#software application email

[lookwhatyoumademelou]

.

[hinditsolutionn]

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https://pittsburghtribune.org/read-blog/153630

[aarunresearcher]

United States marketing automation market size reached USD 19.1 Billion in 2024. Looking forward, IMARC Group expects the market to reach USD 53.8 Billion by 2033, exhibiting a growth rate (CAGR) of 12.2% during 2025-2033. The rising focus of marketers on strategic initiatives, creative campaigns, and more robust customer relationship management is primarily driving the market growth across the country.

[alsohutech]

What is the function of Microsoft Teams app?

Microsoft Teams is a collaboration platform designed to facilitate communication and teamwork within organizations. Its primary functions include:

Chat: Teams provides instant messaging capabilities for one-on-one or group conversations, enabling quick communication.

Video and Audio Calls: Users can initiate video or audio calls, making it easy to connect face-to-face or have meetings remotely.

File Sharing and Collaboration: Teams allows users to share files and collaborate in real-time using integrated tools like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Channels: Teams can create dedicated channels for specific projects or topics, helping organize discussions and keep information focused.

Integration with Other Apps: It integrates with various Microsoft and third-party applications, enhancing productivity and streamlining workflows.

Task Management: Features like Planner and To Do help teams manage tasks and deadlines effectively.

Meetings and Scheduling: Users can schedule and manage meetings, complete with calendar integration.

Overall, Microsoft Teams aims to improve productivity and foster collaboration within teams, whether in-person or remote.

what is Microsoft Team Application and how it works ? — Read More

[dlxxv-vetted-donations]

Tawfik needs to buy tent covers and other necessities.

My other promos

Updated: Nov 29

Member(s): @dev-tawfik (current), @devtawfik (shadowbanned), @tawfikblog, @90-tawfik (shadowbanned)

Verification: @/90-ghost

Payment methods:

Gfm for education: PayPal, Venmo, Google Pay, credit/debit (donation match $10 USD). Focus on Kofi instead until at least mid-December

Kofi for survival (mentioned here): PayPal, credit/debit. Focus on this until at least mid-December

Tawfik is a Palestinian currently taking online classes at an Egyptian university. His Kofi campaign needs to reach $3,000 to buy tent covers and other necessities for his family (see here). Any additional funds in the gfm and Kofi will go towards the next semester's payments and family care respectively.

More info:

Now he is focusing on getting his Kofi to $3,000 (fees included) to get his family tent covers and other survival needs. See here.

Nov 27: Tawfik has reached the Kofi goal to buy flu medication and a vaccine, so we are now focusing entirely on the gfm. His goal of $10,050 by Nov 28 (hard deadline) for his international student fees were also reached on the same day.

He plans to fundraise for this year's remaining academic fees (which will be significantly less than what we already raised), and hopes that the war will end by the next year so he can get a job and pay himself.

Update Nov 20: More details here. Tawfik has fallen ill with the flu and won't be online much. He needs USD $228 (fees included) for medications and a vaccine. This requires him to reach 71% of his goal on Kofi (which is specifically for non-education related needs). At the same time, he needs $10,050 in his gfm by Nov 28 to pay off his international student fees.

Update Nov 15: We reached the halfway goal for the international student fee of USD $9,050 by Nov 15. Now going for the full fee of $10,050 by Nov 28.

Update Nov 6:

Tawfik got an extension to Nov 30 to pay the international fee. New goals of USD $9,050 by Nov 15 and $10,050 by Nov 28 (to account for transfer time) were set. The final goal was reduced with some backup money. Grades will be withheld until payment is made.

Update Nov 5:

Currently, it seems impossible to raise the required funds ($10,050 - $10,150) by Nov 13. Tawfik has emailed his school to negotiate for more time.

Update Oct 29:

Now @dev-tawfik.

The next goal was $9,250 to pay off international student fees (due Nov 13, see math section below) that Tawfik just found out about.

The family urgently needed $1,000 for healthy food (Tawfik's father has health problems and needs vegetables).

Tawfik initially wanted to use the gfm money for education only as promised, but had to add the sum to the campaign goal (a total of $10,250) because the Kofi he made solely for his family wasn't receiving many donations early on.

There were some issues with the Kofi taking a few weeks to transfer funds, but that's been resolved. It is now for support of Tawfik's family and transfers money relatively quickly.

From Oct 17-27, we fundraised to $7,200 to buy some food for the family. This food money will last roughly 2 weeks.

