#microsoft ads services

[hofffuglsang60]

How To Run Microsoft Professional Service Ads +how They Compare To Google Native Services Ads

They each appear on the high of the SERP and the local map pack for relevant local searches and have a photograph, critiques, and the location of close by advertisers. However, advertisers will notice some main variations between Google’s Local Services ads and Microsoft’s Professional Service Ads. Best of all, Microsoft’s Professional Service Ads can show alongside your current search ads on the same SERP and compete in a special ad auction. Learn how advertisers can use them to save time and cut back price per acquisition. To get started, you’ll first have to create a knowledge feed for Microsoft’s Professional Service Ads. For individual practitioners, this could be a simple spreadsheet that you just upload as quickly as into Microsoft Advertising to get started. Once you’ve prepped your knowledge feeds, save them as a CSV, TSV, XLSX, or ZIP file and log in to your Microsoft Advertising account. Luckily, Microsoft Advertising has an ad type called Professional Service Ads to help advertisers promote their experience in their goal markets. We’re going to cowl everything you want to find out about this ad type in this article. To get began, Microsoft recommends using guide or enhanced CPC bidding and setting the bid between $3-5 CPC. microsoft ads agency should attraction to advertisers who need to spend less time building keyword lists. It would also give Microsoft Advertising the ability to adjust your bidding on keywords that are extra likely to full your objective. To assist advertisers stay on pace with automation and competition in a dynamic ad surroundings, Microsoft will no longer provide manual bidding for model new campaigns for the Microsoft Audience Network after April 24, 2023. As the system was phased in, MSN Search (now Bing) confirmed Yahoo! and adCenter promoting in its search results. Microsoft effort to create AdCenter was led by Tarek Najm, then general supervisor of the MSN division of Microsoft. In June 2006, the contract between Yahoo! and Microsoft had expired and Microsoft was displaying only ads from adCenter until 2010. Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads) is an online advertising platform developed by Microsoft, the place advertisers bid to display brief ads, service offers, product listings and movies to web users. It supplies ppc promoting on search engines Bing, Yahoo! and DuckDuckGo, in addition to on other web sites, mobile apps, and videos. Instead, advertisers can present important particulars about their services and enterprise on to Microsoft by way of a unique feed. This permits them to customize how their ads present, what job sorts they may help with, and get in contact with information for interested potential shoppers. Another replace to concentrate on is the deprecation of broad match modifier keywords for search ads. Microsoft’s Professional Services Ads are designed to be arrange quickly and simply. This means these new Professional Service Ads could permit you to serve multiple ads on the same SERP and enhance your visibility without growing your present search ads’ CPC. In a world ruled by algorithms, SEJ brings timely, related data for SEOs, entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs to optimize and develop their companies -- and careers. New options in Microsoft Advertising may assist advertisers adjust ad technique to ever-evolving shopper shopping habits. This is designed in an effort to improve workflow and total efficiency for ad managers with belongings across multiple campaigns and ad teams. For instance, somebody who searches for mobile might even see ads related to smartphones or cell phones. Microsoft Ads additionally supplies APIs that can be used to manage promoting campaigns. Enhanced CPC permits Microsoft Advertising to routinely regulate your bid based on the possibility it'll convert. The aim could be to optimize your ad spend in the course of the customers more than likely to transform. Over the last yr, Microsoft introduced vertical ad formats permitting advertisers in certain verticals to include the information consumers discover most helpful in ads. This spring, Microsoft announced the rollout of a number of options for Microsoft Advertising. Once microsoft ads agency is created and uploaded, making a Professional Service campaign is similar to your different Microsoft Advertising campaigns, with a number of notable quirks. Google’s Local Service Ads have a lot of attain and advertisers can freely management and update important parts of their ads, similar to their weekly price range or job type. But LSA advertisers lack a few of the freedom to optimize or replace their Local Service Ads like they would any other Google Ads marketing campaign. Google doesn’t show any search phrases from their Local Service Ads and doesn’t permit negative keywords either. Optimizations like bid adjustments and even daily budgets are additionally not obtainable for Local Service Ads.

