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November 4

floating-point “accuracy”

It's frequently stated that computer floating point is "inherently inaccurate", because of things like the way the C code

float f = 1. / 10.;
printf("%.15f\n", f);

tends to print 0.100000001490116.

Now, I know full well why it prints 0.100000001490116, since the decimal fraction 0.1 isn't representable in binary. That's not the question.

My question concerns those words "inherently inaccurate", which I've come to believe are, well, inaccurate. I believe that computer floating point is as accurate as the numbers you feed into it and the algorithms you use on them, and that it is also extremely precise (120 parts per billion for single precision, 220 parts per quintillion for double precision.) So I would say that floating point is not inaccurate, although it is indeed "inherently imprecise", although that's obviously no surprise, since its precision is inherently finite (24 bits for single precision, 53 bits for double, both assuming IEEE 754).

The other thing about binary floating point is that since it's done in base 2, its imprecisions show up differently than they would in base 10, which is what leads to the 0.100000001490116 anomaly I started this question with. (Me, I would say that those extra nonzero digits …1490116 are neither "inaccurate" nor "imprecise"; they're basically just false precision, since they're beyond the precision limit of float32.)

But I can see from our page on accuracy and precision that there are a number of subtly different definitions of these terms, so perhaps saying that floating point is "inherently inaccurate" isn't as wrong as I've been thinking.

So my question is just, what do other people think? Am I missing something? Is saying "floating point is inherently inaccurate" an informal but inaccurate approximation, or is it meaningful? —scs (talk) 13:50, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wiktionary: accurate says "accurate ... Telling the truth or giving a true result; exact", but float is not exact so it is not accurate in that sense. 213.126.69.28 (talk) 14:10, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See also Floating-point arithmetic § Accuracy problems. What is not mentioned, is the problem that little inaccuracies can accumulate. For example, consider this code:

x = 0.1
for i in range(62):
  x = 4*x*(1-x)

The true mathematical value computed, rounded to 15 decimals, is 0.256412535470218, but the value computed using IEEE floating point arithmetic will come out as 0.988021660873313. --Lambiam 16:06, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Lambiam: Cute example. (Does it have a name?) Lately I've been impressed at how often cascading precision loss isn't a problem, although it's certainly one of the things you always have to watch out for, as here. (It's why I said "as accurate as... the algorithms you use on them".) —scs (talk) 14:28, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See Logistic map § Solution when

r = 4

. --Lambiam 20:01, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Lambiam: Aha: An "archetypal example of complex, chaotic behaviour". So we shouldn't be too surprised it's particularly sensitive to slight computational differences along the way... :-) —scs (talk) 22:48, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The basic floating point operations are as accurate as it possible for them to be and the specification normally talks about precision which measures the unavoidable deviation from being completely accurate. But no-one is going to carp about calling it inaccurate! NadVolum (talk) 16:57, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@NadVolum: I am here to prove you wrong, because that is exactly what I am carping about! :-) —scs (talk) 17:31, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There are two issues with floating point numbers that are both wrapped up in "they are not accurate." I personally never say that. What I say is that the same number can be stored in memory different ways. For example, a human can tell you that 10e4 and 100e3 are the same number. But, to a computer, they are different. It doesn't parse out the value and computer 100000 and 100000. It compares exactly what it sees. 10e4 and 100e3 are not the same. Of course, computers use binary, not decimal, but that isn't the point. The point is that you have the same value being stored in different ways. You, as the human, don't control it. As you do operations on a value in memory, the value updates and the exact way it is stored can change. Separately, floating point numbers do tend to drift at the very end. So, 3.000000... can become 2.99999999... or 3.00000000....0001. That is not "wildy" inaccurate. But, 2.99999... is not the same value as 3.00000. In the end, why do we care? It comes down to programming. If you have two floating point variables x and y and you want to know if they are the same value, you can't simply compare x==y and hope to get the right answer. What if x is 3.00000.... and y is 2.99999...? Instead, you do something like abs(x-y)<0.000000001. Then, if there is a little drift or if the two numbers are the same value but stored slightly different, you get the correct answer. This came to a head way back in the 80s when there was a flame war about making the early c++ compiler automatically convert x==y to abs(x-y)<0.0000000000000000001. But, what I believe you are arguing is that memory storage should be fixed instead of the programming so the numbers are always stored in the exact same format and there is never ever any drift of any kind. That would be more difficult in my opinion. 17:24, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

