As part of my effort to streamline recreation of my daily driver Windows box, I've been looking at posts from various Developers using Windows 10, detailing their environment configuration. They generally have pretty extensive application / package dependencies so it seemed like a good source of tips and strategies.

I stumbled across mentions of Scoop and AppGet. I'd heard of Scoop, it was on my radar, but AppGet, I've no knowledge of. It uses YAML for manifests (which are open source and stored in GitHub). Seems to be a decent (and current) list of Packages.

I do use Chocolatey on my PC and for helping patch the Windows PCs at work, but it's not been super smooth sailing.

Anyone spent any time using AppGet?

Update - Developer manifesto AppGet, What Chocolatey wasn’t

I backed this.... I mean, the logo itself is a winner 😁 . I’m almost as excited to be getting a shirt as a fantastic modern hypervisor platform to move forward with!

JumpCloud Free version now has the System Insights feature included

" A core philosophy at JumpCloud has always been to provide tremendous functionality to customers, including free accounts with up to 10 users and systems. It’s critical that IT admins can fully deploy and use our platform without restrictions, especially during times when managing a remote workforce is necessary.

To support this, we've made our new premium feature System Insights available to use for all JumpCloud free accounts like yours. System Insights provides critical visibility into OS configurations and security settings on JumpCloud-managed systems. We hope that you’ll use and enjoy this new and exciting feature to:

• Remotely collect data on OS version, patches, kernel info, and app versions in order to find recently reported security vulnerabilities and take appropriate action
• Track the applications end users are installing on systems to find out-of-date software and licenses
• Troubleshoot user issues and mitigate them with easy access to system data such as uptime, network interfaces, shared resources, hardware, and more
• Gather deep insights from 64bit Mac, Windows, and Linux operating systems "

Currently loving playing old ColecoVision carts via my recently arrived CollectorVision Phoenix Video Game System™ (FPGA Console).

I've given up playing "fix-the-bad-ram/component-and-lifting-traces-with-barely-enough-technical-skill" game on the real Coleco hardware, not to mention keeping CRTs alive so I can try and use the end result.

@StuartJordan I kinda like the netplan approach (ducks for cover)

@scottalanmiller @CCWTech - chiming in late... I inquired a couple of years back (a few perhaps :thinking_face: ). They were just "Storware" then. From vague memory it was expensive and didn't inspire confidence. I ended up staying on Windows Server, utilising Hyper-V and Veeam.

Would be really interesting to see if they reinvigorate efforts for this product, at a realistic price (cough significantMLdiscountsforeveryone cough). Looks like they could use some marketing and increased product awareness out into the tech community.

@scottalanmiller no updates required either, turn it on, it's ready :+1:

PowerToys updated recently, v 0.16.0 - looks like it's already in Chocolatey (public)

Noticed it here -> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-updates-windows-10-powertoys-with-new-utilities/

github link -> https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/releases/tag/v0.16.0

Has a "Bulk image resizer", SVG preview pane add-in etc

What caught my eye was "Window walker" (alt tab replacement) ..... anyone used it?

Seriously - this is fantastic stuff !!

experiencing the joy of multi-part Google Takeout for the remains of my Google Play Music collection

@AdminEvo I've found the JumpCloud docs (previously - not sure at the moment of this post, same for Synology docs) to be confusing on this front. I had issues with Synology services and JumpCloud LDAP. Turns out you need to bind every user individually (whom you wish to access things via JumpCloud LDAP). I had incorrectly assumed that I could propagate LDAP via enabling the JumpCloud LDAP option for desired JumpCloud User Groups. I would only get listings of users, but no individual logins worked - corrected via manually enabling bind on each user.

Note - ignore the password expired, it's a test account.

I use a Synology NAS with NFS for manual backups from Proxmox. Works pretty well.

spent some time last night on this (I'm terrible, but its addictive)

experiencing the joy of multi-part Google Takeout for the remains of my Google Play Music collection

@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@warren-stanley said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@scottalanmiller it's pretty scary that GovOzle™ (I should trademark this now!) has even been tabled

It really is. But it's kind of matching the impression that the news here gives us of Australia. Most of the news is pretty scary stuff - offshore concentration camps and five eyes stuff. I'm sure we get a skewed view, but the way Australia is presented here, this is the least scary thing that they are doing.

There's definitely have some major issues going on and I've no doubt there is skewing in the media (after all, boring news doesn't get views). I'm not certain the broader issues are unique to Australia, which is also alarming.

-- apologies for taking this off the tech topic a little

@scottalanmiller it's pretty scary that GovOzle™ (I should trademark this now!) has even been tabled

@NashBrydges I'm also watching this space a little more closely. Not that we need "Enterprise" level NAS but I have some ageing Synology 4 bay units that should really have a succession plan. The convenience is nice and they've been reliable (some Syno-isms), but I've provided clean, consistent power, regularly removed dust (ESD precautions taken), upgraded RAM* and HDDs** etc

* RAM - So far I've avoided needing to pay the inflated price and limited availability for the vendor's labeled RAM
** HDD upgrades are meant to be a no-brainer in these devices..... but I do wonder if pushing the proprietary drive concept into the top end, might have some trickle down before too long. the RAID acronym might not be applicable for these products at that point

Just my 2c

@scottalanmiller the taxpayer only pays taxes, very little say on how they are spent :expressionless_face:

@warren-stanley said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

Greens float publicly owned search engine

The Greens are calling on the government to establish a publicly owned search engine if Google makes good on its threat to withdraw from Australia.

https://www.forbesadvocate.com.au/story/7110893/greens-float-publicly-owned-search-engine/?cs=9676

NOTE - "The Greens" are a political party in Australia

Greens float publicly owned search engine

The Greens are calling on the government to establish a publicly owned search engine if Google makes good on its threat to withdraw from Australia.

https://www.forbesadvocate.com.au/story/7110893/greens-float-publicly-owned-search-engine/?cs=9676