[simpsonpennington94]

Microsoft Commits To Eu's Digital Services Act Dsa For Transparency In Ads

We perceive that reaching the right audience is essential for the success of your promoting efforts. That’s why we leverage the superior focusing on choices offered by Microsoft Advertising to make sure that your ads are shown to the proper individuals, on the right time, and in the proper context. Microsoft Advertising, previously generally identified as Bing Ads, presents a powerful platform for companies to reach a vast and diverse audience. With the Microsoft Search Network, businesses can reach as much as 655 million month-to-month unique searchers online, an underestimated pool of untapped potential. microsoft ads services Microsoft has a status for recommending merchandise such as Bing and Edge via alerts or pop-ups in Windows. For occasion, a beforehand noticed pop-up in the handle bar of the Edge browser reminded customers that Microsoft's browser adopts the same tech as Google, however with the added trust of Microsoft. The Digital Services Act (DSA) is a regulation in EU law that aims to update the Electronic Commerce Directive 2000 relating to illegal content material, transparent promoting, and disinformation. If you aren't already profiting from the Microsoft Advertising alternatives, then get in contact with us right now and we’ll show you how one can grow your business utilizing this platform. As you can see, while it will not be Google’s billion-strong audience, Microsoft Advertising nonetheless has a significant attain, allowing you to connect with clients you would possibly have in any other case ignored. Microsoft Advertising is a latest rebranding of Bing Ads, with the name change occurring in the spring of 2019. An earlier report by Windows Latest's Mayank Parmar indicated that Microsoft is aggressively promoting Bing on Chrome. If you’re trying to learn the way we will provide consistent and sustainable progress for your business, get in contact with our pleasant group at present. We’ve obtained a real interest in studying about different businesses like yours, and exploring what objectives you wish to achieve and why. July continues the pattern of speedy change within the digital advertising world, fueled by volatility on Google... To build model consciousness and to extend gross sales we created a variety of cross-channel ad campaigns which delivered a 61% ROI for Saints. In truth, we needed to halt considered one of our campaigns due to success being so excessive that that they had hit capacity. Desktop search market, which implies that roughly one in five individuals are utilizing Bing, Yahoo, or AOL over Google. Worldwide, that accounts for 44 million desktop searchers that you wouldn't have reached should you neglected Microsoft Advertising. The advert highlighted numerous benefits of utilizing Bing, together with Microsoft Rewards and AI chats. Additionally, with Microsoft Audience Network, you'll have the ability to reach audiences across premium websites, apps, and experiences which are unique to Microsoft, corresponding to MSN, Outlook.com, and Microsoft Edge. Microsoft Advertising offers access to a novel and various audience by way of its default search engine standing for Microsoft Edge, the default web browser for Windows gadgets. This will allow you to reach tens of millions of customers worldwide who may not be as accessible through different promoting platforms. While Google is undoubtedly a powerhouse within the internet marketing area, it’s important to contemplate the benefits of diversifying your advertising efforts throughout a number of platforms.

[kraghfog39]

Develop Your Business With Microsoft Ads

Our skilled PPC managers have a minimal of 3+ years of experience operating high-converting campaigns. The Upgrow group has been a valuable extension of the SingleStore advertising group. They have helped us scale our demand technology by way of well executed digital advertising campaigns, providing precisely the staffing we have wanted to meet our growth goals. Are you able to unlock the full potential of your ad spend with an experienced Microsoft Ads (formerly Bing Ads) agency? There’s no minimal finances for running a marketing campaign on Microsoft Advertising. Most firms have to spend £500-£800 per 30 days to get any results although. Monthly budgets can reach the tens or tons of of 1000's for larger companies. Most brands build great merchandise solely to fail in reaching their perfect prospects. Upgrow makes use of full-stack advertising to generate consistent, certified visitors who purchase. microsoft ads services This means we're recognised for our high stage of competency in serving to our customers exceed their goals. This ensures our PPC specialists are always up to speed with the latest platform developments in Bing ppc management. This timeline permits us to offer you the necessary assist and steerage to make certain that your launch is successful. We perceive that time is of the essence, and as a premier Bing Ads agency, we’re dedicated to delivering top-notch service to get you up and working promptly. Our full-service Microsoft Ads (formerly Bing Ads) administration is often priced at either $3,000 per 30 days or 12% of your ad spend, whichever is larger. Microsoft has premium properties folks have interaction with daily throughout work and life. By tapping into the ability of their viewers community prospects can dramatically broaden their attain and enhance performance. If, after the first 60 days, you’re not happy along with your outcomes, let us know. Send us a written discover and you’ll receive a full refund of all paid monthly agency charges. We provides you with options once we know what you want, how many channels you have and the way aggressive your targets are. It is inconceivable to say without a review and discussion of your marketing and wider business goals, however 9 instances out of 10 you will note a significant enchancment in your efficiency. Outlook has 200 million distinctive month-to-month guests, MSAN has 500 million unique monthly guests and Microsoft additionally has a lot of publishing partners.

