#Native Azure AD Join

[fantasyinvader]

So, this kinda hit me after last night's post. There might be more to the Claude's relation to Nemesis than just "Claude learns the truth and fights the guy his ancestors backed," or "Claude could have been like the Agarthans and let his hatred towards the Church ruin him, but he didn't and now fights their former champion."

Think about what we know about Almyra for a second. They like to raid other countries, and call the people of Fodlan cowards because they built a wall to keep Almyra out. They also like to plunder their targets according to Hopes, and according to Cyril they don't look after the orphans of those who die in these raids. These kids are left to fend for themselves before being sent out in future raids. Despite calling the people of Fodlan cowards, they value their own lives to the point that they'll flee to survive rather than fight to the bitter end. They also like to party after the raids.

According to the History of Fodlan, quote:

"Under the tyranny of ruthless disorder, the people endured a long period of suffering. The vile Nemesis, who proclaimed himself the King of Liberation, delighted in war and bloodshed. Rather than rebelling against his persecution, the people of Fódlan fell to his depths in a mad scramble to attain power through murder and theft."

Murder and theft stands out here. Almyra is a kingdom that attacks those in borders, not out of need but simply for kicks. People die in these attacks, and then the Almyrans go on to pillage. Almyra murders and steals from people, yet Claude acts like they have a good name. But think about this, who would they have a good name with? From what we know of the World of Three Houses, Almyra is east of Fodlan and the furthest place away from Dagda in the South-west (though Dagda stretches to the North enough that it has a polar region) according to Shamir's support with Claude. The only other place East of Fodlan we know about is the city of Morfis south of Almyra and possibly on an island.

What other places does Almyra, who go around trying to conquer their neighbors for the thrill of battle, have a good name in? Hilda flat out says that Almyra will "attack without reason," "break treaties" and "tell lies." As @randomnameless pointed out in a post, Claude does all of these things in Hopes. Cut and Paste:Break treaties : plans on breaking his treaty with Supreme Leader if Billy joins him in Supreme Bullshit, or doesn't offer assistance to the Imperial Forces in Golden Shower Attack without reason : borrows Daddy's naval forces to attack Sreng, not because he has something against Sreng, but to create chaoes in the Kingdom Tell lies : all the schitck about Claude being the embodiement of distrust - or how he backstabs Supreme Leader, if Billy joins in, in Supreme Bullshit.

Then we take the context of Claude saying they have a good name, supposed pirates posing as the Almyran navy. Meanwhile, if Claude joins Cyril/Hilda's paralogue, one native to his route, he says nothing about fighting Almyrans.

Adding onto that is how Edelgard says that Claude's ideals aren't that removed from her own. Edelgard, who says she's fighting for humanity while at the same time treating Nemesis as a hero and wants to put the world back to what it was before the Church. Aka, she views the rule of Nemesis as a good thing, in part because of Agarthan manipulation. The Agarthans also left texts for Claude to see in an attempt to turn him against Rhea, texts Seteth took away from him. Edelgard is also meant to represent the moral decline of the Empire, Hadou, and she wants to implement a meritocracy where the strong rise up when they don't have the safety net to supposedly keep them weak.

Goes back to Cyril here, how Almyra doesn't look after it's kids. We know that Edelgard sets up her own Church after Flower due to Hanneman/Manuela and Bernie/Lin endings, but despite that Mercedes doesn't join it like she does the Church in other routes. Azure Gleam made it out that she disagreed with Edelgard's Southern Church, a church that appeals to those who don't like what the Church of Seiros teaches. Mercedes ends up looking after orphans after Flower seemingly going against Edelgard's doctrine.

Also, with the lies thing. Edelgard tells lies so often it's mentioned in the main theme of the game, Edge of Dawn. Nemesis was also said to have rallied support under a "pretense," meaning he kept his real agenda a secret. As pointed out, Claude lies in Hopes to gain support as well and even when Edelgard lies to his face about the attack, he accepts it.

Then we go with the meritocracy. Claude notes that Almyra values strength, much like Edelgard and Nemesis do, hence why he has to play smart (though he would like to get his hands on the Sword of the Creator). The prince that gets the throne is chosen, with Shadid attempting an invasion to prove his worthiness and Claude gets it post-Wind due to his accomplishments in Fodlan. Military seems to be the best way to get promoted, and when you consider Caspar's Flower endings in the Japanese…

English text: In recognition of his achievements during the war, Caspar was given the title of Minister of Military Affairs in the new Adrestian Empire. Though his command developed a reputation for occasional recklessness, he proved an able leader, guiding his troops to overcome countless obstacles. Long after his career had ended, tall tales of the glory and good cheer that he brought to his army endured.

Japanese text through Chrome's translation: Caspar is recognized for his achievements in the war and becomes Minister of War in the new Adrestian Empire. When he was entrusted with full powers of the military, he led many difficult situations to solution, often out of control. As most of his surviving anecdotes are jokes, he was always smiling wherever he went.

His ending with Dorothea mentions expeditions, meaning he's going into other countries. The Empire is invading other countries, it's army "often out of control" and it's treated like a joke while Caspar has given into, as Hopes put it, bloodlust. It's sounding more and more like Almyra in the Japanese version, isn't it?

Fuck, no wonder Cyril likes the Church. Their teachings go against everything Almyra seems to value, all the problematic elements he hated. Not to lie or kill without reason (in the Japanese, English changed this to "unless by the will of the Goddess"), not to abuse their power, and even looks after the poor and weak.

If you put all of this together, Almyra isn't too different from the Empire. It's very similar to a country that's supposed to have suffered moral decline, with it's leader hero-worshipping a tyrant. That's tyrant's name is Nemesis, the same person Claude fought at the end of Verdant Wind. Nemesis is, in reality, a reflection of the Almyran ideal. And that ideal is the antithesis of what the Church of Seiros, the same Church Claude hates and wants it's leader to die initially, teaches. By fighting Nemesis, Claude is rejecting his country's toxic culture just like the Eagles do in Silver Snow.

The other route with Byleth's flag, the game's Fire Emblem and an allusion to Buddhism's Banner of Victory symbolizing not being tempted away from the achieving Nirvana…at the end of what is called the Path of Liberation, in contrast to Nemesis being the supposed King of Liberation. Claude follows the path of Liberation and ends up as king when he puts aside his hatred of the Church to work with them rather than just using them. As a result of this, he begins to recognize his own hypocrisy because how can he make a world where differences are meant to be respected when he's willing to completely wipe out a Church he doesn't like. Link this back to Nemesis, who is said to have persecuted his people, and Edelgard, whose persecution against the Church is the pretense for a continental war. Wind is Claude achieving his own form of Nirvana when he opens himself up to the possibility of gods, and ends with the other Deer helping spread his ideals like a pack of disciples.

Not to say though that this is making one side of Claude's ancestry better than the other. After all, the Alliance only pays lip-service to the Church according to Lorenz, and the nature of it's leadership leads to problems when the nobles are all trying to amass wealth for themselves because wealth = power at the roundtable in the Alliance. They're also willing to screw each other over for this, meanwhile Leonie's village had to shoulder a debt so a noble would endorse her to go to Garreg Mach. It's also the one place we know has slavery. And let's not forget if Claude does turn on Edelgard in Blaze, the Deer will fight and kill him over "betraying" the Alliance while killing their own army, and interviews state that the Alliance idolizes the Empire.

The Alliance…isn't that good overall. It's flawed, just like Almyra. Claude's solution is to give it a king in direct defiance of it's stance on No Kings or Emperors (only men), albeit one with an advisory council. At the same time, Claude has Almyra begins converting Almyra into a trading country much like the Alliance. And even the Church loses power in this due to the false history being revealed. Everyone needs to learn from each other.

Claude is a wyvern lord. He can degrade into a snake if he lets his hatred wash over him, making him more akin to Nemesis and the Agarthans. He can stay a wyvern, as he does in most routes, letting his judgement be clouded but not to the same degree. Or he became a dragon, symbolic of Enlightenment, as he lets go of his hatred and realizes that the person he hated had legit reasons for doing what she did. That she's not too different from himself, while at the same time discovering there's lines he doesn't want to cross.

I feel like with Hopes, Claude makes a lot more sense. He's more linked to the game's symbolism, and his route feels less like "Silver Snow guest starring Claude." But at the same time, it kinda shows how his story is reliant on it's symbolism much like the Black Eagles route. We all thought Claude's problem was his ignorance, not his hatred, and lines like Edelgard calling out his not knowing Fodlan's history only served to create that misunderstanding. His supports also emphasize him realizing he was wrong, and you need to play as girl Byleth and S support him to find him saying Rhea was a positive influence of Fodlan and her work needs to be continued. Much like how you need to pay attention to the details to confirm Edelgard is lying to you, you need the details to fully realize Claude's growth. The fact that some information was only available in Hopes, such as his real freaking name, because the developers forgot to bring it up also adds to the problem. Claude was a character we were missing pieces of, and those missing pieces led us to the wrong conclusion, so I can't really fault Hopes for giving us a more complete picture. We've seen Claude at his best, his worst, and in-between and because of that we can argue more for his route being the best ending. After all, it also reforms a neighbouring country not dissimilar to the Empire, and that nation is shown to have a powerful navy and are the only ones with cannons.

But, really, those missing pieces should have been in Houses.

Anyway, thanks for listening guys to me talking about my favorite of the three lords. Fear the Deer. Peace

[faciletechnolab1]

Exploring the Power of Microsoft Identity Platform

Join us on a journey to understand how Microsoft Identity Platform revolutionizes user access, enhancing both security and user experience.

What is microsoft identity platform?

The Microsoft identity platform is a cloud identity service that allows you to build applications your users and customers can sign in to using their Microsoft identities or social accounts. It authorizes access to your own APIs or Microsoft APIs like Microsoft Graph.

OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect standard-compliant authentication service enabling developers to authenticate several identity types, including:

Work or school accounts, provisioned through Microsoft Entra ID

Personal Microsoft accounts (Skype, Xbox, Outlook.com)

Social or local accounts, by using Azure AD B2C

Social or local customer accounts, by using Microsoft Entra External ID

Open-source libraries:

Microsoft Authentication Library (MSAL) and support for other standards-compliant libraries. The open source MSAL libraries are recommended as they provide built-in support for conditional access scenarios, single sign-on (SSO) experiences for your users, built-in token caching support, and more. MSAL supports the different authorization grants and token flows used in different application types and scenarios.

Microsoft identity platform endpoint:

The Microsoft identity platform endpoint is OIDC certified. It works with the Microsoft Authentication Libraries (MSAL) or any other standards-compliant library. It implements human readable scopes, in accordance with industry standards.

Application management portal:

A registration and configuration experience in the Microsoft Entra admin center, along with the other application management capabilities.

Application configuration API and PowerShell:

Programmatic configuration of your applications through the Microsoft Graph API and PowerShell so you can automate your DevOps tasks.

Developer content:

Technical documentation including quickstarts, tutorials, how-to guides, API reference, and code samples.

For developers, the Microsoft identity platform offers integration of modern innovations in the identity and security space like passwordless authentication, step-up authentication, and Conditional Access. You don't need to implement such functionality yourself. Applications integrated with the Microsoft identity platform natively take advantage of such innovations.

With the Microsoft identity platform, you can write code once and reach any user. You can build an app once and have it work across many platforms, or build an app that functions as both a client and a resource application (API).

More identity and access management options

Azure AD B2C - Build customer-facing applications your users can sign in to using their social accounts like Facebook or Google, or by using an email address and password.

Microsoft Entra B2B - Invite external users into your Microsoft Entra tenant as "guest" users, and assign permissions for authorization while they use their existing credentials for authentication.

Microsoft Entra External ID - A customer identity and access management (CIAM) solution that lets you create secure, customized sign-in experiences for your customer-facing apps and services.

The Components that make up the Microsoft identity platform:

OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect standard-compliant authentication service enabling developers to authenticate several identity types, including:

Work or school accounts, provisioned through Microsoft Entra ID

Personal Microsoft accounts (Skype, Xbox, Outlook.com)

Social or local accounts, by using Azure AD B2C

Social or local customer accounts, by using Microsoft Entra External ID

Open-source libraries: Microsoft Authentication Library (MSAL) and support for other standards-compliant libraries. The open source MSAL libraries are recommended as they provide built-in support for conditional access scenarios, single sign-on (SSO) experiences for your users, built-in token caching support, and more. MSAL supports the different authorization grants and token flows used in different application types and scenarios.

Microsoft identity platform endpoint - The Microsoft identity platform endpoint is OIDC certified. It works with the Microsoft Authentication Libraries (MSAL) or any other standards-compliant library. It implements human readable scopes, in accordance with industry standards.

Application management portal: A registration and configuration experience in the Microsoft Entra admin center, along with the other application management capabilities.

Application configuration API and PowerShell: Programmatic configuration of your applications through the Microsoft Graph API and PowerShell so you can automate your DevOps tasks.

Developer content: Technical documentation including quickstarts, tutorials, how-to guides, API reference, and code samples.

[azuretrainingsin]

What are the different types of Azure storage?

As IT strategies become increasingly data-driven, organizations rely on Microsoft Azure Storage services for secure and scalable data management. Azure Storage offers robust solutions for both unstructured and structured data, catering to diverse operational needs and complexities. Key Azure Storage services include Blob, Table, Queue, and File Storage, each designed to handle specific data tasks efficiently.

Overview of Azure Storage Services

Choosing the right Azure Storage service is essential for optimizing operations and managing costs. Here’s a detailed look at each service to help you make an informed decision for your next project.

Azure Blob Storage

Blob Storage is Azure’s object storage solution, ideal for unstructured data such as text, binary data, and multimedia files. Its cloud-native architecture supports various data types, offering global accessibility and collaboration. Unlike relational databases, Blob Storage handles unstructured data without schema constraints, making it perfect for storing large volumes of multimedia content, log files, or backup data. Features like data tiering (hot, cool, and archive tiers) and different Blob types (block blobs, page blobs, and append blobs) enhance its flexibility and cost-efficiency.

Azure Table Storage

Table Storage is a NoSQL service for semi-structured data, using a schemaless design for straightforward data management. It’s ideal for applications that don’t require complex joins or stored procedures, enabling rapid development and deployment. Table Storage’s flexible data schemas and quick transactions make it suitable for mobile apps, e-commerce platforms, and enterprise IT infrastructures, allowing you to scale resources efficiently to meet varying demands.

Azure Queue Storage

Queue Storage is designed for message queuing, ensuring secure and globally accessible message handling. It excels in scenarios requiring asynchronous processing, like order processing systems, by decoupling components to enhance fault tolerance. Queue Storage helps maintain operational flow during high-traffic periods and allows on-demand scalability, optimizing resource allocation and cost-effectiveness.

Azure Files Storage

Azure Files Storage offers managed shared file access via the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol, integrating seamlessly with existing workflows and tools. It’s ideal for migrating on-premises applications to the cloud, providing secure data access and management through Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) integration. This service ensures high availability and seamless file sharing, making it a strong choice for businesses modernizing their IT infrastructure.

Choosing the Right Azure Storage Service

Selecting the appropriate Azure Storage service is crucial for building an efficient data storage infrastructure. Here’s a summary of the advantages of each service:

Blob Storage: Best for unstructured data, capable of storing large volumes of multimedia and backup content.

Table Storage: Ideal for semi-structured data, offering fast transactions and flexible NoSQL database solutions.

Queue Storage: Facilitates communication among application components via message queuing, essential for high-traffic environments.

File Storage: Provides seamless network file sharing, suitable for migrating on-premises applications with minimal system changes.

Conclusion

Each Azure Storage service meets specific needs and operational scenarios. Blob Storage handles unstructured data with global accessibility and high availability. Table Storage offers efficient management of semi-structured data. Queue Storage ensures reliable communication between application components, and File Storage supports seamless file sharing and secure data access.

When selecting a storage solution, consider both current demands and future needs. An effective Azure Storage service can be the backbone of your data management strategy, driving business success.

Optimizing Azure Storage Usage

After choosing the right Azure Storage service, optimizing its usage is key. Site24x7’s Azure Storage account monitoring integration helps you monitor services with accurate metrics, configure thresholds to prevent resource overconsumption, receive alerts, and mitigate failures, ensuring your storage solution operates at peak efficiency.

