#microsoft teams training

[lrtrainingsolutions-oganization]

LR Training Solutions

LR Training offers training for corporations and organizations https://lrtrainingsolutions.com/blog-2/

[icouldntfindquiet]

I think the link in the Instagram caption confirms it's Van running the account 😂

We can’t click on the link! Or he could’ve wrote “link in bio.” 😂 He’s busy advertising this gig. Also just realized I post full links in my captions too so me and you both, Van. 💀🤝

[gamereporter]

AbleGamers Brasil realiza evento anual de inclusão e acessibilidade nos games

No próximo sábado, 21 de setembro, a ONG AbleGamers Brasil realizará a 8ª edição de seu evento anual, voltado à promoção da inclusão de pessoas com deficiência no mundo dos games. A transmissão, que ocorre das 13h às 21h, será feita pelos canais da instituição na Twitch e no YouTube, diretamente das instalações do Alienware Training Facility, espaço da equipe Team Liquid. O evento é parte de uma…

[rajaniesh]

Automate boring ServiceNow tickets with Power Automate

Automate boring ServiceNow tickets with Power Automate

Service now is an excellent tool for IT service management. But have you come across a situation where your most precious time is wasted in raising the service now tickets (Change Ticket, Incidents, and Service Tickets)? This becomes quite boring and inefficient. Especially when you have to go thru this ordeal very often because your work depends upon other teams. Did you always imagine being…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Supervised AI isn't

It wasn't just Ottawa: Microsoft Travel published a whole bushel of absurd articles, including the notorious Ottawa guide recommending that tourists dine at the Ottawa Food Bank ("go on an empty stomach"):

https://twitter.com/parismarx/status/1692233111260582161

After Paris Marx pointed out the Ottawa article, Business Insider's Nathan McAlone found several more howlers:

https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-removes-embarrassing-offensive-ai-assisted-travel-articles-2023-8

There was the article recommending that visitors to Montreal try "a hamburger" and went on to explain that a hamburger was a "sandwich comprised of a ground beef patty, a sliced bun of some kind, and toppings such as lettuce, tomato, cheese, etc" and that some of the best hamburgers in Montreal could be had at McDonald's.

For Anchorage, Microsoft recommended trying the local delicacy known as "seafood," which it defined as "basically any form of sea life regarded as food by humans, prominently including fish and shellfish," going on to say, "seafood is a versatile ingredient, so it makes sense that we eat it worldwide."

In Tokyo, visitors seeking "photo-worthy spots" were advised to "eat Wagyu beef."

There were more.

Microsoft insisted that this wasn't an issue of "unsupervised AI," but rather "human error." On its face, this presents a head-scratcher: is Microsoft saying that a human being erroneously decided to recommend the dining at Ottawa's food bank?

But a close parsing of the mealy-mouthed disclaimer reveals the truth. The unnamed Microsoft spokesdroid only appears to be claiming that this wasn't written by an AI, but they're actually just saying that the AI that wrote it wasn't "unsupervised." It was a supervised AI, overseen by a human. Who made an error. Thus: the problem was human error.

This deliberate misdirection actually reveals a deep truth about AI: that the story of AI being managed by a "human in the loop" is a fantasy, because humans are neurologically incapable of maintaining vigilance in watching for rare occurrences.

Our brains wire together neurons that we recruit when we practice a task. When we don't practice a task, the parts of our brain that we optimized for it get reused. Our brains are finite and so don't have the luxury of reserving precious cells for things we don't do.

That's why the TSA sucks so hard at its job – why they are the world's most skilled water-bottle-detecting X-ray readers, but consistently fail to spot the bombs and guns that red teams successfully smuggle past their checkpoints:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-breaches-us-airports-allowed-weapons-through-n367851

TSA agents (not "officers," please – they're bureaucrats, not cops) spend all day spotting water bottles that we forget in our carry-ons, but almost no one tries to smuggle a weapons through a checkpoint – 99.999999% of the guns and knives they do seize are the result of flier forgetfulness, not a planned hijacking.

In other words, they train all day to spot water bottles, and the only training they get in spotting knives, guns and bombs is in exercises, or the odd time someone forgets about the hand-cannon they shlep around in their day-pack. Of course they're excellent at spotting water bottles and shit at spotting weapons.