[richardmhicks]

Microsoft Intune Cloud PKI and Certificate Templates

Microsoft recently announced the general availability of its new PKI-as-a-Service platform called Microsoft Intune Cloud PKI. With Intune Cloud PKI, administrators create certification authorities (CAs) to issue and manage user and device authentication certificates for Intune-managed endpoints. Cloud PKI also provides hosted Authority Information Access (AIA) and Certificate Revocation List…

[softtrix0]

An examination of Microsoft Ads in 2024: Their applicability, benefits, drawbacks, and incorporation into the Microsoft ecosystem within the digital advertising domain.

[theamazingannie]

Capitalism fucking sucks. I’ve used the website evernote to write down miscellaneous scenes that appear in my head that aren’t ready to be added to the official story yet for over a decade now and now they made it so I have to pay to add any more notes than what I already have cuz now you only get 50 free notes (I have hundreds by this point). Something that had previously been free I now need to pay $10 a month for. How can anyone look at this and think this is a good thing???

[tavarillasgalen]

i miss when it was the norm for movies and shows to come out on dvd and blue-ray. i want to have physical copies so i can keep them forever to watch whenever i want, not subscribe to all these different streaming services and have to worry about whether the things i like will be removed or not.

[meetanshi]

Microsoft Bing Ads Management Services

Let the professionals at Meetanshi effectively manage the Bing Ads account and offer high-end results by opting for Microsoft Bing Ads Management Services and maximize PPC ROI.

Bing is the search engine owned by Microsoft that allows carrying out various PPC campaigns. Easily connect with relevant target audience and offer a personalized experience that can boost the performance of the campaigns.

To seek benefit of the advertising platform, it is advisable to opt for Meetanshi’s Microsoft Bing Ads Management Services and get heavy returns on your PPC campaigns.

Benefits of Using Our Microsoft Bing Ads Management Services

Meetanshi is one of the leading eCommerce development company and digital marketing service provider. We have a pool of experts that can help get desired results of our PPC campaigns. Here is a list of few of them:

• Generate high-quality leads

• Minimize PPC cost

• Gain huge ROI on PPC ads

Microsoft Bing Ads Management Services for Varied Industries

• App Install Ads

• Dynamic Search Ads

• Micrsoft Audience Ads

• Multimedia Ads

• Product Ads

• Responsive Search Ads

• Vertical Ads

Meetanshi’s Microsoft Ads Management Services

• Bing Ads Campaign Creation

• Bing Ads Optimization

• Bing Ads Management

Our PPC Campaign Process

• Carry out research and proper analysis

• Detailed keyword research

• Bing Ad copy creation

• Track the results and reporting

• Optimize the campaigns performance

For more information, visit: https://meetanshi.com/microsoft-bing-ads-management-services.html

[mostlysignssomeportents]

An adversarial iMessage client for Android

Adversarial interoperability is one of the most reliable ways to protect tech users from predatory corporations: that's when a technologist reverse-engineers an existing product to reconfigure or mod it (interoperability) in ways its users like, but which its manufacturer objects to (adversarial):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

"Adversarial interop" is a mouthful, so at EFF, we coined the term "competitive compatibility," or comcom, which is a lot easier to say and to spell.

