I'm curious as to what exactly caused the current CrowdStrike outage. According to this article, [1] the root cause is a single file located in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike\ and is named C-00000291*.sys. Even though it ends with the sys extension, it is not a kernel driver. I don't have CrowdStrike on my PC and I'm just wondering if this file is a text file, and if so, has anyone compared the broken version with the fixed version and figured out the delta? A Quest For Knowledge ( talk) 21:51, 20 July 2024 (UTC) reply

No, this is the Computing ref desk of Wikipedia, we hold ourselves aloof from such minor niggles as the proximate cause of bringing down half the world's IT systems because some CrowdShite CrowdStrike techie couldn't be arsed to check whether their patch worked before releasing it into the wild (and consequently half-asleep IT teams across the globe). It's a channel .sys file to update the Falcon Sensor software, not an AV update, which seems to have caused a page fault, try The Register at e.g. [2] It will be a BitLocker problem for many, since Win 10 removed the ability to boot directly into Safe Mode. Where are your 48-digit recovery keys? [3] On-prem, I hope, in a locked safe, to which there are two keys, since one has gone on holiday with the IT department's boss. MinorProphet ( talk) 16:59, 21 July 2024 (UTC) reply

It is not a single file; there are different files whose name match the pattern. ^[4]  -- Lambiam 20:57, 21 July 2024 (UTC) reply

Apparently the error was not in the patch itself. A logic error in an existing driver, CrowdStrike’s Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) driver, running in kernel mode, had until recently gone unnoticed. It was triggered when parsing the content of the patched file, a configuration file. (For more detail, see [5], but the reporting on where the logic error was is a bit confused.)  -- Lambiam 21:15, 21 July 2024 (UTC) reply

As is Microsoft's commitment to OS security. [6] MinorProphet ( talk) 23:34, 21 July 2024 (UTC) reply

There were at least two procedural problems involved, in addition to the code error. The first procedural error was by CrowdStrike. The second procedural error was by the user community, with assistance by Microsoft. The error by CrowdStrike was inadequate pre-deployment testing. They should have had a small number of target systems on site running applications that resembled some of the operation-critical applications of their customer base. They should have deployed the patch to the target systems, and verified that the target systems came up cleanly. Obviously, they did not do that. They had some sort of system testing prior to deployment, but not a simulation of actual deployment to target systems.

Second, if I unplug my desktop computer from the UPS, and then plug it back in, it comes up to a blue screen that is not exactly a blue screen of death. I will call it a blue screen of birth. It says that Windows did not load properly the last time. It really means that Windows did not shut down properly, but that is a minor detail. It then gives me the option of restarting my PC normally, or of various options. Either the customers didn't have a USB drive or CD-ROM to boot from, or the startup sequence had been altered to make it more automatic to assume a normal restart. Something was wrong with the restart procedures of the customer base. Robert McClenon ( talk) 02:47, 25 July 2024 (UTC) reply

An Australian firm overcame the restart mess: How a cheap barcode scanner helped fix CrowdStrike'd Windows PCs in a flash, from El Reg. MinorProphet ( talk) 12:14, 25 July 2024 (UTC) reply

CrowdStrike has issued a "Preliminary Post Incident Review". According to this report, it was a bit more complicated (and, in my eyes, looking even worse for the company) than the story I linked to before. It was the result of four failures coming together. (1) an instance of an "InterProcessCommunication Template" was deployed whose content was invalid. This file was not itself a program, but contained data that was meant to be used to detect a certain attack. (2) The file was validated before deployment by an automatic process. The validating program contained a logic error, because of which it failed to detect that the content of the template instance was not valid. (3) As noted above by Robert McClenon, the deployment process of the company did not include a preliminary live test of the effect of deploying the file in a controlled environment, which would have made the issue manifest before worldwide deployment. This is strange; such live tests are standard across the industry. Omitting it and relying instead on static content validation for something so safety critical and meant to be used in kernel mode is indefensible. (4) The program interpreting the content did not itself attempt to validate the content independently. This is the most forgivable part; unless also developed independently it would likely have suffered from the same error as the validator of point 2. But as a result of interpreting the invalid content it executed an out-of-bounds memory read triggering an exception while in kernel mode, resulting unavoidably in the blue screen of death. This is hard to forgive; the interpreter should have been hardened to do a bounds check before performing a potential out-of-bounds operation.  -- Lambiam 18:41, 25 July 2024 (UTC) reply