That's not what I was saying, but thanks for your reply. [P.S. 10e4 and 100e3 are the same number, in any normalized floating-point format; they're both stored as 1.52587890625 × 2¹⁶, or more to the point, in binary as 1.10000110101₂ × 2¹⁶.] [P.P.S. Testing fabs(x - y) < some_small_number is not a very good way of doing it, but that wasn't the question, either.] —scs (talk) 20:12, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A fundamental problem is that numbers represented in numerical form, whether on paper or in a computer, are rational numbers. In print, we typically have numbers of the form

m\cdot 10^{n},

where

m

and

n

are whole numbers. In computers,

m\cdot 2^{n}

is more common. However, most numbers are not rational. There is no way to compute the exact value of, for example,

{\frac {\ln 24591257752}{\pi {\sqrt {58}}}}.

There is no known algorithm that will decide in general whether the mathematical value of such an expression with transcendental functions is itself transcendental, so at a branch asking whether this value is equal to

1

we have no better recourse than computing this with limited accuracy and making a decision that may be incorrect.

BTW, "comparison tolerance" was a feature of APL.^[1] The "fuzz", as it was colloquially called, was not a fixed constant but was a system variable with the strange name ⎕ct to which a user could assign a value. The comparison was more complicated than just the absolute difference; it was relative to the larger absolute value of the two comparands (if not exactly equal as rational numbers). --Lambiam 21:37, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I actually don't agree with the claim that numbers represented in numerical form...are rational numbers. If you're talking about the main use for them, namely representing physical quantities, they aren't rational numbers, not conceptually anyway. Conceptually they're "fuzzy real numbers". They don't represent any exact value, rational or otherwise, but rather a position along the real line known with some uncertainty. --Trovatore (talk) 22:36, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am not talking here about numbers representing values, but numbers being represented by (finite) numerical forms, such as decimal expansions or floating-point representations. A bit pattern can be used to represent a number. Humans can interpret such numbers as representing the cube root of 2 or the size of the observanle universe, but the numbers representing these irrational or fuzzy values are themselves rational. --Lambiam 19:33, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't agree. Floats are a different thing; they aren't rationals or irrationals. They aren't really real numbers at all. They're a different structure, which approximates the structure of the reals. Sure, there's a standard interpretation of them as rationals, but that interpretation is not really faithful, and the objects that the floats are intended to represent are not those rationals, particularly, but rather an approximation to a real value. --Trovatore (talk) 20:00, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Right. If you say that "floating-point numbers are rational numbers", that's true in that, for example, the single-precision floating-point number you get for 0.1 is exactly 13421773/134217728. But it's pretty badly false if it leads you to conclude that you should be able to represent numbers like 1/3 and 2/7 exactly. The best description really is that floats are an imperfect, finite-precision approximation of real numbers. —scs (talk) 21:35, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(Taking the above comments as read:) Most of the significant issues with floating point numbers are programming errors, often slightly subtle ones. It is possible in the majority of cases to use rational numbers as an alternative, only producing a floating point representation when display or output is needed in that form. Again for the majority of cases this would be a good solution, but for a very few cases the numerator and denominator could be very large (the logistic map example above would require ~ 2^62 digits (cancelling helps but a little)), and for compute intensive cases the general slowdown could be important. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 12:00, 6 November 2024 (UTC).[reply]

It's conceptually wrong, though, in most cases. Floating-point numbers usually represent physical quantities, and physical quantities aren't conceptually rational numbers. What we want is something that approximates our state of knowledge about a real-valued quantity, and floating point is the closest thing we have to that in wide use. (Interval arithmetic would be a *little* closer but it's a pain.)

That doesn't actually prove that you couldn't get good solutions with rationals, but it's kind of an article of software-engineering faith that things work best when your data structures align with your concepts. I don't know if that's ever been put to a controlled test. --Trovatore (talk) 18:25, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sure you are absolutely right for representing physical quantities in most cases - in chaotic scenarios whatever accuracy you measure with might not be enough regardless of the way you calculate. However computing is used for many purposes including mathematics. It's also used in ways where careful application of floating point will bring an acceptable answer, but naive application won't. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 23:03, 6 November 2024 (UTC).[reply]

Incidentally here's a perl program that gets a more accurate answer to the logistic map problem above, using floating point:

use Math::BigFloat;
my $x = Math::BigFloat->new('0.1');
$x->accuracy(50);  # Set desired precision
for (my $i = 0; $i < 62; $i++) {
    $x = 4 * $x * (1 - $x);
}
print "$x\n";

All the best: Rich Farmbrough 23:07, 6 November 2024 (UTC).[reply]

I guess you meant "...using arbitrary precision floating point" (i.e. perl's "BigFloat" package).

