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October 27

IP address geolocation on cellphone

When I'm using it to surf the Web, my Sprint phone has started giving me random things out of Russellville, Arkansas: for example, when I used it to Google the phrase <fajita "ghost pepper sauce" arby's>, it asked if I wanted to search for Arby's stores in Russellville, and it gave me information (including address) about one of their stores there. Going to Special:Mypage on the phone, I learnt that the phone's IP address was 68.28.147.123 right then, but WHOIS and GeoLocate both say that it's merely a generic Sprint address without anything geo-specific, and the Arkansas identification obviously isn't based on my physical location, since I'm in central Virginia. Any ideas why the phone would start focusing on a city that's 900 miles away from me? Nyttend (talk) 00:18, 27 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Geolocation services based only IP addresses are guesswork, and different services produce different guesses for the same IP. The results of these guesses are often laughably wrong, and are wildly inconsistent to boot - even for ADSL addresses, never mind mobile. Worthwhile web services use GPS/GLONAS, cell-tower information, and/or a Wi-Fi positioning system. You (or some update, or some security software) may have disabled the Google Search app's access to the location API. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 15:55, 27 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Why is everything so big?

The computer at the library froze and something done to unfreeze it made everything really big.

I read the solution was to use CTRL and minus but when there was a place to click to return to default, that made everything big again. Plus even when I reduce everything to what looks "normal" the URL and the web site names above it are still big, and the start button, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome logos, time and everything else at the bottom of the screen is still big.

Also, the fonts on Wikipedia look weird. I have Monobook but it still doesn't look normal.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:08, 27 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Its likely that the machine defaulted to a lower resolution. I can't really tell you how to change it back without knowing the actual operating system but there should be an option in the Control Panel. uhhlive (talk) 21:35, 27 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Control panel. Right. The people that work at the library would have to do that. I'll check the same computer next week to see if it's fixed.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 23:04, 27 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It just happened on my own computer (Windows 10, Microsoft Edge). I somehow unplugged the monitor and an hour ago plugged it back in after I turned the computer on and the screen was black. I finally decided to try restart and that worked.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:03, 1 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

As part of the reboot procedure, many computers will return to the default (low resolution) display if a problem is detected. A later reboot may restore the original screen resolution, if no problem is detected. StuRat (talk) 19:13, 1 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]