Another reason to dislike cloud computer services.

Gromett

Gromett

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Google Docs to prompt users to write in gender-free language​


Technology giant will suggest alternatives to gendered words to make Google Docs more inclusive

Google will prompt users of its software to write in non-gendered language to ensure they do not offend colleagues or friends.
When writing in a shared Google Docs file, the online word processing tool will suggest edits if someone types a word it does not deem to be “inclusive”. If an employee writes “chairman”, for example, it will show a pop-up which suggests changing the word to “chairperson” or “mail carrier” instead of “mailman”.


Google will also make other stylistic suggestions like to avoid passive voice or offensive language.
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Full story here.

www.telegraph.co.uk

Google Docs to prompt users to write in gender-free language

Technology giant will suggest alternatives to gendered words to make Google Docs more inclusive
www.telegraph.co.uk www.telegraph.co.uk

I like having the software running on the computer I own and it doing what I tell it to do and nothing more.
 
Is writing in shared Google Docs the common way for users to work?
Not sure it’ll be a change that effects many home users.

But this will be a desired feature for employers.
Anyway, not a feature that’s coming to all providers of cloud services. 🤔
 
It may affect more then you think, many children use Google docs linked to the Google classroom their school adopts.
 
Just spent three months working in Google with the ONS. Never, ever again. On both counts.....

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kevenh said:
Is writing in shared Google Docs the common way for users to work?
Not sure it’ll be a change that effects many home users.

But this will be a desired feature for employers.
Anyway, not a feature that’s coming to all providers of cloud services. 🤔
Click to expand...
A lot of companies use Google cloud workspaces for Gmail and Drive. Both are very good compared to the Microsoft equivalents. Google Sheets is a very good spreadsheet tool, especially if you need to share something. But Google Docs is not a patch on Word, far too many features missing to write serious documents.
 
There's also a Google Docs Personal v Business option to choose.
I've no knowledge at the moment about which one or if both will offer up gender-free language options; but like the MS Office Assistant clip man we can turn it off 🤞
 
BTW this feature isn’t out yet, it is Google reacting to corporate pressure, it is for working in a collaborative environment. It’s a feature that will undoubtedly have user settings. Maybe even an “off”.
It’s likely not out until late 2021.
News of Smart Canvas is coming from a Google developer conference so we’re low on hands on usage but a screen shot shows there’ll be a hamburger menu for it (I.e. there are menu settings).

More Broken Link Removed
 
Guigsy said:
A lot of companies use Google cloud workspaces for Gmail and Drive. Both are very good compared to the Microsoft equivalents. Google Sheets is a very good spreadsheet tool, especially if you need to share something. But Google Docs is not a patch on Word, far too many features missing to write serious documents.
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Just spent three months working and using Google stuff. As above some of it is good such as sharing - provided that it is disciplined; a lot of it a nightmare to navigate and compromised. Tomorrow my last day before I return my awful chromebook

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DuxDeluxe said:
Just spent three months working and using Google stuff. As above some of it is good such as sharing - provided that it is disciplined; a lot of it a nightmare to navigate and compromised. Tomorrow my last day before I return my awful chromebook
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Most of the time at the moment I'm playing with large datasets (R, Python, local SQL) and my fairly beefy home desktop struggles under the load. But if the day involves relatively light stuff like editing docs, writing emails and doing (too many) video conference meetings, I can get away with using my dinky Chromebook. Something that took me a while to realise is that often on a Chromebook, the web app works better than the Android app. Only downside is that web apps aren't as good at notifications.

When the new motorhome is eventually ready, I'm looking to be going away on a Thursday night and work from the van most of the day on Friday. I'm thinking I'm going to have to get myself a mid range Windows laptop for those duties...
 
buttons said:
Sorry had no idea who or what are the ONS so had a shot in the dark at ONS and you working from home and this is what Google came up with :emo:
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Organisation for National Statistics. Been working on management for the census

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Gromett said:
Full story here.

www.telegraph.co.uk

Google Docs to prompt users to write in gender-free language

Technology giant will suggest alternatives to gendered words to make Google Docs more inclusive
www.telegraph.co.uk www.telegraph.co.uk

I like having the software running on the computer I own and it doing what I tell it to do and nothing more.
Click to expand...
This is one thing we can agree on, and cloud hosting is a dodgy thing in my opinion. Uber has done the very thing the likes of Amazon and Google could do. Uber has learnt about the restaurant trade and their customers. Uber have and are opening ‘dark kitchens’ to provide the very meals in areas that are profitable so when a customer orders a Uber delivery it will be from a dark kitchen rather than a restaurant. From my perspective host all your processes rather than your own servers or ‘trusted’ hosting services you may just find your competing against a cloned business....
 
