#Outlook Data File | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

feminist-space · 6 months ago

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"Balaji’s death comes three months after he publicly accused OpenAI of violating U.S. copyright law while developing ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence program that has become a moneymaking sensation used by hundreds of millions of people across the world.

Its public release in late 2022 spurred a torrent of lawsuits against OpenAI from authors, computer programmers and journalists, who say the company illegally stole their copyrighted material to train its program and elevate its value past $150 billion.

The Mercury News and seven sister news outlets are among several newspapers, including the New York Times, to sue OpenAI in the past year.

In an interview with the New York Times published Oct. 23, Balaji argued OpenAI was harming businesses and entrepreneurs whose data were used to train ChatGPT.

“If you believe what I believe, you have to just leave the company,” he told the outlet, adding that “this is not a sustainable model for the internet ecosystem as a whole.”

Balaji grew up in Cupertino before attending UC Berkeley to study computer science. It was then he became a believer in the potential benefits that artificial intelligence could offer society, including its ability to cure diseases and stop aging, the Times reported. “I thought we could invent some kind of scientist that could help solve them,” he told the newspaper.

But his outlook began to sour in 2022, two years after joining OpenAI as a researcher. He grew particularly concerned about his assignment of gathering data from the internet for the company’s GPT-4 program, which analyzed text from nearly the entire internet to train its artificial intelligence program, the news outlet reported.

The practice, he told the Times, ran afoul of the country’s “fair use” laws governing how people can use previously published work. In late October, he posted an analysis on his personal website arguing that point.

No known factors “seem to weigh in favor of ChatGPT being a fair use of its training data,” Balaji wrote. “That being said, none of the arguments here are fundamentally specific to ChatGPT either, and similar arguments could be made for many generative AI products in a wide variety of domains.”

Reached by this news agency, Balaji’s mother requested privacy while grieving the death of her son.

In a Nov. 18 letter filed in federal court, attorneys for The New York Times named Balaji as someone who had “unique and relevant documents” that would support their case against OpenAI. He was among at least 12 people — many of them past or present OpenAI employees — the newspaper had named in court filings as having material helpful to their case, ahead of depositions."

#whistleblower #open ai whistleblower #open ai #suchir balaji #may his memory be a blessing

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hardinternetkid · 2 years ago

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Open OLM Files in Web Browser with a Great Method

Looking for a way to open OLM files in Web Browser. Then, you are in the right place. This article will explain a method you can use to convert OLM files into HTML and also discuss the reasons why users want to open their files in HTML format. All users know what an HTML file is. HTML files are text-based documents used to design web pages. The code is used on all web pages which helps it to…

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#Business #convert OLM to HTML #HTML #HTML to Wordpress #html website #Mac Outlook data in HTML #OLM file converter

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orellazalonia · 7 days ago

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Unexpected Outlook

Summary: The Avengers launch a mission to raid a known base of the organization you now work with and discuss over what they found.

Word Count: 1.7k+

A/N: A little shorter since it’s Father’s Day, but I also wanted to add more weight to the previous chapter and progress the story.

Main Masterlist | The One You Don’t See Masterlist

Preparations moved fast. Too fast, maybe.

Steve didn’t like that they were running with incomplete information, but the longer they waited, the deeper this organization could dig itself into global systems. And the more time you had to assist them, whether willingly or not.

Still, it didn’t sit right. None of it did.

Bruce pulled the files. Natasha studied known locations. Sam monitored chatter. Bucky cleaned his weapons with a look in his eyes like he wanted answers he didn’t have the right to ask.

Yet no one brought up your name again. At least, not directly. But it hovered beneath everything.

The way Bucky checked each plan twice. The way Natasha’s jaw twitched when she reviewed footage. Even the way Steve hesitated before calling it an official mission.

The woman Bucky liked didn’t voice objections anymore. She simply kept a kind, quiet distance, like someone watching friends argue over a lost cause.

And within a week, the op was set.

Steve gave the greenlight with his jaw tight and eyes harder than usual. The mission was clear: infiltrate a suspected communications hub. A nondescript, rural compound masked as a grain storage facility. Satellite data showed encrypted signals routing through it over the last month, signals that matched ones the Avengers used internally.