We are focusing back on international student fees and set a short-term goal of $8,862 in the campaign by Nov 3. There will be another small goal set after this date.

We need roughly $10,050 (an estimate) in the campaign by Nov 13 (hard deadline). Again, this isn't a concrete number and involves some usage of Tawfik's backup money.

Campaign details:

Tawfik is a software engineering student in Palestine trying to continue his education by enrolling in online classes at an Egyptian university.

He already raised roughly USD $2,500 in late July through a now closed Paypal campaign and paid the school as an application and reservation fee. This is nonrefundable.

We fundraised $4,113 (5200 - 1087) and paid off his tuition for the year on Oct 7

The gfm is meant for education only. To support the family, donate to the Kofi. It no longer faces issues with long transfer times.

Tawfik has some extra leftover funds from paying off the tuition, but it isn't much and is to be used for emergencies.

Oct 17: Tawfik bought his textbooks ($800 incl fees → $6,000 in campaign) and got a small discount for being Palestinian. This money saved went into his emergency funds.

Math:

Please let me know if I screwed up the calculation somewhere.

The transfer fee is assumed to be ~$50 per $600 earned. My bad in earlier calculations where I set it after the bank fee rather than before.

Textbooks: base $600

Funds left after:

Gfm for 40 donations: 570.6

~$50 transfer fee: 520.13

12% Bank fee: 458.13

To cover the funds lost to fees, we need an extra $200 (assumed 15 donations). After fees on that, it's only $166 (enough to cover the short-term goal)

So we need 600 + 200 = $800 for the textbooks.

This is $6,000 in the campaign.

Slightly outdated: International student fees: base $2,423

900£ = USD $1,180.93

60k EGP = USD $1,241.29

Funds left after:

Gfm fees for 160 donations: 2304.74

Transfer fee, ~$200: 2,104.74

12% Bank fee: 1852.17

To cover the funds lost to fees, we need an extra $800 (assumed 55 donations). After fees on that, it's only $625 (enough to cover the short-term goal)

So we need 2423 + 800 = $3,223 for the international student fee.

This is $9,223 10,223 in the campaign, rounded up to $ 9,250 10,250

The rate of ~$100 daily is sufficient to get us to this goal before the deadline of Nov 13 (this accounts for the 2 days needed for transfers)

[featherssoftware]

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[communistkenobi]

I think if there is 1) massive economic and social pressures intentionally eliminating as much free time people have as possible, 2) every job application portal is built on an automated mysticism software meant to reject as many resumes as possible, 3) mass corporate adoption of AI, 4) continuous international rollbacks of labour laws so your boss can install go-pros on every employee to make sure you aren’t picking your nose on the clock 5) personal concern about the fact that failing to please the automated mysticism job portal means you will lose your housing and/or die, people using AI to generate a resume or an email makes some amount of sense. at this point you just need to simply acknowledge that there are a variety of social and economic pressures incentivising the use of chatGPT for administrative work, and even accepting that 100% of those chatgpt outputs are bad/unusable/whatever, you need to ACKNOWLEDGE that this behaviour is largely an output of these pressures. and you can even still hold onto the belief that this behaviour isn’t making the world better! but like you guys are just straight up conservatives for finger wagging at people while intentionally ignoring these pressures even exist. and over resumes and emails of all things! i hope you all have jobs in some protestant capitalist apologia factory somewhere, I can’t imagine anything more pathetic than saying this shit for free

[characteroulette]

Happy Layton Big Bang!!! @proflaytonbigbang !!

Here's my contribution: a whole new ukagaka to play around with!! (Grab them here!!)

Layton and Luke come with a few features --

Sit on your desktop and chat to themselves

Serve them a spot of tea! (Be careful not to jostle them)

Read through Luke's journal and get anecdotes from all their adventures!

A simple affection system!

Update functionality! So if they get more dialogue in the future, all you need to do is tell them to update and they'll grab it automatically!

Other ukagaka functionality (checking your email, deleting the files in your recycling bin, recognising certain files you drag and drop onto them)

And three whole shells! One made by the fantastic Danganny_art (Instagram) (X/Twitter) (check her post on it over here!!), the other made by @smooley (Instagram) (Itch.io) (coming soon!!)!! (I made the third but it was mostly for sprite sheet reference haha)

They come with their own unique balloon as well, made by @ageofzero!! It comes with designs from all 6 of the mainline games, so you can choose your favourite!

I have also posted all of their dialogue lines on ao3 in case you can't get ssp to work, though it's only the barebones dialogue from their release version.

