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Microsoft pulls MS365 Business Premium from nonprofits

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  • They didn’t donate all of that to that fund. They’ve donated hundreds of millions/billions to many other charities and causes that they don’t run. The money that they do donate to that fund does get used to help humanity. If you’re going to claim that it just goes back to line their own pockets, can you provide evidence of this?

    Oh and what a creative way to use one of the most uncreative low-iq commie insults!

    They "donated" 54 billion dollars to the gates & melissa fund.

    The other "donations" are coming with so many strings attached people do not want them. Hey let me "donate" to your researh! I just gotta need the IP of anything that comes from it...

    Zuckenberg also does this.

    For the low quality meme, well you are out here "protecting" an evil person. For free too.

  • This post did not contain any content.

    Actually I think this isn't exactly news. The university I go to, which is technically a foundation, had MS365 pulled last year IIRC and sent us all scrambling to find alternatives.

    It didn't bother me too much because I had already fully transitioned to LibreOffice, but my classmates were furious because they didn't want to lose the "seamless online editing experience". I told them to either use LibreOffice or move to Google Docs, but they didn't like the idea and most (if not all) of them purchased MS365 subs. I unfortunately had to budge and get one too, because we needed to get some work done ASAP. I can't wait until I graduate (should be soon-ish?) to stop paying for that crap.

    But yeah. IIRC they started by reducing the amount of storage the university got, meaning they had to quickly delete data from past classes (fortunately I managed to back up quite a bit), and then one day they suddenly sent everyone an email saying "you don't have access to MS365 anymore lol get fucked"

  • How are you handling compliance/legal obligations like DLP policies on your email and cloud storage, legal holds and investigations, data tagging, and retention policies? I'm under the impression that only Microsoft offers those in a single product.

    Legal Hold is easy in the Google Workspace using Google Vault and DLP is a native feature-set for Enterprise plans. Audit and investigation features are very thorough and we've used them extensively.

    We do use an additional third-party endpoint DLP software with TLS inspection as well.

  • Legal Hold is easy in the Google Workspace using Google Vault and DLP is a native feature-set for Enterprise plans. Audit and investigation features are very thorough and we've used them extensively.

    We do use an additional third-party endpoint DLP software with TLS inspection as well.

    Interesting, I didn't realize that Google Suite enterprise options had become so robust.

  • Google offers workspace for free to nonprofits, Including device management. No one, I know in nonprofits even fucks with Microsoft because they’re so ridiculous. Now it’ll be even less people.

    Google now has the market cornered because they aren’t as greedy.

    Google now has the market cornered because they aren’t as greedy.

    honestly cant tell if this is satire. my university is currently purging google storage as fast as we can because they altered the licening once we were fully invested. and that was before they started screwing around with licensing language around their Ai. the google mdm is an absolute joke. not even my orgs own google team reccomends it and their jobs depend on google being used. i'd use the vmware nightmare formerly known as airwatch over google mdm.

    google is exactly this greedy.

  • Actually I think this isn't exactly news. The university I go to, which is technically a foundation, had MS365 pulled last year IIRC and sent us all scrambling to find alternatives.

    It didn't bother me too much because I had already fully transitioned to LibreOffice, but my classmates were furious because they didn't want to lose the "seamless online editing experience". I told them to either use LibreOffice or move to Google Docs, but they didn't like the idea and most (if not all) of them purchased MS365 subs. I unfortunately had to budge and get one too, because we needed to get some work done ASAP. I can't wait until I graduate (should be soon-ish?) to stop paying for that crap.

    But yeah. IIRC they started by reducing the amount of storage the university got, meaning they had to quickly delete data from past classes (fortunately I managed to back up quite a bit), and then one day they suddenly sent everyone an email saying "you don't have access to MS365 anymore lol get fucked"

    we used google docs alot during my final years in college, why aare they so resistant, its free. libreoffice i havnt touched yet.