Which meant either someone was watching. Or someone had been taught how.

They went in with a small team. Just Steve, Sam, Natasha, and Bucky. No need for Hulk or Thor; this wasn’t a battering ram job. It was a retrieval and disrupt operation. Quiet and clean.

Or so they thought.

The quinjet landed half a mile out, under cover of dense fog rolling over the hills. The forest beyond the compound was eerily still like it had been holding its breath since before dawn.

“They want us to find this,” Natasha muttered, brushing a branch aside as they crept through the trees.

Steve didn’t argue. His shield was strapped to his arm, but he hadn’t raised it once.

They reached the clearing. The compound was just as expected. Gray concrete, flat roof, minimal security fencing, and a gravel path leading to two entrances. No guards. No movement. Even the air felt… hollow.

Sam scanned the building with a handheld sensor. “No heat signatures. Not even a rat.”

“Too clean,” Bucky said, voice low.

They breached the back door.

Inside, it was dark but not ruined. Every surface was wiped. Consoles powered down. Not destroyed, removed. Carefully like a move-out rather than an attack. Upon investigating further, files had been cleared, drawers emptied, and chairs pushed in with bland desks.

Whoever had been here knew exactly when to leave.

Steve turned in a slow circle, taking it in.

“This was active,” He said. “Days ago.”

“Hours, maybe,” Natasha said, crouching beside a desk. She tapped the edge, there was a faint spot where something electronic had been sitting. Someone had worked here… and then vanished.

Sam stepped into the central control room. There was only one thing left behind: a monitor left switched on, flickering a soft blue light in the dimness.

A single message scrolled across the screen.

Too late, Captain.

That was it. There wasn’t any long monologues. No other mocking comments. Not even a signature or sign-off present. Just a cold fact. Steve stared at it like he could will it to change. Bucky stood a step behind him, arms folded, expression unreadable.

“I don’t like this,” Sam muttered.

Natasha approached a wall panel and pried it open effortlessly. Inside, wires had been sliced. Intentionally. However, there were no explosives. No traps could be seen anywhere either. It was all just… closure.

“They stripped this place surgically,” She said. “No fingerprints, no traces. It’s like they wanted us to know they were here… but not who they are.”

Steve closed the monitor with a clenched jaw. “This wasn’t a base. It was a decoy.”

“No,” Bucky said suddenly. His voice was soft but steady. “It was a base. It just outlived its usefulness.”

They all turned toward him. He looked at the empty room, the missing equipment, and the quiet hallways. Then, to the message. And for a moment, something shifted in his eyes. Guilt, maybe or something deeper.

“They planned for this,” He murmured. “Someone told them exactly how we’d come.”

No one responded, but no one needed to. Because they were all thinking it.

The debrief room was thick with a heavy silence, the kind that pressed down harder than shouting. Ghost-blue blueprints and photos of the abandoned compound still flickered on the monitors, reminders of how quickly their plan had unraveled. Notes about the missing equipment and the chilling message on the screen scrolled slowly, marking everything they should have anticipated.

Steve hadn’t sat once since they returned. He stood rigid at the head of the table, hands braced on his hips, and a deep furrow like it was etched there permanently. Sam had stopped pacing but his leg bounced nervously, jaw clenched tight. Natasha’s fingers tapped against her thigh in a rhythm so steady it barely seemed voluntary.

Only Bucky remained perfectly still, arms crossed, and eyes locked on the screen across the room. He said very little since they’d left the empty compound since that message haunted him.

Too late, Captain.

The words weren’t just text; they carried a weight, a deliberate coldness that dug into Bucky’s mind. Whoever had left it knew him. Not just the soldier, but his moves, his instincts. And worse, their enemy had used the knowledge you once held to outmaneuver them.

The memory played on loop in his mind. Not just the words but the feel of them. The calculation in them. Whoever was behind that terminal… knew him. Not just facts. His patterns.

And maybe worse than that, they’d used your knowledge to do it. They probably used you to do it.

The door hissed open.