This article " The months and days before and after CrowdStrike's fatal Friday" is subtitled "In the short term, they're going to have to do a lot of groveling". Understatement or what, especially since the CEO of CrowdStrike was the CEO of McAfee when an update borked millions of of PCs worldwide in 2010. Useless managers? They self-promote themselves upstairs. The update was only in operation for 78 minutes, there were many more millions of PCs which escaped. Plenty of links within the article for b/g info, and the comments are fairly negatory and forceful. As I understand it, M$ was forced to allow kernel access to 3rd-party suppliers since it couldn't be trusted to keep tabs on the security of the monopoly of its own OS. 'Page fault in nonpaged area' (0x50) has existed as a concept since bounds-checking was a compulsory module of Coding 101. MinorProphet ( talk) 21:59, 25 July 2024 (UTC) reply

Group areas act(1950) 41.114.250.185 ( talk) 19:01, 22 July 2024 (UTC) reply

Your question is unclear but have you read our extensive article on apartheid? Shantavira| ^{feed me} 19:11, 22 July 2024 (UTC) reply

Please do your own homework. 41.23.55.195 ( talk) 06:40, 23 July 2024 (UTC) reply

@ 41.114.250.185: The OP's first language is obviously not English, and possibly not their second language either. How many languages do you speak? Why don't you create a WP account rather than carping anonymously from the sidelines? I'm sure you failed some homework assignments yourself. MinorProphet ( talk) 19:14, 23 July 2024 (UTC) reply

This is the Computing Reference Desk. HiLo48 ( talk) 06:49, 23 July 2024 (UTC) reply

Well spotted, top marks! Hurrah! This is indeed the Computing Reference Desk. In 1995 (nearly 30 years go) I was fortunate and privileged enough to be in the group of the very first technical instructors from IBM to present that company's latest hardware offerings (laptops, desktops and PC servers) after the general international embargo ended, the same year when SA won the Rugby World Cup at home. I wasn't employed by IBM directly. It was a joyous occasion, taking place immediately after the 1994 South African general election. South Africa was open to the world again. But all the white people drove around in cars, including the taxi-drivers, and all the black people walked. That's how apartheid affected people's lives. All the techies I taught were white as well. MinorProphet ( talk) 19:14, 23 July 2024 (UTC) reply

"At least that's slightly relevant to this page. I'll keep it that much off topic by saying that in 1994 I (on behalf of my employer at the time) was one of the first customers for IBM (not Lenovo) ThinkPads in Australia. I still have two of them and they still work!!!! (On mains power of course.. The batteries are long gone.) HiLo48 ( talk) 21:24, 23 July 2024 (UTC) reply

Yah, but can you still source those replacement red nipples? They wear out, you know. The feel of a brand new one under your fingertip is simply astounding. MinorProphet ( talk) 02:28, 24 July 2024 (UTC) reply

Do you mean the red nipples that everyone I know immediately removes? Martin of Sheffield ( talk) 14:22, 24 July 2024 (UTC) reply

We have articles on the Group Areas Act, and apartheid, and Category:Apartheid in South Africa lists many other relevant articles. If you have more questions, then the Humanities Reference Desk is probably the best place to ask. DuncanHill ( talk) 23:18, 24 July 2024 (UTC) reply

I have a Dell Inspiron 3910 with 16 GB of RAM and approximately 216 GB of solid-state storage as the C: drive. I just got a pop-up message saying something to the effect of "We can't back up your system files". It says that if I free up some space on my "hard drive" (which is hard because it is solid-state), it will be able to back up my system files. I don't recall having seen that message before. I do see that I have 10.1 GB free on my solid-state C: drive out of 216 GB. I also see that my pagefile.sys on the C: drive has grown to 26.6 GB, which is what is taking up the space. My question is: What system backup function is there that was trying to back something up, and was unable to back something up? The message was a pop-up, and I can't bring it back, although maybe that isn't important. So: What system process was trying to back something up to my C: drive and didn't have space for the backup? I will, in the very near future, be getting something like WINDIRSTAT to get a better view of how the 206 GB is being used, to see what if anything to move to my F: drive. So what is trying to back up my system files automagically? Robert McClenon ( talk) 18:15, 24 July 2024 (UTC) reply

You've probably told us before, but which version of Windows are you using? Is there a load of Dell stuff in your Start Menu? Do you ever use such apps? Could be a cause. Maybe try disabling them sequentially in Services via Windows Task Manager. To reduce disk usage, perhaps try the resident Disk Cleanup app. Try using a fixed-size paging file. Delete the contents of your Temp folder and Recycle Bin. Purge your browser's cache frequently (In Firefox, press Ctrl+Shift+Delete, select 'Cache' only.) Your mileage may vary. MinorProphet ( talk) 22:19, 25 July 2024 (UTC) reply