This is an inescapable, biological aspect of human cognition: we can't maintain vigilance for rare outcomes. This has long been understood in automation circles, where it is called "automation blindness" or "automation inattention":

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29939767/

Here's the thing: if nearly all of the time the machine does the right thing, the human "supervisor" who oversees it becomes incapable of spotting its error. The job of "review every machine decision and press the green button if it's correct" inevitably becomes "just press the green button," assuming that the machine is usually right.

This is a huge problem. It's why people just click "OK" when they get a bad certificate error in their browsers. 99.99% of the time, the error was caused by someone forgetting to replace an expired certificate, but the problem is, the other 0.01% of the time, it's because criminals are waiting for you to click "OK" so they can steal all your money:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ema-report-finds-nearly-80-130300983.html

Automation blindness can't be automated away. From interpreting radiographic scans:

https://healthitanalytics.com/news/ai-could-safely-automate-some-x-ray-interpretation

to autonomous vehicles:

https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-tech/automated-vehicles-may-encourage-new-breed-distracted-drivers

The "human in the loop" is a figleaf. The whole point of automation is to create a system that operates at superhuman scale – you don't buy an LLM to write one Microsoft Travel article, you get it to write a million of them, to flood the zone, top the search engines, and dominate the space.

As I wrote earlier: "There's no market for a machine-learning autopilot, or content moderation algorithm, or loan officer, if all it does is cough up a recommendation for a human to evaluate. Either that system will work so poorly that it gets thrown away, or it works so well that the inattentive human just button-mashes 'OK' every time a dialog box appears":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/21/let-me-summarize/#i-read-the-abstract

Microsoft – like every corporation – is insatiably horny for firing workers. It has spent the past three years cutting its writing staff to the bone, with the express intention of having AI fill its pages, with humans relegated to skimming the output of the plausible sentence-generators and clicking "OK":

https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-news-cuts-dozens-of-staffers-in-shift-to-ai-2020-5

We know about the howlers and the clunkers that Microsoft published, but what about all the other travel articles that don't contain any (obvious) mistakes? These were very likely written by a stochastic parrot, and they comprised training data for a human intelligence, the poor schmucks who are supposed to remain vigilant for the "hallucinations" (that is, the habitual, confidently told lies that are the hallmark of AI) in the torrent of "content" that scrolled past their screens:

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922

Like the TSA agents who are fed a steady stream of training data to hone their water-bottle-detection skills, Microsoft's humans in the loop are being asked to pluck atoms of difference out of a raging river of otherwise characterless slurry. They are expected to remain vigilant for something that almost never happens – all while they are racing the clock, charged with preventing a slurry backlog at all costs.

Automation blindness is inescapable – and it's the inconvenient truth that AI boosters conspicuously fail to mention when they are discussing how they will justify the trillion-dollar valuations they ascribe to super-advanced autocomplete systems. Instead, they wave around "humans in the loop," using low-waged workers as props in a Big Store con, just a way to (temporarily) cool the marks.

And what of the people who lose their (vital) jobs to (terminally unsuitable) AI in the course of this long-running, high-stakes infomercial?

Well, there's always the food bank.

"Go on an empty stomach."

Going to Burning Man? Catch me on Tuesday at 2:40pm on the Center Camp Stage for a talk about enshittification and how to reverse it; on Wednesday at noon, I'm hosting Dr Patrick Ball at Liminal Labs (6:15/F) for a talk on using statistics to prove high-level culpability in the recruitment of child soldiers.

On September 6 at 7pm, I'll be hosting Naomi Klein at the LA Public Library for the launch of Doppelganger.

On September 12 at 7pm, I'll be at Toronto's Another Story Bookshop with my new book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation.

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/2023/08/23/automation-blindness/#humans-in-the-loop

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

--

West Midlands Police (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/westmidlandspolice/8705128684/

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

[autistichrlady]

The Cover Letter Toolbox

Or, how to write cover letters while autistic.

One of the autistic traits I have is difficulties with what's called "expressive language" - I don't think in words, and putting my thoughts into words takes a lot of time and effort. For me, going straight from a blank page to a full sentence that makes sense is difficult, and making that sentence sound professional is even harder. So I came up with a way to avoid starting from a blank page. This is what I do instead.

When I've read a job posting and decided I want to apply, I start by making a list of qualifications and things from the job posting that I have or can do, just a list of words or short phrases like

Customer service experience Scheduling Microsoft Office

Then I go under each of those list items and make it into a full sentence.

Customer service experience: I have five years of experience in customer service.

Once I have the most basic version of that sentence, I think about details that I can add to it. The point of a cover letter is two things-

to summarize the things from your resume that are relevant to this job, so the person doing the hiring doesn't have to read the whole thing and connect the dots themselves.

to add details and explain things that might not be in your resume.