She stepped in with her usual soft elegance, cradling a fresh cup of tea between her hands like she had no idea anything had gone wrong. Dressed casual, warm, and comfortable. Like she belonged. Like she didn’t feel the same tension that pulled everyone else taut. The one you used to be jealous of had sat out for the mission after all.

“Oh,” She said lightly. “You’re all back already.”

Her tone wasn’t mocking. If anything, it was gently surprised, as if she’d simply walked into a meeting that ended early. Steve didn’t answer right away. Neither did the others.

She blinked, smile sweet and expectant, like someone unaware they were intruding. “Was it a short mission?”

“We were too late,” Steve said flatly, straightening.

Her brows lifted, and she crossed to the table, setting the tea down. “Really? That’s unfortunate. I thought it was just one of those cleanup things. You all make those look so easy.”

Sam looked over, jaw tight. “They cleaned up, alright. Took every last trace of themselves. Left us a polite message, too.”

“They knew how we’d approach,” Natasha added with her arms crossed now. “Like they knew our pattern. Our flow. They stripped the place within hours of our arrival window.”

“Hmm.” She tapped a fingernail against the ceramic. “That’s strange. Maybe they had inside intel?”

“No,” Steve spoke, narrowing his eyes. “Not unless someone studied us long before they left.”

“Oh.” She blinked, tilting her head. “So… do you think your old administrator friend told them?”

Bucky stiffened.

Natasha’s voice was sharper now, eyes narrowing. “She’s not our anything.”

That seemed to amuse her. She let out a light laugh, the kind meant to dissolve tension, not that anyone was asking for it. “Well, you’re not wrong,” She smiled. “ She didn’t really fit in here anyways, did she?”

Bruce, who had been mostly quiet, looked up sharply. “She worked here for over two years.”

She didn’t seem phased. There was no malice on her face actually. Just soft confidence.

“I guess I didn’t think she’d be important,” She sighed simply. “Kind of kept to herself. I always assumed she’d move on.”

Sam stood, voice tight. “She did. Straight into the hands of the people trying to tear us apart.”

Her smile faltered just a touch. “I didn’t mean—look, I’m sure she was… sweet. I just don’t see how it helps to chase after someone who clearly didn’t want to be here. Don’t you think she made her choice?”

Steve’s eyes narrowed. “We don’t know that yet.”

“I mean, sure,” She said gently, “But if she’s really that dangerous, wouldn’t you have noticed before she left? You didn’t even realize she was gone until weeks later, right?”

Bucky shifted slightly. The burn in his chest deepened. Not from her words exactly, but from how true they rang.

They hadn’t noticed. They hadn’t looked.

The woman moved closer to Bucky, noticing his subtle distress as she rested her hand lightly on Bucky’s shoulder.

“I just worry about you,” She confessed softly, smiling up at him. “You’re all stretched so thin already. I’d hate to see you waste energy chasing ghosts.”

Her hand lingered. But Bucky’s jaw clenched, and for once, he didn’t lean into her touch.

“She’s not a ghost,” He muttered. “She’s a mirror. Of everything we missed.”

Her expression flickered for barely a moment. Then the sweet smile returned.

“Well, if you have to go after her,” She brushed her hand away, her expression turning more solemn. A hint of pity evident, “I hope you’re prepared for what you find. Sometimes people change… and not always in ways you can fix. I don’t want you to be hurt.”

She reached for her tea again, her fingers wrapping around the cup like it was an anchor.

“And if you do decide to keep going after her, well.” She gave a gentle little laugh, looking around with open, innocent eyes. “I hope it goes well. I really mean that. And if you need my help at all… just let me know. I’m always happy to support the team.”

The door hissed softly behind her as she walked out, quiet heels tapping against the floor in steady, graceful rhythm.

The rest of the team stood in silence for a few long seconds, each lost in their own storm of thoughts.

Steve broke it first.

“We move forward. We stop that organization before it spreads deeper.”

“And if she’s helping them willingly?” Sam asked, his voice low.

Steve hesitated.

So, Bucky answered instead.

“Then we stop her, too.”

