The lonely tech post thread.

[UnderOpenSky]

I'm a bit leery of reconditioned electronic stuff.

That's a tight budget. I had a look on Amazon and couldn't actually see anything Windows based I'd recommend under £300. I think you'd need to spend more or get something with a bigger screen (or maybe consider another Chromebook)

 

[Chz]

Upgradeable ASUS VivoBook 16, Intel i5, 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD at £314.09 at Technoworld | hotukdeals

www.hotukdeals.com

£315 for a decent spec. Intel's had some issues with the 13th and 14th gen, so the 12th is actually a good buy being the same architecture but without the flaws of later revisions.

Edit: Ah, showing out of stock now. That's not surprising - it was a cracking deal.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

Fucks sake. I'm not exactly the best at PowerShell, but when I need to pull some information from a 365 control panel, I can normally google well enough or use AI to get me where I want.

I was asked for a report that Intune web front end can't produce, so assumed I'd be able to manage something, not realising what a rabbit hole it was leading me down. I ended up staying late at work, getting just enough to keep me going, but nowhere near what I need. Annoyed, I came home and started pissing round on my own tenancy, where I've full rights to everything. I was only vaguely aware of MS Graph before, but I now realise it's an absolute beast. I've got no idea why I've got to create applications in Entra and set API permissions to do this, and why I can't just download an Intune module like I can with something like Exchange. Anyway, I'm giving up as this is way too much for a simple report, but I'm annoyed as I've wasted hours on it. We might have to move to a shared tenancy soon, in which case learning more advanced M365 skills will be totally pointless.

 

[alex_]

Fucks sake. I'm not exactly the best at PowerShell, but when I need to pull some information from a 365 control panel, I can normally google well enough or use AI to get me where I want.

I was asked for a report that Intune web front end can't produce, so assumed I'd be able to manage something, not realising what a rabbit hole it was leading me down. I ended up staying late at work, getting just enough to keep me going, but nowhere near what I need. Annoyed, I came home and started pissing round on my own tenancy, where I've full rights to everything. I was only vaguely aware of MS Graph before, but I now realise it's an absolute beast. I've got no idea why I've got to create applications in Entra and set API permissions to do this, and why I can't just download an Intune module like I can with something like Exchange. Anyway, I'm giving up as this is way too much for a simple report, but I'm annoyed as I've wasted hours on it. We might have to move to a shared tenancy soon, in which case learning more advanced M365 skills will be totally pointless.

It’s because with entra everything is an api and permissioned separately, with exchange you are doing it from a process running as domain admin with all permissions already.

 

[Artaxerxes]

Fucks sake. I'm not exactly the best at PowerShell, but when I need to pull some information from a 365 control panel, I can normally google well enough or use AI to get me where I want.

I was asked for a report that Intune web front end can't produce, so assumed I'd be able to manage something, not realising what a rabbit hole it was leading me down. I ended up staying late at work, getting just enough to keep me going, but nowhere near what I need. Annoyed, I came home and started pissing round on my own tenancy, where I've full rights to everything. I was only vaguely aware of MS Graph before, but I now realise it's an absolute beast. I've got no idea why I've got to create applications in Entra and set API permissions to do this, and why I can't just download an Intune module like I can with something like Exchange. Anyway, I'm giving up as this is way too much for a simple report, but I'm annoyed as I've wasted hours on it. We might have to move to a shared tenancy soon, in which case learning more advanced M365 skills will be totally pointless.

Yeah Graph is an absolute ball ache compared to powershell, you have to actually know proper programming and manipulation for it.

 

[Chz]

.
Blimey. The good deals sell out fast.

 

[two sheds]

there was probably something wrong with it

 

[Chz]

Okay, not sub-£300 but with the code AFF4INSP it's down to £412. Not bad for the spec.

Dell Inspiron 16 Laptop with AMD Ryzen 5 | Dell UK

Shop the Dell Inspiron 16 laptop with AMD Ryzen™ 5, Windows 11, and FHD. Choose from 1TB or 512 GB SSD and 16 GB or 8GB RAM. View more 16-inch laptops at Dell.com

www.dell.com

 

[UnderOpenSky]

Okay, not sub-£300 but with the code AFF4INSP it's down to £412. Not bad for the spec.

Dell Inspiron 16 Laptop with AMD Ryzen 5 | Dell UK

Shop the Dell Inspiron 16 laptop with AMD Ryzen™ 5, Windows 11, and FHD. Choose from 1TB or 512 GB SSD and 16 GB or 8GB RAM. View more 16-inch laptops at Dell.com

www.dell.com

I mean thats a great price for the spec, but its the opposite of small. My work laptop is 16" and it's quite a step up size wise from the 14" machines I'm used to.

 

[Chz]

I forgot about small.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

Yeah Graph is an absolute ball ache compared to powershell, you have to actually know proper programming and manipulation for it.

Yeah Graph is an absolute ball ache compared to powershell, you have to actually know proper programming and manipulation for it.

Thank you, that makes some kind of sense. I hadn't actually appreciated just what a different beast Graph was. Couldn't Microsoft make some PowerShell modules for Intune or at least some premade applications in Entra for their own stuff? Like there are things for AWS, but not Intune?

 

[UnderOpenSky]

So I spent part of the day helping with a SOP for techs to helps users deploy these. Well those who refuse to use their phone for even an SMS.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Unpatchable-Yubico-two-factor-authentication-key-vulnerability-breaks-the-security-of-most-Yubikey-5-Security-Key-and-YubiHSM-2FA-devices.883661.0.html

But reading the details I think we're safe from that healthcare assistants email being hacked.

I've been moaning I'm not able to use mine for MFA on the servers...

 

[two sheds]

Did we have a question on how to stop Excel auto converting cells into dates?

https://www.science.org/content/article/one-five-genetics-papers-contains-errors-thanks-microsoft-excel

Autoformatting in Microsoft Excel has caused many a headache—but now, a new study shows that one in five genetics papers in top scientific journals contains errors from the program, The Washington Post reports. The errors often arose when gene names in a spreadsheet were automatically changed to calendar dates or numerical values. For example, one gene called Septin-2 is commonly shortened to SEPT2, but is changed to 2-SEP and stored as the date 2 September 2016 by Excel. The researchers, who published their analysis in Genome Biology, say the issue can be fixed by formatting Excel columns as text and remaining vigilant—or switching to Google Sheets, where gene names are stored exactly as they're entered.

 

[2hats]

Ill-advised use of Excel for "data analysis" has been manufacturing bad (junk) science in biomedicine, socioeconomic health-related studies for years. (Answer: Use a proper data analysis package).

 

[Artaxerxes]

Did we have a question on how to stop Excel auto converting cells into dates?

https://www.science.org/content/article/one-five-genetics-papers-contains-errors-thanks-microsoft-excel

 

[two sheds]

Ill-advised use of Excel for "data analysis" has been manufacturing bad (junk) science in biomedicine, socioeconomic health-related studies for years. (Answer: Use a proper data analysis package).

On the other hand, it's actually very good at simple analysis of time-series data for the process behaviour charts described by Shewhart and Deming, which are unfortunately much neglected outside production environments.

 

[2hats]

Trivial in (eg) Python or R.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

View attachment 442790

It's a classic

 

[Artaxerxes]

What I always love is importing a csv from the admin centre and it converts half the dates properly and half it just leaves in a weird state where it’s clearly a date but not recognised or formatted by excel as a date despite looking exactly the same as the other dates

 

[two sheds]

Trivial in (eg) Python or R.

quite possibly, I know neither of these things, but also in Excel