Enhance Your Skills with Azure Training

To fully leverage these Azure services, consider investing in Azure training programs. Azure Data Factory training and Azure DevOps training provide comprehensive knowledge and practical skills to manage and optimize your Azure storage solutions effectively. These training programs cover essential aspects of Azure services, ensuring you can maximize their potential and drive your organization’s success.

[fishbreedsblog]

Introducing Koi Guppies: A Splendid Aquatic Display

Envision a captivating aquatic masterpiece gracefully gliding through your aquarium. These mesmerizing aquatic marvels, known as Koi Guppies, serve as living canvases, bringing the allure of Koi fish to your aquatic world. Join us as we dive into the vibrant realm of Koi Guppies.

Appearance and Characteristics: Koi Guppies resemble tiny aquatic replicas of Koi fish, renowned for their captivating colors and patterns. Allow us to introduce you to "Scarlet Kimono," adorned in fiery red, and "Azure Pond," with its deep azure hues. These graceful creatures are truly a feast for the eyes.

General Information

Origin: Koi Guppies, akin to their larger counterparts, draw inspiration from the Land of the Rising Sun. Originating in Japan, these guppies have been meticulously bred to replicate the striking appearance of Koi fish.

Size: These charming creatures attain a petite size, averaging about 1.5 to 2 inches (3.8 to 5 centimeters), making them a perfect fit for compact aquariums.

Lifespan: With proper care, Koi Guppies can grace your aquarium for approximately 2 to 3 years.

Temperament: Sharing the classic guppy temperament, they are peaceful, sociable, and thrive in community aquariums.

Appearance: Koi Guppies boast sleek and slender bodies, reminiscent of standard guppies. Their allure lies in their intricate and vibrant color patterns, closely resembling the mesmerizing scales of Koi fish.

Varieties and Colors: While Koi Guppies are renowned for their Koi-like colors, an array of variations exists. Meet the "Golden Koi" adorned in rich golden hues, the "Black Koi" with its ebony splendor, and the "Platinum Koi," shimmering with silver and white.

Price: The cost varies, influenced by factors such as coloration, quality, and rarity. On average, anticipate an investment ranging from $5 to $20 per fish.

Habitat and Tank Requirements

Natural Habitat: Despite being inspired by Japanese Koi fish, Koi Guppies are exclusively freshwater dwellers. Their native habitat mirrors that of standard guppies, commonly found in sluggish freshwater bodies, especially in South America.

Tank Size: For their well-being, house them in a tank with a minimum capacity of 10 gallons (38 liters). Larger tanks offer increased swimming space and facilitate stable water conditions.

Water Parameters: Maintain water temperatures within the range of 72°F to 82°F (22°C to 28°C), and ensure a pH level ranging from 6.5 to 7.5. Efficient filtration and regular water changes are imperative for maintaining water quality.

Tank Setup: Create an aquatic haven by incorporating live or artificial aquatic plants, rocks, driftwood, and a fine-grain substrate that mimics their natural environment. Providing hiding spots and open swimming areas fosters a harmonious environment.

Feeding

Diet: Koi Guppies are omnivorous and relish a diverse diet. Their primary sustenance comes from guppy pellets or flakes, ensuring essential nutrients. Enhance their diet with live or frozen foods, such as daphnia, brine shrimp, and bloodworms, for added protein.

Feeding Habits: These enthusiastic eaters often gather at the water's surface to consume their meals. Offer small, frequent portions to prevent overeating and maintain water quality.

Suitable Foods for Koi Guppies:

Quality guppy pellets or flakes

Live or frozen daphnia

Brine shrimp

Bloodworms

Spirulina flakes to enhance coloration

Breeding

Reproduction: Koi Guppies, akin to their standard guppy relatives, are prolific breeders. They employ internal fertilization and give birth to live fry, distinguishing them from egg-laying species.

Breeding Requirements: To encourage breeding, maintain a well-planted aquarium with a male-to-female ratio of 1:2 or 1:3 to minimize stress on females. Provide ample hiding spots for fry, as adult guppies may perceive them as potential prey.

Spawning Process: Female Koi Guppies typically produce fry every four to six weeks, with a gestation period lasting approximately 26 to 31 days. Unlike egg-laying species, the fry are born fully developed and self-reliant, capable of swimming and feeding immediately.

Common Health Issues

Common Health Issues: While Koi Guppies are generally hardy, they can be susceptible to typical guppy health concerns, such as fungal infections, parasites, and issues like guppy mouth rot. They may also experience constipation, swim bladder problems, and fin rot if water quality and nutrition are suboptimal.

Preventive Methods: Safeguard the health of your Koi Guppies by maintaining pristine water conditions through regular water changes and efficient filtration. Quarantine new fish to prevent disease introduction and offer a balanced diet rich in essential nutrients.

Special Considerations

Compatibility: Koi Guppies are peaceful and thrive in community aquariums. They coexist harmoniously with other peaceful fish species like neon tetras, platies, and Corydoras catfish. Avoid housing them with aggressive or fin-nipping species.

Special Care Instructions: To enhance their coloration, incorporate spirulina flakes into their diet. Ensure they have access to hiding spots and suitable tankmates to minimize stress.

Legal Restrictions: Verify local regulations regarding the ownership and breeding of Koi Guppies, as some regions may impose specific rules related to the ornamental fish trade and care.

Compatible Varieties for an Aquatic Ensemble

When selecting tankmates for Koi Guppies, consider other peaceful and similarly-sized fish species such as:

Neon tetras

Platy fish

Corydoras catfish

Dwarf gouramis

Harlequin rasboras

Endler’s livebearers

Cherry shrimp

Difference between Male and Female Koi Guppies

Characteristic: Males often display more vibrant colors and possess a gonopodium, a modified anal fin used for mating.

Appearance: Females tend to be larger and have a rounded, fan-shaped anal fin, while males have a slender, pointed anal fin.

Behavior: Males are known for their active and sometimes territorial behavior when pursuing females, while females are generally less aggressive.

Similarities between Koi Guppies and Other Guppies:

Species: Koi Guppies (Poecilia reticulata) belong to the same species as other guppy varieties, making them all members of the Poecilia reticulata species.

Size: Koi Guppies and other guppy types share a similar size range, with adults typically reaching lengths of around 1 to 2 inches.

Livebearers: Like other guppy varieties, Koi Guppies are livebearers, giving birth to live fry rather than laying eggs.

Omnivorous Diet: They all have an omnivorous diet, consuming a mixture of plant matter and small aquatic organisms.

Differences between Koi Guppies and Other Guppies:

Coloration: The most significant difference is their coloration. Koi Guppies are named for their resemblance to koi fish, with bright orange or red patches on a white or pale background, mimicking the iconic colors of koi. Other guppy varieties exhibit different color patterns, including solid colors, spots, or multicolored fins and bodies.

Pattern: Koi Guppies often have a distinctive pattern of color patches reminiscent of koi fish, with the orange or red patches appearing as irregular splotches or stripes. Other guppies may have various patterns, including bars, dots, or solid colors.

Genetic Background: Koi Guppies have been selectively bred to mimic the koi fish’s coloration, resulting in their unique appearance. Other guppy varieties have been selectively bred for different aesthetic traits, leading to a wide range of color combinations and patterns.

Availability: The availability of Koi Guppies may vary depending on your location and local breeders. Some guppy varieties, such as fancy guppies, may be more commonly found in the aquarium trade due to their popularity.

Price: Due to their striking koi-like appearance, Koi Guppies can be relatively expensive compared to more common guppy varieties. The price of other guppy types can also vary, with fancy guppies often being more expensive than standard guppies.

In conclusion, Koi Guppies offer aquarists an exquisite blend of nature’s artistry and the joy of fishkeeping. Their vibrant colors, easygoing nature, and compatibility with a variety of tankmates make them an excellent choice for both beginners and experienced hobbyists. By providing them with the right environment and care, you can witness the captivating beauty of Koi fish gracefully translated into these miniature aquatic wonders.

[richardmhicks]

Always On VPN Trusted Network Detection and Native Azure AD Join

Administrators deploying Microsoft Always On VPN are quickly learning that the native Azure Active Directory join (AADJ) model has significant advantages over the more traditional Hybrid Azure AD join (HAADJ) scenario. Native AADJ is much simpler to deploy and manage than HAADJ while still allowing full single sign-on (SSO) to on-premises resources for remote users. Intune even allows for the…

[gloryofluv]

Traditionally Obscure Chapter 28

A nice transitional chapter? I think so.

Previous Chapter

Rosa came down the staircase and heard deep laughter in the sitting room nearby. She breathed and entered the room to see the tall, framed magician with bound-back hair. His dark hair highlighted his sharp azure eyes. He was smiling and in the midst of explaining some adventure. By Luke’s grin, it likely had more than typical amusement.

“It was a blunder,” Carl laughed and shook his head.

Ester covered her laughter as the princesses giggled. Vyn was smiling, but when his eyes met Rosa’s form, he wagged two fingers toward her. Carl noted the action and turned with a wild smile.

“Ms. Rosa! How wonderful to see you,” He chuckled and skipped over to her.

“Mr. Carl,” Rosa beamed.

He bowed and tilted his head. “How are you in Svart? Has it been decent to you in your stay?”

“Very much. I’m absolutely charmed by the country,” she declared.

Carl grinned and pulled a black handkerchief from his pocket. With a flash of sparks, it turned into a small porcelain blackbird. He offered it in his palm toward her. “This is our bird in Svart. Just as beautiful as you, My Lady.”

“Carl, you’ve made your point,” Vyn said in a flat tone.

He smirked back at Vyn. When he spoke, it was playful and in his native tongue. Carl covered the bird with his hand, and it disappeared. Vyn’s smile faded, and he spoke with a bit of force.

“I wouldn’t test him; he’s in pain,” Rosa added.

Carl was still speaking to Vyn and asked a clear question pointing to her.

“Yes,” Vyn said with a nod. “Should she agree.”

The princesses gasped and nearly jumped from their seats to skip over to Vyn, speaking to him swiftly. Rosa’s eyebrows raised, and she glanced at Luke, who shrugged his shoulders. It was unusual, that was certain.

“He says you shall be joining him for his visits to the estate more often,” Carl explained.

Rosa smiled and rocked her head before walking toward Vyn’s chair. “Now, ladies, your cousin is grumpy today. Don’t nag him,” she teased while touching their shoulders.

The princesses pouted and went to sit back down. Vyn curled his lips and gestured to the seat nearby. “Please sit, Rosa. Tea will be brought in shortly.”

“Seems Vilhelm is quite authoritative today,” Carl chuckled and walked over to the empty armchair.

“Indeed,” Ester breathed.

Rosa crossed her leg over the other and smiled at Carl. “So tell me. How have you been since the last we’ve seen each other? Have you been working on any new acts?”

Carl rocked his hand from side to side and snorted. “It is always in progress. I’m pleased you’re interested in hearing more about my future shows. Is magic not a staple in your life currently?”

“Vyn actually showed me such a wonderful trick, similar to your handkerchief one,” Rosa declared.

“Vilhelm, you shouldn’t be revealing the secrets of the trade,” Carl laughed.

Vyn chuckled and shook his head. “Not nearly as proficient as yours, Carl.”

“Oh, a compliment? I’m touched, Your Grace,” Carl replied and bowed his head with a smile.

“Comedy doesn’t suit you,” Vyn voiced.

Luke scratched his head. “Are you both friends?”

“Quite, from school. You see, Vilhelm and I shared the same dormitory. While others were out jostling about during recess hours, we were in our room working on magic and science,” Carl chuckled.

Two workers came into the room with trays and set them on the table. Rosa waited for them to finish and excuse themselves with bows before she stood up and began dressing the cups. She turned her attention to the magician and tilted her head.

“I’d like to hear more about this dormitory. You both bunked together?” Rosa asked.

Carl grinned and rocked his head. “It seems Vilhelm hasn’t been revealing any of our school days to you, Ms. Rosa. I was not in the exhilarated classes such as him, but we did trade fantastic stories when he wasn’t excelling at some sport or class.”

“So, he was like this even as a child? Vyn, do you ever relax?” Luke inquired as his eyebrows skewed.

“Says the man who went to college the first year of high school,” Rosa tutted.

“High school, ah, that is,” Carl wavered and then spoke to Vyn in his native tongue.

“No, I was already a second-year graduate by then,” Vyn clarified.

“Wait, just a second here,” Luke huffed. “You were a second-year graduate at the start of high school?”

Ester arched an eyebrow. “Nephew, why is this a surprise? Don’t you have two degrees?”

Vyn’s smile was pleasant, but there was a glint in his eyes. “Yes, as it seems, time isn’t factored into Ph.D.’s.”

Carl rocked his head and pointed his index finger at Vyn. “Vilhelm, now that you’re a duke, when do you plan to come back so I can set up a show for you. It would be quite the honor to host such in your honor.”

“Oh, Vil said he’d be home for the dressage competition!” Sasha rushed out with a smile.

“We’re trying to insist he comes out for fall harvest,” Elsa voiced.

“Cousins, we talked about this,” Vyn tutted and shook his head. “Patience.”

“Ladies, are you in your final year of tutelage?” Carl questioned the princesses.

They rocked their heads, and Sasha exhaled. “Vil says we have to finish with accelerated studies due to the last two years.”

Luke cocked his head like a lost puppy. “Okay, I don’t know about this royal stuff. Why did the two years matter?”

Ester cleared her throat and nodded. “Mr. Pearce, in Svart, the royal family, stands for head of the country. We represent the sacred precedence all the country holds to tradition. When my King husband was diagnosed by the royal physicians, he was given less than a year. We as the family must put all tasks and business on hold that could be.”

“So, this is like an exaggerated version of how we see our government heads in Stellis?” Luke questioned.

Ester rocked her head and touched her chest. “We are the symbol of prosperity and kindness. Anointed for a higher standard of life. The king is our shining star, and without a bright shine of guidance, the country's leadership isn’t balanced. That is why we have three different branches to run our land.”

“Aristocratic, Government and State,” Vyn added.

“That’s interesting,” Rosa nodded while serving the princesses and queen tea and turned to Vyn. “So, your title does grant you a form of leadership then?”

Vyn nodded as Rosa offered him a cup after the ladies. “Thank you, Rosa. I influence the word of the Aristocracy, yes. My uncle was very forceful about how he believed in checks and balances in his country.”

Carl waved his index finger. “And so the wheel moves and spins. Vilhelm, we always knew you were going not to be a spoke, but the lever.”

Luke adjusted his coat and hummed. “Vyn, if you’re the head of the aristocracy, then how are you going back to Stellis?”

“Ah, yes, Vilhelm, I was going to see about your plan,” Carl took the teacup Rosa handed him. “Thank you, My Lady.”

Rosa gave Luke a cup before sitting down herself. “I’m interested to hear about your plan as well, Dr. Richter.”

Vyn sipped his cup and reached over for a folder with a small wince. “Alright, if you insist.”

He handed Rosa the green folder, and she set down her tea to shuffle through it. It was pragmatic and genuinely a piece of art as far as plans go. Vyn has everything plotted in a manner of telecommunications, video sessions with the other leaders of the aristocracy, and scheduled visitations.

“I’m so impressed,” Rosa gasped. “Not that I should be shocked. You have always been impressive.”

Vyn gestured to Carl. “What my friend here hasn’t announced from his mischievous passions in magic is that he’s remarkably wonderful at communications. He is here to receive my certifications to give to the different international companies based in the east of my province.”

Rosa arched her eyebrows and glanced over at Carl. “Oh, I hadn’t a clue. That’s excellent. It does make sense how you’re so excellent at magic then, Mr. Carl. You know how people perceive their surroundings.”

Carl grinned and rocked his head. “It does help. I’m happy to see your skills of awareness are sharp. However, your enjoyment of magic is a sign of partaking in the tender parts of life.”

“Thank you; I’d like to think there needs to be joy in life because there’s so much difficulty as it is,” Rosa agreed before nibbling on a danish.

Ester moved her hair from her shoulder and smiled. “It seems my nephew keeps useful friends.”

“It certainly does,” Rosa laughed.

Luke reached over and snatched up the folder from Rosa. He was glancing over the papers with an intense scowl as his coral eyes shot between pages. The princesses whispered to each other a moment and then nodded.

“Cousin, can we at least break tradition for your birthday this year?” Sasha asked.

Vyn exhaled and glanced over at Ester. She raised her eyebrows and slanted her head. “It wouldn’t be a horrible thing to celebrate your birthday with a ball. It doesn’t go against tradition if you don’t require the attendance of the present royal family,” she nodded.