Taglist: @herejustforbuckybarnes @iyskgd @torntaltos @julesandgems @maesmayhem @w-h0re @pookalicious-hq @parkerslivia @whisperingwillowxox @stell404 @wingstoyourdreams @seventeen-x @mahimagi @viktor-enjoyer @vicmc624 @msbyjackal @winchestert101 @greatenthusiasttidalwave

#The One You Don’t See #bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #marvel x reader #marvel fic #bucky barnes fic #bucky x you #avengers fic #chapter 5

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lazeecomet · 8 months ago

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The Story of KLogs: What happens when an Mechanical Engineer codes

Since i no longer work at Wearhouse Automation Startup (WAS for short) and havnt for many years i feel as though i should recount the tale of the most bonkers program i ever wrote, but we need to establish some background

WAS has its HQ very far away from the big customer site and i worked as a Field Service Engineer (FSE) on site. so i learned early on that if a problem needed to be solved fast, WE had to do it. we never got many updates on what was coming down the pipeline for us or what issues were being worked on. this made us very independent

As such, we got good at reading the robot logs ourselves. it took too much time to send the logs off to HQ for analysis and get back what the problem was. we can read. now GETTING the logs is another thing.

the early robots we cut our teeth on used 2.4 gHz wifi to communicate with FSE's so dumping the logs was as simple as pushing a button in a little application and it would spit out a txt file

later on our robots were upgraded to use a 2.4 mHz xbee radio to communicate with us. which was FUCKING SLOW. and log dumping became a much more tedious process. you had to connect, go to logging mode, and then the robot would vomit all the logs in the past 2 min OR the entirety of its memory bank (only 2 options) into a terminal window. you would then save the terminal window and open it in a text editor to read them. it could take up to 5 min to dump the entire log file and if you didnt dump fast enough, the ACK messages from the control server would fill up the logs and erase the error as the memory overwrote itself.

this missing logs problem was a Big Deal for software who now weren't getting every log from every error so a NEW method of saving logs was devised: the robot would just vomit the log data in real time over a DIFFERENT radio and we would save it to a KQL server. Thanks Daddy Microsoft.

now whats KQL you may be asking. why, its Microsofts very own SQL clone! its Kusto Query Language. never mind that the system uses a SQL database for daily operations. lets use this proprietary Microsoft thing because they are paying us

so yay, problem solved. we now never miss the logs. so how do we read them if they are split up line by line in a database? why with a query of course!

select * from tbLogs where RobotUID = [64CharLongString] and timestamp > [UnixTimeCode]

if this makes no sense to you, CONGRATULATIONS! you found the problem with this setup. Most FSE's were BAD at SQL which meant they didnt read logs anymore. If you do understand what the query is, CONGRATULATIONS! you see why this is Very Stupid.

You could not search by robot name. each robot had some arbitrarily assigned 64 character long string as an identifier and the timestamps were not set to local time. so you had run a lookup query to find the right name and do some time zone math to figure out what part of the logs to read. oh yeah and you had to download KQL to view them. so now we had both SQL and KQL on our computers

NOBODY in the field like this.

But Daddy Microsoft comes to the rescue

see we didnt JUST get KQL with part of that deal. we got the entire Microsoft cloud suite. and some people (like me) had been automating emails and stuff with Power Automate

This is Microsoft Power Automate. its Microsoft's version of Scratch but it has hooks into everything Microsoft. SharePoint, Teams, Outlook, Excel, it can integrate with all of it. i had been using it to send an email once a day with a list of all the robots in maintenance.

this gave me an idea

and i checked

and Power Automate had hooks for KQL

KLogs is actually short for Kusto Logs

I did not know how to program in Power Automate but damn it anything is better then writing KQL queries. so i got to work. and about 2 months later i had a BEHEMOTH of a Power Automate program. it lagged the webpage and many times when i tried to edit something my changes wouldn't take and i would have to click in very specific ways to ensure none of my variables were getting nuked. i dont think this was the intended purpose of Power Automate but this is what it did

the KLogger would watch a list of Teams chats and when someone typed "klogs" or pasted a copy of an ERROR mesage, it would spring into action.