So some details that I want to add here are that I didn't just talk to customers myself for five years, for part of that time I was a manager responsible for training other people to give good customer service. And I was good at that- we always got good results on our customer surveys, and we also always hit our goals for stuff like signing people up for the loyalty program. So now I've got a second sentence:

As the [job title] with [company], I trained our entire team on how to best serve our customers and helped ensure that my location had the best results in the region for customer loyalty.

Another thing from the job posting that I want to address with this bit is that the job I'm applying for involves helping people over the phone a lot. So I want them to know that even though my experience is in a different environment (retail instead of an office front desk) I did still have to answer phone calls and help people over the phone. This is the type of detail that's not in my resume and that someone wouldn't necessarily guess, but I really did answer a lot of phone calls working in retail.

I also added a little bit of Flavor, so it's not just assisting customers, it's "welcoming, respectful assistance". Yes, I did try like five different words there before picking these ones. Usually I look back to the job posting and pick something that relates to what they've said they want. But I find it a lot easier to figure out details like this after I have the basic structure.

This is what I ended up with for my Bit About Customer Service:

I have five years of experience in customer service, providing welcoming, respectful assistance to customers over the phone and in person. As the [job title] with [company], I trained our entire team on how to best serve our customers and helped ensure that my location had the best results in the region for customer loyalty.

If I really wanted to add a lot of detail, I'd put numbers in here- how big "our entire team" was, what the "best results" were and how we were measuring it. But the position I'm applying for is with a small organization, and probably doesn't involve measuring sales in the same way, so I decided not to add that. If I was applying for another retail job, I'd include those things.

I repeat this same process with each of the qualifications from my list, copy-paste each of those bits in order of how important they are, and then I need an opening and a closing. For the opening, I start by stating the obvious.

Dear hiring manager, I am applying for/interested in/etc. [this position]

and then I apply my school-essay-writing techniques and do a one-sentence preview of the qualifications I just got done writing about.

I am confident I have the customer service skills, computer expertise and organized mindset to excel in this position.

For the closing, this job posting specifically mentioned putting your contact information in your cover letter, so I did that, and then I like to thank them for looking at my application because that's a nice polite note to end on.

I can be reached at [contact info]. Thank you for taking the time to consider my application, and I look forward to hearing from you. [signature]

Extra Bonus Brownie Points:

Go to their company website and add something that shows you have looked at their company website. Like yes, the main reason you're applying for this job is it's available and you need money, but besides that, there's gotta be something at least a little interesting about this company that might be cool if you get to work for them. In this case they had a whole big section about charities they donate to and how they get involved in their local community, so I added this right before my closing:

[this company's] contributions to charities such as [things from their website] are truly admirable. I've grown to love [this city] since moving here, and I would be honored to be part of an organization that does so much to contribute to the community.

Now wait before you go here's the important part:

I don't delete any of this stuff.

I copy/paste out the finished bits into a new document to send to the recruiter, but I keep that list of qualifications with sentences under each one.

Now I have a document with a list of qualifications I have and nice professional-sounding descriptions of those qualifications, and for the next cover letter I write, I can reuse them if they're relevant, so I don't have to redo all this work of making words make sense. If I decide to change them a little bit for the next job, I'll keep the new version next to the old one under the same heading. I also keep my openings and closings.

I used to have a big file like this but I apparently didn't back it up before my old computer died, so I'm having to re-create it, but you guys this saves me so much time I would otherwise spend staring at a blinking cursor. And it's easier than saving the full finished cover letter and trying to pull sentences out of it, because all the Bits are already organized by topic. (And it lowers the risk of accidentally copy-pasting the wrong company's name.)

I <3 my cover letter workbox.

[lemonadedino]

Have a snippet of landoscar enemies to lovers background story from the much ado about nothing au fic below the cut 🫶

I have to prove to myself that I’ve actually worked in it lol

As he walked back to his seat, amid all the polite clapping, he heard him.

“That Piastri guy had the most boring presentation ever, I swear. I was actively falling asleep. And don’t get me started on the slide choice, Carlos! Where was the color? The variety? The fun, engaging design elements? It was just all so bland, mate. Blergh.”

Oscar was pretty sure the curly-haired man currently launching a vitriolic attack on his PowerPoint was named Lando Norris. He vaguely recognized him from his presentation earlier in the day.

