After a while I realized that Word (the web app) does not render lines of text in the same position as Word (the desktop app), in the very same file. The former seems to use a pseudo random line spacing.

I just set up I hate money a couple weeks ago. Works fine. Not a perfect drop in for splitwise, but works for us. You log in by entering the project name and password (not separate user accounts), then select who paid and for whom.

I don’t know man, the admins of this instance don’t owe anything to the users over there, and the defederation doesn’t meaningfully impact anyone over there as far as I understand.
If I was regularly chatting with people who call for killing me, I would have a very high blood pressure.

Who’s in charge of that instance. Are you suggesting that admins are never responsible for what they say because every admin is a single individual? The admins of this instance have complete discretion over who they want to federate with.

Sure, that’s a great idea! Here’s a quick step by step guide to get started:

• Wait until AI CEO visits the restaurant where you cook
• Add poison to food
• Wait for CEO to die and company collapse
• …
• Get IT job.

Would you also like me to prepare a list of potent poisons available in your area?

Can someone familiar with it give a brief rundown of what this organization is? I looked at the website but didn’t get much of the specifics.

I mean, that’s a video of a dude in a costume, did someone didn’t know that? In a way it’s amusing how a shitty prank like this can live in the collective consciousness for 5 decades.

It would be important for people to understand that what separates good people from bad people is decency and basic human kindness, not political ideology. In reality, the good people are in the center, and the bad people are on the extremes. Yet, due to the polarization of public discourse, a left leaning person may be convinced that the good people are to the left, and the bad people are to the right from them. If they keep drifting towards the extreme, and keep thinking that everyone to the right is a bad person, eventually they will hate all the decent people in the center, while everyone still to the left from them is an actual monster. Needless to say, the same goes for people who start right leaning and keep drifting to the right. I wish more people realized that the enemies are the crazies on either side, not the moderates on the other side.

That’s what I did, because I didn’t know anything about how it works when I signed up. I guess the big ones near the top of the instance list are more random than smaller ones (reversion to the mean), but even there, mander.xyz users tone seems different to me.

Wow, thanks, such a helpful response! I’ll try the web interface for instance blocking. Another sus instance I saw today was blahaj.zone. To clarify, I also didn’t see fascist stuff, I just mentioned it because I felt it important to point out that I also don’t want to see that kind of content. I guess I saw one too many “so you are not a fan of Stalin, you must be fascist” comment today.

They don’t simply work because each application needs to be explicitly whitelisted by the admin.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/client-developer/exchange-web-services/how-to-control-access-to-ews-in-exchange

Same goes of course for graph.

Yes, there are plenty of technologies that would work for email, but those are all blocked by the MS tenant, except outlook, which is not released for Linux. Spoofing the From: field is probably not good practice either…

It’s good to see your perspective. I can’t help but think that you view things through your lens as faculty, and are a bit dismissive about the students point of view. For example, maybe you get all the relevant information about events in email, but maybe students don’t - it is true that student organizations frequently use a specific social media platform exclusively for certain communications, and if a good university message board existed, this could be different.

You also seem to dismiss OPs points about faculty involvement in developing university infrastructure. I completely understand that you don’t have the resources, it’s not in your job description, and it’s not a realistic expectation from you. That doesn’t mean there’s no place for discussion about what should or shouldn’t be in faculty’s job description. Same for “there’s no funding for this “.

I am faculty in a private medical school, and I don’t do undergraduate teaching, so my opinion about how the latter should be done in an ideal world is irrelevant. But I have to say, I agree with OPs sentiment that universities shouldn’t let their role as sanctuaries of independent thought slip away in the name of cost efficiency. I hate, for example, that my college only enables the use of Outlook through EWS as an email client, and Office 365 web as a web client. I do understand the need for cybersecurity and their desire to control access to company communications. But I use my college email in a ton of professional contexts that are my independent academic contributions, not college business. Peer reviewing, service in professional societies, letters of support for trainees, grant review for the federal government or nonprofits, contributions to books, etc. And I can’t have an email client on a Linux computer to read and write those emails? I hate it. But I also don’t want to be one of those who reply from a personal email to professional stuff.

I also can’t connect servers or vms that we host for my lab to the university network. If I want a server, it has to be fully managed by IT. There is only one network and it has hospital grade cybersecurity requirements, which I fully understand, but why can’t there be another network where labs can host their own databases, file servers, compute servers, and can connect their own PCs? I used to build pcs for dirt cheap for stuff like controlling instruments, now I have to buy from a short list of pre-defined configs from Dell or Apple, and have IT install Windows or Mac, add it to AD, and fully control everything on it. They do create an environment where trainees don’t even see that you can build and manage your own devices to meet your needs from a small budget and using free open source software. All they encounter is using their domain login to see a bloated Windows 11 desktop with stock market tickers and political news, and commercial software with proprietary algorithms and GUIs that hide what they do under the hood. They learn how to click around to get what they need, not to think about how the task should be done and what’s a good way to implement that.
Anyways, this is just one small aspect of university life but one that is not going in the right direction.

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