it extracted the robot name from the message and timestamp from teams

it would lookup the name in the database to find the 64 long string UID and the location that robot was assigned too

it would reply to the message in teams saying it found a robot name and was getting logs

it would run a KQL query for the database and get the control system logs then export then into a CSV

it would save the CSV with the a .xls extension into a folder in ShairPoint (it would make a new folder for each day and location if it didnt have one already)

it would send ANOTHER message in teams with a LINK to the file in SharePoint

it would then enter a loop and scour the robot logs looking for the keyword ESTOP to find the error. (it did this because Kusto was SLOWER then the xbee radio and had up to a 10 min delay on syncing)

if it found the error, it would adjust its start and end timestamps to capture it and export the robot logs book-ended from the event by ~ 1 min. if it didnt, it would use the timestamp from when it was triggered +/- 5 min

it saved THOSE logs to SharePoint the same way as before

it would send ANOTHER message in teams with a link to the files

it would then check if the error was 1 of 3 very specific type of error with the camera. if it was it extracted the base64 jpg image saved in KQL as a byte array, do the math to convert it, and save that as a jpg in SharePoint (and link it of course)

and then it would terminate. and if it encountered an error anywhere in all of this, i had logic where it would spit back an error message in Teams as plaintext explaining what step failed and the program would close gracefully

I deployed it without asking anyone at one of the sites that was struggling. i just pointed it at their chat and turned it on. it had a bit of a rocky start (spammed chat) but man did the FSE's LOVE IT.

about 6 months later software deployed their answer to reading the logs: a webpage that acted as a nice GUI to the KQL database. much better then an CSV file

it still needed you to scroll though a big drop-down of robot names and enter a timestamp, but i noticed something. all that did was just change part of the URL and refresh the webpage

SO I MADE KLOGS 2 AND HAD IT GENERATE THE URL FOR YOU AND REPLY TO YOUR MESSAGE WITH IT. (it also still did the control server and jpg stuff). Theres a non-zero chance that klogs was still in use long after i left that job

now i dont recommend anyone use power automate like this. its clunky and weird. i had to make a variable called "Carrage Return" which was a blank text box that i pressed enter one time in because it was incapable of understanding /n or generating a new line in any capacity OTHER then this (thanks support forum).

im also sure this probably is giving the actual programmer people anxiety. imagine working at a company and then some rando you've never seen but only heard about as "the FSE whos really good at root causing stuff", in a department that does not do any coding, managed to, in their spare time, build and release and entire workflow piggybacking on your work without any oversight, code review, or permission.....and everyone liked it

#comet tales #lazee works #power automate #coding #software engineering #it was so funny whenever i visited HQ because i would go “hi my name is LazeeComet” and they would go “OH i've heard SO much about you”

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stumpyjoepete · 8 months ago

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I'm working on a project that focuses on solving a bunch of schleppy tasks that the average person has (and might resort to a sketchy website to solve) but a mediocre programmer could probably knock out with half an hour and access to stackoverflow. Examples are things like unlocking password-protected power point files, extracting random archive formats, doing stupid things in ImageMagick, slapping together multiple PDFs, etc. And everything executes in the browser, no uploads or downloads. And programmers can share helpful scripts with their less technically inclined friends in a safe way. Anyhow, if you're interested, I can share more later.

One example task that's driving me nuts is dealing with those Winmail.dat files that Outlook sometimes sends instead of a normal email with attachments. This problem is so straightforward and easy to solve--there's a fuck ton of libraries to extract them--, but I have no idea if I've solved it because I can't acquire any test data. Every search result on the internet for Winmail.dat is instructions for how to extract attachments from them or for how to reconfigure Outlook to never send them. At no point has anyone in the history of the world ever intentionally created a Winmail.dat file. For every 100 libraries that parse them, there are zero libraries to create them. It's like searching for the best way to contract leprosy. I think I might need to resort to hiring a borderline-illiterate boomer to send me important paperwork via email.