He adjusted his golden glasses and rocked his head. “Fine, we shall throw a party.”

The girls clapped; however, Rosa scowled. “How is that not breaking the rules? Sorry, I’m still learning.”

“Well, My Lady, as long as the current royal family doesn’t engage with social events and the entire family doesn’t publicly engage in courting or international events, then private engagements are welcome,” Carl explained before glancing over at Ester. “Your Majesty, did I miss anything?”

Ester shook her head. “As always, you have proven to remain knowledgeable of Svartian traditions.”

Rosa tilted her head. “So, the dressage competition is just countrywide, which is allowed? Also, that’s why Sasha and Elsa can’t engage with social events like the summer fashion show in Paris?”

“Royal life is complex,” Ester laughed. “It’s alright, Rosa. It’s a different world.”

Vyn shifted and bent with a bit of effort to retrieve a pastry. Carl waved him off and stood up, grabbing a plate before offering it to him after selecting pastries. “My friend, you need to let your injuries mend.”

“Yes, well, I can test my own limitations,” Vyn grumbled and took the offer. “Thank you.”

“No, you need to recover,” Ester declared with a glare. “Vilhelm, that isn’t a request. As head of this household, you will take care of yourself.”

Luke handed the folder back to Rosa and nodded. “That’s an excellent proposal, Vyn. However, my only concern is how you expect to maintain all of your requirements in both countries.”

Rosa set it aside and sipped her tea. “If anyone is capable of doing it, Dr. Richter can.”

“It’s plenty to take on, Rosa. You don’t understand the intricacies of running several operations at once,” Luke sighed.

“Pardon me, but you don’t need to talk down to me, Luke. I understand very well the issues that he’s facing,” Rosa groaned.

Luke gasped as his cheeks tinted. “Rosa, I wasn’t trying to be rude. It’s just plenty to do.”

“Which, Luke, I’ve plotted out. I have known of my uncle’s issues for years and laid out this plan on the off chance that my Uncle Ruthgar would need assistance,” Vyn exhaled.

“Quite intricate,” Carl nodded.

“I think we shall enjoy a few tricks that our friend has prepared are in order after tea,” Vyn hummed and set down his plate. “Aunt, I believe you wanted some time to relax before our departure tomorrow?”

Ester cleared her throat. “Of course, nephew,” she bobbed her head and stood up. “Ladies, behave for our guests.”

The princesses waved to their mother, and Ester left the room. Rosa noted the subtext of the conversation. Now that she had confirmation that she ran the two companies that originated in Svart, Rosa could understand the subtleties. Vyn stood up and rocked his head. “Shall we head to the ballroom? I believe you brought in the pieces for your show, correct? I know it won’t be as exquisite, but still enjoyable.”

Carl grinned and jumped from his chair. “Of course, Your Grace,” he chuckled and bowed deeply.

Vyn sighed. “Don’t, please.”

Luke glanced at the princesses and shrugged. “He always seems to be in a disagreeable mood.”

“Don’t worry, he isn’t,” Carl chuckled and gestured to them. “Let me perform for you before you leave. I did promise Ms. Rosa to show her something new next time we met.”

Rosa took Vyn’s arm and rocked her head with a smile. “I look forward to it.”

The group left toward the ballroom, but on their way, Rosa noted a cracked door. She had paused only long enough to note a woman speaking in the native language. It wasn’t demure like Ester’s usual tone. It was severe and authoritative.

Vyn glanced at her and tilted his head as they fell behind the group. “She’s quite fierce,” he whispered.

“Yes, and the perfect person to assist with your duties as well. I’m finding that you and your aunt are far more similar than I suspected,” Rosa agreed.

His smile stretched. “Actually, I was estimating you both are more alike than you suspect, Rosa. Let’s enjoy the rest of our evening in Svart. We have a long journey home tomorrow,” he replied before they continued their path to the ballroom.

[claritusconsulting]

Build resilient applications with Kubernetes on Azure

Welcome to KubeCon EU 2020, the virtual edition. While we won’t be able to see each other in person at KubeCon EU this year, we’re excited that this new virtual format of KubeCon will make the conference more accessible than ever, with more people from the amazing Kubernetes community able to join and participate from around the world without leaving their homes.

With everything that has been happening, the last year has been an up and down experience, but through it all I’m incredibly proud of the focus and dedication from the Azure Kubernetes team. They have continued to iterate and improve our Kubernetes on Azure that provides enterprise-grade experience for our customers.

Kubernetes on Azure (and indeed anywhere) delivers an open and portable ecosystem for cloud-native development. In addition to this core promise, we also deliver a unique enterprise-grade experience that ensures the reliability and security your workloads demand, while also enabling the agility and efficiency that business today desires. You can securely deploy any workload to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) to drive cost-savings at scale across your business. Today, we’re going to tell you about even more capabilities that can help you along on your cloud-native journey to Kubernetes on Azure.

Improving latency and operational efficiency

One of the key drivers of cloud adoption is reducing latency. It used to be that it took days to get physical computers and set them up in a cluster. Today, you can deploy a Kubernetes cluster on Azure in less than five minutes. These improvements benefit the agility of our customers. For customers who want to scale and provision faster, we are announcing a preview of ephemeral OS disk support which makes responding to new compute demands on your cluster even faster.

Latency isn’t just about the length of time to create a cluster. It’s also about how fast you can detect and respond to operational problems. To help enterprises improve their operational efficiency, we’re announcing preview integration with Azure Resource Health which can alert you if your cluster is unhealthy for any reason. We’re also announcing the general availability of node image updates which allow you to upgrade the underlying operating system to respond to bugs or vulnerabilities in your cluster while staying on the same Kubernetes version for stability.

Finally, though Kubernetes has always enabled enterprises to drive cost savings through containerization, the new economic realities of the world during a pandemic mean that achieving cost efficiency for your business is more important than ever. We’ve got a great exercise that can help you learn how to optimize your costs using containers and the Azure Kubernetes Service.

Secure by design with Kubernetes on Azure

One of the key pillars of any enterprise computing platform is security. With market-leading features like policy integration and Azure Active Directory identity for Pods and cloud-native security have always been an important part of the Azure Kubernetes Service. I’m excited about some new features we’ve added recently to further enhance the security of your workloads running on Kubernetes.

Though Kubernetes has built-in support for secrets, most enterprise 

environments require a more secure and more compliant implementation. In the Azure Kubernetes Service, being enterprise-grade means providing integration between Azure Key Vault and the Azure Kubernetes service. Using Key Vault with Kubernetes enables you to securely store your credentials, certificates, and other secrets in state of the art, compliant secret store, and easily use them with your applications in an Azure Kubernetes cluster.

It’s even more exciting that this integration is built on the back of an open Container Storage Interface (CSI) driver that the Azure team built and open sourced for the entire Kubernetes community. Giving back to open source is an important part of what it means to be a community steward, and it was exciting to see our approach get validated as it was picked up and used by the HashiCorp Vault team for their secrets integration. Our open source team has been hard at work on improving many other parts of the security ecosystem. We’ve enhanced the CSI driver for Windows, and worked on cgroups v2 and containerd. If you want to learn more about how to secure your cloud-native workloads and make sure that your enterprise is following Microsoft’s best practices, check out our guide to Kubernetes best practices. They will teach you how to integrate firewalls, policy, and more to ensure you have both security and agility in your cloud-native development.

[deemclucas86-blog]

Free MP3 Cutter Joiner

Helium Audio Joiner, as its name suggests, lets you merge various audio tracks into one single file using an intuitive interface and advanced instruments. No fancy choices not just easy buttons, easy interface and fundamental audio editing commands, this is Beat Maker online audio joiner Editor all about. Chances are you'll wish to attempt extra software program program, just like EZ WAV Joiner, Aplus WAV Joiner or WAV Cutter Joiner, which is prone to be associated to WAV Joiner. To showcase this, we used a easy movement of creating mashups by merging audio (mp3) recordsdata using this program, uploading the mashed-up information to a cloud primarily based storage (we used Azure blob storage in this case) after which finally creating assets on a BigchainDB primarily based blockchain, having links of the respective mashup files. Is there any great on-line MP3 editor for basic audio editing? Our MP3 Joiner works with audio recordsdata directly and the joined MP3 tune can be ready nearly instantly. Combine audio recordsdata at very quick pace which lower than 30 seconds. To begin the merge process, double-click on the Magic Audio Joiner shortcut in your Desktop. The audio format could be WAV , WMA , MP3 , OGG , AAC , AU , FLAC , M4A , MKA , AIFF , OPUS or RA Audio file measurement will likely be as much as 200M. Mp3splt is an open-supply application that you should utilize to split MP3 audio recordsdata on your laptop with out decoding or encoding the unique file. You could select to remain the unique audio codecs or change to other audio formats. The Audio Joiner Plus just isn't a sophisticated program and it can be used even by a beginner. It permits to chop an audio with an accurate starting time and ending time in milliseconds. It helps plenty of media file formats which embrace MP3, AAC, OGG, FLAC, WAV, M4A and many different more, so just import the audio and re-create it instantly. As well as, you can choose the audio output format as well, change its configuration and even apply fundamental results.

Be a part of MP3 and all different varieties of audio recordsdata into an even bigger one with high speed for gapless and non-stop playback or sharing. And you too can remove audio from a video or convert a video to audio format. Another helpful utility that can assist you combine audio and video files is FormatFactory. Free download FonePaw audio joiner and observe the steps beneath to mix songs collectively. Timbre is little doubt the most effective audio and video editors for Android. Leawo Video Converter would instantly begin to convert audio recordsdata into one file. Magic Audio Joiner can mix many audio information into a single file. Free internet service to combine one picture with one audio (MP3) file to make a MP4 video. 2. Can add native audio tracks or import files from Google Drive, Dropbox or URL. Note that this impact operates on the audio channels inside the SoX effects processing chain; it shouldn't be confused with the −m international option (where a number of files are mix-mixed before getting into the results chain). With Direct MP3 Joiner you'll be able to be a part of multiple music MP3 files to one larger MP3 file in a second.

Verdict: The app is free and ad-supported but lacks options like advance search, lower, merge, and join. In instances when you only require a bit of an audio recording, perhaps for one thing you have got dictated that you just wish to type up later, a software program software which can lower the audio is helpful. Chances are you'll want to merge audio files for a lot of reasons. It's a super simple audio becoming a member of software program and powerful audio converting instrument that make ringtone or create something particular to your portable system. This is the case for a lot of codecs utilized in telephony (e.g. A-law, GSM) the place low sign bandwidth is more necessary than excessive audio fidelity, and for a lot of codecs utilized in moveable music gamers (e.g. MP3, Vorbis) where enough fidelity may be retained even with the massive compression ratios which are needed to make portable players practical. Be part of audio files completely! You now need to hitch these files into one piece with the intention to cut up it in keeping with tracks robotically (using a cue sheet) or even by splitters detecting silence, and many others. My MP4Box GUI affords a easy interface, however mixing audio and video files may not be the best process. Set the preferred order by dragging files, discover that it is best to drag the audio information for his or her names. Merge MP3 can be part of mp3 recordsdata in a variety of audio codecs, encoded with totally different codecs utilizing completely completely different settings. Missing in operate, ugly, and hard to make use of, Free MP3 Cutter Joiner has a really particular use. Free Video Joiner A free video joiner tool to hitch a number of video files into one large video file. (That is called joining a by edit.") Then, discover new audio clip trimming methods, as well as a proof of the way to separate audio from video for editing. Click on the Add Files" button and select the audiobook information you wish to merge. Simple MP3 Cutter Joiner Editor is a simple to make use of but highly effective audio cutter, MP3 joiner, online audio joiner MP3 splitter and MP3 editor. Due to web and expertise right this moment, we will discover almost anything we wanted in Google, search like free audio merger" or in the event you worry in regards to the converted output audio high quality, you might search goal phrases like greatest free audio converter ". Luckily, I just have a right device here, named Free HD Video Converter Manufacturing unit, a simple and free audio joiner to manage your varied audio files smoothly and losslessly.

MP3 Joiner merges audio to a non-cease audio file! There are many audio formats might be acceptable by this compact tool, reminiscent of WAV, OGG, AAC, online audio joiner WMA, AU, FLAC, MKA, M4A, AIFF and RA and so forth. Even though effective as it's, you may only be empowered to join audio track with the identical format and bit price. You'll be able to add the audios to the program and use it to trim, change order of tracks and join them into one. It does not only deal with MP3 formatted audio but also more than 15 different audio codecs.

[kumkaniudaku]

Wing Man: Two

Chadwick Boseman x CoCo (Black!Reader)

Warnings: Language, Smut references

A/N: Future pieces to this series will posted on this blog!

(1) (3)

“Lucy, I’m home,” Tasha cooed into the unusually quiet and warm Harlem apartment. 

Usually Tasha drive in from New Jersey every other weekend after her job with the New Jersey Nets, barge into Chad’s apartment unannounced, scream some television line and wait for his sarcastic reply. Today, only the sound of a body shifting on the bed in the other room acted as a reply to her ‘I Love Lucy’ reference.

Rounding the corner Tasha found her lean, lanky best friend upside down on his bed. His shoulders and head hung off of the side, nearly touching the floor as he absentmindedly stared at the worn ceiling. A t-shirt and a pair of boxers hung loosely off of his frame and scruff peppered his jawline. The usually strong and almost regal young man looked withered and tired, as if he had been in his current position for days.

“Chad,” Tasha started quietly. His eyes briefly shifted to her while she stood in the door frame before they moved back to focus on the invisible spot on the ceiling. “What’s going on? Are you hurt? How long have you -”

“She broke up with me.” He deadpanned. Though his voice held little emotion, his eyes told a different story. A glassy gloss covered them, indicating that he had been crying at some point during the day over the loss of his long-term girlfriend, Jayme.

Tasha let out the breath that she didn’t know she was holding before pushing her body away from the door and sitting on the floor beside his head. He also let out a deep breath while turning lay on his stomach.

“Did she say why?”

“Something about not wanting to wait forever while I chase this acting dream.” He answered, using air quotes to illustrate the sarcasm on her end of the exchange. “She also said that she met another man. Travis.”

A drawn out groan into one of his pillows punctuated the sentence, the first verbal indication of his frustration.

“What? That’s...insane. I’m sorry, Aaron,” Tasha added rubbing his head over her shoulder. “Fuck Travis.”

A dry chuckle slipped from Chadwick’s lips as he slid from the bed to join Tasha on the floor. Lying his head on her lap, he stared up at her with a heartbreaking look of devastation in his eyes. To avoid his gaze, she focused her attention on the circles she rubbed against his forehead.

“Maybe…maybe she’s right.”

“What! Chad, no!”

“I’ve been here for nine years, T! I don’t have shit to show for it. Not a steady TV spot, a commercial, a straight to DVD movie; nothing. I’m chasing a dream that isn’t meant for me. I’m a director, not the guy in the front.”

Another awkward silence enveloped the stuffy New York apartment while Tasha tried to find the words to lift his spirits. A joke at this time was obviously inappropriate and there was no way that you would agree with him.

Chadwick hadn’t landed any serious roles but he was overlooking the work that he had accomplished. Deep Azure was a tremendous success and his directorial work garnered. enough accolades to necessitate another page for his official biography. Most importantly, his work with at the Schaumburg Center was impactful to the youth that regarded him as a superstar. At any point in the afternoon, one could find middle school aged children crowded around Chadwick and hanging on to his every word as if his voice held the key to life. They respected him more than anyone else in the building, wanting nothing more than to make him proud.

“Let’s go. We’re not sitting here and sulking.” Tasha demanded, pushing his head from her lap and standing to her.

Chadwick shot back a bewildered look as his eyes moved quickly between her stern expression and outstretched hand. “Are you being serious?”

“You bet your sweet ass I am! Let’s go. Now.”

Shuffling to stand up, Chadwick barely had a chance to grab hold to Tasha’s hands before she began dragging him into the bathroom to position him in front of the dingy mirror. 

“What do you see?”

“I see...me?” He stated confused at Tasha’s intentions. “What is this about?”

“Can I tell you what I see?” She asked looking at him for approval to continue. Chadwick’s lips spread into a slight smile as a signal for permission. Placing a hand on each shoulder, Tasha hid her body behind his and began to speak. 

“I see a Black man that fought tooth and nail to make it out of his fine arts program. Remember those long ass nights writing and rewriting drafts? Learning lines so you could relate to the actors on stage?”