But this ends up being a nice illustration of another principle of numerical programming, namely the importance of using excess precision for intermediate results. Evidently that call to accuracy(50) sets not only the final printout precision, but also the maximum precision carried through the calculations. So although it prints 50 digits, only 32 of them are correct, with the rest lost due to accumulated roundoff error along the way. (The perl program prints 0.25641253547021802388934423187010674334774769183115, but I believe the correct answer to 50 digits — at least, according to my own, homebrew multiprecision calculator — is 0.25641253547021802388934423187010494728798714960746.) —scs (talk) 04:02, 7 November 2024 (UTC), edited 13:45, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My original question was about how to describe the imperfections, not what the imperfections are or where they come from. But since someone brought up rational numbers, my own take is that there are several models you might imagine using for how computer floating point works:

Now, although real numbers are arguably what floating-point numbers are the farthest from — there are an uncountably infinite number of real numbers, but "only" 18,437,736,874,454,810,626 floating-point ones — it's the real numbers that floating-point at least tries to approximate. The approximation is supremely imperfect — both the range and the precision are strictly limited — but if you imagine that floating-point numbers are approximate, limited-precision renditions of certain real numbers, you won't go too far wrong. (As for the rationals, it's not strictly wrong to say that "floating point numbers are rational numbers", because the floating point numbers are indeed a proper subset of the rational numbers — but I don't think it's a useful model.) —scs (talk) 13:35, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, it is "strictly wrong to say that 'floating point numbers are rational numbers'". At least there is no injective ring homomorphism from the floats into the rationals, because the arithmetic is different. Of course the floats aren't literally a ring in the first place, but you can work out what I mean. --Trovatore (talk) 19:35, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Trovatore: I'm just a simple computer programmer who doesn't even know how to spell — in jek tiv ring homeopathy (?) — but yes, now that you mention it, even I can work out that between the fact that they're barely closed, don't always have inverses, and aren't always associative, floating point numbers aren't rationals in the group-theoretical sense. :-) (I was agreeing with Lambiam insofar that every normal and subnormal floating-point number is trivially representable as p/q, albeit with q always 2ⁿ.) —scs (talk) 15:08, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

November 5

Monitor Is Dark

I have a Dell desktop computer running Windows 11 with a full-screen monitor. Early this afternoon, it was displaying the screen to prompt me to enter my passnumber, which I entered, and then the screen went dark. The computer itself is still functioning. I have shared some of its folders, and I can see them as shared drives on my laptop computer. My question is what I should try short of replacing the monitor. I haven't priced monitors yet, but I know that they cost between $100 and $200, and I am willing to spend that if necessary, but would of course rather spend on something else. I tried unplugging the monitor from the UPS and plugging it back in. Is there anything that can be inferred from the fact that the monitor turned off while it was logging me on? Is there anything in particular that I should try? Robert McClenon (talk) 00:42, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Please disregard this question. I disconnected the monitor power cord from both the monitor and the power supply. Then I plugged it back into a different socket of the power supply, and back into the monitor, and the display is fine again. I don't know whether a connection had been loose or whether the socket in the power supply failed, more likely the former, but I will just leave it alone now that it is working. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:14, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am running Windows 11 and the same thing happened to me a few hours ago. I have three monitors. All went black. The computer was still on and running, but no display except for the mouse. It took me a bit to realize that as I moved the mouse, a gray pixel moved around the screens. I forced a shutdown on the computer by long-holding the power button, turned it back on, and all three monitors started working again. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 17:15, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That was a different problem. That sounds like a failure in Windows 11. My problem turned out to be a hardware problem. I am satisfied that I solved my problem and that you solved yours. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:01, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

November 6

Turning Off Ad Blocker

Sometimes when I am viewing a news web site, there is a message asking me to turn off my ad blocker. I have not deliberately enabled an ad blocker, so I assume that something, maybe Norton, is blocking ads. If I am using Firefox, how do I determine what ad blocker is in use, so that I can turn it off if I want to view a page that doesn't like ad blockers? If I am using Chrome, how do I determine what ad blocker is in use, so that I can turn the ad blocker off? I have found that if I really want to bypass the ad blocker, I can use Opera, which is a less commonly used web browser, so that common security software doesn't mess with it, but I would like to be able to turn off the ad blocker if the web site tells me to turn off the ad blocker.