Oscar had heard his name floating around the office break room. Supposedly, he was the office prodigy, some sort of comp-sci genius poached straight out of Oxford. Public opinion on Lando seemed to deem him as an intensely likable and cherubic, if slightly hyperactive, team member with a strong work ethic and sharp sense of humor.

Listening to the Brit’s increasingly passionate tirade, Oscar wasn’t so sure about the first part of that descriptor.

Unaware that he now had an audience, Lando kept on ranting to his companion, gesticulating wildly.

“I can’t believe he used Times New Roman, Carlos. Times New Roman! That’s literally the worst possible choice. It means you intentionally didn’t want to use the default font, Arial, but still couldn’t branch out and be more exciting! Oswald is right there!” His voice gradually climbed in volume. “Also! Who actually adds transitions to their slides? That’s some George type shit.”

“Mate, yours wasn’t much better.” The words came spitting out before Oscar even registered that his mouth had opened. Clearly, four hours of sleep had lowered his normal inhibitions surrounding conflict avoidance. Two sets of eyes snapped to look at him, one pair unnervingly reminiscent of watercolor and the other velveteen brown.

Oscar swallowed. Well. There’s no backing out now. He might as well fully commit.

“At least I didn’t use brain-meltingly bright neon colors and an overcrowded SlidesGo template. And a soundtrack? Really, Norris? Where did you even find that?” Oscar was on a roll now. There was something oddly liberating about it. “What are you, a five year old who got access to Microsoft Office for the first time?”

Lando pouted, which in theory should look absolutely ridiculous on a full grown man. It certainly didn’t help him fight the “five year old who got access to Microsoft Office for the first time” allegations. Yet somehow, on Lando, it was adorable. Oscar shut down that train of thought as soon as it sprouted.

Lando pursed his lips, primed to respond, no doubt with another jab at Oscar’s presentation.

“Oscar! Great job, dude!” Logan suddenly hollered from across the room, eagerly waving him over. Oscar had never been more grateful for his best friend. He would definitely be buying him one of those Arnold Palmers that the American so adored from the office café in thanks.Taking the opportunity to escape, Oscar waved back and slipped away.

He heard Carlos chuckle as he left.

“He’s really got you there, Lando. You know, I quite liked his presentation. He’s a good speaker. Very articulate,” the older man said.

“Shut up. That’s my new Sworn Arch-Nemesis you’re talking about.”

“A bit dramatic, don’t you think? What happened to Betty from HR being your Sworn Arch-Nemesis? You were complaining to me about her just yesterday.”

“I’m not being dramatic, Carlos. Can’t you see it? Betty’s been ousted. Oscar Piastri is an infinitely more qualified candidate for the role of my Sworn Arch-Nemesis.” Lando paused. “Plus, I’m pretty sure Betty is nearing her 70s. She talks about her grandchildren all the time. I don’t want to deal with the hassle of finding a replacement after her retirement.”

Up until that moment, Oscar had been planning to chase Lando down after the conference, buy him a coffee, and apologize effusively for his outburst. Sure, it had been rude of the Brit, but it didn’t justify Oscar insulting his presentation. He didn’t know why he had reacted so strongly to Lando’s snarky commentary. Truly, Lando’s presentation hadn’t been that bad. He’d seen way worse. Oscar actually thought that the soundtrack was a nice touch.

But if Lando was already dead set on treating him as his Sworn Arch-Nemesis, Oscar didn’t see why two couldn’t play at that game. He had to spice up his workday somehow, after all.

Since then, for the last couple of years, there had been a constant stream of traded barbs and petty jibes, more often than not sent via Microsoft Teams, because Lando transferred to a new division based across the country a year ago.

Oscar would never admit it, but he had started looking forward to opening his inbox every morning, eager to see what creative insult Lando had launched at him. Obviously, he shot one of his own right back.

[lrtrainingsolutions-oganization]

Black-Owned SEO leadership and management training Company. Providing Providing leadership development and remote communication solutions https://lrtrainingsolutions.com/blackownedseotrainingcompany/

[noyoucannotpushthevoid]

Part One of Two, because I'ven't done one of these in forever and have a backlog of quotes lol

