I have a dumb question.

I have used GCC, but always in the context of compiling a program for Linux on the Linux system where the program will be used.

I am trying something a bit different this time;

The system where I will do the compiling is a 64-bit Window 10 box with Cygwin and the usual GCC toolchain.

The system where the program will run is one of these: STM32 32-Bit ARM Cortex M3" Blue Pill". It will be running FreeRTOS and I plan on using libopencm3 and GCC.

Right now I am figuring out what Cygwin packages I want to install. (Installing everything would be stupid; Cygwin has 11242 packages and installing everything takes up 112 GB of disk space).

So, should I install the 64-bit GCC to match the 64-bit Cygwin running on 64-bit Windows? Or should I install the 32-bit GCC to match the 32-bit ARM Cortex? --Guy Macon (talk) 20:28, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

You can use 64-bit GCC to compile into 32-bit code. Ruslik_Zero 20:43, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

What you are trying to do is called cross compiling. You need a version of gcc that runs in your Windows Cygwin environment but produces ARM machine code rather than x86 machine code. I'm not sure if you can get a precompiled cygwin version of such a beast -- probably you will need to get the source for the ARM compiler and build it to run on your PC. These links might point you in the right direction: [16] [17] [18] CodeTalker (talk) 22:12, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Exactly what I was looking for (and didn't know I was looking for). Thanks! --Guy Macon (talk) 22:20, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

You might start here:[19] It's probably easier to use an existing arduino chain than bringing up from nothing. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 04:39, 3 August 2018 (UTC)