Here's how to grab them --

Download SSP (you are looking for the ダウンロード button)

(as a note, SSP currently only runs on Windows. for solutions to a linux setup, check here!)

Make sure to place SSP in its own folder! Don't extract it directly onto your desktop and don't remove any of the files from its folder. Not even the application.

(You might have to add ssp to the exceptions on your virus protection software so it can run.)

Say hello to Emily (the cat girl)! She will always be there to greet you the first time you run ssp.

Download Layton and Luke's .nar! (You can download their balloon separately, but they come bundled with it so that's not necessary)

Drag Layton and Luke's .nar file onto Emily once she's finished speaking so she will install it.

(Alternatively, if you are having trouble with this, a .nar file is just another .zip, so you can grab the files from it and place it into a folder yourself! Make the new folder in the Ghosts folder of ssp's files (you will see Emily's folder in there!) (make sure to name it the same name as the .nar itself) and place all of Layton and Luke's files inside it!)

Then you can switch or call up Layton and Luke by right clicking on Emily and selecting them from the Switch Ghosts or Call Ghosts options! Simple as that!

Thanks so much for everyone involved!! Happy Layton big bang!!

[errorid-mt7lt7k7unfr9ttfua5]

me when companies try to force you to use their proprietary software

anyway

Layperson resources:

firefox is an open source browser by Mozilla that makes privacy and software independence much easier. it is very easy to transfer all your chrome data to Firefox

ublock origin is The highest quality adblock atm. it is a free browser extension, and though last i checked it is available on Chrome google is trying very hard to crack down on its use

Thunderbird mail is an open source email client also by mozilla and shares many of the same advantages as firefox (it has some other cool features as well)

libreOffice is an open source office suite similar to microsoft office or Google Suite, simple enough

Risky:

VPNs (virtual private networks) essentially do a number of things, but most commonly they are used to prevent people from tracking your IP address. i would suggest doing more research. i use proton vpn, as it has a decent free version, and the paid version is powerful

note: some applications, websites, and other entities do not tolerate the use of VPNs. you may not be able to access certain secure sites while using a VPN, and logging into your personal account with some services while using a vpn *may* get you PERMANENTLY BLACKLISTED from the service on that account, ymmv

IF YOU HAVE A DECENT VPN, ANTIVIRUS, AND ADBLOCK, you can start learning about piracy, though i will not be providing any resources, as Loose Lips Sink Ships. if you want to be very safe, start with streaming sites and never download any files, though you Can learn how to discern between safe, unsafe, and risky content.

note: DO NOT SHARE LINKS TO OR NAMES OF PIRACY SITES IN PUBLIC PLACES, ESPECIALLY SOCAL MEDIA

the only time you should share these things are either in person or in (preferably peer-to-peer encrypted) PRIVATE messages

when pirated media becomes well-known and circulated on the wider, public internet, it gets taken down, because it is illegal to distribute pirated media and software

if you need an antivirus i like bitdefender. it has a free version, and is very good, though if youre using windows, windows defender is also very good and it comes with the OS

Advanced:

linux is great if you REALLY know what you're doing. you have to know a decent amount of computer science and be comfortable using the Terminal/Command Prompt to get/use linux. "Linux" refers to a large array of related open source Operating Systems. do research and pick one that suits your needs. im still experimenting with various dispos, but im leaning towards either Ubuntu Cinnamon or Debian.

[laika290]

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

[mariacallous]

Ever since OpenAI released ChatGPT at the end of 2022, hackers and security researchers have tried to find holes in large language models (LLMs) to get around their guardrails and trick them into spewing out hate speech, bomb-making instructions, propaganda, and other harmful content. In response, OpenAI and other generative AI developers have refined their system defenses to make it more difficult to carry out these attacks. But as the Chinese AI platform DeepSeek rockets to prominence with its new, cheaper R1 reasoning model, its safety protections appear to be far behind those of its established competitors.

Today, security researchers from Cisco and the University of Pennsylvania are publishing findings showing that, when tested with 50 malicious prompts designed to elicit toxic content, DeepSeek’s model did not detect or block a single one. In other words, the researchers say they were shocked to achieve a “100 percent attack success rate.”

The findings are part of a growing body of evidence that DeepSeek’s safety and security measures may not match those of other tech companies developing LLMs. DeepSeek’s censorship of subjects deemed sensitive by China’s government has also been easily bypassed.