"Unfortunatey his lifeless corpse is lifeless" - Adam Raucous cheers of "Lenin" - Blue "Wouldn't you like to know fed boi" - Blue @ Gansey "Look [I] can't help [I’m] a shopaholic, okay?" - Henry  "The whole thing behind buttchugging" - Kavinsky "Okay Squidward" - Henry "Little known red gem fact: the gem is red" - Ronan "Have depression? Just sleep! Have exams coming up? Just sleep! 50,000 dollars in debt? Just sleep it off!"- Ronan "If you're sleeping you can't hear the IRS” - Ronan "I am a tree person basically" - Blue "[Gansey] has [Ronan] trained" -Kavinsky   "Very craisin" - about Gansey’s brain "THE JORTS ARE BACK" - Henry "Bugs are like fish, they don't have feelings" - Ronan "The land animals are safe, the fish have sinned" - Ronan "Too big to be an ankle biter, it's a calf biter now" - Ronan about Blue "Oh damn, diva down for real this time" - Henry "Silly little guy. Don't mind him and his icbm shaped suitcase" - about Nathan "Ga[nsey] pulled a Karen moment"   "You can't spell arson without sin" - Ronan "Advanced eepy" - about Adam, or Ronan, or Declan. Really just take your pick lol "If there's no blood, there's no bood alcohol level" - Kavinsky "Raised by my father's wife" - Kavinsky "How dare you say the fuck word to my small approachable [Noah]" “The reservation at Yapplebees is over!" - Blue kicking her boys out of Nino’s at closing time “Woke Lewis Caroll be like: Jab-her woke-he” - Henry “On the girl math glaive grind” - about Henessey “[Ronan] goes straight for pride month” - Henry “My girl does not have kind eyes” - about Blue “The middle-aged mother thing, which is look at me” - Adam “I love when 18 year olds are in kindergarten” - Kavinsky “Henchson” - about Declan “If [you] had a fursona, it’d probably be one of the anti-drug PSA animals” - Henry @ Gansey “I see pretty people, I say AWOOGA!” - Adam “Since when do we have a murder limit?” - Ronan “I’m not well versed in hot dog” - Gansey’s rich ass “So anyway, I got rizzed up on Microsoft Teams” - Adam “Me when I’m straight” - Henry

[darkmaga-retard]

Some of the agents who were protecting President Donald Trump before his assassination attempt have blown the whistle about their lack of training.

Agents on Trump’s security detail say they were hastily reassigned and received little training.

The whistleblowers also allege that the problem still hasn’t been fixed.

The security detail for Trump included Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents who received poor training from the Secret Service, sources told Republican Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO)

The Secret Service has been slow to answer questions about the security failures that led to the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13.

Many have questioned why an obvious vantage point on a nearby rooftop was left unguarded.

Secret Service has also faced scrutiny for failing to act on reports of a suspicious person before the shots rang out.

HSI agents who were reassigned to the protective detail told Hawley that their training was limited to a glitchy, two-hour seminar on the computer.

“Imagine 1,000 people logging onto Microsoft Teams at the same time after being informed at the last minute that everyone needed to log in individually,” one agent said.

[khalid-albeshri]

How to manage a company's workflow?

Managing workflow in a company ensures efficiency and productivity. Here are key steps:

1. Define Clear Processes and Procedures

Document Workflows: Outline each step and develop Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).

2. Assign Roles and Responsibilities

Role Clarity: Ensure team members understand their roles and tasks.

3. Utilize Workflow Management Tools

Project Management Software: Use tools like Trello or Asana.

Automation: Implement automation for repetitive tasks.

4. Set Clear Goals and Priorities

SMART Goals: Define Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound goals.

Prioritization: Focus on high-priority tasks.

5. Monitor and Measure Performance

KPIs and Metrics: Establish Key Performance Indicators.

Regular Reviews: Conduct performance reviews to identify bottlenecks.

6. Foster Communication and Collaboration

Communication Tools: Use Slack or Microsoft Teams.

Regular Meetings: Hold team meetings for updates and discussions.

7. Continuously Improve Processes

Feedback: Encourage employee feedback.

Optimization: Regularly review and update workflows.

8. Manage Resources Efficiently

Resource Allocation: Allocate resources effectively.

Capacity Planning: Plan resource needs in advance.

9. Ensure Training and Development

Skill Development: Provide ongoing training.

Knowledge Sharing: Encourage knowledge sharing within the team.

10. Address Challenges Proactively

Problem-Solving: Quickly address issues.

Flexibility: Adapt workflows as needed.

Example Workflow Management Approach

Initiation: Identify tasks and assign a leader.

Planning: Break down tasks, assign them, and identify resources.

Execution: Perform tasks and monitor progress.

Monitoring and Controlling: Track progress, hold status meetings, and adjust plans.