  • So that's why Gates said he would donate money once he dies

    hes just trying to "clean up his image" of being a ruthless businessman in the 80s and 90s, he still is, even his foundation is questionable, remember the vaccines, he lobbied it so the poorer countries are forced to buy the usa/western versions, and cant make similar ones. warren isnt a saint either, but i dint hear much negative things about yet.

  • He said that he was giving away 99%+ 30 years ago, it's just publicity stunts, or as Kyrgizon explains below they "give" things to nonprofits that they control. Why? They no longer pay taxes. So nice!

    Bill gates is another billionaire mentally ill evil crap person, no different than elon or zuckenberg etc.

    hes a billionaire, with a veneer of "philantrophy", which means hes not genuine. there were plenty of ytbers that are like this had a veneer of progressivism, while turning hard right in the end.

  • I don't trust any of these "giving pledges" upon death. In name, their fortunes will pass on to nonprofits. Nonprofits controlled by their family members, which comes down to letting them keep their inheritances tax-free. This even happens in Europe.

    thats how he does it.

  • Now now, it's not like they get the whole inheritance. It's more like they get cushy overpaid non-work jobs to manage or consult for the non-profit.

    its "charity" was only a front for him doing this, pure laundering methods. he was on an AMA on reddit last decade i did try to quesiton him on that same thing, but AMA doesnt like to allow discussion of them quesitoning the AMA hosts in anyway.

  • Yup it's mostly bullshit. Someone, somewhere might benefit, but certainly not any of the people within two thousands miles of where the rich guy lived. Which is still better than nothing, but Bill Gates could end homelessness in America immediately if he chose to do so. (I'm not saying it would be easy or fast, just that he has the money to make it happen.) He could make ALL COLLEGE FREE for students. Musk could have too, likely for less than he spent on Twitter.

    what he was doing overseas was virtue signalling, to disguies his charities, so nobody would go looking into it, that is actually laundering money.

    him lobbying the covid vaccine to be instantly pantent by the US was sketchy asf. its to ensure countries like african and asian ones, south america cant make deratives of the vaccine.

  • Sadly. An example: I work at a small school that does not have an IT department. Staff and teachers are nearly IT-illiterate, and the students can hardly be coaxed to do stuff on a laptop instead of their phones. So installing Linux would add an additional hurdle for both. Probably much smaller than they think, but still: it heightens the threshold to even consider switching to Linux.

    There's a few people who know that Linux is just as valid as Windows, but who would they trust to make the switch safely. Me? I'm not a professional. So they'd have to pay someone, properly. And then it all comes down to money again which usually comes down to "let's not change anything".

    So for now I'd just be happy if they used LibreOffice instead of MS365.

    The same goes for Google Workspace. Making the effort to roll your own (totally possible with FOSS) would require to pay at least 1 person, and some sort of transitional period. It's cheaper and easier to pay none and just blame it on Google when things don't work as desired. These people just don't see it as a priority. Don't understand the dangers.

    teachers dint go to school for tech, i would give them a pass.

  • Microsoft 365 Business Basic gives you all this:

    Plan highlights:
    • Identity and access management for up to 300 users

    • Web and mobile versions3 of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook

    • Custom business email (you@yourbusiness.com)

    • Chat, call, and video conference with Microsoft Teams

    • 1 TB of cloud storage per employee

    • 10+ additional apps for your business needs (including Microsoft Bookings, Planner, and Forms)

    • AI chat experience with web grounding, writing assistance, data analysis, and access to agents4

    • Automatic spam and malware filtering

    • Anytime phone and web support

    LibreOffice gives you ………. 1 of those bullet points lol. Not really a like for like replacement is it?

    Libre Office, like some office software, can't meet the needs of businesses at the pace they're moving. Furthermore, developers aren't going to spend their time and resources creating a project that can compete with proprietary software. It would take an organization with more resources to try to keep up, but that would take a few years.

  • hes a billionaire, with a veneer of "philantrophy", which means hes not genuine. there were plenty of ytbers that are like this had a veneer of progressivism, while turning hard right in the end.

    Exactly.

    They all have PR firms, we know that because elon bought in on his own PR and booted his in 2018 (IIRC).