“Damn near sleeping in the theater some nights,” he chuckled, vivid memories of those experiences flashing in his mind. The grind was his favorite part.

Tasha rubbed his shoulders before gently tugging them back so that he would stand up straight. “I see a man with enough passion in his eyes to make the world go ’round. I see Mr. Chad, the only person at Schaumburg to get those rowdy ass kids to be quiet and listen.”

Chadwick’s eyes moved from Tasha’s to finally look at himself in the mirror. He looked both confused and intrigued. How could Tasha see all of this when all he found looking back at him was the taunting face of a man that had failed to make his dreams reality.

“I also see,” Tasha continued “a man that loves with his whole heart and is going to make a woman very happy but, only when the time is right. You are amazing. You’re walking directly in your purpose. Your accomplishments are plenty and this is only the beginning. So tuck that chapped ass bottom lip back in and get it together, Aaron. You’re going to be just fine.”

Tasha playfully slapped Chadwick’s cheeks in as a way to smack him back to reality. Finally, a toothy grin found a resting spot on his face as he took one last look at himself in the mirror.

“Thank you,” He muttered, turning to lean against the sink and face Tasha “For everything. I owe you a hug.

“Oh no you don’t!” She exclaimed in an attempt to dodge his outstretched arms. “You stink! How long have you been in that bed?”

“I don’t know. Two days?” The longtime best friends scrunched their faces in disgust as the realization that he hadn’t showered in 48 consecutive hours settled into their brains.

“Gross, Aaron! Take a shower and get dressed.”

“Please don’t make me leave the house, CoCo.” He whined, using Tasha;s nickname in an attempt to change her mind.

“Don’t CoCo me! We’re going out because I need a drink and you need some fresh air to hit that funky ass body of yours.”

An incredulous look followed by incoherent mumbles drew a boisterous laugh from CoCo as she flopped down on the bed to being her wait.

If a pep talk couldn’t cheer him up, Tasha knew a double shot of whiskey and a dance party would do the trick. They hadn’t been out together in months. She missed their nights running the streets in the Summer, staying out too late and drinking too much. She’d try to set him up with some unsuspecting girl at the bar when she was fueled by liquid courage and he’d laugh and talk her down, usually citing his relationship or work as his reason to decline. It was always a lie, but it stopped Tasha long enough for him to change the subject.

“None of that matchmaker stuff tonight, Tasha. I’m serious,” Chadwick admonished as he closed the cab door after she’d exited the vehicle.

“Oh c’mon! You need it!”

“I’m serious, Co. Drinks only.”

Chadwick only pulled out Tasha’s nickname when he wanted something or when he needed to assert himself. The words she opened her mouth to counter his point with never made it into the warm summer air because of Chad’s conversation ending glare.

“Buzzkill,” Slipped pass CoCo’s lips in a disgruntled mumble causing Chadwick to scoff.

The usual bar was bursting at the seams with natives and tourists looking for a little fun to kick off the season. Jamie Foxx’s “Blame It” rattled the glass windows surrounding the bricked building, filling Tasha’s heart with excitement. Fortunately, the line outside moved quickly and finally allowed them to join in on the dance party.

“I’m gonna go get us some drinks. You go find a spot at the bar!” Before he could protest, Tasha scurried towards the bartender to pick the poison for the night’s activities. A fond smile never left his face while he watched her from his seat. He loved the way Tasha exaggerated her facial expressions when she was excited. Her animated conversations could bring him from the darkest depths of frustration and lift his spirits in a matter of seconds. 

He committed to memory how her beautiful brown skin reflected the red and blue hues that emitted from the lights around the dance floor. There were no words to describe the way his stomach filled with butterflies when her hands touched any part of his body or when she said his name for any reason at all. His relationship with Jayme was full of love but not in the way that he loved Tasha. She brought that up in her parting argument but he felt it unnecessary to bring up for fear that CoCo would blame herself for his mistake.

“What are you over here smiling at?” She asked interrupting his thoughts while balancing four shots between her fingers.

Instead of letting his smile fall, he simply grabbed one of the glasses she presented him and instructed you to do the same. “To friendship?”

“To friendship!”

                                        ____________

Slurred speech and giggles bounced off the hallways wall, brightening up the dark corridor. A night of unadulterated fun was near its end if Chadwick could reach his apartment door without Tasha pulling them to the floor in a heap. 

“Chaaadwiiiiiick,” Tasha sang, stumbling under the tight grasp of Chadwick’s arms.

He laughed and shook his head. “Tasha, this is third time you’ve called my name. Do you want something or do you just like the way it sounds.”

A hiccup preceded hysterical laughter and served as CoCo’s reply. By the 10th shot, third dance battle and the near scuffle by the bar, Chadwick decided that the party was over for his friend and practically drug her out of the building. Tasha’s drinking made it difficult for her to stand on her own and contributed to the sudden inability to keep her hands to herself.

CoCo’s fingertips traced Chadwick’s clenched jawline while he attempted to get his key in the lock of his apartment door. Chadwick drew in a sharp breath when her soft lips replaced her hands, sending blood and his sense of calm in a race to his lower half.

“Be careful, CoCo,” he spoke in a low rumble. “You’re about to start something you can’t finish.”

His warning did nothing to stop Tasha as you placed another kiss on his earlobe. The kisses became slower, moving from his ear, to his cheek and finally the corner of his mouth. A strained grunt emerged from his throat, carrying equal parts frustration and desire.

Desire won the internal battle, and before he knew it, he was pressing CoCo up against the front door out of pure desperation. His hands frantically grabbed her wrists to pin them above her head while their tongues danced in a lewd ballet.

“Dammit,” he breathed against her neck “We’re not supposed to be doing this.”

“Why not?” 

Pulling away from Tasha, he peered into her dark eyes and found the same lust filled look that he was sure his eyes carried. He felt his heart’s pace begin to pick up. 

Why couldn’t he take the opportunity to bury himself deep inside of Tasha? To taste the juices that had made an appearance just for him? Why couldn’t he finally make love to the woman that had been the best part of his life for over a decade? The fear of crossing the invisible line in their relationship, threatening to make him back out of the moment. He quickly shook his trepidation. 

As if he never stopped, Chadwick hungrily latched his lips to CoCo’s neck, nipping and sucking at the skin that rivaled the sweetest milk chocolate. Following his cue, she lazily wrapped your legs around his waist to allow Chadwick and easier method of transferring you to his bedroom.

Tasha landed on his bed with a soft thud, slightly shaking up the contents of her stomach. She paid no mind to the sudden bout of nausea, instead choosing to watch Chadwick remove his shirt and expose his chest. He had grown so much since his undergraduate years. His shoulders were broader, chest more firm, accented with a small amount of hair, and his abs were more pronounced. She couldn’t have dreamed of a more perfect being.

Chadwick smirked at Tasha after noticing her bottom lip denting beneath her top row of teeth.

He slowly crawled to the top of the bed to press her lips against his in the most sensual kiss either of them had ever had. Chadwick planned to take his time with her tonight and deal with the consequences in the morning. Their moans harmonized under the moonlight, wrapping your bodies in a swath of brilliant light as if the act was written for the stage. 

Before Chadwick could make a move to Tasha’s chest, a wave of heat accompanied the feeling of her mouth preparing for an acidic eruption to interrupt the activity.

“Oh my-Chad stop!” She blurted, throwing her hands up to cover her mouth.

“What? Why?”

“I’m gonna-oh shit. Move!”

Chadwick watched in amusement as Tasha darted into the bathroom to empty out all of the fun she had consumes a few hours ago. A fond smile spread across his face while he slipped on his t-shirt and walked towards the bathroom door, listening to her wretch and cure. 

“I love you, CoCo.” he whispered to himself before pushing open the door to help her through her episode. “C’mon, now. Not on the floor!”

Tag List: @thegirlonhamilton @idilly @wakanda-4evr @redvonlace @onyour-right @wakandan-aesthetic @chocolate-flavouredcondom

(Let me know if you want to be added.)

[brownada311]

Tile App For Mac Desktop

Tile App For Mac

Tile App For Mac Desktop Background

Mac Desktop App Store

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For related 'What's New' information, see:

August 2019

Secured access with Azure Active Directory (AD) Application Proxy

We partnered with Azure Active Directory team to integrate Power BI mobile applications with Azure Active Directory (AAD) Application Proxy. With this configuration you can connect to Report Server hosted inside the enterprise boundaries from Power BI Mobile app, without the need to set up complex on-premise configuration. Read more on Power BI mobile and Azure AD Application Proxy integration. Learn how to configure Azure AD Application Proxy and Power BI.

July 2019

Dec 10, 2012  Mixtiles are beautiful photo tiles that stick to walls. They’re made from your photo memories -- just choose your favorite photos in the app, select your style, and they’ll be delivered to your door, ready to transform your walls. Thankfully, it’s now possible to create your own Modern UI tiles for any desktop app, folder, or file. Here’s how: To create custom Modern UI icons or tiles, first download OblyTile. Desktop Tiles is a simple screensaver that takes a screenshot of the entire screen and turns into a puzzle, randomly moving the tiles. There are 3 types of animation you can choose from: Puzzle, Flip and Switch.

Report page tooltips

Report page tooltips are now supported when viewing reports in your mobile app. Simply press and hold on a visual that has a report tooltip tied to it and it will be shown.

Note

Report tooltips are supported for devices greater than 640 pixel size and 320 viewport. Smaller devices use default tooltips.

June 2019

Barcode scanning is now available in Android

Now you can use your Power BI app on Android (phone and tablet) to scan barcodes printed on products or shelves at your store to display related Power BI reports filtered by the scanned value. More about filtering your data with barcodes.

Supporting PBIX reports hosted in PBI-RS over ADFS configuration (iOS, Android)

Power BI Reports (PBIX) hosted in PBI-RS over ADFS configuration can now be accessed also from Power BI mobile apps.

May 2019

Siri Shortcuts support (iOS)

Users can create Siri Shortcuts to their Power BI reports and dashboards, and then open them directly from Siri voice interface. Read how to use Siri Shortcuts in Power BI iOS app.

Device search (iOS)

Integrating Power BI with iOS device search (Spotlight). Searching for content in iPhone or iPad will now include Power BI items as well. Google photos login. When users use device native search, Power BI reports, dashboards, apps, workspaces and people matching the search criteria, will be listed in the results as well. Visit the blog post to learn more.

Single tap report interaction - GA

Single tap is now GA, and will become the default touch interaction for new users. Users will still be able to turn it off and have double tap in the app settings.

Enhanced conditional access protection (iOS, Android)

We integrated with AAD new app protection-based conditional access capability to increase security by limiting access to Power BI before app policy is applied.

Device protection (iOS)

Users can use device built-in protection to secure Power BI, by asking for Face ID, Touch ID or passcode for accessing Power BI. This can be control by the user using the app settings, but also by admins using Intune and any other MDM tool. Learn more.

One page report Slideshow (Windows)

Supporting auto refresh also for one-page reports in slideshow. So, if the report's underline data source is updated, we will pick it up and update the data in the page.

April 2019

Key Influencers visual

Key Influencers visual is now available on your mobile app. This visual lets you perform analysis of key drivers over your data with just a few taps.

Add comments to report content (Android and iOS)

Now you can use comments to collaborate and share your feedback on report pages and visuals. Read more about report commenting in Power BI Service and Mobile in this blog.

Maximize the view with full screen mode (Android and iOS)

We added new button that let you control when to focus on your data by removing report headers and footers and giving you maximum space for viewing your reports.

March 2019

Supporting external guest users in Power BI apps (iOS, Android)

You can access Power BI content shared with you from other organization directly from the app (also known as B2B). Read more on Power BI mobile apps B2B here.

Enhancing Windows presentation mode with slideshow (Windows)

With slideshow you can use public displays located in your office to run Power BI reports in full screen that will auto rotate between report pages.

Supporting PBI-RS reports over ADFS and WAP configuration (iOS only)

Power BI Reports (PBIX) hosted in PBI-RS over ADFS configuration can now be accessed from Power BI iOS app.

Enabling single tap interaction with report visuals

We changed report interaction so it will require only one tap on a visual, button, or slicer to interact with its data right away. Users will no longer need to tap on a visual to select it and to tap again to interact with it, a single tap will do them both.

Note

Existing users will need to turn on this behavior in the app setting. For more information, see the How to configure single tap report interaction article.

January - February 2019

Visio visuals

Enabling Single sign on (SSO) in Visio visuals, so no additional sign-in steps are required when viewing report with Visio visual in the app.

Dashboard commenting is coming to Power BI Mobile Windows app

You can add comments directly to dashboards and specific tiles to discuss your data, and anyone viewing the dashboard will see your comments.

December 2018

Filter is now available for landscape reports

Report's filter pane is now available for landscape reports (in addition to phone report).

November 2018

Modern visual header

Reports using the new ‘modern visual header’ will no longer allocate space for headers, resulting in less empty space and more room for your visualizations.

Enhance presentation mode (Windows)

Enhanced presentation mode for Surface Hub and Windows 10 devices. Enjoy an enhanced Surface Hub meeting room experience, with improved presentation and collaboration tools, and a chromeless, large-screen optimized view, so you can focus on your data. Presentation mode also provides tools such inking to help you effectively present and have discussions about your data. Read more about presentation mode here.

Portrait report layout in tablets (iOS and Android)

We now use phone report layout, when it exists, for displaying reports on tablet in portrait mode orientation. Read more on how to create phone layout in Power BI Service or Desktop.

Supporting report query string

Opening report link that includes query string will now be opened in the mobile app and be pre-filtered based on the conditions defined in the query string. Learn more on how to create report url with query string.

Shared credentials (now in Android)

Signing in to Power BI from your mobile app has never been easier. With shared credentials, we simplified the sign-in process by using other Office 365 app credentials on the device to authenticate you in the Power BI service.

In-app URLs (now in Android)

Links in reports that point to other Power BI artifacts now open directly inside the app. This enables you to build custom navigation flows, for example, linking from a report into a dashboard.

Show data and copy values

Report visual action menu (..) now has the option to show the underlying data in table format. Once in the table, you can long-tap to select and copy values from that table (assuming that there is no Intune policy restricting copying).

October 2018

Paginated report preview (all devices)

Paginated reports are now available on Power BI service. Users with access to paginated reports in Power BI Service can also access these reports from their mobile app.

Read the Power BI blog post about paginated reports in mobile.

Shared credentials (iOS)

Signing in to Power BI from your mobile app has never been easier. With shared credentials, we simplified the sign-in process by using other Office 365 app credentials on the device to authenticate you in the Power BI service.

In-app URLs (iOS)

Links in reports that point to other Power BI artifacts now open directly inside the app. This enables you to build custom navigation flows, for example, linking from a report into a dashboard.

iOS12 and watchOS 5 support

We have updated Power BI app for iOS to work seamlessly with the new OS on mobile devices and watch.

September 2018

Phone report editing in the browser (all devices)

Now you can create a phone report layout for a report that is already published in the Power BI service, and not just in Power BI Desktop. You create it in Edit mode in your browser.

Dashboard commenting (iOS and Android)

You can add comments directly to dashboards and specific tiles to discuss your data, and anyone viewing the dashboard will see your comments. You can also pull others in your organization into the conversation by @mentioning them. Those you’ve @mentioned receive a push notification with your message to their mobile phone.

Currently available for iOS and Android devices. Windows support coming soon.

Read the Power BI blog post about dashboard comments.

Single Sign-On (Windows)

Single Sign-On (SSO) is one of the most requested capabilities for Power BI mobile for Windows.Now you can use your primary organizational account not only to sign in to your domain-joined Windows mobile devices, but also to sign in seamlessly to the Power BI service. Read more about SSO and the Windows mobile apps.

Previous months

July 2018

iOS and Android only

Shared filters

You can now receive reports with shared filters and slicers.

Background image support

When you view a report in landscape mode on your mobile device, you see the same background images that you see in Power BI on the web.

June 2018

Full-canvas reports

Top and bottom action bars now disappear shortly after your report loads, so you can see more of your report at once.

Increased phone report canvas size

We increased phone report canvas size to have room for more visuals than before.

May 2018

Mobile drill-through: all mobile apps

You can drill through from a selected data point to another report page in the mobile apps, if the report author has defined that action.

Back button: all mobile apps

Now when you navigate through a report by swiping, choosing a report page on the action bar, or using drill-through, the back button takes you back to the previous page you were looking at.