Completion: Review tasks, gather feedback, and document lessons learned.

[hiding-in-the-vault]

Good day,

I came across your advertisement for several job openings in your company “Evil Vault (No Not That Evil Vault The Other Evil Vault) Corporations” on the website tumblr dot com slash dreblr and I would like to submit my application for your perusal.

My name is @airrec and I believe that I am more than suited to work at Evil Vault (NNTEVTOEV) Corporations as my qualifications in Immorality, The Problematique (TM), Evil Arcane Arts, and Minor Misdemeanours speak for themselves. I have a degree from Miskatonic University of the Strange, Eldritch and Unethical, majoring in Psychology (Malicious) and minoring in Business (Late Sage Capitalism). I am a qualified first aider, and I have had training and experience working with Microsoft Excel.

I have past experience in dubiously legal requisitions, secretarial work (with law firm Jekyll & Hyde & Sons), animal conservation (I was part of the team that helped bring the Megalodon back ^_^!!), and retail. I am hard-working, flexible, a good team player, and I am patient; I have been shadowbanned for over five months, and my time in the Realm of Darkness has sharpened my instincts – it takes a particular personality to endure the madness there, and to remain focused with eyes on the prize. I know I can bring that to your company.

Please find attached my CV.

I hope to hear from you soon,

@airrec

You seem very qualified! I have heard of some of your works from across the veil and into the Realm of Darkness myself-- it's quite impressive.

I think you'd be a good fit for Evil Vault (NNTEVTOEV) Corporations, and will move your resume to the second and also third stage of the interview process. I'd also suggest a bribery on your way in next time, it goes a long way. I expect you have the makings to get hired on the spot and sent out on a dubious task that very same day!

[goddamnshinyrock]

microsoft teams is SUCH a dogshit program, my god

the fact that one person on the meeting was currently walking through a train museum when he joined while another person had a juvenile guinea hen named greg on her shoulder the whole call almost made up for having to suffer through Worse Zoom

[chrismcshell]

happy monday everyone i was offline for most of the weekend and now im here to rant about work-related nonsense. did u know that the "New" Microsoft Teams will set the time to display in 24hr time or 12hr time depending on your language setting, and give u no flexibility to choose your own preferred combination of language + time format? i had to change my language from English (Canada) to English (United States) to get my Teams Shifts to display in 12hr time. which is weird because, in my experience, the vast majority of english-speaking canadians use 12hr time. 24hr time is only used for some specific use cases like train schedules - and even then, if i'm talking to someone about taking a train scheduled for 17:00, i'm gonna translate that to 5pm. most of the time we use AM/PM. in any case it's weird not to give a time format option separate from language. why did they do it like that

[in-case-of-grace]

THIS WEEK'S GOOD NEWS

The UK supreme court ruled that AI cannot be listed as the inventor for a patent. (If other countries take this same stance, this will avoid a potential CASCADE of patent filings that could gum up the works.)

https://ground.news/article/ai-cannot-be-patent-inventor-uk-supreme-court-rules-in-landmark-case

Rudy Giuliani filed for bankruptcy, in the wake of losing his defamation suit!

https://ground.news/article/giuliani-files-for-bankruptcy-after-judge-rules-georgia-election-workers-can-collect-148m_090475

Puma is terminating its sponsorship of Israel's national football team. They claim it is a total coincidence this came out now, in the midst of the boycott, and that this decision was totally made before the current situation haha don't read into it guys! (Have hope! This proves that boycotts WORK- you have power when you hit them in the profits! We may see other business targeted by the BDS movement follow suit in the coming weeks!)

https://www.reuters.com/sports/puma-terminate-sponsorship-israels-national-football-team-ft-2023-12-12/

Idaho's trans healthcare ban has been blocked by a federal judge! We're seeing this story play out state after state lately!

https://ground.news/article/idahos-ban-on-gender-affirming-medical-care-for-minors-on-hold-as-judge-issues-ruling_0a2c6a

The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for using its articles to train their AI. This is one of the first big lawsuits over the use of copyrighted datasets!

https://ground.news/article/new-york-times-sues-microsoft-chatgpt-maker-openai-over-copyright-infringement_e5fd67

The UN voted to increase humanitarian aid to Gaza. The US abstained, instead of vetoing, this time.

https://ground.news/article/un-security-council-passes-resolution-to-boost-aid-to-gaza-after-us-abstains_e784d7

--- Why not reblog and share other bits of good news you’ve seen this week? My own exposure is limited and I’d love to see stories I missed!