  • They "donated" 54 billion dollars to the gates & melissa fund.

    The other "donations" are coming with so many strings attached people do not want them. Hey let me "donate" to your researh! I just gotta need the IP of anything that comes from it...

    Zuckenberg also does this.

    For the low quality meme, well you are out here "protecting" an evil person. For free too.

    Lol facts > downvotes.

    Interesting that there are billionaire bootlickers on Lemmy 🤷🏼♀️.

  • we used google docs alot during my final years in college, why aare they so resistant, its free. libreoffice i havnt touched yet.

    Depending on what you're using it for, the gsuite office alternatives are incredibly feature-sparse. Last I checked, a lot of essential features such as accessibility checking and scripting either have nightmarish implementation, or require third-party addons. It also requires an internet connection and can't save in-progress documents to your local storage.

    Honestly the only leg up over the others that I think the GSuite really has is the seamless collaboration features.

  • That's the thing, I wish we could just switch all enterprises to Linux, but Microsoft developed a huge ecosystem that really does have good features. Unless something comparable comes up in the Linux world, I don't see Europe becoming independent of Microsoft any time soon

  • Police rule out using Live Facial Recognition on Surrey Street

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    How? They've literally been asking for more crime cameras be installed to fight crime since a resident was murdered. "It's not in the budget." More on duty police? "Sorry, it's just not in the budget." Live facial recognition tracking system that doesn't exist anywhere else and can be used to collect data and create a giant AI database with data from every civilian it tracks. That data can then coincidentally be used to train AI models and enhance profits for companies like Palantir. "Yeah we should be able to swing that in the budget." Basically the exact same story is happening in the U.S. city where I live. We have a boil water advisory every other week, we have terrible roads, and awful schools but somehow the city has the budget to update our cameras so we will become the first city to test this out. After Palantir already secretly used our city to create and test their predictive policing model (which still fucking sucks btw). https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/27/17054740/palantir-predictive-policing-tool-new-orleans-nopd Oh also Palantir happens to be currently working with the U.S. government to create a giant database of every citizen. https://www.mercurynews.com/?p=12164379%2F
  • From Lab to Field Testing of Millimeter Wave Drilling

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    Let’s have a really long nasty drawn out internet argument over whether it’s fifteen or fifty.
  • Radio geeks say you can still get 'lost' DoD hurricane data

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    That's the one, and thanks! My son and I got into Meshtastic as a hobby, and I guess ham radio was the next logical direction for our interest. It's fun learning the science behind how it works.
  • Elon Musk's X slams French criminal investigation

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    Actually there was just yesterday a story about Corning (The maker of Gorilla glass), that was accused by EU for anti competitive behavior, where Corning entered in positive dialogue, and stated they intended to work fully within regulation. https://lemmy.world/post/33255689 Corning, the US-based manufacturer of Gorilla Glass, has successfully avoided potential European Union antitrust fines of up to $1.25 billion by agreeing to a set of legally binding commitments that address concerns over its exclusive supply agreements for specialty glass used in smartphones and other handheld devices. So yes Musk is an ass, also compared to other companies. And his reaction is confrontational, which is not normal behavior.
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    Haha I'm kidding, it's good that you share your solution here.
  • uBlockOrigin is porting uBOL to iOS and macOS

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    Will never happen unfortunately
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  • X blocks 8,000 accounts in India under government order

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    'member Aug 6 2024: https://www.ft.com/content/31919b4e-4a5a-4eba-ada7-88d3fec455f8 ;D UK faces resistance from X over taking down disinformation during riots Social media site owner Elon Musk has also been posting jibes at UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer Waiting to see those jibes at Modi... And who could forget in April 11, 2024: https://apnews.com/article/brazil-musk-x-twitter-moraes-bef06c0dbbb8ed87495b1afbb0edf211 What to know about Elon Musk’s ‘free speech’ feud with a Brazilian judge gotta see that feud with Indian judges, nobody asked him to block 8000 accounts, including western media outlets, whatever is he gonna do?