User:MinorProphet - You have addressed a question which I might have reasonably been asking, but not the question that I was asking. You have told me how to free up space on my disk. I already have plans for freeing up space on my disk. What I am asking is what process was trying to back something up on my C: drive. But thank you for useful general advice. Robert McClenon ( talk) 07:06, 27 July 2024 (UTC) reply

I am running Windows 11, and I think that I have the personal version. (Are there a personal version and a business version?) Robert McClenon ( talk) 07:06, 27 July 2024 (UTC) reply

@ Robert McClenon: Hi, sorry for the slow reply, I don't come here every day. Last question first: You probably have the 'Home' version as opposed to the 'Pro/Professional' version. It's mostly to do with Pro's office networking capabilities. My main question may have been camouflaged by my suggestions: Does your PC have any pre-installed Dell software? If so, I found this page from Dell with plenty of screenshots which might prompt some memory of that transient pop-up, in case it wasn't anything to do with Windows. Just attempting to eliminate likely suspects. MinorProphet ( talk) 16:46, 1 August 2024 (UTC) reply

Hi I just noticed your query further down: You said you had Norton Safe Web installed. Do you have any other Norton apps/utilities installed? Might they have been attempting to back up your hard drive? MinorProphet ( talk) 16:56, 1 August 2024 (UTC) reply

Can the Fourier transform, using the Fourier series, analyze a function f(x) on a bounded interval x whose members are -P/2 and P/2 for some positive real number P, with frequency being the reciprocal of period (f=1/T or T=1/f), be programmed in PL/1? Afrazer123 ( talk) 23:43, 24 July 2024 (UTC) reply

no, as the frequency goes to infinity for this, and the coefficients are real numbers that can be calculated, but not with perfect accuracy. However PL/1 could be used to approximate a finite number of coefficients approximately. see Square wave#Fourier analysis for the calculation. Graeme Bartlett ( talk) 12:47, 25 July 2024 (UTC) reply

The question is not entirely clear. Does T stand for the variable x or for the constant P?  -- Lambiam 13:45, 25 July 2024 (UTC) reply

T doesn't stand for the variable x. T does stand, however, for the constant P. Afrazer123 ( talk) 02:55, 28 July 2024 (UTC) reply

E.g, software that can identify a person's native language, when they are currently speaking in a non-native language (e.g. English), rather than in their native language we want to identify.

Yesterday, I presented this question at the language reference desk. However, no one has given me a positive answer yet, except for a possible direction via AI, but without a certain answer. 2A06:C701:7B31:C100:7D63:C50F:C3A5:9744 ( talk) 10:18, 25 July 2024 (UTC) reply

You received a comprehensive answer at the language desk. The answer is no. Shantavira| ^{feed me} 11:48, 25 July 2024 (UTC) reply

AI is used for pattern matching and classification. If there is some pattern that classifies speech as having a specific accent, AI can identify the pattern and classify the accent. AI is not magic. It won't do any more than identify a pattern using one of the many methods of pattern matching and then classify using one of the many ways of clustering and classification. 75.136.148.8 ( talk) 12:12, 25 July 2024 (UTC) reply

A more precise answer is that no respondent here is aware of the existence of such an app. Perhaps the NSA has developed one but is keeping it under wraps. If so, how would we know?  -- Lambiam 13:33, 25 July 2024 (UTC) reply

It is likely that, for the moment, it is far easier and cheaper to employ non-Artificial Intelligences, i.e. people, with linguistic expertise that enables them to make such identifications. This of course would only apply to specific instances – an AI-like application would be needed for automatic surveillance on a mass scale. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.2.67.235 ( talk) 00:18, 28 July 2024 (UTC) reply

We can automatically search and replace single-lined text in Linux CLUI with awk and sed, but I need a way to do it multi-lined.

• File A has several HTML structures.
• File B has this HTML structure:

    <footer class="site-footer">
      <div class="site-footer__inner container">
        {{ page.footer_top }}
        {{ page.footer_bottom }}
      </div>
    </footer>

• File C has this HTML structure:

    <footer class="site-footer">
      <div class="site-footer__inner container">
        {{ page.footer_top }}
        {{ page.footer_bottom }}
      </div>
      <span class="globalrs_dynamic_year">{{ 'now' | date('Y') }}</span>
    </footer>

How to automatically search in file A and if it contains the text of file B then replacing that text with the text of file C?