Coolcats said:
This is one thing we can agree on, and cloud hosting is a dodgy thing in my opinion. Uber has done the very thing the likes of Amazon and Google could do. Uber has learnt about the restaurant trade and their customers. Uber have and are opening ‘dark kitchens’ to provide the very meals in areas that are profitable so when a customer orders a Uber delivery it will be from a dark kitchen rather than a restaurant. From my perspective host all your processes rather than your own servers or ‘trusted’ hosting services you may just find your competing against a cloned business....
Click to expand...
Previously, when you wanted some IT you bought hardware and software and hopefully a support contract. You stumped up for the cost of everything at the beginning, guessing at the required size and hoped that you didn't need to expand it later. Companies that provided this software and hardware had to sell at high prices because they didn't know where their next meal was coming from. If you found a bug or needed a new feature, you were pretty much at the whim of the supplier. You did 'own' it, but often that didn't really mean that much.

Now suppliers are all moving towards 'as a Service' IT in the cloud. They get paid a monthly fee that often scales with demand. So you can start projects small and pay more as you add more users. No large up-front costs, so projects are lower risk because they can be dropped without a massive sunk cost. The suppliers prefer it because they have everyone on the same software base and they've got a nice continuous income. From the consumer's perspective, there's an incentive for the supplier to keep stuff working or they don't get paid! And security is really hard! Let them be responsible for it.

It's becoming increasingly difficult to purchase software and hardware outright and put it 'on premises'. Suppliers just don't want to sell it to you. And for many start-ups, they prefer the pay as you go approach too. /shruggie
 
Guigsy said:
It's becoming increasingly difficult to purchase software and hardware outright and put it 'on premises'. Suppliers just don't want to sell it to you. And for many start-ups, they prefer the pay as you go approach too. /shruggie
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For well over 20 years now I have run my companies entirely on open source software. Free in both senses of the word. Bugs fixed quickly and scales perfectly well.
I ran an entire large scale hosting company entirely on open source software except for Sage Accountancy software which was required by our accountant.
 
Gromett said:
For well over 20 years now I have run my companies entirely on open source software. Free in both senses of the word. Bugs fixed quickly and scales perfectly well.
I ran an entire large scale hosting company entirely on open source software except for Sage Accountancy software which was required by our accountant.
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Some of the projects we're running, we've got open source software. But we're hosting on the cloud so we don't need to stump up for the hardware. And it means you need a specialist to run those servers, which is an ongoing cost, even if they are rarely needed.

Alternatively, you get the whole thing 'as a service' and not have to worry about scaling the hardware or keeping it patched. It definitely has its downsides, but when the 'master of coin' in the business puts their oar in, they'll go for the aaS approach every time because it improves cash flow and reduces risk.
 
Guigsy said:
Some of the projects we're running, we've got open source software. But we're hosting on the cloud so we don't need to stump up for the hardware. And it means you need a specialist to run those servers, which is an ongoing cost, even if they are rarely needed.

Alternatively, you get the whole thing 'as a service' and not have to worry about scaling the hardware or keeping it patched. It definitely has its downsides, but when the 'master of coin' in the business puts their oar in, they'll go for the aaS approach every time because it improves cash flow and reduces risk.
Click to expand...

That is a choice for the business.

In most normal cases buying the software outright works out cheaper in the medium term onwards.

As for maintenance, I and many others offer monthly services to handle this for companies who run their own software.
I will give one of my larger examples. They have 12 servers, I monitor them and provide 24/7 services on it. I also manage their backup server. I do monthly scans and updates on each server and I charge £108 / month for it.
It is in my best interests to keep those servers up to date and stable to avoid a 3am call out. So most months I get my £108 for doing nothing.
My smallest client pays £45 a month for the same services but I do the backups for his server as well. The monitoring I do includes things like intrusion detection, security and I have a number of checks running that can notify me long before a problem occurs.
My backup service is also designed to prevent crypto ransomware from infecting backups. Something their previous backup service didn't/couldn't offer.

There are lots of small but professional shops like mine that provide services like this to small businesses that want/need to run their own stuff in house but can't afford a full time server guy.

The advantage of doing it this way is that scaling is not an issue, and the costs are kept low. AWS S3 for example can very quickly bankrupt a company if they don't have the scaling restricted and software properly configured.

Here is an example of a company going bust due to scaling gone wrong. (Have seen 100's like this)

A few years ago my startup was killed by a AWS mistake that ran overnight. The i... | Hacker News

news.ycombinator.com news.ycombinator.com

And then there is the risks involved of having your business open to a potential competitor.
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I was going to post more but lightening here and powering down.

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Gromett said:
<snip>

The advantage of doing it this way is that scaling is not an issue, and the costs are kept low. AWS S3 {S3 is storage, and you pay for what you use (& less if you don't want instant recall, etc...) You mean EC2? That's the compute service that scales up or down on user rules} for example can very quickly bankrupt a company if they don't have the scaling restricted and software properly configured.

Here is an example of a company going bust due to scaling gone wrong. (Have seen 100's like this)

A few years ago my startup was killed by a AWS mistake that ran overnight. The i... | Hacker News

news.ycombinator.com news.ycombinator.com
{Oh!! A scale up rule but no scale down rule - or just a "shutdown all type thing" . AWS fault :( :lol:}
And then there is the risks involved of having your business open to a potential competitor.
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There's also a risk of hosting a "marketplace" on you platform so customers go to the marketplace. Where are those examples? :rofl:
Amazon have rival shops on amaxon.xo.uk/.com, etc AND aws console has marketplace for alternative services.