Dashboard themes: all mobile apps

When report authors customize dashboard themes in the Power BI service, the look and feel of the dashboard will change in the mobile app, too. However, you won't see background images.

iOS: Configure Power BI iOS mobile app access to a report server remotely

Your IT admin can now use an MDM tool to configure Power BI iOS mobile app access to a report server. See Configure Power BI iOS mobile app access to a report server remotely for details.

Power BI for Mixed Reality app (Preview)

The Power BI for Mixed Reality app is now in the Microsoft Store. View your dashboards and reports while immersed in the virtual world, or place them and view them in specific locations in the context of your environment. See the new Introducing Power BI on Hololens video for context, or read the article about the new Power BI for Mixed Reality app.

April 2018

Mobile drill-down and drill-up

You can now drill down and drill up to dive into report visuals on your mobile device. To access this new feature, tap and hold to open the tooltip menu on a report visual, and then tap the drill buttons to explore your data in depth. More about drilling up and down in the mobile apps.

Persistent filters

We recently updated report filters and slicers, so they are automatically saved from Power BI on the web to the Power BI mobile app. Now, filters and slicers you set in the mobile app are automatically saved to Power BI on the web.

March 2018

Power BI for Mixed Reality app (Preview)

In the latest move to bring data where you are, we've created the Power BI for Mixed Reality app. View your dashboards and reports while immersed in the virtual world, or place them and view them in specific locations in the context of your environment. Read more about the new Power BI for Mixed Reality app.

Share reports and dashboards externally

Share dashboards and reports with users outside of your organization, directly from the app. External sharing in enabled for both organizational and social accounts.

Persistent filters

When you set filters and slicers in Power BI on the web, your filter choices are saved to your mobile app as well, so you can pick up where you left off.

Refresh reports on the iPad

Power BI reports now have a refresh button in the iPad app.

February 2018

Share reports

Now you can share a report directly from the mobile apps. Read more about sharing dashboards and reports from the mobile apps

Improved tooltips

When you tap and hold on a report visual to access tooltips, you can now drag your finger across the visual to explore details about each data point along the way.

January 2018

Report favorites

Tag reports as favorites so they appear on the Favorites page. Read more about favorites in the Power BI mobile apps.

View shared reports

Now when someone shares a report with you, it's listed on the Shared with me page along with dashboards.

Improved hyperlink support

You can now tap links in custom visuals to open them in your mobile browser.

Intune integration (Android)

Support for conditional access using Intune mobile device management.

December 2017

Improved security management

We’ve added support for conditional access (CA) and Microsoft Intune mobile device management (MDM) on Android devices, to better secure your organization’s data. It's already available on iOS.

Improved permission management

We’ve made some changes that allow for more precise management of user permissions for datasets, dashboards, and reports.

Auto-installed apps

You don't need to install some of the apps in Power BI at all. Power BI app creators in your organization can create apps that contain a collection of dashboards and reports. Then they can publish the app and set it to install automatically in the Power BI service and the Power BI mobile apps. When an app is set to install for you, it automatically appears in your Apps menu:

November 2017

iPhone X optimization

We’ve optimized the app layout for iPhone X, so you can explore your data in style on every device.

October 2017

Filters for phone reports in Android

If you create a report with phone-optimized pages in Power BI Desktop, and the report has filters, you can now apply those filters in the phone report on your Android. Read more about filters for Power BI reports on Android.

Show data in reports

You can now switch visuals in your reports to a table view to see the numbers behind the data. To access this feature, tap 'Show data' from the visual's .. menu on your report or the new icon on the expanded visual's action menu.

September 2017

Filters for phone reports in iPhones

If you create a report with phone-optimized pages in Power BI Desktop, and the report has filters, you can now apply those filters in the phone report on your iPhone. Read more about filters for Power BI reports on iPhones.

August 2017

iOS proxy settings support

You can now set proxy settings in the Power BI iOS mobile app. This means that Power BI will now work with VPN connections on your mobile device, allowing more users and organizations to securely leverage the power of Power BI on the go.

July 2017

Read the mobile apps feature summary for July 2017

iOS devices

New Q&A experience on iOS (Preview)Instead of just receiving an answer to your question, you can now use natural language to get scoped insights. IEven if you're not sure what you're looking for, Q&A proactively surfaces insights relevant to your data. The new Q&A experience on mobile, developed in collaboration with the Microsoft Research team, showcases powerful technologies within our product. Try the tutorial, Ask questions about your data in the iOS mobile apps.

Responsive visuals

Responsive visual for phone reports and dashboardsYou can set the visuals in your dashboard or report to be responsive, to change dynamically to display the maximum amount of data and insight, no matter the screen size. Read the blog about responsive visuals.

June 2107

All devices

Make apps favoritesYou can already make a dashboard a favorite. Recently, Power BI added apps, and now you can make apps favorites, too.

May 2017

All devices

New menu: Shared with meGo to Shared with me in the mobile app menu to see all the content that's been shared with you.

New menu: AppsAn app is a collection of dashboards and reports built by your organization to deliver key metrics for faster and easier refers to Hebrew and Arabic writing systems, which are written from right to left and require contextual shaping. See the list of Supported languages in the Power BI mobile apps.

Android devices

Connect to more than one SSRS server

Now you can have connections to up to five SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) servers at the same time.

Request access to dashboards

If you scan a QR code for a dashboard that you don't have access to, now you can submit a request for access right from the mobile app.

February 2017

All devices

Scrolling made easier

Now you can scroll in bar and column charts in a report by touching the chart itself, rather than touching the scroll bar on the side.

iOS devices

Ask questions of your data with a preview of Q&A

With Q&A, you ask questions about your data in your own words, and Power BI provides the answers. Q&A is already in the Power BI service on http://powerbi.com. Now it's also available in the mobile app on your iPhone or iPad.

Connect to more than one SSRS server

Now you can have connections to up to five SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) servers at the same time.

Android tablets

The Power BI mobile app for Android tablets is now available globally. Get started with the Power BI on your Android tablet.

iOS and Android devices

New menu for dashboard tiles Navigate to the underlying report, expand the tile, or manage an alert, all directly from a menu on the tile on a dashboard.

This menu is new for iOS, Android phones in landscape mode, and Android tablets. It was already in Windows and Android phones in portrait modes.

January 2017

Read the January 2017 mobile apps blog feature summary.

All devices

Load more than 100 rows in tables and matricesNow, if you have a large table or matrix on your dashboard or report, we show as much data as possible in the tile. Then in focus mode, you can scroll down to load additional rows.

Phone report - general availabilityPower BI phone reports are now generally available. In Power BI Desktop, you can tailor a portrait view of an existing report for mobile viewers. Learn more about authoring phone reports in Power BI Desktop and the report experience on phones.

iOS

SSRS Authentication using Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) PreviewNow you can sign in to on-premises SQL Server Reporting Services servers from your mobile device with your organizational account. Read more about using OAuth to connect to SSRS servers.

Android

SSRS Authentication using Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) PreviewNow you can sign in to on-premises SQL Server Reporting Services servers from your mobile device with your organizational account. Read more about using OAuth to connect to SSRS servers.

New and improved: Annotate and share insights quicklySharing and annotating are now fully functional on Android devices. The improved menu makes it easier and quicker to annotate and share insights, and you can also share an annotated report or directly from the Power BI app.

December 2016

Read the December 2016 mobile apps blog feature summary.

All devices

Offline background refresh

To make sure you can access your latest data while offline, we perform a refresh in the background of the app so your business information is up to date, even if you haven’t accessed it for a while. To make sure certain dashboards are always up to date, just mark them as favorites. Learn more about offline capabilities in the Power BI mobile apps.

iOS devices

Annotate and share

Now you can annotate and share a tile, report, or visualization from the Power BI mobile app for iOS.

Request access to dashboards

If you scan a QR code for a dashboard that you don't have access to, now you can submit a request for access right from the mobile app.

Custom URL on image tile

If an image tile has a custom URL defined by the dashboard owner, when you tap the tile you go directly to that URL without opening the tile in focus mode.

iPhone

Apple watch improvements

You can now refresh Apple Watch data directly from the Watch app. In the dashboard index page, deep press to refresh your data. (The Power BI mobile app must be running in the background on your iPhone for this to work).

Android

Custom URL on image tile

If an image tile has a custom URL defined by the dashboard owner, when you tap the tile you go directly to that URL without opening the tile in focus mode. Also, dashboard tiles containing predefined custom URLs can now redirect readers to reports within the app.

November 2016

Read the November 2016 Power BI mobile apps feature summary.

Android tablets

Power BI mobile app for Android tablets Yes, the preview is here.

Experience Power BI on your Android tablet

Explore Reporting Services mobile reports and KPIs on your Android tablet

Android devices

Preview: Intune Mobile Application Management Power BI support for Microsoft Intune Mobile Application Manager (MAM) is now in preview for Power BI Pro users on Android devices.

Favorites Tag your favorite dashboards on your Android device, and see all your favorite Power BI dashboards and Reporting Services mobile reports and KPIs collected in one convenient location.

iOS devices

Links URLs in tiles and visualizations are now clickable, and open in a browser.

Windows devices

Center a map to focus on data near you in your location

September/October 2016

Read the October 2016 Power BI mobile apps feature summary.

All devices

Favorites as landing pageIf you’ve marked any of your dashboards as favorites, then your landing page will be your Favorites entry.

Improved navigationThe main navigation has a new look, and groups navigation has moved to the groups catalog.

Report and dashboard performance improvementsImproved the experience of loading reports and dashboards in the Power BI mobile apps

Enhanced alert notificationsNotifications for yourre offline.

Power BI app for Windows 10 devices

Quick access Access your dashboards, reports, and groups quickly with a new “recently viewed” list and global search so you can find the data you need.

Bing and R tiles Open Bing and R tiles in focus mode.​

More live tiles on your Start screenPin KPIs and row cards to your Start screen as live tiles, so you can see all of your critical metrics at a glance.

Pinch to zoom Use pinch-to-zoom on your tablet to examine dashboards in greater detail.

Notifications Get notified when your datasets, reports, and dashboards update with new data.

Report gallery Open your reports directly in the report gallery.​

February 2016

Android

View dashboards in landscape mode on Android phones.

Power BI app for Windows 10 devices

View reports on your Windows 10 phone.

Faster time to insights on your Windows 10 mobile dashboards: Share a tile snapshot or open a report directly from the dashboard.

January 2016

All of the January improvements are already in the new Power BI app for Windows 10 phones, released in December 2015. Now they're rolling out to the other Power BI apps for mobile devices. Read the blog post about these improvements.

Real-time data support Dashboards refresh in real time, so you don't need to refresh them manually.

Offline indicators When you don't have signal, you see an offline indicator at the top of your dashboard.

Access cached data Cached data no longer expires, so you have access to your cached data indefinitely while offline.

R tiles and web widgets View these new tile types in dashboards on your mobile device.

Bing dashboards In the Power BI service, you can now create dashboards with Bing search results, and view them on your mobile device.

Report pages pinned as tiles to dashboards Now that you can pin a whole report page to a dashboard in the Power BI service, you can view report pages in the Power BI app on your iPhone or on your Android phone.

December 2015

The Power BI team ended 2015 strong, with several major additions and updates.

SQL Server 2016 Reporting Services mobile reports in iOS

Now you can view your SQL Server mobile reports in the Power BI app on your iOS device, be it iPad or iPhone. Read more:

SQL 16 SSRS on Power BI app for iOS blog post

View SQL Server mobile reports and KPIs in the iPhone and iPad apps documentation

Power BI app for Windows 10 phones

The new Power BI app for Windows 10 phones is optimized for touch and mobile productivity. Explore dashboards and reports, invite colleagues to view data, and share insights over email to engage your team. Plus you can pin Power BI dashboards to your Windows phone Start screen.

Read the Power BI app for Windows 10 phones blog post.

Get started with the Power BI app for Windows 10 phones.

Other additions

Read the Power BI mobile apps December blog post for more details.

Receive notifications when a colleague shares a dashboard with you. (iOS)

View entire pinned report pages in your dashboards. (iOS and Android)

Scan a QR code and go directly to a relevant tile on your Android phone.

November 2015

Read the November 2015 Power BI mobile blog post.

All Power BI mobile apps

A new welcome experience.

Improved chart data capacity.

iOS and Android mobile apps

Enterprises can now configure Power BI mobile apps for iOS and Android with Microsoft Intune to manage devices and applications.

iPhone mobile app

Add a picture tile to a dashboard directly from your iPhone.

Create QR codes in the Power BI service, then scan them from your iPhone to open the Power BI app to a specific tile.

The Power BI app for Windows devices

Link directly from a tile to a specific URL.

October 2015

Read the mid-October Power BI mobile blog post.

All Power BI mobile apps

Line charts with a percentage-based Y-axis now calculate the visual range according to your actual data. The graph now starts from the lowest data point in the chart, instead of from a default value.

Line, column, and bar charts can now have data labels.

iPhone

Stay up to date with your groups' newest dashboards -- receive notifications on your iPhone each time a team member adds a dashboard to one of your groups.

You can now view dashboards horizontally, just by turning your phone. Read more about landscape mode in the iPhone app.

September 2015

Improvements in the Power BI mobile apps -- Android, iOS (iPhone and iPad), and Windows. Read the mid-September Power BI mobile blog post.

Android

Support for group workspaces: Collaborate with colleagues in group workspaces.

Support for non-authenticated users: For the few scenarios when users fail or can’t sign in to the app, we added a fast, convenient way to contact support and send feedback.

Improved user experience when accessing dashboards using role-based security.

Improved data formatting of charts and alignment of all dashboard tiles.

iOS (iPhone and iPad)

New & improved navigation: New drawer navigation maximizes screen real estate and improves navigation throughout the app.

Group workspaces: Collaborate with colleagues in group workspaces.

Authentication process upgrade Quality, performance, and functionality improvements enhance the app authentication process, including support for SSO (Single Sign-On).

Improved data representation of line chart tiles to better compress the x-axis.

Improved user experience when using with role-based security.

Touch-optimized improvements for matrix chart tiles: Now you can easily scroll through your matrix data and view all its data easily and intuitively.

Improved data formatting of charts and alignments of dashboard tiles.

Removal of iOS 7 support: To maintain highest security standards for Power BI, we will no longer support iOS 7 installed devices. iOS 8 and above is required.

Send feedback and rating added in app: Added in-app capability to send feedback and provide ratings so that we can increase the community’s influence on our roadmap and promote issues easily and directly from the app.

Windows

Improved map tile rendering in in-focus mode to maximize screen real estate.

Improved user experience when accessing dashboards using role-based security.

A new capability allows you to browse back and forth through dashboard tiles exploring them directly in in-focus mode without the need to return to the dashboard to select the next tile.

Additional stability and performance improvements.

What are you doing! I won many times, but keep on continuing. You are wasting my time. Mother! Time is gold!

How to use Hong Kong Style Mahjong – Free for PC and MAC

You can run all Android games and applications on your PC or MAC computer. Using a free software called Bluestacks, you don't need to purchase anything but games or applications it self if it isn't free.

Download Bluestacks from this link.

Install BlueStacks from installation file with following the on-screen instructions.

Once Bluestacks is installed add your Google account in it.

Type Hong Kong Style Mahjong – Free in Search bar and install it.

Now you can use Hong Kong Style Mahjong – Free on your PC or MAC.

Buggy, but fun Really enjoy the game, but the bugs are annoying. Periodically the game treats the tiles differently from how they appear. It will give you the option to pong tiles that don't match, or will not let you win when you should. You can have a pong and a pair, and still be forced to discard.

Finally A HK Style Mahjong Game A good HK style mahjong game and the best thing about it is that it has an English GUI. I wish it also had the ability to switch the GUI to Chinese too.

Potentially a great game but right now it has many bugs. It often shows 5 of the same tile. And I did email you, but no response. And other people here are also saying it's buggy. Don't be defensive. We're all trying to help you make a great game!

Bugs won't let me win a lot of time, so frustrating Won't let me win on a winning hand, makes me throw card instead of winning.

Fun, but bugs are frustrating So many times I should have won, but game does not recognize.