Scratch any tech success and you'll find a comcom story. After all, when a company turns its screws on its users, it's good business to offer an aftermarket mod that loosens them again. HP's $10,000/gallon inkjet ink is like a bat-signal for third-party ink companies. When Mercedes announces that it's going to sell you access to your car's accelerator pedal as a subscription service, that's like an engraved invitation to clever independent mechanics who'll charge you a single fee to permanently unlock that "feature":

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/12/05/carmakers-push-forward-with-plans-to-make-basic-features-subscription-services-despite-widespread-backlash/

Comcom saved giant tech companies like Apple. Microsoft tried to kill the Mac by rolling out a truly cursèd version of MS Office for MacOS. Mac users (5% of the market) who tried to send Word, Excel or Powerpoint files to Windows users (95% of the market) were stymied: their files wouldn't open, or they'd go corrupt. Tech managers like me started throwing the graphic designer's Mac and replacing it with a Windows box with a big graphics card and Windows versions of Adobe's tools.

Comcom saved Apple's bacon. Apple reverse-engineered MS's flagship software suite and made a comcom version, iWork, whose Pages, Numbers and Keynote could flawlessly read and write MS's Word, Excel and Powerpoint files:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay

It's tempting to think of iWork as benefiting Apple users, and certainly the people who installed and used it benefited from it. But Windows users also benefited from iWork. The existence of iWork meant that Windows users could seamlessly collaborate on and share files with their Mac colleagues. IWork didn't just add a new feature to the Mac ("read and write files that originated with Windows users") – it also added a feature to Windows: "collaborate with Mac users."

Every pirate wants to be an admiral. Though comcom rescued Apple from a monopolist's sneaky attempt to drive it out of business, Apple – now a three trillion dollar company – has repeatedly attacked comcom when it was applied to Apple's products. When Apple did comcom, that was progress. When someone does comcom to Apple, that's piracy.

Apple has many tools at its disposal that Microsoft lacked in the early 2000s. Radical new interpretations of existing copyright, contract, patent and trademark law allows Apple – and other tech giants – to threaten rivals who engage in comcom with both criminal and civil penalties. That's right, you can go to prison for comcom these days. No wonder Jay Freeman calls this "felony contempt of business model":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

Take iMessage, Apple's end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) instant messaging tool. Apple customers can use iMessage to send each other private messages that can't be read or altered by third parties – not cops, not crooks, not even Apple. That's important, because when private messaging systems get hacked, bad things happen:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_celebrity_nude_photo_leak

But Apple has steadfastly refused to offer an iMessage app for non-Apple systems. If you're an Apple customer holding a sensitive discussion with an Android user, Apple refuses to offer you a tool to maintain your privacy. Those messages are sent "in the clear," over the 38-year-old SMS protocol, which is trivial to spy on and disrupt.

Apple sacrifices its users' security and integrity in the hopes that they will put pressure on their friends to move into Apple's walled garden. As CEO Tim Cook told a reporter: if you want to have secure communications with your mother, buy her an iPhone:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tim-cook-says-buy-mom-210347694.html

Last September, a 16-year old high school student calling himself JJTech published a technical teardown of iMessage, showing how any device could send and receive encrypted messages with iMessage users, even without an Apple ID:

https://jjtech.dev/reverse-engineering/imessage-explained/

JJTech even published code to do this, in an open source library called Pypush:

https://github.com/JJTech0130/pypush

In the weeks since, Beeper has been working to productize JJTech's code, and this week, they announced Beeper Mini, an Android-based iMessage client that is end-to-end encrypted:

https://beeper.notion.site/How-Beeper-Mini-Works-966cb11019f8444f90baa314d2f43a54

Beeper is known for a multiprotocol chat client built on Matrix, allowing you to manage several kinds of chat from a single app. These multiprotocol chats have been around forever. Indeed, iMessage started out as one – when it was called "iChat," it supported Google Talk and Jabber, another multiprotocol tool. Other tools like Pidgin have kept the flame alive for decades, and have millions of devoted users:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/07/tower-babel-how-public-interest-internet-trying-save-messaging-and-banish-big

But iMessage support has remained elusive. Last month, Nothing launched Sunchoice, a disastrous attempt to bring iMessage to Android, which used Macs in a data-center to intercept and forward messages to Android users, breaking E2EE and introducing massive surveillance risks:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/21/23970740/sunbird-imessage-app-shut-down-privacy-nothing-chats-phone-2

Beeper Mini does not have these defects. The system encrypts and decrypts messages on the Android device itself, and directly communicates with Apple's servers. It gathers some telemetry for debugging, and this can be turned off in preferences. It sends a single SMS to Apple's servers during setup, which changes your device's bubble from green to blue, so that Apple users now correctly see your device as a secure endpoint for iMessage communications.