#programming

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domesticadventures · 18 days ago

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most of the discourse around ai on tumblr has to do with visual art and fanfic for obvious reasons, but my own opinion of it is based mostly on the ways it's relevant to my job (paralegal), and my opinion is that it's a helpful tool at best and a liability at worst.

like the main thing that shows up in the news re: ai and the legal field is with stuff like lawyers using ai to write shit they file with the courts and getting in trouble because their filings include, like, cites to cases that don't exist. i'm actually dealing with this specific issue right now in a case with a pro se defendant who keeps filing stuff we suspect he used chatgpt or similar to write because like 95% of his case cites are to cases that don't exist or, if they do, they don't say what his filing claims. but like this isn't really caused by ai specifically imo because in the case of pro se litigants, they don't know what they're doing anyway, so their filings are pretty much always going to be nonsense whether they used ai to write them or not. and as for lawyers, the bad ones who are using ai don't need ai to make stupid arguments or just make shit up out of whole cloth lol. they were already doing that before.

so that aside, the main way ai shows up in my day to day job is that providers like westlaw and lexisnexis (the two big players in terms of platforms for legal research) keep touting their ai that's trained only on their data and thus is supposed to be more reliable and avoid the exact issues i mentioned above. except that i attended a meeting where westlaw was specifically trying to sell us on buying into their ai feature (which of course is an additional feature and requires us to pay more $ per user per year to use) and they used a narrow legal issue i was currently trying to research (without any success re finding relevant cases) as an example. and i looked at the response the ai generated and was like, woah, that's exactly on point. so i copied down the cases and i looked them up after the meeting and none of them said what the ai implied they did and none of them were on point or helpful. lol.

(as a side note, another feature places like westlaw tout is that their ai can draft documents for you. but like, i've been doing this for over a decade...i'm not reinventing the wheel each time i draft a demand letter or a petition or whatever. i just look to my prior work, or use one of the million forms that are out there from reputable sources like o'connors. useless feature imo.)

the other main use of ai i encounter regularly is that netdocuments (the biggest player for legal document management) has a plugin for outlook that will save emails to a case file, and the more emails you send, the more this ai "learns" which case any given email is likely to be associated with, saving you the hassle of having to manually search for the relevant case. and like i'd say it's accurate about 95% of the time. it genuinely saves me a lot of hassle! and i wish we could focus on using ai for things like this, that it's actually good at, instead of all the things it's bad at lol.

#this post brought to you by taking a break from drafting a frustrating motion #which is frustrating because both opposing counsel and the judge in this case are so so so stupid #yet another problem ai can't fix. lol

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allthebrazilianpolitics · 3 months ago

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Brazil Finance Ministry expects inflation, interest, exchange rates to fall

While U.S. economists denounce the policy as illogical, Brazilian officials see potential for lower inflation and new trade opportunities

“It’s now clear that the Trump administration computed reciprocal tariffs without using tariff data. This is to economics what creationism is to biology, astrology is to astronomy, or RFK thought is to vaccine science. The Trump tariff policy makes little sense EVEN if you believe in protectionist mercantilist economics.”

The sharply worded response from former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers on X captured the tone of most American economists reacting to Donald Trump’s sweeping new tariff proposal. In Brazil, however, officials at the Ministry of Finance are cautiously hopeful. So far, they view the outlook as relatively benign for the Brazilian economy—reflected in growing investor interest in Brazilian assets, both in government bonds and stocks traded on the B3 exchange.

A projected 4-percentage-point decline in global trade in 2025, as forecast by the World Trade Organization, supports the view that global economic activity will slow. This could pave the way for the U.S. Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, with Brazil following suit. Additionally, the weakening of the U.S. dollar—driven by recession fears—and falling oil prices, due to uncertainty around global demand, could further ease inflationary pressures.

A 10% surcharge on a trade relationship already in deficit from Brazil’s perspective is not negligible. In 2024, the U.S. recorded its third-largest trade surplus—$28.6 billion—globally. Moreover, key sectors of Brazilian industry are already feeling the effects of a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum, in place since March. Brazil plans to file a complaint with the World Trade Organization over the issue.

#brazil #brazilian politics #politics #economy #image description in alt #mod nise da silveira

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countzeroor · 2 months ago

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I've been thinking long and hard about the BDS Microsoft Boycott call. The request focused on Microsoft Games, on the basis that, in theory, that's the easiest part of the Microsoft financial ecosystem for people to disconnect from in order to send a message. This includes pushing people (including parents) to uninstall and get their kids to stop playing Minecraft.

