Joel Bennett

I ❤️ OpenSource, Scripting, PowerShell, Python, dotnet, VSCode. I'm a Principal DevOps Engineer, and a 14x Microsoft MVP for PowerShell.

I also care about fairness and justice, which has combined with my career to lead to my interest in open source, open culture, encryption and federation.

Call me he/him, and think of me as a Luke 18:27 believer: a Jesus follower who cares about social justice, urban renewal, and open culture.

Github: https://github.com/jaykul
HuddledMasses: https://huddledmasses.org

Public Key

npub18dqdtq38873745nxtqa2z54d6pfagzhespenkvqcwqsmyrlyp9rsqy9qnp

NIP-05 Address

jaykul_at_fosstodon.org@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsrksx4sgnnlgl26fn9sw4p22kaq575ptucquemxqv8qgdjpljqj3ca7kxr8

Author Public Key

npub18dqdtq38873745nxtqa2z54d6pfagzhespenkvqcwqsmyrlyp9rsqy9qnp

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Last Notes

2024-08-18 00:45:47

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Set the Wallpaper using SystemParametersInfo
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winuser/nf-winuser-systemparametersinfoa
In #PowerShell just:
Add-Type -Namespace "" -Name Desktop -MemberDefinition @"
[DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto, EntryPoint="SystemParametersInfo")]
public static extern bool SetWallpaper(int uAction = 20, int uParam = 0, string Path="Wallpaper.jpg", int fuWinIni=3);
"@
Change the image with:
[Desktop]::SetWallpaper(20,0,(Convert-Path "MyPIcture.jpg"))
Without parameters, it reverts to Wallpaper.jpg

2024-06-19 04:29:49

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For sure -- and it's a hard area for people to get their heads around: if Copilot or ChatGPT can write computer code, it must be "smart" right?
Most people don't have any basis for understanding what an LLM is, so they have no understanding of their limitations. For instance, we all assume computers know what time and day it is, have access to maps, and can do math...

2024-06-18 01:09:13

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cool 😉I am not terribly picky (and in the old days, always wrote them exactly the way you did there).
I have been particularly sensitive to it lately because I've been trying (on and off for years) to get some of case correction into the auto-formatter in PSScriptAnalyzer
https://github.com/PowerShell/PSScriptAnalyzer/pull/1704/

2024-06-18 00:54:01

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short answer: your tutorials are not obsolete.
You actually *know* things (unlike ChatGPT, which has merely read a lot), and additionally, you have self-doubt.
As long as you have enough self-doubt that you actually test the instruction you're giving other people, you're years ahead of what "AI" can do.
Besides, how will the AI learn to use Tasker, if you don't write it tutorials? 😉

2024-06-16 18:38:15

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I don't know, the red team at work managed to make CrowdStrike isolate one of our database servers and take down half the QA environment.
That was ... tangible 😉

2024-06-11 22:36:05

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People love to hate on any process used to control, direct, or measure their work. 😉
Lately, it seems everyone talking about agile software development is engaging in wishful thinking, rather than speaking from experience.
I, for one, have only come _close_ to agile in the small-scale (i.e. individual teams being agile, not entire organizations) and that, at companies that followed scrum "by default" but gave their teams flexibility to define their own process.

2024-06-11 20:23:39

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Have you ever wondered why?
I mean, why does a Word processor, of all things, have lorem ipsum? I understand having that functionality in design tools, but who's putting place-holder text in a Word document?

2024-06-11 20:17:37

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Why do you capitalize the block names (BEGIN, PROCESS, END, CLEAN) in your code?
You have all other keywords fully lowercase, but even though you are consistently using "clean" when you write *about* it, you use "CLEAN" when you write it...
#PowerShell #BestPractices #Syntax

2024-06-04 06:04:05

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There is a samples repo, with an example resource written in go, and some examples of how to run that resource by hand without the dsc executable...
https://github.com/PowerShell/DSC-Samples

2024-06-04 00:30:50

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yep, totally agree.
It's basically a tool / spec for writing "resources" that consume and emit json/yaml, and wrapping sets of these configurations into a bigger configuration.
Reminds me a lot of kubernetes CRDs 😉
Despite the pre-release nature, there are (some) docs https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/dsc/overview?view=dsc-3.0
And several of these sort of presentations:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpKXIAjVccs

2024-06-03 15:40:05

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It's not a question of fashion. Configuration management is still necessary -- as long as we have physical VMs (and that includes the ones that host Kubernetes).
How about a cross-platform Desired State Configuration agent written in Rust?
There's no central server, and in fact, there's no sync of config at all yet, so it's still very early.
https://github.com/PowerShell/DSC

2024-06-02 02:43:11

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I'm not really there, but DragonRuby, I guess. Maybe Smaug, or Gosu...

2024-05-28 15:38:18

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I guess it depends what you value. Power Automate Desktop is Microsoft's closest offering.
Most other offerings are not like shortcuts, but are scripting tools like AutoHotKey and PowerShell. You can do nearly anything with them, but the learning curve is much steeper.
E.g. Radial Menu:
https://www.autohotkey.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=12078

2024-05-26 17:46:37

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Honestly, given that the help "description" of Test-Path says:
The `Test-Path` cmdlet determines whether all elements of the path exist.
I think the current behavior _is_ a bug, and it SHOULD be doing what @npub1emr…xc68 and you expected: testing each element of the path, not just the final location.

2024-05-25 22:06:49

Here's the talk I gave at the PowerShell and #DevOps Summit:
GitOps: Beyond Patterns and Principles
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AqoIpaGRqog&list=PLfeA8kIs7CoftSa3hQ9dQseIxdSMBZO_z&index=46
#GitOps #PSHSummit
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/112/504/000/203/626/180/original/939d470277ee5fda.jpg

2024-05-25 17:24:31

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You CAN get updates to .NET through WSUS or "Microsoft Updates" (just not through "Automatic Updates").
You have to opt in, and obviously it only works on Windows.
Separately, since PowerShell 7.2, it can also be updated that way, including it's embedded dotnet.
You have to opt in separately, and it still only works on Windows.
Additionally, it won't upgrade from an LTS to non-LTS major version, so you'll get stuck on the LTS release.
Az Cli has a built-in "upgrade" command.

2024-05-25 16:57:54

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I know bash acts that way, but I don't understand why.
If you want to be sure that your _grandparent_ contains ABC/123 then you can test ../../ABC/123
Adding the ../.. on the end serves no purpose. Obviously the parent of ANY folder exists.
I would prefer if putting ".." on the RIGHT END of a path caused a warning or error. The only reason you would construct a path like that is you're dealing with user inputs, and these particular inputs are probably dangerous.

2024-05-25 06:00:12

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If people don't upgrade (and uninstall old versions of) their CLI tools, it doesn't make much difference if it's an old Python or an old PowerShell (with the ENTIRE dotnet framework).

2024-05-25 05:57:02

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because the path has to be _resolved_ to a real location in order to test whether it exists, which means normalizing it. You didn't ask if "ABC\123" exist ...
`Resolve-Path ..\..`
`Resolve-Path ..\..\a\..\`
`Resolve-Path ..\..\a\b\..\..\`
`Resolve-Path ..\..\a\b\c\..\..\..\`
Those are all the same place.

2024-05-24 20:44:32

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That's hysterical
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/112/498/010/042/359/957/original/b424b8b5f4820247.png

2024-05-24 19:10:18

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PowerShell is the best. But I don't think everyone appreciates any shell 😉 that's why there's are so many.
In an era of cross-everything compatibility (I don't know who needs to hear this but):
Native PowerShell is a powerful, but least compatible way.
If you write a PowerShell module, it literally only works in PowerShell. If ANY of your users don't already use PowerShell, they'll want something else...

2024-05-24 17:29:05

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what's that got to do with anything? It's not like you can't use native command-line apps in #PowerShell.

2024-05-24 17:26:42

Is it just me, or are the #git commit messages from #GitHub #Copilot extraordinarily bad?
They probably didn't specifically train the #AI against commit messages, and #OpenAI #LLMs are pretty terrible at short answers, but I don't think I've used a suggestion for a commit message _even once_.