Finally an actual mahjong game and not 'solitaire'. Only been playing for half a day. It's good BUT sometimes glitchy when you have winning tiles but game doesn't let you win, noticed it happening more frequently after first round. Needed one tile to complete the final pair and picked it myself but no option came up, had to throw it out and the game came to a draw soon after (this has happened at least twice)

Best game of four winds but needs improvement Just needs some graphical improvement and some bug fixes. I can't pick up a discarded tile to form a pair even though it's a winning move since I already have 4 sets. Improve this and it would be the best game of four winds.

How come there are totally 6 same tiles? And it happens all the time!

Lousy I won many times but it did say I won and the game continues

Bugs cause wrong tiles are displayed. You have no idea what you hand really is. Very frustrating.

Does Not Understand All Tile Combinations I play mahjong regularly. With family. At parties. Good game, but when I know I won and the game doesn't recognize the combination because it can't differentiate chows and pong, it means you need to fix it.

Waiting for multiplayer support, otherwise would 5 star it. Best mahjong interface with HK style I've tried thus far. Waiting for multiplayer support, otherwise would 5 star it. Best mahjong interface with HK style I've tried thus far.

Lacking in polish and variety The gameplay is acceptable (minus some jarring graphical flaws and the bugs that cause the wrong tiles to be discarded sometimes) but the other players have become predictable always trying to get all the characters for for their particular sign and favoring chows over anything else.. Is it too much to ask for some variety?

Minimum levels to win 1 to 6 great With minimum levels to win from 1 to 6, it adds realism to the real played game. Thank you.

Very good A very good game. It uses the score that are mostly used internationally. There are few combinations that we used in national championship in my country not recognized here. It doesn't include richi in the combinations. Only one little problem, sometimes it won't let me go out. Other players discard what I need and it won't let me win. When it shows the summery in the hand my hand had 1 or 2 different tiles from my hand of when I was playing. Very addictive game.

C+ Glitches! Sometimes a tile is missing. It just disappears. Sometimes I get the kong/chow/or win. Sometimes I dont, :(

hong kong style - Great This it's great it really works

Overall alot of bugs. Had alot of malfunctions in the command and the reading of all the tiles

There was one game when there were 5 tiles of four marbles on the table, impossible!!!! I have a screenshot of it ..

o g Kong Style Mahjong - Free True! Best magic app ever

Real Mahjong The rules are slightly different than what I play at home, and the scoring eludes me, but a great game.

Fast Paced Mahjong action Incorporating traditional Hong kong rules, it has many options

New game app. trying to learn it. also enjoying it a lot.

Very good game =p Hy . Im new but im really enjoyed this game. I recommended this game . really friendly user

Hongkong mahjong Light game good for teaching rules of play enjoyable game, :p

mahjong was my childhood games. this really remembering me about my childhood. thanks 100%works for me

Tile App For Mac

Mahjong is a game that originated in China. It is commonly played by four players. The game and its regional variants are widely played throughout Eastern and South Eastern Asia and have a small following in Western countries. Mahjong is similar to the Western card games like rummy, mahjong is a game of skill, strategy, (…)

Screenshots

Tile App For Mac Desktop Background

PriceFreeApp Size7.3 MBInstalations100,000 - 500,000Score4.1DeveloperPS GamesLink

Mac Desktop App Store

We don't provide APK download for Hong Kong Style Mahjong – Free but, you can download from Google Play

[huntersj967]

Silverlight 4 Download For Mac

News and how-tos on all the tech in your home. 4/21 (水) オンライン開催. 昨今勢いを増す「Java on Microsoft Azure」をテーマに、Azure 上で利用可能なさまざまなサービス群とアップデート情報、また国内における取り組みと利用企業のベスト プラクティスをご紹介します。.

Flashpoint's Mac support is heavily experimental. This page provides information about the current Flashpoint for Mac package.

Please join our Discord and provide your feedback: http://discord.gg/S9uJ794

2Installation Instructions

2.1Troubleshooting

3Technologies

Latest Package

Download Beta 2019-12-15:

Changelog:

2019-12-15: Added 'wmode':'direct' to the default SWFObject parameters. This fixes certain 3D Flash games which previously did not work properly.

2019-12-14: First beta available!

Installation Instructions

Download and unzip the latest package using the link above.

Double-click StartFlashpoint.command to open Flashpoint.

Do not forget this step! You must use StartFlashpoint.command, otherwise Flashpoint will not work properly.

Troubleshooting

If Flashpoint does not work after installation, follow the steps below:

Click the Apple menu and open System Preferences.

Click 'Security & Privacy,' then click the 'Privacy' tab.

Click 'Full Disk Access'.

Click the lock icon and enter your password to make changes. Then click the + button under the list of apps to add Terminal to the list.

Click the lock icon again to save your changes. You should see Terminal in the list of allowed apps, as shown below.

Silverlight 4 Download For Mac Windows 7

Flash EOL Screen

If you see the Flash Player EOL information screen when you try to play a game, that means that SeaMonkey is loading your installed Flash Player plugin instead of the plugin that is bundled with Flashpoint. To fix the problem, uninstall Flash Player from your Mac and restart Flashpoint. Games should work again in SeaMonkey.

MacOS Catalina and Big Sur

Because Flashpoint's applications are from an 'unidentified developer,' if you're using Catalina or Big Sur, you'll need to approve each application before it can run. Open your system preferences, click 'Security & Privacy', then allow each of the following applications to run: StartFlashpoint.command, Flashpoint Launcher, swfbbox, and SeaMonkey. If you have trouble figuring out how to do this, watch this tutorial video.

Because Adobe Director Projectors are 32-bit applications, SPR for Mac will not work on MacOS Catalina or Big Sur. This means that Flashpoint for Mac does not support Shockwave games on Catalina or Big Sur.

MacOS Big Sur (MacOS 11.0)

Flash applications have been successfully tested and are working. To use Flashpoint with Big Sur, a few modifications are required. Follow the steps below:

Silverlight 4 Download For Mac Installer

Download SeaMonkey 2.53.4 for MacOS x64 from here: https://www.seamonkey-project.org/releases/

Open Flashpoint Infinity's FPSoftware folder, then find the old 'SeaMonkey.app' there.

Right-click the old SeaMonkey.app and click 'Show Package Contents.'

Open the Contents folder, then within that folder, open the Resources folder.

Find the folder called plugins and copy it.

Find the new 'SeaMonkey.app' file that you downloaded by searching in Finder under 'This Mac'.

Right-click the new 'SeaMonkey.app' and click 'Show Package Contents.'

Open the Contents folder, then within that folder, open the Resources folder.

Paste in the plugins folder that you copied earlier.

Go back outside of the new 'SeaMonkey.app' package and copy it.

Open Flashpoint Infinity's FPSoftware folder, then paste the 'SeaMonkey.app' file that you just copied. Replace the original file when prompted.

Apple Silicon Macs

To run Flashpoint on Macs with the new M1 chip, you'll need to install Rosetta by following these instructions. Once you've done that, follow the instructions in the previous sections to get Flashpoint working.

Installing Java

To add support for Java games, you'll need to install the Java Development Kit. Follow the steps below:

Download JDK version 8u212 from here: https://github.com/frekele/oracle-java/releases/download/8u212-b10/jdk-8u212-macosx-x64.dmg

Open the DMG file and run the installer. Follow the on-screen instructions to install the JDK.

Installing Wine

Running games in Wine is not yet supported, but we hope to add support for this in a future build. If you'd like to contribute to our efforts, you can download an installer here.

Using Flashpoint with Automator (optional)

You can start Flashpoint without having to click on StartFlashpoint.command by using Automator using the below steps:

Choose File > New.

Select 'Application', then click Choose.

Drag the Run Shell Script action into your workflow.

Enter open /Users/[YOUR USERNAME HERE]/Downloads/Flashpoint Infinity for Mac Beta/StartFlashpoint.command in the command field.

Technologies

Currently, only Flashpoint Infinity is available for Mac. However, as explained here, both PHP and Apache are included with MacOS. This means it should be fairly simple to create a Flashpoint Ultimate package for MacOS as well. Let us know in our Discord if you can help!

No equivalent to the Flashpoint Redirector currently exists for MacOS. MacOS also does not provide any native way to set per-application proxy settings. In Flashpoint for Mac, the proxy settings for each supported technology must be set separately. This rules out using the Flash projectors, since they do not have configurable proxy settings. In Flashpoint for Mac, all Flash games run in a browser.

The Flashpoint FAQ contains a list of all web game technologies ('Platforms') supported in the Windows version of Flashpoint. The Mac version currently supports a small subset of these platforms. This is explained in detail below. The list of supported platforms includes an unscientific estimate of the percentage of games supported by our method.

Supported Platforms

Flash: Supported using the SeaMonkey web browser, with a Flash plugin included. Games that use a Flash Player version other than 32 are not yet supported.

~95% of games supported.

Shockwave: Supported with SPR for Mac. Because LeechProtectionRemovalHelp is only available for Windows, the majority of Shockwave games will not work properly.

~30% of games supported.

Requires a 32-bit compatible OS; Catalina is not supported.

HTML5: Supported using the SeaMonkey web browser. WebAssembly support is enabled in Flashpoint's SeaMonkey profile, so it should be compatible with nearly all of the same games as Basilisk.

~99% of games supported.

Java Applets: Supported natively using the JDK. Java in the browser is not supported yet.

~99% of games supported.

Unsupported Platforms

Unity Web Player: Has not been attempted yet. We would need to track down the Mac builds of all 12 versions of Unity Web Player that we support on Windows. Needless to say, this would be a huge challenge.

PopCap Plugin: As far as we know, there is no version of PopCap Plugin for modern Macs.

Authorware Web Player: Authorware is incompatible with all Intel Macs.

GoBit Plugin: As far as we know, there is no version of GoBit Games Plugin for modern Macs.

Silverlight: Silverlight for Mac is available here, but as explained in this StackExchange answer, Microsoft Silverlight for Mac is 32-bit only, even though the Windows version has 64-bit and 32-bit versions. This is a problem because no major browser for MacOS has a 32-bit version, and MacOS Catalina drops support for 32-bit programs entirely. As such, Silverlight is unusable on Mac.

3DVIA Player: As far as we know, there is no version of 3DVIA Player for modern Macs.

3D Groove GX: 3D Groove is incompatible with all Intel Macs.

ActiveX: ActiveX is a Windows-only technology.

ShiVa3D: The Windows version of the ShiVa3D Player is available in the free ShiVa Web Edition; this is where we obtained it. However, no Mac version of the ShiVa Web Edition is currently available, so we haven't been able to find a Mac version of the ShiVa3D Player. It's possible that we could extract a Mac version of the player from a Mac version of a ShiVa3D game. Or maybe we could obtain the Mac runtime from the Windows version of ShiVa3D Web Edition, since it has the capability of publishing for Mac.

Launcher Issues

A number of Flashpoint Launcher issues affect the experience of using Flashpoint Launcher on MacOS. Unfortunately, none of our Launcher developers currently have access to a Mac, so updates for the Mac version of Flashpoint Launcher will not be available in the foreseeable future. We will be unable to release a Mac version of Flashpoint 7.0 until a new version of the Launcher is built for MacOS. If you have access to MacOS and are able to build Flashpoint Launcher, please let us know!

The current issues with the Mac version of Flashpoint Launcher are listed below.

Errors are shown in the log when services are missing from the services.json. These services are unnecessary for Flashpoint on Mac, so the errors can be ignored.

Flashpoint Launcher cannot find its own Version file, even if it is present in the Launcher's folder and app package.

The Theme dropdown menu on the Config tab does not work properly. To select a theme, you must manually type the path to the theme's CSS file.

A popup appears if the user attempts to start a Windows executable from Flashpoint. This popup tells the user to install Wine, and points them to the Linux Support page, even though the Launcher is running on Mac.

If a shell script is specified in execs.json as an alternative to a batch script, the Launcher will attempt to launch the shell script defined for Linux, even if a different shell script is defined for Darwin (MacOS).

Flashpoint Launcher attempts to load the hidden resource forks of certain files as separate files. These files are not visible in the MacOS Finder, and have filenames beginning with ._.

If any Platform XML has a resource fork, all of the Platform XMLs will fail to load, causing a 'No games found' error.

If any localization JSON file has a resource fork, a 'NotValidJSON' error will appear in the logs.

When Wine is started from Flashpoint Launcher, it uses >70% CPU for several minutes without ever starting the intended executable. This is despite Wine working fine when started from the terminal. This issue needs to be investigated and solved before Flashpoint can support launching games through Wine.

By default, Flashpoint Launcher will attempt to read and modify config.json and preferences.json inside its own app package. Since Mac applications are not allowed to modify their own app packages, this will fail. For this reason, Flashpoint Launcher must be opened with a shell script command StartFlashpoint.command. This script sets the current directory to the Flashpoint Launcher folder so that the Launcher accesses the config.json and preferences.json in the correct location. However, this unusual way of opening the Launcher may be the cause of the previously mentioned Wine bug.

Other Notes

Some keyboard controls such as the spacebar or WASD keys may not work in some games. This is a known problem with the NPAPI Flash plugin on MacOS. We plan to resolve this problem in the next build of Flashpoint for Mac by using the PPAPI plugin instead.

Flash games with URLs pointing to filenames with special characters will not work. This is because nosamuEmbedSWF.sh does not properly handle special characters when it converts URLs to paths, so it cannot copy the game's HTML to the correct location in htdocs.

Some Shockwave games may not close when you quit them from the menu. If this occurs, click inside the Message Window next to the game. Then type quit and press Enter to close the game.

Flashpoint for Mac uses exec mappings to determine what native executable to run based on the specified Windows application path. For example, flashplayer_32_sa.exe is mapped to nosamuEmbedSWF.sh for MacOS. To add more exec mappings, navigate to Flashpoint's Data folder and open execs.json in a text editor. The exec mappings use 'darwin' to refer to MacOS.

Flashpoint for Mac uses swfbbox to determine the width and height of an SWF file. swfbbox is part of the swftools homebrew package. To install swftools, first install homebrew. Then type brew install swftools in the terminal.

Flashpoint for Mac requires that PHP and cURL are enabled on your system. These components should be enabled by default.

Packaging Flashpoint for Mac

Here are some steps to keep in mind when packaging Flashpoint for Mac. This assumes that you are using the current package as a base and modifying it.

You can follow these instructions to update Flashpoint's XMLs to the latest version.

You can follow these instructions to update Flashpoint Router to the latest version.

Use update-spr.sh in the FPSoftware folder to update SPR to the latest version. To get the latest version of SPR for Mac, see SPR for Mac.

If you would like to distribute a modified SeaMonkey profile, be sure to clear the cache, cookies, and other data. In SeaMonkey, click Tools -> Clear Private Data.

If you would like to add a plugin to SeaMonkey, first install the plugin normally. Then, follow these steps:

Navigate to /Library/Internet Plug-Ins in Finder and copy the files for the plugin you want to add.

Navigate to Flashpoint's FPSoftware folder. Right-click SeaMonkey.app and choose 'Show Package Contents.'

Inside the app package, navigate to /Contents/Resources/plugins. Paste the plugin files that you copied in Step 1.

Before running or distributing Flashpoint, you should run the dot_clean command inside the Flashpoint folder to remove resource forks. Flashpoint Launcher may not work properly if Flashpoint files have resource forks, as explained in Launcher Issues.

Retrieved from 'https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/datahub/index.php?title=Mac_Support&oldid=4501'

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Google Cloud Will Not Be Able To Overtake Microsoft Azure

New Post has been published on https://perfectirishgifts.com/google-cloud-will-not-be-able-to-overtake-microsoft-azure/

Google Cloud Will Not Be Able To Overtake Microsoft Azure

ANKARA, TURKEY – MARCH 3: In this photo illustration a mobile phone and computer screens display … [] Microsoft and Google logos in Ankara, Turkey on March 3, 2020. Halil Sagirkaya / Anadolu Agency

Google Cloud certainly has the technical chops and engineering talent to compete with Microsoft Azure and Amazon’s AWS when it comes to cloud infrastructure, edge computing – and especially inferencing/training for machine learning models. However, Google may lack focus due to Search and YouTube being the main revenue drivers. This is seen from the company’s inability to ignite revenue growth in the cloud segment during a year when digital transformation has been accelerated by up to six years due to work-from-home orders.

In this analysis, we discuss why Google (Alphabet) may have missed a critical window this year for the infrastructure piece. We also analyze how Microsoft directed all of its efforts to successfully close the wide lead by AWS. Lastly, we look at how all three companies will bring the battle to the edge in an effort to maintain market share in this secular and fiercely competitive category.