First off, the way the game industry is now, unfortunately, is that game developers or even full divisions of larger companies that underperform - or even just indy developers who self publish and underperform, just get shut down and everyone gets fired. Even if we boycott South of Midnight as part of the BDS movement and clearly communicate that message, what's more likely to happen is the company would be shut down, everyone would be fired, and a bunch of alt-right chuds would ignore the BDS boycott and call this a triumph of "Get Woke, Go Broke". They might even try to co-opt the movement as a half alliance of convenience, half desire to redirect the movement for antisemitic ends, with no actual interest in the plight of the Palestinian people.

There was an opportunity here to point people towards alternatives outside of either abandoning the software entirely, or alternative programs people who want to boycott can use to abandon something that they didn't think they could.

First, and this feels weird to say, Minecraft is something that doesn't have a lot of alternative replacements - it's a sandbox that allows children to indulge their imagination to create large scale ambitious projects that can't be replicated the same way as, for example, Lego, because they take no space in the real world, and thus you have no real world storage concerns, both in terms of space and in terms of risk of damage. The alternative to Minecraft isn't Palworld or Ark Survival Evolved. It's Roblox. And Roblox is also a bunch of dark patterns and sexual predators stacked on top of each other in a trenchcoat.

https://youtu.be/cGAXGroHZKA?si=SNfL_seTHlLTzLh4

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2024-roblox-pedophile-problem/

Now, on the other hand, Microsoft will happily charge you money to host a Minecraft server through them, and that puts money in the Azure division, the part that is directly aiding and abetting Israeli war crimes. But you don't have to go through Microsoft. You can run your own Minecraft server. Microsoft even tells you how to do it.

https://help.minecraft.net/hc/en-us/articles/360058525452-How-to-Setup-a-Minecraft-Java-Edition-Server

So, cancel your Minecraft Worlds subscription, and roll your own server. You can even set it up so it stays in your network, so your kid's friends have to come over to use it (or so it stays in the family).

Next up - Microsoft pushes OneDrive hard as part of Windows 11. They also pushed it hard on Windows 10. They insist that it's the best and biggest way, and easiest way to backup your data. It's not. There are myriad alternatives, from Google Drive, to Dropbox, to the Apple iCloud (if you use iOS devices). And, OneDrive uses Azure Cloud services to host your data

So, disable OneDrive, and go somewhere else. I've listed several alternatives above, but if you're okay with the backup being on site, you can also build a NAS (Network Attached Storage) server to store files locally. This does have the disadvantage that if something damages your house, your kinda in trouble, though using something like Backblaze on the NAS can make up for that.

Then there's the whole Microsoft 365 suite. Azure is connected to the Microsoft Office part of the business, and they've been incorporating some of those services, like Copilot, into Microsoft 365. So, again, there are alternatives.

LibreOffice has been around for years, is free, and runs locally with no cloud hooks. You can replace Outlook with Thunderbird, or the BetterBird fork.

Finally, there are the hooks to Copilot, which also runs on Azure, which Microsoft runs in the operating system. Turn that shit off.

https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/software/how-disable-copilot-in-windows-11

Also, turn off the Bing websearch hooks as well, as those also connect to Azure.

https://www.howtogeek.com/826967/how-to-disable-bing-in-the-windows-11-start-menu/

Also, if you use DuckDuckGo, that links with Bing for part of their search results, so you may want to switch back to Google or find another search engine in the interim.

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beardedmrbean · 2 months ago

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U.S. applications for jobless benefits rose modestly last week as business continue to retain workers despite fears of a possible economic downturn.

Jobless claim applications inched up by 6,000 to 222,000 for the week ending April 19, the Labor Department said Thursday. That’s just barely more than the 220,000 new applications analysts forecast.

Weekly applications for jobless benefits are considered a proxy for layoffs, and have mostly stayed in a healthy range between 200,000 and 250,000 for the past few years.

Even though President Donald Trump has paused or pulled back on many of his tariff threats, concerns remain about a global economic slowdown that could upend what has been an historically resilient labor market.