This is sort of an electronic arms race, with electronic counter-measures, and electronic counter-counter-measures. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:11, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Robert McClenon: I believe it potentially could be the tracker blocking from Firefox itself. I'm not sure whether there's an easy way to see what's blocking the adverts as it could potentially be down at network level. I suspect it's Firefox blocking trackers as occasionally when I use a browser that blocks trackers, I do get ad blocker disable notices. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 13:14, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Robert McClenon: using Firefox, I had a similar problem with YouTube, and learned that not only Adguard Adblocker and uBlock origin needed to be turned off for YouTube to work, but that Malwarebytes had also acquired an ad-blocking aspect and also needed to be turned off.

On Firefox, you may be able to click a jigsaw-piece icon at top right, labelled 'Extensions' and see what you currently have turned on and off. Hope this helps. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 21:52, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

When you open your web browser, you should be able to see the extensions or add-ons menu. On Chrome, you can type “chrome://extensions/” in the search field and look for the installed ad blockers under the “All Extensions” heading. Stanleykswong (talk) 17:04, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Intermittent but predictable IP connectivity

Context: I had an interesting issue, which I would like to know the technical cause of, partly out of curiosity, and partly so that I can have a more elegant fix should it recur. I resolved the issue by restarting my laptop (restarting the router didn't work and other devices did not have the problem).

My laptop had been working fine for a week or so on a new fibre connection, using the same router that we have had for several years. I went out and used my phone as a hotspot for my laptop. Came home, with hotspot turned off the to discover very intermittent Internet access.

The lap top was connected for 3 minutes, disconnected for 1 minute. I ran ping -t from command line to the gateway and logged the results. Ping -t should run once per second. I got between 177 and 179 successful pings, followed by 60-63 unsuccessful pings. I believe the slight variance from 180/60 was due to the reset happening in a lower level of the stack, so losing a little time while higher level connections were established (of course I'd expect the counts to vary by 1 or 2 simply because of the coarse resolution).

Hypotheses welcome, they should explain the 3 minute and 1 minute time spans.

Note: I found a Reddit post where someone had connectivity in "2-3 minute" chunks , but the answers weren't particularly informative.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough 11:45, 6 November 2024 (UTC).[reply]

@Rich Farmbrough:, Hi Rich, are you still experiencing this anomaly (and if not, how did you fix it), or would you like some troubleshooting suggestions? Cheers, :>MinorProphet (talk) 17:03, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It hasn't recurred. As I remarked I restarted my laptop. If it recurs I might try some command line stuff. Thanks for the kind offer. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 20:28, 10 November 2024 (UTC).[reply]

November 11

Error Clicking Link

I was sent an email containing a link providing a listing. When I clicked on the link on my laptop computer within Outlook, I get the error message: "Your organization's policies are preventing us from completing this action for you. For more info, please contact your help desk." I tried copying the link from an email document to a Word document and clicking on the link, and get the same message. If I copy the link into the URL bar, I can open it. I just can't open it on my desktop computer. I don't have a help desk that configures the laptop computer/ What rule or restriction is interfering with my ability to open the link on of two computers? Robert McClenon (talk) 07:35, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

125 people found the reply by TedFritchlee given here helpful --Lambiam 12:25, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, User:Lambiam. I am not number 126. I understood the answer to mean to use the Registry Editor and to look for [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.html]. But the default is already set to htmlfile, and the content type and perceived type are as described. So I see nothing that I can fix with the Registry Editor.

Is that a forum that I can use to ask for help? Robert McClenon (talk) 18:39, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have no personal experience with answers.microsoft.com. It does not look different from other community support forums where users offer other users advice on how to cope with less-than-perfect software. --Lambiam 19:06, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Are you using Office 365? There are "sharing" options in Office 365 that can cause that issue. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 17:41, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sharing Options in Office 365