Beeper Mini is now available in Google Play:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.beeper.ima&hl=en_US

Now, this is a high-stakes business. Apple has a long history of threatening companies like Beeper over conduct like this. And Google has a long history deferring to those threats – as it did with OG App, a superior third-party Instagram app that it summarily yanked after Meta complained:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/05/battery-vampire/#drained

But while iMessage for Android is good for Android users, it's also very good for Apple customers, who can now get the privacy and security guarantees of iMessage for all their contacts, not just the ones who bought the same kind of phone as they did. The stakes for communications breaches have never been higher, and antitrust scrutiny on Big Tech companies has never been so intense.

Apple recently announced that it would add RCS support to iOS devices (RCS is a secure successor to SMS):

https://9to5mac.com/2023/11/16/apple-rcs-coming-to-iphone/

Early word from developers suggests that this support will have all kinds of boobytraps. That's par for the course with Apple, who love to announce splashy reversals of their worst policies – like their opposition to right to repair – while finding sneaky ways to go on abusing its customers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently

The ball is in Apple's court, and, to a lesser extent, in Google's. As part of the mobile duopoly, Google has joined with Apple in facilitating the removal of comcom tools from its app store. But Google has also spent millions on an ad campaign shaming Apple for exposing its users to privacy risks when talking to Android users:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/21/23883609/google-rcs-message-apple-iphone-ipager-ad

While we all wait for the other shoe to drop, Android users can get set up on Beeper Mini, and technologists can kick the tires on its code libraries and privacy guarantees.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/07/blue-bubbles-for-all/#never-underestimate-the-determination-of-a-kid-who-is-time-rich-and-cash-poor

[techfeeddata]

Microsoft has released the Windows 10 Build 19044.1862 on the Release Preview channel

Microsoft has released the Windows 10 Build 19044.1862 on the Release Preview channel

Good evening friends! Yesterday, Microsoft released a new preview build of Windows 10, numbered 19044.1862 (KB5015878) for members of the Windows Insider Program on the Release Preview channel. This cumulative update brings with it a number of bug fixes. You can find the full list of changes on the official blog. We will list only the most important changes and improvements. Changes and…

[autolenaphilia]

The main reason to use Firefox and Linux and other free and open source software is that otherwise the big tech monopolies will fuck you as the customer over in search of profits. They will seek to control how you use their products and sell your data. When a company dominates the market, things can only get worse for ordinary people.

Like take Google Chrome for example, which together with its chromium reskins dominate the web browser market. Google makes a lot of money from ads, and consequently the company hates adblockers. They already are planning to move to manifest V3, which will nerf adblockers significantly. The manifest V3 compatible chrome version of Ublock Orgin is a "Lite" version for a reason. Ublock's Github page has an entire page explaining why the addon works best in Firefox.

And Google as we speak are trying to block adblockers from working on Youtube, If you want to continue blocking Youtube ads, and since Youtube ads make the site unuseable you ought to want that, it makes the most sense to not use a browser controlled by Google.

And there is no reason to think things won't get worse. There is for example nothing stopping Google from kicking adblockers off their add-on stores completely. They do regard it as basically piracy if the youtube pop-ups tell us anything, so updating the Chrome extensions terms of service to ban adblocking is a natural step. And so many people seem to think Chrome is the only browser that exists, so they are not going to switch to alternatives, or if they do, they will switch to another chrominum-based browser.

And again, they are fucking chromium itself for adblockers with Manifest V3, so only Firefox remains as a viable alternative. It's the only alternative to letting Google control the internet.

And Microsoft is the same thing. I posted before about their plans to move Windows increasingly into the cloud. This already exists for corporate customers, as Windows 365. And a version for ordinary users is probably not far off. It might not be the only version of Windows for awhile, the lack of solid internet access for a good part of the Earth's population will prevent it. But you'll probably see cheap very low-spec chromebookesque laptops running Windows for sale soon, that gets around Windows 11's obscene system requirements by their Windows being a cloud-based version.

And more and more of Windows will require Internet access or validation for DRM reasons if nothing else. Subscription fees instead of a one-time license are also likely. It will just be Windows moving in the direction Microsoft Office has already gone.