Early Thursday, the head of the International Monetary Fund urged countries to move “swiftly’’ to resolve trade disputes that threaten global economic growth.

IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva said the unpredictability of Trump’s aggressive campaign of taxes on foreign imports is causing companies to delay investments and consumers to pull back spending. Georgieva’s comments came two days after the IMF downgraded the outlook for world economic growth this year.

Like his pledge to institute tariffs, Trump’s promise to drastically downsize the federal government workforce has occupied much of the early weeks of his presidency and is still in motion.

It’s not clear when the job cuts ordered by the Department of Government Efficiency — or “DOGE,” spearheaded by Elon Musk — will surface in the weekly layoffs data. However, the federal government staff reductions are already being felt, even outside of the Washington, D.C. area.

Federal agencies that have either announced layoffs or are planning cuts include the Department of Health and Human Services, IRS, Small Business Administration, Veterans Affairs and Department of Education.

Despite showing some signs of weakening during the past year, the labor market remains healthy with plenty of job openings and relatively few layoffs.

Earlier this month, the government reported that U.S. employers added a surprisingly strong 228,000 jobs in March. While the unemployment rate inched up to 4.2%, that’s still a healthy figure by historical standards.

Some high-profile companies have announced job cuts already this year, including Workday, Dow, CNN, Starbucks, Southwest Airlines and Facebook parent company Meta.

Thursday's report also showed that the four-week average of applications, which evens out some of the week-to-week volatility ticked down by 750 to 220,250.

The total number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits for the week of April 12 declined by 37,000 to 1.84 million.

#nunyas news

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stuarttechnologybob · 2 months ago

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How do businesses use Microsoft technologies?

Microsoft Technologies Services

In today’s fast-paced and modern digital world, businesses rely on powerful tools and resources to stay productive, secure, and competitive. Microsoft Technologies provides many solutions that help organizations streamline operations, improve communication, and grow efficiently. Companies across all industries, from small startups to large enterprises, use Microsoft tools to power their success.

Enhancing Team Collaboration and Productivity -

One of the most common uses of Microsoft Technologies is to improve how teams work together. Microsoft 365 tools like Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive make it easy for employees to share files, hold virtual meetings, and manage tasks in real time—no matter where they are.

Cloud Computing with Microsoft Azure -

Businesses use Microsoft Azure to host websites, applications, and databases in the cloud. Azure allows companies to scale their IT resources and tools up or down based on the objective demand, which lower costs and increases flexibility. It also supports data backup, disaster recovery, and AI-driven services.

Managing Customer Relationships -

Microsoft Dynamics 365, resources assists the companies to handle out their sales, customer service, and marketing in one place at a time. With insights powered by data and automation, businesses can build stronger customer relationships and make smarter decisions faster with the assistance of Microsoft Technologies.

Improving Security and Compliance -

With cyber threats on the rise, Microsoft Technologies offers built-in security tools to help protect sensitive data. Features like multi-factor authentication, data encryption, and compliance tracking help businesses meet industry regulations and secure their systems.

Automating Processes with Power Platform -

Tools like Power Automate and Power Apps allow businesses to create custom apps and automate repetitive tasks without writing complex code. This helps save time and lets employees focus on more important work.

Businesses use Microsoft Technologies to stay efficient, connected, and secure in a digital-first world. Whether through cloud computing, team collaboration tools, or business intelligence platforms, Microsoft remains a trusted partner for organizations looking to grow and succeed. Additionally, Microsoft and its tools support the organization with remote work offerings and hybrid environments setup, and digital transformation with ease. Their solutions helps out the businesses to stay agile and alert, adaptive to change quickly, and remain competitive in the ever-evolving market as leads towards stand out of the domain in the industry.

Partnering with Experts for Microsoft Technology -

Businesses can rely on shifting their existing system and operating structure to new mediums as if for Microsoft tools with companies and experts like Suma Soft, IBM, and Cyntexa for a hassle-free Microsoft rollout journey.

As these set of industry leaders and experts assure a smooth transition with custom solutions offerings with its adaptation into the system with advanced security measures, and ongoing support, allowing the companies to maximize the benefits of their modern digital infrastructure.

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