I was going to post more but lightening here and powering down.
Click to expand...
words inserted in quote.
jff, feet too firmly in the cloud solution to be unbiased & dive deeper ;)
 
kevenh said:
words inserted in quote.
jff, feet too firmly in the cloud solution to be unbiased & dive deeper ;)
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You don't need to edit my quote to do this.

Highlight a bit you want to quote, then click the quote button that pops up. If you want to do this multiple times you can use the +Quote button.

Then add all the quotes in the order you want.

I cannot respond to your post now in a proper manner.

You are correct I meant EC2 not S3 in this case. I just have a real downer on S3 and mis-stated it here.
 
kevenh said:
{Oh!! A scale up rule but no scale down rule - or just a "shutdown all type thing" . AWS fault :( :lol:}
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No not AWS fault. But it was in response to Guigsy saying this.
Guigsy said:
But we're hosting on the cloud so we don't need to stump up for the hardware. And it means you need a specialist to run those servers, which is an ongoing cost, even if they are rarely needed.
Click to expand...
Even with cloud stuff you need an expert at times other wise you run into problems BIGGER than if you hosted it yourself.

kevenh said:
There's also a risk of hosting a "marketplace" on you platform so customers go to the marketplace. Where are those examples?
Click to expand...
Agreed. Which is why I recommend self hosting the critical and core parts of your business that differentiate you from your competition.

Using any Saas or marketplace for your critical and core infrastucture may seem easy up front but has too many risks if you ask me. You no longer control your core business assets.
 
It's all great when you have a reliable and fast enough data connection.
 
Money you would spend on hardware, maintenance and the running of them (CAPEX) can usually be cheaper on flexible pay for what you use (OPEX) spending on cloud services.
One cloud vendors info <Broken link removed>. (sorry, it is the one I have an affiliation with).

The cross over between the benefits between on-premise hardware versus cloud (owned or vendor) changes with scale and application.
I don't know why cloud customers end up becoming worse off as AWS have customer facing staff on-hand to help with cloud architecture, etc. to reduce billing. I'm thinking of their Solutions Architects. The AWS SA remit is to save the customer money even at the expense of sales.

Random anecdote, Hilary was not in trouble for having a personal 'work' email server in the cloud, as that is secure.
She's in trouble for having copies of emails. :think:

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kevenh said:
Money you would spend on hardware, maintenance and the running of them (CAPEX) can usually be cheaper on flexible pay for what you use (OPEX) spending on cloud services.


The cross over between the benefits between on-premise hardware versus cloud (owned or vendor) changes with scale and application.
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You jump from cloud to on premises. I have never suggested that a company should set up their own in house data centre, that is going too far for pretty much any company.

In between cloud and on premises is leased/dedicated and co-located.

My preference for most use cases is leased/dedicated. You pay a fixed monthly lease for a server. You then configure this server however you want.

For instance you can lease a server with 2TB of storage and a 100Mbps network connection for under £50 a month. This gives a maximum theoretical monthly data transfer rate of 20TB. Now obviously this is a stupid figure as it would require maximum utilisation every minute of the month to achieve.
However even at 20% utilisation this is still 4TB of data per month which is within reason for this server spec.

So for a semi realistic example. A new company starts up and they initially go with AWS and use the free tier. They pay nothing. But in month 3 they go viral and people start paying into their service.
They quickly exceed the free tier and end up storing 1TB of user data and pump 4TB of data per month.

Because they haven't pre-booked this requirement, their bill would be $376.12 per month.

If they had the leased/dedicated server for £50 a month, they would know they were getting close to the limits based on trends and could quickly roll out an additional server for another £50.

I have a client who does this using £50 dedicated servers across multiple data centres. He has a front end load balancer and can add additional back end web servers on demand (currently 3). A dedicated db server for a total of 6 servers if you include his back up server.
His total costs including month software licensing is just over £300/month. AWS doesn't even come close to this.

The CAPEX vs OPEX argument would only apply if you are building your own data centre in house or using co-location facilities.

I have done all 4 routes. I have had my own datacentre, co-located, leased dedicated and cloud.
Each have their own advantages but cloud is NOT cheaper for most use cases.
 
Oops. Forgot to add data transfer charges in above calculation. It is closer to £800 per month when you add that in :(
 
EuroTrotters said:
our Bespoke software supplier has no told us they will no longer support our systems with non cloud based software. We have used the company for 26 years. They are forcing everyone to go cloud based.

I refused.
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It is getting silly now.
You have to spend £5 here, £10 there, then another £5 and it soon adds up to a chunk of change going out every single month.

Whereas if you own the software you can buy once and stick with it, planning upgrades for when finances allow and features demand.

It won't be too long until windows is a monthly subscription as well I fear.

I am just so glad I am fully 100% Linux and OSS based. Oh except for Sublime Edit which is amazing and is on a 3 year (optional) renewal cycle .

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