“A hundred percent of the attacks succeeded, which tells you that there’s a trade-off,” DJ Sampath, the VP of product, AI software and platform at Cisco, tells WIRED. “Yes, it might have been cheaper to build something here, but the investment has perhaps not gone into thinking through what types of safety and security things you need to put inside of the model.”

Other researchers have had similar findings. Separate analysis published today by the AI security company Adversa AI and shared with WIRED also suggests that DeepSeek is vulnerable to a wide range of jailbreaking tactics, from simple language tricks to complex AI-generated prompts.

DeepSeek, which has been dealing with an avalanche of attention this week and has not spoken publicly about a range of questions, did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment about its model’s safety setup.

Generative AI models, like any technological system, can contain a host of weaknesses or vulnerabilities that, if exploited or set up poorly, can allow malicious actors to conduct attacks against them. For the current wave of AI systems, indirect prompt injection attacks are considered one of the biggest security flaws. These attacks involve an AI system taking in data from an outside source—perhaps hidden instructions of a website the LLM summarizes—and taking actions based on the information.

Jailbreaks, which are one kind of prompt-injection attack, allow people to get around the safety systems put in place to restrict what an LLM can generate. Tech companies don’t want people creating guides to making explosives or using their AI to create reams of disinformation, for example.

Jailbreaks started out simple, with people essentially crafting clever sentences to tell an LLM to ignore content filters—the most popular of which was called “Do Anything Now” or DAN for short. However, as AI companies have put in place more robust protections, some jailbreaks have become more sophisticated, often being generated using AI or using special and obfuscated characters. While all LLMs are susceptible to jailbreaks, and much of the information could be found through simple online searches, chatbots can still be used maliciously.

“Jailbreaks persist simply because eliminating them entirely is nearly impossible—just like buffer overflow vulnerabilities in software (which have existed for over 40 years) or SQL injection flaws in web applications (which have plagued security teams for more than two decades),” Alex Polyakov, the CEO of security firm Adversa AI, told WIRED in an email.

Cisco’s Sampath argues that as companies use more types of AI in their applications, the risks are amplified. “It starts to become a big deal when you start putting these models into important complex systems and those jailbreaks suddenly result in downstream things that increases liability, increases business risk, increases all kinds of issues for enterprises,” Sampath says.

The Cisco researchers drew their 50 randomly selected prompts to test DeepSeek’s R1 from a well-known library of standardized evaluation prompts known as HarmBench. They tested prompts from six HarmBench categories, including general harm, cybercrime, misinformation, and illegal activities. They probed the model running locally on machines rather than through DeepSeek’s website or app, which send data to China.

Beyond this, the researchers say they have also seen some potentially concerning results from testing R1 with more involved, non-linguistic attacks using things like Cyrillic characters and tailored scripts to attempt to achieve code execution. But for their initial tests, Sampath says, his team wanted to focus on findings that stemmed from a generally recognized benchmark.

Cisco also included comparisons of R1’s performance against HarmBench prompts with the performance of other models. And some, like Meta’s Llama 3.1, faltered almost as severely as DeepSeek’s R1. But Sampath emphasizes that DeepSeek’s R1 is a specific reasoning model, which takes longer to generate answers but pulls upon more complex processes to try to produce better results. Therefore, Sampath argues, the best comparison is with OpenAI’s o1 reasoning model, which fared the best of all models tested. (Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment).

Polyakov, from Adversa AI, explains that DeepSeek appears to detect and reject some well-known jailbreak attacks, saying that “it seems that these responses are often just copied from OpenAI’s dataset.” However, Polyakov says that in his company’s tests of four different types of jailbreaks—from linguistic ones to code-based tricks—DeepSeek’s restrictions could easily be bypassed.

“Every single method worked flawlessly,” Polyakov says. “What’s even more alarming is that these aren’t novel ‘zero-day’ jailbreaks—many have been publicly known for years,” he says, claiming he saw the model go into more depth with some instructions around psychedelics than he had seen any other model create.

“DeepSeek is just another example of how every model can be broken—it’s just a matter of how much effort you put in. Some attacks might get patched, but the attack surface is infinite,” Polyakov adds. “If you’re not continuously red-teaming your AI, you’re already compromised.”

[lazeecomet]

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

[pocket-size-cthulhu]

I put in several job apps last night!! I'm gonna tell y'all every time I get a rejection and we're gonna clap! The likelihood that I get a job in my first few rounds of applications is pretty slim so I'll make it less miserable for myself by celebrating every rejection as one rejection closer to an offer!!!