How would you do this with C/Perl/Python/PHP/Node.js or something else? 103.199.70.159 ( talk) 19:06, 25 July 2024 (UTC) reply

While it would be trivial to do this in Python or any other reasonable programming language, if I wanted to do this with a script, my approach would be:

1. . Convert all three files to a version which eliminates newlines, using sed. For convenience, I would replace the newline character with some character or string which would not occur in the HTML, call it '~' (tilde).
2. . Now add a newline to change the tilde in every occurrence of "</footer>~" to a newline in each of the three converted files. Do the same for "~<footer class="site-footer">". You end up with files where the html of interest is on a single line.
3. . Use sed to do the substitution of the single line file C text to replace the single line file B text in the single line file A text.
4. . Use sed to convert single line file A back to the original formatting by replacing '~' with newline.

This won't work if files B and C are not marked with the exact footer head and tail as you have shown.- Gadfium ( talk) 20:46, 25 July 2024 (UTC) reply

In any programming langauge, A, B, and C are just text. So, you use a string replace function. In C++, it is (from memory) replace(A,B,C);. In Perl (again from memory), it is A=~s/B/C/;. In PHP, it is $A=str_replace($B,$C,$A);. In Python, it is A = A.replace(B,C);. In Node.js it is A = A.replace(B,C) as well. Note that in a programming language, a string is just a string of characters. It doesn't care if there are newline or return characters in it. So, replacing a substring replaces it all, including the return and newline characters. But, the text has to match perfectly. For example, if A is using two spaces for indentation and B is using tab characters, it won't match. Similarly, if one uses all lower case tag names and another uses all upper case tag names, it won't match. In that case, you need to reformat the text so it is all the same or use regular expressions. 75.136.148.8 ( talk) 13:31, 26 July 2024 (UTC) reply

The Unix/Linux utility sed can do this; see sed § Multiline processing example. The search ["sed" multi-line replace] gives some more examples.  -- Lambiam 23:01, 26 July 2024 (UTC) reply

Since the OP asked for a Perl solution, here is a simple one.

my $orig = `cat $ARGV[0]`;
my $repl = `cat $ARGV[1]`;
my $text = `cat $ARGV[2]`;
$text =~ s:$orig:$repl:g;
print $text;

CodeTalker ( talk) 18:57, 27 July 2024 (UTC) reply

Can a relational database, with its set of rows and columns, support the computerization of the Fast Fourier transform ? Afrazer123 ( talk) 04:40, 27 July 2024 (UTC) reply

No. The FFT algorithms require computations based on the indices. This is not supported by relational databases. The notion of index is in fact alien to the relational model, which is essentially an unordered set of tuples (the rows) of named values (as identified by the row names). One can add the index as a key, basically an extra column, but this does not help. The SQL-type languages that come with such databases also do not support the recursion used by FFT algorithms.  -- Lambiam 13:18, 27 July 2024 (UTC) reply

Thanks for the reply. How pulsating! It seems there's a discharge of some sort which apparently isn't taken into consideration by the RDB while using an extra column (key) only exacerbates things. Also, SQL appears to be to confining, off-limits for the algorithm's recursion. Afrazer123 ( talk) 02:09, 28 July 2024 (UTC) reply

If I am using Firefox and Windows 11, and a web site asks me to turn off my ad blocker, and I don't know what ad blocker I am using, how do I determine what ad blocker I am using, so that I can turn it off? This is sort of a strange question, because I don't want to deal with ads, but I would rather just ignore the ads than deal with web sites that aggressively fight ad blocking. I do have Norton Safe Web. I don't know if it tries to block ads. Robert McClenon ( talk) 00:23, 28 July 2024 (UTC) reply

Hi, Robert McClenon! In Windows 10 which I'm on, such blockers appear (with other things) in a drop-down list of 'Extensions' found by clicking a jigsaw-puzzle corner piece at the top right corner of the Firefox window. I had a similar problem (with YouTube) until I discovered that Malwarebytes had added ad blocking to its functions. Hope this helps. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.2.67.235 ( talk) 20:54, 28 July 2024 (UTC) reply

The better way to get around this is to reconfigure your RAM firewall to exclude cloud analytic encryption on your virtual platform. Pretty simple fix, will take about 30 seconds. Jidarave ( talk) 21:49, 28 July 2024 (UTC) reply

The above post is nonsensical. Philvoids ( talk) 22:53, 28 July 2024 (UTC) reply

This is probably the same troll who reappears here periodically to post gibberish like this before getting blocked. CodeTalker ( talk) 06:52, 29 July 2024 (UTC) reply

It looks like perfectly legit response from AI. Maybe someone is training their bot to replace human editors on Wikipedia. 75.136.148.8 ( talk) 12:50, 29 July 2024 (UTC) reply

The responses by LLMs tend to read like something a human could actually have written as a reasonable response, using terms from the question. This response does not. It looks contrived to sound impressive while making no sense whatsoever.  -- Lambiam 22:51, 29 July 2024 (UTC) reply

I'm glad it's confirmed to make no sense, because although I didn't understand it, I feared that to be because of my limited knowledge of IT.