There is nothing preventing this, because again on the desktop/laptop market Windows is effectively a monopoly, or a duopoly with Apple. So there is no competition preventing Microsoft from exercising control over Windows users in the vein of Apple.

For example, Microsoft making Windows a walled garden by only permitting programs to be installed from the Microsoft Store probably isn't far off. This already exists for Win10 and 11, it's called S-mode. There seem to be more and more laptops being sold with Windows S-mode as the default.

Now it's not the only option, and you can turn it off with some tinkering, but there is really nothing stopping Microsoft from making it the only way of using Windows. And customers will probably accept it, because again the main competition is Apple where the walled garden has been the default for decades.

Customers have already accepted all sorts of bad things from Microsoft, because again Windows is a near-monopoly, and Apple and Google are even worse. That’s why there has been no major negative reaction to how Windows has increasingly spies on its users.

Another thing is how the system requirements for Windows seem to grow almost exponentially with each edition, making still perfectly useable computers unable to run the new edition. And Windows 11 is the worst yet. Like it's hard to get the numbers of how many computers running Win10 can't upgrade to Win11, but it's probably the majority of them, at least 55% or maybe even 75%. This has the effect of Windows users abandoning still perfectly useable hardware and buying new computers, creating more e-waste.

For Windows users, the alternative Windows gives them is to buy a new computer or get another operating system, and inertia pushes them towards buying another computer to keep using Windows. This is good for Windows and the hardware manufacturers selling computers with Windows 11 pre-installed, they get to profit off people buying Windows 11 keys and new computers, while the end-users have to pay, as does the environment. It’s planned obsolescence.

And it doesn’t have to be like that. Linux distros prove that you can have a modern operating system that has far lower hardware requirements. Even the most resource taxing Linux distros, like for example Ubuntu running the Gnome desktop, have far more modest system requirements than modern Windows. And you can always install lightweight Linux Distros that often have very low system requirements. One I have used is Antix. The ballooning Windows system requirements comes across as pure bloat on Microsoft’s part.

Now neither Linux or Firefox are perfect. Free and open source software don’t have a lot of the polish that comes with the proprietary products of major corporations. And being in competition with technology monopolies does have its drawbacks. The lacking website compatibility with Firefox and game compatibility with Linux are two obvious examples.

Yet Firefox and Linux have the capacity to grow, to become better. Being open source helps. Even if Firefox falls, developers can create a fork of it. If a Linux distro is not to your taste, there is usually another one. Whereas Windows and Chrome will only get worse as they will continue to abuse their monopolistic powers over the tech market.

[leidensygdom]

Fighting AI and learning how to speak with your wallet

So, if you're a creative of any kind, chances are that you've been directly affected by the development of AI. If you aren't a creative but engage with art in any way, you may also be plenty aware of the harm caused by AI. And right now, it's more important than ever that you learn how to fight against it.

The situation is this: After a few years of stagnation on relevant stuff to invest to, AI came out. Techbros, people with far too much money trying to find the big next thing to invest in, cryptobros, all these people, flocked to it immediately. A lot of people are putting money in what they think to be the next breakthrough- And AI is, at its core, all about the money. You will get ads shoved in your fave about "invest in AI now!" in every place. You will get ads telling you to try subscription services for AI related stuff. Companies are trying to gauge how much they can depend on AI in order to fire their creatives. AI is opening the gates towards the biggest data laundering scheme there's been in ages. It is also used in order to justify taking all your personal information- Bypassing existing laws.

Many of them are currently bleeding investors' money though. Let it be through servers, through trying to buy the rights to scrape content from social media (incredibly illegal, btw), amidst many other things. A lot of the tech giants have also been investing in AI-related infrastructures (Microsoft, for example), and are desperate to justify these expenses. They're going over their budgets, they're ignoring their emissions plans (because it's very toxic to the environment), and they're trying to make ends meet to justify why they're using it. Surely, it will be worth it.

Now, here's where you can act: Speak with your wallet. They're going through a delicate moment (despite how much they try to pretend they aren't), and it's now your moment to act. A company used AI in any manner? Don't buy their products. Speak against them in social media. Make noise. It doesn't matter how small or how big. A videogame used AI voices? Don't buy the game. Try to get a refund if you did. Social media is scraping content for AI? Don't buy ads, don't buy their stupid blue checks, put adblock on, don't give them a cent. A film generated their poster with AI? Don't watch it. Don't engage with it. Your favourite creator has made AI music for their YT channel? Unsub, bring it up in social media, tell them directly WHY you aren't supporting. Your favourite browser is now integrating AI in your searches? Change browsers.