And in the meantime if you know any companies who are looking for a level 1 software developer/engineer, lmk 😇

First win: didn't get any auto rejection emails first thing this morning!!

It's so insulting when it's like the very first thing. Like you didn't even look?! 😅 My resume must have made some progress since last time I tried to do this 😎

[featherssoftware]

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[cindylouwho-2]

The European Union's General Product Safety Regulations (GPSR): A Huge Mess For Some Small & Micro Businesses

Above is an email Amazon sent to sellers many months ago that covers the basics. Not all marketplaces were as forthcoming - or early - with info.

UPDATED: February 25, 2025

As many of you know, new laws coming into effect Friday December 13, 2024 affect businesses' ability to sell products into the European Union and Northern Ireland (EU and NI). The General Product Safety Regulations (GPSR) impose various requirements on most goods being sold to the EU and NI, and some of those new rules will be very onerous for some small businesses. Furthermore, there are still some unanswered questions that the relevant government bodies hadn't covered until the European Commission did release some more details and an FAQ page very recently [pdf for download at the end of the first section on that page], and until public Q & A sessions were held.

This post contains a brief summary of the GPSR and of the key questions for common small business types, with the best answers I can find at this time. There is a section discussing problems on Etsy (which hasn't yet adapted their platform to the new regulations). I also compiled a list of helpful links including government and marketplace information pages, and places to obtain an "EU Responsible Person" to represent your business.

If anything gets clarified in the near future, this post will be updated.

What Does GPSR Require?

The Amazon summary in the screenshot at the top of this post is one of the easiest to understand, but a shorter overview may work better for some, so here is what eBay has to say:

To comply with the GPSR and related regulations, all business sellers listing items for sale in the EU and NI must include the following information: 1. The product manufacturer's name and contact information 2. If the manufacturer isn’t located in the EU or NI, you’ll have to indicate an EU-based Responsible Person or entity, along with their name and contact details 3. Any relevant product information like model number, pictures, and type 4. Product safety and compliance information like warnings and safety information (which can be included in labels and product manuals) in the local language 5. The CE marking when required by the related regulations applicable to your product

And yes, all of this applies to merchants of all stripes, including small and microbusinesses. Per the EU, “...the GPSR obligations apply to businesses of all sizes. Consumers are entitled to only safe products and therefore exceptions cannot be made based on the size of a business.”

Clearly there are significant hurdles for small and micro businesses: the cost of hiring a responsible person, and the cost of producing the required safety and use instructions and of translating them into local languages. Some may choose to stop sales to the EU and NI instead of complying.

Are There Any Exceptions?

Yes, several types of products are excluded, but most of those already subject to equally strict or even stricter regulations, e.g., medicine, foods, animals etc.

The two main known exceptions of interest to most of my readership are:

Antiques, which seem to be limited to items that are old (but no age is given, as far as I can tell) and generally to art or other collectible items.

Items already available for sale before December 13 of this year.

That second point is good news for many businesses, but please note it only seems to apply to stock made before December 13, not just listings made before that date. Once you run out and need to order or make more products, they then become subject to the GPSR.

Does The GPSR Apply To Digital Products?

It now appears that the new regulations cover items such as digital downloads. The FAQ pdf put out by the European Union very recently states "[t]he GPSR applies to all types of products (physical or digital products too, including software) that are placed or made available on the EU Single Market". At least some analysts agree this can include pretty much everything digital:

I can understand why some folks think that a knitting pattern or a simple art downloadable file should not be covered, and in the future once there is more discussion of and action taken under the GPSR, those products might be excluded. But note that the pdf of FAQs also states "[t]he GPSR is about avoiding and preventing “risks to both physical health and mental health”. Including image files and similar downloads therefore makes some sense.

How Do I Find A "Responsible Person" To Represent My Digital Download Business In The EU?

That's a good question, because I haven't found any verified sources saying they will cover digital items, or any digital sellers mentioning they have found coverage. Many have been denied by the companies they have contacted. [UPDATE: A company called EAS has agreed to represent at least one digital seller.]

If you are aware of any other firms or individuals offering "Responsible Person" services for digital products, please let me know!

(Remember, If you are in the EU/NI, you are the Responsible Person. If your products are manufactured in the EU/NI, the manufacturer is the Responsible Person.)

Does the GPSR Apply To Free Products?

Yes. From the FAQ pdf: "an item provided free of charge falls within the scope of the GPSR.”