Yes, I am using Office 365. The errors occur when clicking the link from within Outlook, or by copying the link to a Word document. The error can be worked around by doing a Copy Hyperlink and then clicking the hyperlink in a URL in Chrome. So I think that we agree that the problem is in Office 365. How do I work on the sharing options in Office 365? Robert McClenon (talk) 18:12, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There are two common issues that have nothing to do with one another. Both are in Office 365 settings, which is separate from your computer settings. The first one is file and document sharing. Hunt for that setting (the menus change all the time, so it is difficult say "click this, then this, then this..."). Try setting it to allow everyone. If that doesn't fix the problem, change it back. The second is under your default application handler settings. Your html handler should be your web browser. You are probably like most people and have at least 2 web browsers, Edge and Google or Edge and Firefox or Edge and Opera. Whatever is selected, select the other one. Try it. It should open links in that browser. Try to switch it back. If it won't work, the best path forward is usually to delete and reinstall the browser so you can select it. If neither of those works, it is still likely an Office 365 settings issue. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 18:25, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, 12.*. But how do I get to the Office 365 settings? I have an Office 365 thing on the taskbar of my desktop computer, but I don't have one on the taskbar of my laptop computer, and it is my laptop that has the problem. How do I open the Office 365 settings? Robert McClenon (talk) 19:23, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Office 365 is, essentially, web based. Go to microsoft365.com (I assumed it was office365.com, but when I tried that it redirected to microsoft365.com). Sign in with your Office 365 account. From there, you will see settings. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 19:28, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, sort of, 12.116.*. I have signed into microsoft365.com, and there is a Settings gearwheel in the upper right corner. When I click it, it gives me the option to turn on Dark Mode and to display third-party notices. To the left, it displays a list of Office apps and allows me to create documents, but I create documents using the versions of the apps that are installed on my C: drive. What am I missing? Robert McClenon (talk) 19:40, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Problem Solved

This problem was solved, with help from a technical support person. The default browser was set to Microsoft Edge, but Microsoft Edge was broken. The problem was solved by reinstalling Microsoft Edge. It was possible to work around the problem by copying the hyperlink into a Chrome or Firefox URL window because Chrome and Firefox were not broken. A conclusion is that another cause of this problem may be that the default browser cannot be launched successfully. Maybe that is the whole meaning of the message, in which case it is another case of a message that doesn't say what is wrong because the software, being broken, is confused as to what is wrong. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:55, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Robert, I am glad you resolved this problem to your satisfaction. Possible over-arching solution: do not use M$ Edge as your default browser. In fact. have nothing to do with it, ever. A few years back Internet Explorer was frankly the pits (Mozilla totally broke FF <sob> as well when they destroyed extensions), and it's a moot point whether Edge is one level above IE in the generally-acknowledged pecking order, or in fact constitutes the very bottom of the barrel itself. Just my 2¢ worth. MinorProphet (talk) 20:53, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Encyclopedia.com

Hi, I've no idea which section this goes in, or if this is even the correct noticeboard for my question.

A new user has posted an update about the website and change of owners, but for me, on my mobile, the website comes up with 'Bad gateway, error code 502, Visit cloudflare.com for more information. (It says it's a host error). I'm an old mare, t'internet wasn't even invented until I got to uni! @Zubyp: to see if I ca get an answer. I haven't posted the link just in case its harmful but the edit is here [2]) Knitsey (talk) 22:40, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like a call to false interpretations all across the board except for the genuine distress perceptible in the author prose ( Zubyp's interpretation being at least half-erroneous as a result I think: "some of the information herein is fabricated ( .. ) for privacy purposes", not validable for any kind of primary source. ) -- Askedonty (talk) 01:35, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't get an error message. The page reads like a press release, but the text is bizarre, not something people maintaining an encyclopedia would write. It looks like someone hacked the website and then posted a link here on Wikipedia to draw attention to their prose. --Lambiam 07:26, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you both for checking. I really appreciate it. I will let the user know. Knitsey (talk) 14:00, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

November 12

UserScript

Why does this script works only from console but not from a userscript on wikipedia websites?

// ==UserScript==
// @name         x
// @match        *://*/*
// @run-at       document-start

// ==/UserScript==
window.setTimeout ( ()=>{
if (window.location.href.includes('wikipedia.org')) {
    window.open("https://example.com/", "_self");
    // window.location.replace("https://example.com");
    // window.location.href("https://example.com");
}
}, 100);

Thank you in advance. 223.24.184.76 (talk) 04:57, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

More information needed for an answer: How do you run the UserScript? Are you using a method that Wikipedia supports or a browser addin? If you are using a browser addin, which addin?

Do other scripts that use setTimeout or access window work fine?