Let them know that the costs they cut through the use of AI don't justify how many customers they'd lose. Wizards of the Coast has been repeatedly trying to see how away they can get with the use of AI- It's only through consumer boycotting and massive social media noise that they've been forced to go back and hire actual artists to do that work.

The thing with AI- It doesn't benefit the consumer in any way. It's capitalism at its prime: Cut costs, no matter how much it impacts quality, no matter how inhumane it is, no matter how much it pollutes. AI searches are directly feeding you misinformation. ChatGPT is using your input to feed itself. Find a Discord server to talk with others about writing. Try starting art yourself, find other artists, join a community. If you can't, use the money you may be saving from boycotting AI shills to support a fellow creative- They need your help more than ever.

We're in a bit of a nebulous moment. Laws against AI are probably around the corner: A lot of AI companies are completely aware that they're going to crash if they're legally obliged to disclose the content they used to train their machines, because THEY KNOW it is stolen. Copyright is inherent to human created art: You don't need to even register it anywhere for it to be copyrighted. The moment YOU created it, YOU have the copyright to it. They can't just scrape social media because Meta or Twitter or whatever made a deal with OpenAI and others, because these companies DON'T own your work, they DON'T get to bypass your copyright.

And to make sure these laws get passed, it's important to keep the fight against AI. AI isn't offering you anything of use. It's just for the benefit of companies. Let it be known it isn't useful, and that people's work and livelihoods are far more important than letting tech giants save a few cents. Instead, they're trying to gauge how MUCH they can get away with. They know it goes against European GDPR laws, but they're going to try to strech what these mean and steal as much data up until clear ruling comes out.

The wonder about boycotts is that they don't even need you to do anything. In fact, it's about not doing some stuff. You don't need money to boycott- Just to be aware about where you put it. Changing habits is hard- People can't stop eating at Chick-fil-a no matter how much they use the money against the LGBTQ collective, but people NEED to learn how to do it. Now it's the perfect time to cancel a subscription, find an alternate plan to watching that one film and maybe joining a creative community yourself.

[richardmhicks]

Mastering Certificates with Intune Training Course

I’m excited to announce I’ll present a three-day LIVE online training event covering all things Microsoft Intune and certificates. This training event takes place on the ViaMonstra online academy May 14-16, 2024. Course Material This training course comprehensively examines all aspects of delivering certificates using Microsoft Intune, including common deployment scenarios, PKCS and SCEP…

[reelmegabyte]

ever wonder why spotify/discord/teams desktop apps kind of suck?

i don't do a lot of long form posts but. I realized that so many people aren't aware that a lot of the enshittification of using computers in the past decade or so has a lot to do with embedded webapps becoming so frequently used instead of creating native programs. and boy do i have some thoughts about this.

for those who are not blessed/cursed with computers knowledge Basically most (graphical) programs used to be native programs (ever since we started widely using a graphical interface instead of just a text-based terminal). these are apps that feel like when you open up the settings on your computer, and one of the factors that make windows and mac programs look different (bc they use a different design language!) this was the standard for a long long time - your emails were served to you in a special email application like thunderbird or outlook, your documents were processed in something like microsoft word (again. On your own computer!). same goes for calendars, calculators, spreadsheets, and a whole bunch more - crucially, your computer didn't depend on the internet to do basic things, but being connected to the web was very much an appreciated luxury!

that leads us to the eventual rise of webapps that we are all so painfully familiar with today - gmail dot com/outlook, google docs, google/microsoft calendar, and so on. as html/css/js technology grew beyond just displaying text images and such, it became clear that it could be a lot more convenient to just run programs on some server somewhere, and serve the front end on a web interface for anyone to use. this is really very convenient!!!! it Also means a huge concentration of power (notice how suddenly google is one company providing you the SERVICE) - you're renting instead of owning. which means google is your landlord - the services you use every day are first and foremost means of hitting the year over year profit quota. its a pretty sweet deal to have a free email account in exchange for ads! email accounts used to be paid (simply because the provider had to store your emails somewhere. which takes up storage space which is physical hard drives), but now the standard as of hotmail/yahoo/gmail is to just provide a free service and shove ads in as much as you need to.

