Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2021 September 7

= September 7 =

Interesting User Agent String results
I recently added the "Custom UserAgent String" by Linder to Firefox and set my browser to send a blank user agent string. I got the idea from https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/

Interestingly, 5 to 10 percent of the websites I visit go nuts and give me various errors, which go away when I tell Custom UserAgent String to send a fake but real-looking string. Wikipedia works just fine either way. I wonder what those pages are doing with the user agent string? A couple of them give me a different page when I pretend to be googlebot.

Which brings me to my question. looking at coveryourtracks.eff.org it looks like there are a boatload of things that identify a user other than the obvious IP address. When someone runs a checkuser do they see any of these extra fingerprints? EFF says they use


 * Your system platform (e.g. Win32, Linux x86)
 * Your system language (e.g. en-US)
 * Your User agent string
 * The Timezone your system is set to
 * Whether your browser executes JavaScript scripts
 * Yes/no information saying whether the browser accepts various kinds of cookies and "super cookies"
 * HTTP ACCEPT headers sent by the browser
 * Screen resolution and color depth
 * The browser extensions/plugins, like Quicktime, Flash, Java or Acrobat, that are installed in the browser, and the versions of those plugins
 * The fonts installed on the computer, as reported by Flash or Java.
 * Yes/no whether your browser is sending the Do Not Track header
 * A hash of the image generated by canvas fingerprinting
 * A hash of the image generated by WebGL fingerprinting
 * Your browser's touchscreen support

It seems to me that if a Wikipedia checkuser could compare all of those things it would be way easier to tell if someone is socking. Can they? Should they? --Dalek Supreme X (talk) 01:12, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Checkusers only see the UserAgent String. Ruslik_ Zero 20:23, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Too many background processes
My seven-year-old Windows 10 desktop PC is slowing down and complaining of a lack of resources. It takes ages to boot up, and there is always constant activity on the hard drive. I have deleted all the temporary, unused, and dowloaded files but that has not made any difference. When I examine the task manager (with no applications running) there are almost 200 processes running, which I'm sure is too many. Googling the problem I see warnings not to delete any of these processes unless I understand what they're doing, but all the filenames are unfamiliar to me.

I have replaced the PC as it is now quite old, but there are some apps that won't run properly on my new PC, so I would like to keep the old one going for as long as possible. There is nothing else wrong with it. Thanks for any suggestions.--Shantavira|feed me 13:12, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
 * If there is any way that you can run those applications under Linux (possibly using wine) then the best advice to to do just that. I've "resurrected" Windows machines by changing the OS many times in the past and got a few more years useful service out of them.  Linux is a lot less resource intensive. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 13:18, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Mark Russinovich's Sysinternals suite used to be good for this sort of thing (seven years ago or more), perhaps it still is. Specifically, Process Explorer would give advice on what all the processes you have running at startup are, whether you need them, and quick links to google them, as well as handy toggles to temporarily disable them. Card Zero  (talk) 15:07, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
 * You should at least replace the hard drive with a SSD. This would speed up the booting up considerably. If you do not want to reinstall Windows 10, you can just clone the old drive into the SSD. Ruslik_ Zero 20:50, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Adding some RAM might help, assuming your motherboard supports it. It looks like your cumputer is using swap. Your task manager or whatever it's called may confirm it. I'm on Linux myself, so I don't really know Windows 10. PiusImpavidus (talk) 08:23, 8 September 2021 (UTC)