In addition to complimentary physical items ("free gifts") sent out with orders, this would seem to include free downloads provided on blogs and social media, on a Patreon site, in YouTube descriptions etc. I’ve not seen much discussion on this aspect of the law for some reason.

Items Offered For Sale Before December 13 Are Exempt, But How Would The Government Know When I First Offered The Product Or When It Was Made?

If you had 100 widgets in stock before December 13 and had them listed on a marketplace or website, by law you can continue to sell those widgets to the EU and NI until all 100 are gone. And if you created a digital file and offered it online before December 13, it should be exempt forever, as long as you do not edit the file after December 13.

But proving you had 100 widgets already made, or that you listed a specific product before the law took effect could be difficult, especially for anyone handmaking their own items. If you are going to continue to sell to the EU and NI after December 13, keep careful records of which stock needs labelling, safety information and translations of use instructions.

Online marketplaces could also create problems if they don't display the date an item was first offered for sale, as happens on Etsy, for example. Every time an item renews, the visible date is reset, and it can be difficult to go through spreadsheets looking for the original listing date, and csv files may not be adequate proof under this law (since they can easily be changed after downloading).

Unfortunately, we won't truly know what evidence will be accepted in these circumstances until the authorities start enforcing these regulations, but this will only be a concern for anyone continuing to sell "old stock" into the EU and NI after December 13, so it is far from the largest concern.

The Case of Etsy - Failure To Comply With The GPSR

Unlike some other marketplaces, Etsy was fairly late in warning its sellers that the GPSR affected them, and how Etsy will approach the law. The blog post included the line "[s]hould Etsy receive a notification from an authority that your product is non-compliant, we will take appropriate action, which may include removing your listing and/or suspending your account." So, the stakes are high here - you could lose your Etsy shop if accused of not complying with the GPSR.

There are currently 2 problems for sellers who decide they can't/won't comply with the GPSR and therefore do not want to offer their items to the EU and NI any more:

Shipping to the UK on Etsy includes Northern Ireland, and sellers anywhere within the UK cannot remove the UK from their shipping profiles. That means they are forced to offer their goods to NI even if they don't want to.

Digital products on Etsy are sold to the whole world by default; there is no way to exclude any countries that Etsy allows sales to. That means every digital listing on Etsy is currently offered in the GPSR jurisdictions, regardless of the seller's wishes or compliance.

The GPSR was published on May 10, 2023. That gave everyone 19 months to get their ducks in a row. However, Etsy has so far done nothing to allow UK and digital sellers to remove their listings from being available in the EU and NI. Nothing.

Support has told some sellers that the corporation is working on it, and that UK sellers could just cancel any sales to NI:

However, it is not good enough to refuse to complete orders to the EU and NI. Any item offered for sale in the EU and NI is automatically subject to the GPSR; just allowing someone to check out is a violation, if the listing and product does not meet the law's requirements.

As of December 13, there is still no way to stop selling to Northern Ireland on Etsy if you are a seller in the United Kingdom, and there is no way for a digital product to be excluded from offer in either the EU or NI. Sadly, this means the only way shops can follow the law is to close for the time being, and some are planning on doing that.

Etsy has failed its sellers, and there is no excuse.

UPDATE (February 25, 2025): Etsy has finally Etsy has updated settings for excluding GPSR countries from those you sell to. Change it here under "Choose how you sell to GPSR states".

More changes to come here under the February updates, including fields for safety information and your responsible person.

And probably the biggest news: Etsy is working on vetting companies that will act as a "responsible person" for its sellers - you know, like eBay already did months ago. Still no word on why Etsy was caught unprepared by legislation that was released almost 2 years ago.

UPDATE (April 15, 2025): Etsy has added fields for safety compliance and an EU responsible person, and now warns shops that "If a product is subject to the GPSR but does not meet the requirements, it may be classified as a “dangerous product��� by EEA or NI authorities. This may result in enforcement actions, including fines, product bans, or the removal of your products from the marketplace.

Should Etsy receive notification from an authority that your product is non-compliant, we’ll take appropriate action, which may include removing your listing and/or suspending your account."

Resources and Responsible Person Offerings

I've compiled a separate post on my Patreon, listing some of the official legal and government resources on GPSR, as well as rules and Help pages from some major marketplaces and Print on Demand companies, and a short list of places you can hire a "Responsible Person" for your products:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/sources-and-for-117871846

Please let me know if you find any broken links there, or have other resources to add!

This post will be updated as required.

UPDATED: April 15, 2025