webapps can do a lot of things, but they didn't immediately replace software like skype or code editors or music players - software that requires more heavy system interaction or snappy audio/visual responses. in 2013, the electron framework came out - a way of packaging up a bundle of html/css/js into a neat little crossplatform application that could be downloaded and run like any other native application. there were significant upsides to this - web developers could suddenly use their webapp skills to build desktop applications that ran on any computer as long as it could support chrome*! the first applications to be built on electron were the late code editor atom (rest in peace), but soon a whole lot of companies took note! some notable contemporary applications that use electron, or a similar webapp-embedded-in-a-little-chrome as a base are:

microsoft teams

notion

vscode

discord

spotify

anyone! who has paid even a little bit of attention to their computer - especially when using older/budget computers - know just how much having chrome open can slow down your computer (firefox as well to a lesser extent. because its just built better <3)

whenever you have one of these programs open on your computer, it's running in a one-tab chrome browser. there is a whole extra chrome open just to run your discord. if you have discord, spotify, and notion open all at once, along with chrome itself, that's four chromes. needless to say, this uses a LOT of resources to deliver applications that are often much less polished and less integrated with the rest of the operating system. it also means that if you have no internet connection, sometimes the apps straight up do not work, since much of them rely heavily on being connected to their servers, where the heavy lifting is done.

taking this idea to the very furthest is the concept of chromebooks - dinky little laptops that were created to only run a web browser and webapps - simply a vessel to access the google dot com mothership. they have gotten better at running offline android/linux applications, but often the $200 chromebooks that are bought in bulk have almost no processing power of their own - why would you even need it? you have everything you could possibly need in the warm embrace of google!

all in all the average person in the modern age, using computers in the mainstream way, owns very little of their means of computing.

i started this post as a rant about the electron/webapp framework because i think that it sucks and it displaces proper programs. and now ive swiveled into getting pissed off at software services which is in honestly the core issue. and i think things can be better!!!!!!!!!!! but to think about better computing culture one has to imagine living outside of capitalism.

i'm not the one to try to explain permacomputing specifically because there's already wonderful literature ^ but if anything here interested you, read this!!!!!!!!!! there is a beautiful world where computers live for decades and do less but do it well. and you just own it. come frolic with me Okay ? :]

*when i say chrome i technically mean chromium. but functionally it's same thing

[probablyasocialecologist]

Following disappointing quarterly earnings results by Microsoft and Google owner Alphabet, Reuters reports that AI-related companies lost a whopping $190 billion in stock market value. Microsoft may have eked out a win, with the promise of AI services convincing investors, but even its stock dropped by 0.7 percent in extended trade, per the report. Google's parent company fared much worse, dropping 5.6 percent after missing ad revenue expectations. Meanwhile, AI chip producer AMD also got hit, despite reporting a solid quarter.

[...]

It's still too early to tell if the recent drop in stock value is related to investors becoming weak on AI. Are they spooked by the daunting costs of expanding infrastructure to keep up with a surging appetite? Data centers designed to crunch data for tools like ChatGPT, which Microsoft has integrated into its software, aren't just incredibly expensive to build — they're also extremely pricey to run. In short, has Wall Street really hit peak AI? Are we looking at a bubble that's about to burst? At the end of the day, it's all going to hinge on whether AI companies can figure out a way to make money.

[allthegeopolitics]

Microsoft has reaffirmed its ban on U.S. police departments from using generative AI for facial recognition through Azure OpenAI Service, the company’s fully managed, enterprise-focused wrapper around OpenAI tech. Language added Wednesday to the terms of service for Azure OpenAI Service more clearly prohibits integrations with Azure OpenAI Service from being used “by or for” police departments for facial recognition in the U.S., including integrations with OpenAI’s current — and possibly future — image-analyzing models. A separate new bullet point covers “any law enforcement globally,” and explicitly bars the use of “real-time facial recognition technology” on mobile cameras, like body cameras and dashcams, to attempt to identify a person in “uncontrolled, in-the-wild” environments.

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