Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2020 October 5

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October 5

Websites stop loading via address bar

Recently I noticed that sometimes, after hitting Enter in the address bar some websites (including Wikipedia and its search, as well as Gmail) abruptly stop loading within about 3-4 sec, and only load after second attempt. Cache purging seemingly doesn't help. Is this a known issue? Running Mozilla Firefox on Windows 10. Thanks. Brandmeister^talk 15:28, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Usually it's something to do with a browser add-on. 93.136.178.2 (talk) 05:33, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Help identifying sorting algorithm implemented in Java

I'm trying to identify the following sorting algorithm:

public void sort(int[] unsortedArray) {
    int lowPos = 0;
    int swappedValue = 0;
    for(int i = 0; i < unsortedArray.length; i++) {
        lowPos = i;
        for (int j = i; j < unsortedArray.length; j++) {
            if(unsortedArray[j] < unsortedArray[lowPos]){
                lowPos = j;
            }
        }
        swappedValue = unsortedArray[i];
        unsortedArray[i] = unsortedArray[lowPos];
        unsortedArray[lowPos] = swappedValue;
    }
}

It's either an insertion sort or a selection sort, but I can't figure out which. It looks like a selection sort, since the inner for loop selects the lowest remaining value and appends it to the already sorted sub-array, but I found it labeled as an insertion sort. What am I missing? --Puzzledvegetable^{Is it teatime already?} 17:31, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

In each pass, it grabs the smallest value and moves it to the front of the array. That is a selection sort. It is doing it in place, which might look weird. In a handwritten form, you commonly have two lists and move items from one to the other. Here, the sorted list is the front of the unsorted list. In each pass, the unsorted list shrinks by one index and the sorted list grows by one index. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 20:02, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

what brand of phone did a tweet come from?

Someone on the interweb claims that President Trump's personal phone is a Samsung Galaxy, but all his tweets from the past couple days have been posted from an iPhone. How can they tell, just from the tweets? I guess if he's posting photos there might be jpeg metadata identifying the camera, hmm. Any other possibilities? Of course they might be making it up. Thanks. 2602:24A:DE47:BB20:50DE:F402:42A6:A17D (talk) 21:17, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

It's pretty simple; if you look at individual Tweets in the desktop web interface, they tell you what app posted them, such as "Twitter for iPhone" in the most recent case, and as far back as I checked for, October 1. Elizium23 (talk) 22:09, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

(ec)You can access twitter via an API and obtain the data associated with a given tweet as a JSON object. See here. One of the data objects is the "source" field, which can contain e.g. "Twitter Web Client" (for tweets coming via the web interface), or

<a href=\"http://twitter.com/\" rel=\"nofollow\">Twitter for iPhone</a>

for the iPhone app. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:14, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Various reports suggest Trump has probably been using one or more iPhones since 2017 [1] [2]. While I'm sometimes cautious about the more obscure claims about Trump, there is strong evidence of iPhone use as Elizium23 and Stephan Schulz said both from the apps supposedly used but also from photos. I cannot find any reports mentioning a Galaxy phone use since the switch to iPhones in 2017 [3]. There is claim of a personal phone [4] but I think that just means the iPhones [5] which even if they are government issue aren't supposed to be used for anything requiring security e.g. calls to world leaders. All of which highlights why "someone on the interweb" tends to be a terrible source. Anyone still making some claim which seems to be over 3 years out of date, and which is called into major question with a 5 second search probably shouldn't be trusted. And sadly way too many "someone on the interweb" do such things. Nil Einne (talk) 22:21, 5 October 2020 (UTC) 22:52, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

BTW, viewing an individual tweet/clicking on a tweet from @realDonaldTrump should also show you the app supposedly used to send it (next to the date) on the Android Twitter app and the website on a mobile browser. Meanwhile to make it clear there wasn't some period earlier this year missed see e.g. this from September [6] or this from July [7], May [8] or these from February [9] [10]. (Because of how Twitter works, you may need to click on the tweet to see the tweet individually and so the app.) Nil Einne (talk) 22:30, 5 October 2020 (UTC) 22:52, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

You are making the assumption that he posts his tweets. Most celebrities (including politicians) have a social media team that creates an online personality and posts for them. The goal is to make it look like the person is doing it, but it is actually a media relations team. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 11:47, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

'Most' is probably the key word here. Evidence (such as from my sources) including from leaks etc suggest this isn't really the case for Trump, indeed somewhat controversially the case. It's possible a small number of Tweets are posted by someone else, and this could change to all in an emergency, but most seem to be posted by Trump and despite the hospitalisation that emergency doesn't seem to have happened. It's always possible there's some secret team spending thousands of people-hours carefully analysing trends and coming up with great posts like Covfefe that somehow despite all the leaks etc by Trump have managed to escape such public revealing, but probably not..... P.S. To be clear, I'm only referring to realDonaldTrump, not the POTUS account. Nil Einne (talk) 05:47, 12 October 2020 (UTC)