Cloud IaaS Overview:

The three leading hyperscalers in the United States have diverse origins. Amazon found itself serendipitously holding server space year-round that it could rent out and was first to market by a wide lead. Amazon continues to release customization tools and cloud services for developers at a fast clip and this past week was no exception.  

Microsoft’s roots in enterprise created a direct path to upsell on-premise and become the leader in hybrid. The majority of the Fortune 500 is on Azure as they want seamless security and APIs regardless of the environment.

Google is one of the largest cloud customers in the world due to its search engine and mass-scale consumer apps, and therefore, is often first to create cloud services and architectures internally that later lead to widespread adoption, such as Kubernetes. Machine learning is another piece where Google was one of the first to require ML inference for mass-scale models.

Despite all three having very talented teams of engineers and various areas of strength, we see AWS maintain its lead and Microsoft Azure firmly hold the second-place spot. Keep in mind that Azure launched one year after Google Cloud yet has 3X the market share and is growing at a higher percentage.

Google Cloud grew two percentage points from 5% to 7% since 2018 while Azure grew four percentage points from 15% to 19% in the same period. In the past year, Google Cloud saw a 1% gain compared to Azure’s 2% gain, according to Canalys.

Azure is under Intelligent Cloud but the company does break down the growth rate which was 48%. Although Google Cloud Is not specifically broken down, the Google Cloud segment grew 45% year-over-year compared to Microsoft Azure up 48% year-over-year.

Amazon Web Services is growing at 29%, which is substantial considering the law of large numbers. In the past two quarters, Google Cloud reported 43% year-over-year growth and 52% in the quarter before that. Microsoft has seen a slightly less deceleration from 51% and this is down from the 80%-range almost two years ago.

The key thing here is that when Microsoft held the percentage of market share that GCP currently holds, Azure was growing in the 80-90% range. This is the range we should be seeing from Google Cloud if the company expects to catch up to Azure.

In 2020, the term “digital transformation” has become a buzzword with cloud companies seeing up to six years of acceleration. Nvidia is a bellwether for this with triple-digit growth in the data center segment in both Q2 and Q3. Despite this catalyst, Google has lagged the category in Q2 and Q3 in terms of both growth and percentage share of market. If there were any year that Google Cloud could pull ahead, it should have been this year.

Alphabet has emphasized that GCP is a priority and the company will be “aggressively investing” in the necessary capex. However, the window of opportunity was wide open this year and aggressive investments would ideally have been allocated during the years of 2017-2018 to stave off Azure’s high-growth years with 80-90%.

Google is Capable but Lacks Focus

There is no argument that Alphabet is an innovator within cloud and a leader in its own right. Across public, private and hybrid cloud, containers are used by 84% of companies and 78% of those are managed on Kubernetes – which has risen in popularity along with cloud-native apps, microservices architectures and an increase in APIs. Kubernetes was first created by Google engineers as the company ran everything in containers internally and this was powered by an internal platform called Borg which generated up to 2 billion container deployments a week. This led to automated orchestration rather than manual and also forced a new architecture away from monolithic as server-side changes were required.

Kubernetes also helps with scaling as it allows for scaling of the container that needs more resources instead of the entire application. Microservices dates back to Unix, while Kubernetes, the automation piece around containers, is what Google engineers invented before releasing it to the Cloud Native Foundation for widespread adoption.

Just as Google was one of the first to need automated orchestration for containerization of cloud-native apps, the company was also one of the first to require low-power machine learning workloads. The compute intensive workloads were running on Nvidia’s GPUs for both training and inferencing until Google made their own processing unit called Tensorflow (TPUs) to perform the workload at a lower cost and higher performance.

Performance between TPUs and GPUs is often debated depending on the current release (A100 versus fourth-generation TPUs is the current battle). However, the TPU does have an undisputed better performance per watt for power-constrained applications. Notably, some of this comes with the territory of being an ASIC, which is designed to do one specific application very well whereas GPUs can be programmed as a more general-purpose accelerator. In this case, the benchmarks where TPUs compete are object detection, image classification, natural language processing and machine translation – all areas where Google’s product portfolio of Search, YouTube, AI assistants, and Google Maps, for example, excels.

Notably, TPUs are used internally at Google to help drive down the costs and capex of its own AI and ML portfolio and they are also available to users of Google’s AI cloud services. For example, eBay adopted TPUs to build a machine learning solution that could recognize millions of product images.

Unless Google releases an internal technology as open-source, it won’t be adopted by the competitors. This is where Nvidia’s agnosticism becomes a positive as it’s universally used by Amazon, Microsoft, Google —- and Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, IBM and Oracle. Meanwhile, TPUs create vendor lock in which most companies want to avoid in order to get the best capabilities across multiple cloud operators (i.e. multi-cloud). eBay is the exception here as the company needs Google-level object detection and image classification.

In a similar vein of Google being early to the company’s internal requirements, BigQuery is also a superior data warehouse system that competes with Snowflake (I cover Snowflake with an in-depth analysis here). BigQuery has a serverless feature that makes it easier to begin using the data warehouse as the serverless feature removes the need for manual scaling and performance tuning. Dremel is the query engine for BigQuery.

BigQuery has a strong following with nearly twice the number of companies as Snowflake and is growing around 40%. Due to AWS being a first mover and having a large cloud IaaS market share, Redshift has the biggest market presence but growth is nearly flat at 6.5%.

Point being, Google has important areas of strength and first-hand experience – whether it’s in data analytics, machine learning/inference or cloud-native applications at scale. Google’s search engine and other applications are often the first globally to challenge current architectures and inferencing capabilities.

However, as we see in the contrast between Google and Microsoft in the most recent earnings calls, Google has a hard time prioritizing cloud over the bigger revenue drivers. Meanwhile, Microsoft has a no holds barred approach with one, singular focus: Azure.

Q3 Earnings Calls

The most recent earnings calls from both Microsoft and Google could not have carried more contrast. Google focused primarily on search and YouTube while adding towards the last half of the call that GCP is where the majority of their investments and new hires were directed. Notably, one analyst wondered if the capex investments would eat at margins and produce enough returns. 

Microsoft, on the other hand, held an hour-long call that was nearly all-Azure including what the company is doing right now to capture more market share, a laundry list of large enterprises coming on board and strategic partnerships to strengthen its second place standing. The company’s beginning, middle and end was Azure and cloud services.

Here is a preview of how the two opened:

Thanks for joining us today. This quarter, our performance was consistent with the broader online environment. It’s also testament to the investment we’ve made to improve search and deliver a highly relevant experience that people turn to for help in moments big and small. We saw an improvement in advertiser spend across all geographies, and most of verticals, with the world accelerating its transition to online and digital services. In Q3, we also saw strength in Google Cloud, Play and YouTube subscriptions.

This is the third quarter we are reporting earnings during the COVID-19 pandemic. Access to information has never been more important. This year, including this quarter showed how valuable Google’s founding Product Search has been to people. And importantly, our products and investments are making a real difference as businesses work [indiscernible] and get back on their feet. Whether it’s finding the latest information on COVID-19 cases in their area, which local businesses are open, or what online courses will help them prepare for new jobs, people continue to turn to Google search.

You can now find useful information about offerings like no contact delivery or curbside pickup for 2 million businesses on search and maps. And we have used Google’s Duplex AI Technology to make calls to businesses and confirm things like temporary closures. This has enabled us to make 3 million updates to business information globally.

We know that people’s expectations for instant perfect search results are high. That’s why we continue to invest deeply in AI and other technologies to ensure the most helpful search experience possible. Two weeks ago, we announced a number of search improvements, including our biggest advancement in our spelling systems in over a decade. A new approach to identifying key moments and videos, and one of people’s favorites hum to search which will identify a song noticed based on the humming. –Sundar Pichai, Q3 2020 Earnings Call

Compare this to the tone for Microsoft’s earnings call …

We’re off to a strong start in fiscal 2021, driven by the continued strength of our commercial cloud, which surpassed $15 billion in revenue, up 31% year-over-year. The next decade of economic performance for every business will be defined by the speed of their digital transformation. We’re innovating across the full modern tech stack to help customers in every industry improve time to value, increase agility, and reduce costs.

Now, I’ll highlight examples of our momentum and impact starting with Azure. We’re building Azure as the world’s computer with more data center regions than any other provider, now 66, including new regions in Austria, Brazil, Greece, and Taiwan. We’re expanding our hybrid capabilities so that organizations can seamlessly build, manage, and deploy their applications anywhere. With Arc, customers can extend Azure management and deploy Azure data services on-premise, at the edge, or in multi-cloud environments.

With Azure SQL Edge, we’re bringing SQL data engine to IoT devices for the first time. And with Azure Space, we’re partnering with SpaceX and SES to bring Azure compute to anywhere on the planet.

Leading companies in every industry are taking advantage of this distributed computing fabric to address their biggest challenges. In energy, both BP and Shell rely on our cloud to meet sustainability goals. In consumer goods, PepsiCo will migrate its mission critical SAP workloads to Azure. And with Azure for Operators, we’re expanding our partnership with companies like AT&T and Telstra, bringing the power of the cloud and the edge to their networks. Just last week, Verizon chose Azure to offer private 5G mobile edge computing to their business customers.  -Satya Nadella, Fiscal Q1 2021 Earnings (Calendar Year Q3 2020)

The calls continue in a similar manner with Microsoft making it clear they have their entire weight behind cloud while Google must continue to cater to its largest revenue drivers – search and consumer. The main takeaway we get from the call is that Google is investing in GCP rather than a takeaway of market dominance or growth. Here are a few examples:

As we’ve told you on these calls, given the progress we’re making, and the opportunity for Google Cloud in this growing global market, we continue to invest aggressively to build our go-to-market capabilities, execute against our product roadmap, and extend the global footprint of our infrastructure … And another: An obvious example is Cloud. We do intend to maintain a high level of investment, given the opportunity we see. That includes the ongoing increases in our go-to-market organization, our engineering organization, as well as the investments to support the necessary capex. So, hopefully, that gives you a bit more color there. And, also here … And the point that both Sundar and I have underscored is that we are investing aggressively in Cloud, given the opportunity that we see. And, frankly, the fact that we were later relative to peers, we’re encouraged, very encouraged, by the pace of customer wins and the very strong revenue growth in both GCP and Workspace. We do intend to maintain a high level of investment to best position ourselves. And I kind of went through some of those items, the go-to-market team, the engineering team, and capex. And so we describe this as a multi-year path because we do believe we’re still early in this journey.

The question remains if aggressively investing will have the same impact after the digital transformation has been accelerated by up to six years. Nobody could have predicted covid and the work-from-orders but we see from the growth rates on large revenue bases that AWS and Azure were better positioned to answer the demand.

Edge Computing: No rest for the weary

The race for cloud IaaS dominance is only beginning and the hyperscalers are not resting on their laurels as they compete for the edge. Major strategic partnerships are being struck with telecom companies to break open new uses cases for decentralized applications and increased connectivity. Google mentioned Nokia in their earnings call while Microsoft mentioned AT&T, Verizon and Telstra. Amazon also has partnerships with Verizon and Vodafone. (For brevity sake, you can assume every telecom company is either partnered or will be partnering with multiple hyperscalers for edge computing).

Here is a breakdown of the buildout and how these strategic partnerships plan to profit from 5G. The result will be new use cases, such as remote surgery, autonomous vehicles, AR/VR and a significant number of internet of things devices that aren’t feasible with 4G and/or with the current centralized cloud IaaS servers.

AWS Wavelength:

Amazon’s edge computing technologies are being rapidly built-out. For example, Wavelength is being embedded in Vodafone’s 5G networks throughout Europe in 2021 after being in beta for two years. This will provide ultra-low latency for application developers enabled by 5G. On Vodafone’s end, they have developed multi-access edge computing (MEC) to fit both 4G and 5G networks to process data and applications at the edge. This lowers processing time from about 50-200 milliseconds to 10 milliseconds. Amazon is also expanding its Local Zones to offer low-latency in metro areas from L.A. to about a dozen cities in 2021.

In order to support its retail business, AWS built out 200 points of presence where serverless processing like Lambda can run. The network latency map will be enhanced by telco partnerships who have about 150 PoPs per telco.

Microsoft Azure with Edge Zones:

Azure has the largest global footprint across the cloud providers. Where AWS has been the long-standing developer preference, Microsoft is the C-suite/enterprise preferred company across the Fortune 500. Microsoft’s goal will be to move compute closer to end users and to offer Azure-hosted compute and storage as a single virtual network with security and routing.

Microsoft excelled at hybrid as a strategy for taking market share (which I also detailed as the investment thesis for my position in Microsoft after the company missed Q3 2018 earnings and prior to winning the JEDI contract). Azure Edge Zones extends the current hybrid network platform to allow distributed applications to work across on-premise, edge data centers both public and private, Azure IaaS both public and private. This allows the same security and APIs to work seamlessly across these hybrid environments. The overarching performance will attempt to combine the range of compute and storage capabilities of Azure with the speeds/low-latency of the edge.

Google Cloud with Global Mobile Edge Cloud (GMEC):

Google is also partnering with telecom companies such as AT&T to deploy Google hardware inside AT&T’s network edge to run AI/ML models and other software for 5G solutions. Similar to AWS and Azure, the goal is to open up new use cases for industries, such as retail, manufacturing and transportation.

Anthos for Telecom is a Kubernetes-orchestrated infrastructure that can be deployed anywhere including an AWS cluster. In this way, the strategy for Google continues to amplify its strengths which is containerized network functions to merge edge and core infrastructure. This helps with decentralized applications and could potentially compete with “network slices” to where AT&T could potentially use local breakouts to offer a cloud service tier in a few years from now.

Conclusion:

We’ve seen Google build some of the best products for developers in terms of automating microservices and container-orchestration with Kubernetes and also ASIC chips (TPUs) that compete with the likes of Nvidia. I’m not betting against Google’s talented engineers by any means, rather I’m simply observing that the infrastructure piece is leaning towards more of a duopoly at this time. Cloud is expensive on a capex level, so if Google doesn’t find its footing, the margins driven by ads could take a hit in the near-term.

Who will lead software and AI applications is impossible to predict (and when) as the main competitors will be hundreds (if not thousands) of startups. With that said, I personally own Amwell because Google is a backer and I think health care is an example of a vertical where Google’s experience with data can deliver a serious competitive edge. To be clear, Alphabet may have an advantage with AI/ML software whereas this analysis is about the infrastructure. Perhaps there will be a catalyst in the future for Google Cloud to take more share but the strategy is not evident at this time.

Beth Kindig owns shares of Microsoft and Amwell which are mentioned in this analysis. The information contained herein is not financial advice

From Cloud in Perfectirishgifts

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How Windows Remote Can Increase Your Profit! | windows remote

With Chrome Alien Desktop, you can beck your Windows PC over the internet to your Chromebook, MacBook, Linux device, or added buzz or tablet. Here’s how to use it.

How to use Remote Desktop (RDP) in Windows 10 Home – windows remote | windows remote

There are times aback affairs a Chromebook ability end up actuality cheaper for use in business or education. However, the age-old botheration of Chromebooks is the abridgement of abutment for the fully-featured Microsoft 365 desktop programs and alike added Windows 10 desktop applications.

Google aftermost said in June that it is alive on bringing built-in abutment for Office to Windows 10 with Parallels, but did you apperceive there’s a accurate little workaround that you can use appropriate now to achieve about the aforementioned thing?

With Chrome Alien Desktop, you can beck your Windows PC over the internet to your Chromebook, MacBook, Linux device, or added buzz or tablet. This will afresh accord you alien admission to admission Office or your added apps from your Windows 10 PC. Here’s how to use it.

To get started, you’ll appetite to about-face on your Windows 10 PC and download and install the Chrome Alien Desktop addendum for Chrome or Microsoft Edge. Although Google says this addendum is best advised for Chrome, it additionally will assignment in the new Microsoft Edge, too. It is your best of which browser to use but we begin the addendum will assignment after any issues in Edge.

To install the extension, accessible Edge or Chrome and appointment the advertisement on the Chrome Web Store. Already there, bang the blue Add to Chrome button. You’ll afresh appetite to bang the Add Addendum pop-up that appears to affirm abacus it. You’re now done with the aboriginal step.