This sidetrack being dealt with, can anybody give a better answer than mine to the OP's query? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.2.67.235 ( talk) 18:03, 30 July 2024 (UTC) reply

A long shot, but are you using NoScript in Firefox by any chance? It's a kind of an ad-blocker on steroids and because it completely blocks scripts (unless you allow them) it can be difficult to know what's getting blocked. Using the "temporary allow" function usually gets me past things, but sometimes I end up having to switch to incognito mode (which I have setup to run without NoScript). Matt Deres ( talk) 16:02, 31 July 2024 (UTC) reply

In Firefox's Privacy and Security settings, if you have tracking protection set to Strict, try setting it back to Standard. This should help. win8x ( talking | spying) 20:19, 31 July 2024 (UTC) reply

This is about the incident with Pete Souza and an intactly-eared Donald Trump photo. [7] Souza apparently deleted his twitter account after both he and the Trump photographer took heat. Question: can he undelete it later, and get his old tweets back? I mean using normal Twitter features. Presumably someone famous like Souza could get Elon's, um, ear for a special request, but let's not count that. Thanks. 2602:243:2008:8BB0:F494:276C:D59A:C992 ( talk) 23:39, 29 July 2024 (UTC) reply

According to [8] you have 30 days to reactivate your account. After that, it cannot be recovered. RudolfRed ( talk) 15:50, 30 July 2024 (UTC) reply

I work on Google Sheets spreadsheets all day and I don't like how bright light mode gets during sunset. I don't like the look of dark mode either, so I'd prefer to only use dark mode during the sunset time or night. Does anyone know if this is a thing that Google has allowed for? Is there an extension that does this? I could try making a Chrome extension but this is not something I have done before. ― Panamitsu (talk) 05:46, 31 July 2024 (UTC) reply

Google Maps does this automatically when in satnav mode, but I don't know if it is extendable to other products. -- Verbarson   ^talk _edits 10:30, 31 July 2024 (UTC) reply

If you have a chart or pivot chart in Excel, you can double click on the X axis to bring up a pane that gives you all kinds of formatting options, including setting minimum and maximum bounds for the graph. So, you can set the maximum value to be $1,000 and any values that go above that either don't display or are cut off (depending on the chart type). My problem is that, I need to set such a maximum, but I want it to truly act like a maximum value instead of a set number. Like, if the user's choice of filters means that the chart never comes near the boundary I set, then the upper and lower limits should behave dynamically. Is there a way to do that?
If that's hard to picture, here's an example: we sell 10-20 apples and 200-300 oranges each month, so the monthly totals are mostly around 250 or so. But one month we had a crazy value: we sold 10,000 oranges. The chart is unreadable if we leave the defaults in, so we set a maximum value of, say, 350. Now we can read it. But if the user selects "apples" from the filter, the graph becomes unreadable the other way around: we've forced the upper bound of the X-axis to be 350 and the apples are now just a ripple across the bottom of the chart. What I want is for Excel to dynamically resize the chart like it normally does, but not go past my maximum. Can it be done? Googling has not been fruitful so far. Matt Deres ( talk) 19:11, 1 August 2024 (UTC) reply

I understand that you do not want to chart dynamically all the monthly apple totals. Instead you may chart dynamically the minimum of two values, viz. each month's apple total and a numerical limit of 350. Use the Excel MIN function. Philvoids ( talk) 18:19, 2 August 2024 (UTC) reply

Sorry, that is completely unrelated to what I'm talking about. I'm trying to control the way the graphs establish limits to the X-axis. Matt Deres ( talk) 01:43, 3 August 2024 (UTC) reply

Certain templates use SVG images that are not visible with the dark mode gadget.

• Template:Paid uses File:Dollar_sign_in_circle_cleaned_(PD_version).svg

• Template:No spam uses File:At sign.svg

How to fix this? Polygnotus ( talk) 20:59, 2 August 2024 (UTC) reply

If you use {{subst:Welcome-newuser|heading=no}} it insert an extra newline at the top. Can that be fixed? Thanks, Polygnotus ( talk) 02:20, 3 August 2024 (UTC) reply

This is not a good place to ask; try instead Wikipedia:Village pump (technical). I can report that the extra newline issue already appears for just {{ Welcome|heading=no}}</nowiki>.  -- Lambiam 11:47, 3 August 2024 (UTC) reply