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- Hacker News
- Meanwhile, other AI firms are thirsty for data - Microsoft could have just slipped in a terms of service change to allow training (it’s sort of in there already), and presto, exabytes of data to train on, with full metadata so you even know if it’s pre-2022.by trollbridge
- That was devastating to a summer camp that do so volunteer IT work for. By the time they called me, the data was long gone.by systemstops
- > On Reddit, and across Microsoft’s own Tech Community forums, more such claims abound of surprise deletion without notification.
I clicked the link with text “more such claims”, and it appears to be someone complaining about being unable to reach a human after their devices were physically stolen. Not sure how that’s related to the claims in the article.
https://www.reddit.com/r/FuckMicrosoft/comments/1ub7i1h/micr...
by ahepp - As other mention, the "right" way to do this is to withdraw access but keep the data for at least 30days. At least.
Let people give you money instead of them vowing to never trust you again in any sphere of influence they have.
by verytrivial - Why not start with a brownout? Make the data temporarily inaccessible, but don’t actually delete it immediately.by rectang
- Satya has to go. It feels he is there to keep costs low, not to do things correctly.
One of the first moves was to get rid of QA
by rvba - I abandoned Microsoft Outlook Express many years ago after discovering that it kept the files in hidden directories, and were in some scrambled, undocumented format. There was no backup mechanism for it.
I replaced it with Thunderbird Mail.
by WalterBright - Good news! New outlook stores each email in a separate tarball of html. Bad news for your hard drive thoughby fingerlocks
- I'm a tenant admin for a non profit. Just looked and I have 8 emails to two different addresses warning me about the transition.
None were caught in the Microsoft or Fastmail spam filters.
by NordSteve - That's good, but this article explicitly covers this with multiple people citing not receiving any contact.by danpalmer
- Cloud is nice if it works. Web hosting is nice if you pay for it.
In history timeline, future archaeologists will probably see almost nothing, some books… as we are used to past centuries. But clouds, servers… gone.
BTW don’t use SSD for archiving.
by sixtyj - As a society we actually generate a lots of books. Future generations wouldn’t be missing too much without the internet I think. Also, not everything is worth preserving. Easily 90% of Reddit is complete garbageby dgellow
- Never keep your data and your backups in the same place. That’s true for in-office servers, data-centres and cloud. If you must use cloud, use two different providers for your own services and backups.
Also, have a disaster recovery plan ready, and exercise it regularly.
by rbanffy - According to https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/commerce/sub... the data should not be deleted for 90 days after license expiration - what am I missing?by valicord
- The massive disconnect between “should” and “how the systems really work” that even people at Microsoft don’t know.by brookst
- > This article applies to all Microsoft 365 for business subscriptions
I suspect the nonprofit arrangement is not an example of a "Microsoft 365 for business subscription"
Although the old nonprofit FAQ calls it, "the Microsoft 365 Business Premium nonprofit offer" https://web.archive.org/web/20260223193546/https://www.micro...
by lelandfe - This is wrong on so many levels. First of all, IT admins receive weekly e-mails from AWS, Google and MS that a certain service will shut down and that it will affect operations. In 90% of the cases, these e-mails are sent to all customers instead of only the affected customers, so admins get alarm fatigue.
Secondly, instead of doing a rug pull, what's wrong with a 2-month brownout period? Only allow the admin to login, put OneDrive in read-only mode. That will alert all users clearly.
Thirdly instead of fending of the questions from slate.com with Orwellian corporate speak, they should acknowledge their mistake and spend a couple of weeks of the highly paid engineers to see whether they can recover the data. Why is it always so hard for MS to say "Sorry, we made a mistake".
by iamniels - The worst thing you can be in America is wrong. Our entire public society is built around, not admitting guilt or wrongdoing in any way shape or form.by conception
- > Why is it always so hard for MS to say "Sorry, we made a mistake".
Seems like no corpos ever want to say that. Surely it’s not because of some pride or PR? I’m guessing such an admission might also sometimes have legal risks?
by KronisLV - Yep, this is the sort of thing happens when you've deeply internalized that trustworthiness and continuity is not important. Microsoft today is not a serious company, it is not run by serious people, and it is at the forefront of a deeply unserious industry.
- Microsoft is serious because the world is full of people with needs who do not know better and Microsoft is still the default to serve those needs.
Something does not have to be useful, benign, consistent, worthwhile, or deserving to exist in order to be serious.
For example: Losing an arm and an eye to a fireworks accident, being grievously assaulted in an alley, or having Microsoft arbitrarily delete all your data, are all very serious things. So, I think it is fair to say Microsoft can still be called serious.
by lynndotpy - It's what happens when you don't have a backup strategy. Even paper works as a backup.by WalterBright
- As long as the legal department is very serious, that might work rather well.by Gys
- What does "serious" mean in this context?by petcat
- Even most non-serious companies generally tend to follow their own statements regarding product license duration which is a very fundamental thing.
"He renewed Canopy’s yearly license last October, and Microsoft had emailed him to confirm he would retain access until Oct. 4, 2026"
Someone decided to pull the plug anyways.
by lenkite - by yieldcrv