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Before activity to footfall 2, we aloof appetite to acknowledgment that (as the name suggests) Chrome Alien Desktop isn’t a built-in on-device band-aid to accepting Office and Windows applications on your Chromebook. You’re aloof application the internet to beck Windows programs to a Chromebook. The achievement will alter based on the acceleration of your internet and your Wi-Fi performance. It’s additionally best aback you’re affiliated to the aforementioned network, too, admitting you can use a altered arrangement if you appetite to.

For footfall 2, you���ll appetite to bang the anew added addendum in Chrome or Edge. In Edge and Chrome, it will arise on the top bar abreast your contour icon. The Chrome Alien Desktop figure is of two squares, one of which has a Chrome logo. As an alternative, you additionally can go to the Chrome Alien Desktop website, too to launch.

Once there, if you’re application Microsoft Edge, you’ll get a bulletin cogent you that, “Chrome Alien Desktop needs the latest web appearance for the best experience.” You can avoid this message. If you’re application Chrome, you won’t see this. In Edge, you can abolish it by clicking Continue Anyway.

After that, you’ll be launched into Chrome Alien Desktop. From there, you’ll see a bulletin cogent you that you’ll charge to set up alien access. To get started with it, bang the Download button. This will download a MSI book to your host PC which you’ll afresh charge to bifold bang to launch. Aback launched, you’ll appetite to bang Allow on the UAC window that comes up. After that, a appropriate host will be installed on your Windows PC in the background. We’re done with this for now.

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In footfall 3, it’s time to assuredly set up your PC for alien access. To get started, go aback to the Chrome Alien Desktop website and bang the articulation that says Accept and Install under Ready to Install. Aback asked if you appetite Chrome or Edge to accessible the download, bang Yes. This will run through the accoutrement prompt. Chase the instructions on the screen.

When that’s done, you’ll afresh appetite to accord your PC a name. In our case, we’re allotment our alien desktop as Surface. Next, you’ll afresh appetite to put in a PIN, for your security. Please be abiding to bethink this PIN, as if you balloon it, you’ll accept to annul and add your PC again. Already the PIN is entered, you can bang Start. You additionally ability charge to click Yes on the UAC alert in Windows 10.

If all goes well, you’ll see your accessory name arise in the annual beneath the Online section. You can now set your PC to the ancillary and go to the accessory you appetite to beck it to.

(This is optional) Before proceeding, you additionally ability appetite to change your awning resolution settings to bout the accessory you’re alive to. This will ensure it will ample up the absolute awning (and not be scaled wrong.) As we’re application a high-resolution Surface Laptop 3, we afflicted the resolution from (2496 x 1664) to (1920 x 1080) to bout the awning of our Google Pixelbook Go.

Finally, you’ll appetite to accessible the accessory area you appetite to beck your Windows 10 PC on. We’re application a Pixelbook Go. From this device, accessible Chrome (or any added web browser, if you’re not on a Chromebook.) You’ll afresh appetite to go to the Chrome Alien Desktop website.

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Once in the web browser, you should see your accessory arise beneath Alien Devices. If all went well, you should see it arise Green, to appearance it as online. Bang that blooming figure to connect, and afresh admission in your PIN. You can bang bethink my PIN on this accessory to bethink the PIN instead of accepting to reenter it. Your Windows 10 awning will afresh be aggregate over to the alien PC.

To accomplish this alien affair abounding screen, bang the dejected arrow which is assuming to the appropriate of the screen. Afresh accept Abounding Screen. Like magic, this will accomplish your alien affair abounding screen, and accomplish it assume like your accessory is active Windows natively! You can now accessible every distinct app that you accept on your Windows PC, from your Chromebook. Aback you’re accessible to stop sharing, bang the arrow already again, and accept Disconnect.

For customization, you additionally can accept some added options from the menu, too. Such as calibration to fit, resize to fit, and bland the ascent to advice advance the quality. They’ll be added controls like to columnist CTRL ALT DEL, Print Screen, as well. And, for administration files, you can bang Upload Book to upload files from one PC to the other. It’s absolutely a air-conditioned experience.

We primarily talked about application the desktop adaptation of Chrome Alien desktop but there is additionally a mobile, app, too. If you’re on a book or phone, you can download the Chrome Alien Desktop app (iOS here, Android here.) Already downloaded, assurance in with your Google account, afresh tap the accessory you appetite to affix too. Admission the PIN, and afresh bang the dejected arrow to connect. You’ll afresh be taken into the alien desktop session. To end, tap the hamburger menu, choose Disconnect.

At the end of the day, Chrome Alien Desktop is absolutely useful, abnormally if you’re acquisitive to beck your PC to a Chromebook or added device. It additionally can serve as a adjustment to advice others analyze their PCs, or allotment their awning with you. Aloof bang the Remote Support option and chase the instructions on the screen.

Do you acquisition Chrome Alien Desktop useful? Let us apperceive in the comments below.

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[coopdigitalnewsletter]

10 June 2020: Could 5G help make shopping centres safe instead of smart? Black lives matter: #teagate

Hello, this is the Co-op Digital newsletter - it looks at what's happening in the internet/digital world and how it's relevant to the Co-op, to retail businesses, and most importantly to people, communities and society. Thank you for reading - send ideas and feedback to @rod on Twitter. Please tell a friend about it!

[Image: Apple Maps, which pushed out a quick edit to their satellite imagery]

Could 5G help make shopping centres safe instead of smart?

“UK's first smart mall blazes a trail for physical retail: Can 5G technology turn shopping centres back into attractive destinations?” The promise in this story is that 5G bandwidth plus augmented reality will transform a Surrey shopping centre’s shops into an exciting physical/virtual hybrid:

“tapping a phone over a product's barcode will trigger an overlay of digital content that can reveal the entire provenance of the supply chain for checking ethical credentials or ingredient detail. [...] It's like squashing the range you would otherwise get in Selfridges into something the size of Clinton cards but still with the ability to pick something up [in store] and have that physical interaction with the assistant"

(Well, stuffing Selfridges into a Clinton Cards is one way of selling the magic.) This idea isn’t new but it is interesting. Argos, Screwfix and shoe shops already separate display from inventory. And online shopping separates both display from inventory and the transaction from possession of the goods. Splitting things apart (or “unbundling”) can be a good way to create some new value. In physical retail, the unbundling value is generally about cost efficiencies. This might be the challenge for smart shopping centres: are they offering the right bundle? And if the value a smarter shopping centre creates is cost efficiency, how does it compete with the modern cost efficiency experts, online shopping? And will it be happy if shoppers “showroom”: inspect the item in the shop, and then use that convenient 5G to see if they can buy it cheaper online? There is a solutioneering feel about that news story - maybe they wondered if a problem could be found to go with the collection of technologies they had in front of them. 

Instead, what if they started with needs? Instead of “smart” or “cost-efficient Selfridges”, what if they’d started with “safe”? Perhaps a shopping centre could make coronashopping very safe by managing queues and distancing really well. Or by providing booked entry times paired with sensible deals. Or by monitoring what percentage of people are currently wearing masks. Or by providing click and collect from mezzanine level 4 to the car park. Safe shopping is going to be a thing as it becomes clearer that the coronavirus is something we’ll live with for a long time. Can 5G help with any of this?

Related: coronavirus is accelerating wealth inequalities in offline retail, with high margin sectors able to offer bespoke, socially-distanced service and lower margin sectors offering queues.

Black lives matter: #teagate

Yorkshire Tea and PG Tips said please don’t buy our tea to some people on Twitter. Hats off to them. Last week we wondered whether brands will all take political positions eventually, because the world’s increased inequality and rate of change will force them to.

However tea isn’t quite as simple as a binary good vs bad though: tea has a complicated colonial history. Race, racism and history are woven into the everyday - read this powerful piece, by Co-op’s Annette Joseph. We have to work at making everything better. 

Amazon as a COVID green zone?

Amazon could spend $300m on developing COVID-19 testing by the summer. And the company says it will spend $4bn total on virus-related efforts in the next financial quarter. Some of that 4bn is going on PPE, testing, social distancing measures etc, like every other retail company is doing. But the wider aim might be a fully “vaccinated supply chain”, a covid-secured organisation and logistics operation in which both employees and customers feel safer. 

You buy from them because it’s reliable, or maybe you even go work for them. (That’s the theory anyway, though Amazon’s history of warehouse worker complaints suggest it’s not going to be quite as easy as that.) What stops others doing this? If only Amazon has the cashflow to do it, then it might create competitive advantage, and even deeper moat for the Everything Store.

Clapping robots will deliver more Co-op grocery orders

Co-op is expanding same-day robot-delivered groceries to more stores and communities near Milton Keynes:

“The number of customers using robot deliveries has more than doubled since the start of lockdown, with the value of transactions increasing four-fold as shopping habits change. In response to the rising demand, the service has been made available in eight Co-op Group stores, with six new stores added since March.

“Starship has also waived its delivery charge for NHS workers during the lockdown period - and programmed the robots to pause to “clap and cheer” at 8pm on Thursday evenings in recognition of carers and key workers.” [!]

Content writerbots and content moderation farms

Microsoft sacks journalists to replace them with robots gathering stories for MSN.com: “I spend all my time reading about how automation and AI is going to take all our jobs, and here I am – AI has taken my job.” You didn’t need to be a neural network to predict what would happen next: Microsoft's robot editor confuses mixed-race Little Mix singers. And it sounds as if the remaining journohumans at MSN are struggling to control the AI’s driving need to publish stories about its own bias. “Now is not the time to be making mistakes”, says a Microsoft staff member. (Oh! Or maybe this is an elaborate scheme to keep journalists in work, battling their AI colleagues?)

So far content moderation has been difficult to automate, so social media cos typically outsource content moderation to contractors. A new report says that reliance of contractors has led to poor working conditions and a lack of attention to real-world harms caused by inflammatory or deceptive content. Content moderation should be brought in house, it recommends. (More on outsourced content moderation, though that can be a difficult read.)

Various things

Big salute to Doteveryone, which is stopping work after five years of fighting for better tech, for everyone.

Behavioural insurance startup Lemonade will go public.

Ploipailin Flynn wrote a powerful month note for Projects by IF about anti-racism.

Zoom says free users won’t get end-to-end encryption so FBI and police can access calls - that seems a really bad way to think about who deserves privacy, but sadly you’ll probably see more of it in future.

Co-op Digital news

We’re using ‘behaviour modes’ to keep users at the centre of decisions.

Co-op Group’s annual general meeting.

The Federation House team is running weekly drop-in chats for the community every Wednesday at 10am: Join us here. See our online events.

Free of charge 

Andy’s Man Club – Gentleman's Peer to Peer Mental Health Meet Up – Mondays 7pm 

Self-Care – Online Workshops – Various dates/times in June 

Virtual Cloud Native + Kubernetes – Meet Up – 10 June – 6pm  

Northern Azure User Group – Meet Up – 10 June – 7pm  

Let’s Talk Service Design – Lightning Talks – 25 June – 12pm 

 Paid for 

Mental Health – 2 Day Training Course – 15/16 June – All Day 

Cariad Yoga – Online Yoga – Various Dates & Times in June 

Invisible Cities - Online Tours of Manchester or Edinburgh – Various Dates & Times 

Thank you for reading

Thank you, beloved readers and contributors. Please continue to send ideas, questions, corrections, improvements, etc to the newsletter’s typist @rod on Twitter. If you have enjoyed reading, please tell a friend!

If you want to find out more about Co-op Digital, follow us @CoopDigital on Twitter and read the Co-op Digital Blog. Previous newsletters.

[enterinit]

Microsoft Teams Roundup December 2019

Microsoft Teams Roundup December 2019. Microsoft Teams is now available on Linux Microsoft Teams is now available for Linux users in public preview, enabling high quality collaboration experiences for the open source community at work and in educational institutions. Users can download the native Linux packages in .deb and .rpm formats. We are constantly improving based on community feedback, so please download and submit feedback based on your experience.

What’s New: Chat & Collaboration

Native Federation for 1:1 Chats with users outside your organization Have richer conversations with people outside your organization with Microsoft Teams. Users in TeamsOnly mode can now enjoy the same familiar chat experience whether they are communicating with a colleague or someone who is outside of their organization. An icon will appear next to the user’s name to indicate that they are external.

What’s New: Calling & Meetings

Add subtitles to your meetings with the Live Captions Preview (English) Live Captions in Teams meetings allows you to turn on subtitles during the meeting. This makes meetings more inclusive, giving participants another way to follow along with the conversation, and addressing the needs of participants with different hearing abilities or language proficiencies. We are in the process of rolling this public preview feature out in English in the United States, and will look to roll this out in additional languages and geographies in 2020. Dynamic Emergency Calling for Direct Routing Dynamic Emergency Calling for Direct Routing is now available as a part of Microsoft Teams Phone System. It uses the caller’s current location to route their emergency call to a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP), a call center operated by the local government. This is especially helpful when the user is not in their home country and does not know how to get in contact with local emergency services. Add additional participants to meeting chats Today in private meeting chat threads (i.e. the chats that are created in association with a meeting), users don't have functionality to easily add more participants to chat. This feature will add an entry point "Add participants" in the meeting chat header and users who are already part of the chat thread will be able to add more users to the meeting chat using this feature. This functionality currently exists in group chat and it will work the same way as group chat. Reduce your notifications with muted meeting chats Sometimes we must miss a meeting, and we don’t always need real-time notifications from the in-progress meeting chat. By default, meeting chats will now be muted until you either send a message in the chat or join the online meeting. So you can reduce notifications, but still keep track of the conversation. To change these defaults, go to your profile picture at the top right of the app, select Settings > Notifications. From there, scroll to the meetings section and open the menu next to Meeting chat notifications. Presenter or attendee? You decide. Introducing meeting roles. Organizers, you can now choose what roles your invitees have during your meetings. Follow the directions at Assign roles in a Teams meeting and view what each role can do during the meeting. Video Calling on Chrome is here! Video calling on Chrome is now generally available. Now Teams users on Google Chrome can initiate and accept video calls with other Teams users. This release completes our story of full modality support (visual, audio, and screensharing) in Web Calling. Citrix VDI support is now generally available We have delivered an optimized media experience for Microsoft Teams in Citrix on-premises, Citrix Cloud, and Azure-hosted Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environments. Contact Center APIs are ready for development Today, we’re happy to share much of the package of APIs to enable these solutions. Take advantage of the Microsoft Graph Presence, Create Online Meeting APIs & Phone System Direct Routing APIs to develop your solution. More coming soon!

What’s New: Admin

Microsoft Teams is coming to existing installations of Office 365 ProPlus on the semi-annual channel We are making it easier for you to give your users the richest Teams experience, our desktop client, by adding Teams to Office 365 ProPlus. Starting January 14th, the Teams desktop client will be added to existing installations of Office 365 ProPlus on the Semi-Annual Channel. Since everyone in the organization needs to communicate and collaborate, it’s important to make Teams available to all end users. We’ve published guidance to help you plan your rollout: Adopt Microsoft Teams. While we encourage you to adopt Teams, we enable you to deploy at your own pace. If you wish to exclude it from your installation or disable auto-start of Teams, you are fully in control. New mobility policy requiring Wi-Fi for the Teams Mobile app A new mobility policy for the Teams Mobile app allows IT Admins to require their users to have Wi-Fi connections when making or receiving Teams video and/or video calls and meetings to control cellular data usage costs. Admins can apply this restriction on selected or all users in their organization. Number Normalization Rules for tenant administrators Tenant administrators often need to change a phone number for live inbound/outbound calls in order to ensure interoperability with phone networks. The rule can translate either callee or caller numbers to a desired format. Policy can then be applied using PowerShell in inbound and/or outbound directions. Changes in Incoming IP Video policy We have updated our meeting policies to allow IT administrators more control over how video is managed in Teams Meetings. The previous policy only prevented outgoing video. We have extended the Allow IP Video policy to prevent both outgoing and incoming video as needed. Tenant administrators can use this policy to manage bandwidth.

What’s New: Teams for Education

Early teacher access to class teams Microsoft School Data Sync (SDS) enables automatic creation of all your class teams using the data found in your school's student information system. With early teacher access to classes, you now have time to set up assignments, add files, and get organized before your students begin using the SDS-created team. Once your class team is ready to go, simply click “Activate” and that’s it! You control when students have first access to the class. Early teacher access to classes will be gradually rolling out this month.

Sync Teams assignments and grades to PowerSchool with Grade Sync Using PowerSchool SIS for grades? Sync your assignments and grades directly to PowerSchool PowerTeacher Pro with Grade Sync and save yourself a step. Read the full article