Also, if we run into issues reproducing the problem you have after you've answered the above, we would also need to know what browsers (and version) you have tried this in. You've also not given any information about error messages in the console, so I'm assuming there are no error messages when you check the browser console. Komonzia (talk) 20:36, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

HTTP 451 and GDPR

HTTP 451 mentions that many non-EU websites use this code when refusing traffic from EU countries, since they don't want to comply with the EU's General Data Protection Regulation. I'm confused: if you're not in an EU country, why do you have to comply with EU regulations of any sort? What can the EU do to you if you're not in the EU? Nyttend (talk) 22:06, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Impose fines and if they're not paid, impound property you happen to have in the EU. Or, if you're traveling via the EU, holding you hostage until you've paid the fines. --Lambiam 23:48, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not that most of that is likely for 'legit' websites, but these organisations don't want the extra overhead of even having to think about any of that, so this is the cheap way out for them. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:35, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

November 13

PNG Transparent Background

I've got some images with off-white backgrounds that I'd like to set as transparent, and I'm following the instructions at https://www.photoroom.com/blog/transparent-background-in-ms-paint. I'm left with two images. The first (after the instruction "Right-click on the protected object and select "Cut" to remove it from the image.") has the off-white background with a white hole the shape of the foreground object, the second has the foreground object with a white background. Neither shows any sign of transparency when I insert it into my target application!

Questions:

Do .png files support transparency? My research suggests they do.
I'm using the Paint app that comes with Windows 10. Is that the same as the MS Paint referred to?
What am I doing wrong???

Thanks. Rojomoke (talk) 11:42, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

PNG images DO support transparency. The application you are using must support saving a PNG image with transparency. Paint is MS Paint. The instructions provided appear correct compared to other guides. There is another question you didn't ask. Does the application you are using to display the images support transparent PNG images? If not, it will display the transparent area with the color indexed at 0 in the color pallete. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 11:58, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I do not have recent experience with paint and transparent backgrounds, but it used to be horrible. paint.net is an open source alternative that does what you want. Added benefit is that it looks just like paint does/did, so for simple stuff it doesn't have much of a learning curve (it has much more options than paint does, but those might need some practice). Note that it's also available from the microsoft store, but then it isn't freeRmvandijk (talk) 13:25, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not familiar with using MS Paint to make transparent images, but it sounds to me like the instructions you're following are having you 'cut' the foreground object out, which likely copies it to the clipboard. You should be able to paste that copied image into a new file that already has a fully transparent background, or even just erase the background from the current image and then re-paste the cut image back in. Amstrad00 (talk) 16:42, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This webpage is promoting an app. It's an advert dressed up as advice. Eventually the advice turns into "use an app such as ours".

PNGs support transparency. They also support an alpha channel which allows degrees of transparency, to smooth jaggy edges. You may need to select the option to include an alpha channel when saving the PNG. We have a Comparison of raster graphics editors, which includes a column for the ability to use the alpha channel. I hear Krita spoken of favorably lately, I haven't tried it. Card Zero (talk) 19:23, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

November 17

Jiggly computer game characters

For want of a better word, there's a trope used in the depiction of creatures (humanoid or other) depicted in video games where the characters are constantly jiggling about. I can guess several reasons why this might be the case. Is there a name for this sort of depiction? Does it have an interesting history perhaps? --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 00:58, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's rather vague, can you give an example? Are you thinking of the spasms sometimes afflicting puppets due to ragdoll physics? Or something simpler, like the jerkiness of two-frame animation? Card Zero (talk) 09:52, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If you've played any video games in last decade, you'll have seen it; here is an example. Has nothing to do death throes (unless that's where the trope started.) It doesn't seem to have any purpose other than visual; it's not denoting actual motion or anything vaguely realistic. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 16:05, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The name of that type of depiction is idle or idling animation, as indicated on that page. Shantavira|^{feed me} 17:48, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Idle animation. Thank you, that's what I was looking for. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 18:34, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Two-factor authentication and repeated codes

One form of two-factor authentication (or 2FA for short) uses six-digit codes. So, how likely will one encounter a code that one has already seen before? If a six-digit code is generated 1,000,001 times, then the pigeonhole principle guarantees that at least one of them must be repeated. So, if a six-digit code is generated every 30 seconds starting from the beginning of a year, then there must inevitably be a repeated code by the end of the year. GTrang (talk) 15:34, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, and? The codes don't need to be unique. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 16:40, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The likelihood of encountering a code that one has already seen before (which appears to be your question) depends entirely on how many you have seen before. Shantavira|^{feed me} 17:52, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Let