Souk's Notes - Unofficial Summaries

2023-11-20 · open the original ↗

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2023-11-16 · open the original ↗

• The new Radio Manager allows bulk access-point radio changes. UniFi Network 8.0.7, in Early Access at recording and subject to change, adds a left-menu page for filtering access points by band or MIMO class and setting values such as transmit power across many at once. The host is on the fence: he wants control in UniFi but fears MikroTik-style overload for new users.
• A Ports page summarizes every switch port network-wide. It shows each in-use port's connected device, PoE type and link speed, with filters. An Insights view breaks out per-port usage, packets and PoE; on his Pro 24 PoE switch it showed port 2 at 183 MB against port 4 at 1.7 MB, useful for finding where traffic flows.
• The host's favourite change is the new VLAN viewer. It stacks VLANs against switch ports and colour-codes native (untagged) and allowed tagged VLANs per port, with a simple native-VLAN and allow/block setting. He thinks it will help VLAN newcomers, but warns the blue, grey and green coding may be hard for colourblind users.
• UniFi Network now has a WireGuard VPN client. Before this the only VPN client was OpenVPN. A WireGuard config, such as from PiVPN or a provider like NordVPN or Private Internet Access, imports and sets itself up. Routing rules then send chosen traffic through it; his demo routes reddit.com over the tunnel.
• Smaller additions include SD-WAN site stats and richer client logs. Site Magic SD-WAN sites now show device and wired/wireless client counts per site; he has none set up to demonstrate. The system log's client tab now records connection time, data usage, SSID and access point, which he expects to help troubleshooting.

2023-11-14 · open the original ↗

• Nice technical people are the ones most often underpaid. The speaker tells technical people to know their worth and to use the channel's checklist to find a place that values their rare skill. They say the people who are really nice tend to get ripped off the most.
• Business partners should deal honestly with technical colleagues. The speaker asks business people not to exploit technical colleagues and to be upfront with them. Decisions should be ones those colleagues will still be glad about later, not just today. The clip cuts off mid-sentence as it warns what happens if a strong technical person leaves.

2023-11-13 · open the original ↗

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2023-11-12 · open the original ↗

• The free trial is for learning; pay-as-you-go is for long-term use. Giard says "Try Azure for free" at azure.com (which redirects to azure.microsoft.com) gives $200 of credit for many Azure services. When it runs out you either start paying or stop using Azure. You cannot keep creating free subscriptions: anyone who has already had one has to take pay-as-you-go, and that bills from the start.
• Sign-up needs a credit card even for the free option. Giard says the card isn't charged, but you may see a $1 verification charge that is later reversed. His own sign-up was pushed onto pay-as-you-go because the card had been used before. He turned down the optional technical support plan at $100 a month.
• A subscription's ID never changes, but its name can. The ID is unique and permanent. Giard renames the generic default to make it easier to find among many subscriptions. The portal said the rename was done, but that only meant the change had been submitted: the new name took about 10 minutes to show, even after refreshing.
• Separate subscriptions under one account can split the billing. Adding another doesn't ask for card details again. It lets you choose a different billing profile and invoice section. Giard's example is one subscription per department, each with its own resources and charged separately, which makes billing reports easier. He notes reporting can also do this.
• Cancelling a subscription asks for a reason and an auto-renew choice. Giard turns auto-renew off and confirms, and the cancellation finishes in a few seconds. He says a cancelled free subscription can't be replaced with another free one on the same email.

2023-11-12 · open the original ↗

• A private pilot certificate is the first step for any pilot. Shepherd, a software consultant, started training in January after waiting a decade since an introductory flight, and was due to take his checkride the week after recording; the certificate (he stresses it is not a "license") lets him fly solo, at night and with passengers. He says his training took about 11 months and around $20,000, against perhaps $12,000–15,000 over a couple of months for someone flying only the 40-hour minimum in good weather, and his advice to beginners is to book a local flight school's free introductory flight.
• A wing generates lift as one half of a Venturi. Shepherd explains that air over the wing's hump speeds up, leaving lower pressure above than below, and the difference pushes the plane up; he says that with enough speed, almost anything can be made to rise regardless of weight or shape.
• Flying is nothing like driving. Shepherd says a plane moves in three dimensions about three axes and asks the pilot to track about 30 things against a car's six to eight; on the ground you steer with your feet on the rudder pedals, and hands and feet stay busy with the yoke, throttle and fuel-air mixture of a piston engine.
• Instruments demand fast reading of delayed data. Shepherd says the altimeter works as a barometer and the attitude indicator, formerly the artificial horizon, shows the plane relative to the horizon; Garmin's glass cockpits now render these on dense screens, and the vertical speed reading lags six to eight seconds. He says flying takes a mix of courage and calm.
• Visual-flight rules and air traffic control govern when and where. Shepherd says a new private pilot flies VFR only, keeping set distances from clouds such as 500 feet below and 1,000 feet above, and his airport in a river bend often waits for morning fog to burn off. Controllers handle each stage of a flight, airspace below about 1,200 feet is generally uncontrolled class G, most US airports have no tower, and an emergency overrides every rule. Owning is costly: he says his trainer, a 1969 Cessna 172, still costs over $100,000, so most pilots rent, share or lease back.

2023-11-09 · open the original ↗

• Venmo transactions are public by default and should be made private. Anyone you have transacted with can view your other transactions. The fix is Me icon → gear → Privacy → default to Private, which covers future transactions only; also open Past Transactions and choose "Change All to Private".

2023-11-07 · open the original ↗

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2023-11-04 · open the original ↗

• Dev Drives bring the ReFS file system to ordinary Windows 11. Hanselman says they shipped in the Windows 11 "October moment" (13 October), needing version 22621 or later, and are created under Settings > developer features as either a VHD or a real partition; he carved a 51,200 MB (the minimum) D: partition out of unallocated space on the same physical disk as his NTFS C: drive.
• The big gain came from Defender's async scanning, not the file system. His first Meadow Project Lab samples build (about 20 projects) took 49.95 s on both drives; only after he turned on "Dev Drive protection" (scan threats asynchronously on trusted Dev Drives) did the Dev Drive run drop to about 28 s, which he credits to the antivirus change "more than … the file system".
• Small, CPU-bound builds gain modestly; disk-bound work gains more. With async on, his Hanselminutes podcast site built in about 2.37 s against 2.71 s on C: (about 12% faster) and dasBlog in about 3.74 s against 4.5 s (about 18%); he warns that a Dev Drive only helps disk-bound builds, and his 32-thread machine's compiles showed as CPU-bound in Task Manager.
• Package caches and temp folders belong on the Dev Drive, not tools. Following Microsoft's documentation, he pointed a user-level NUGET_PACKAGES environment variable at D:, after which dasBlog built in 4.44 s against 5.89 s on C: (about 25% faster); he notes the same applies to temp, npm, pip, cargo, Maven and C++ caches, and says he believes Dev Home and Visual Studio will automate this in future.
• He reports 10–50% speedups and calls the test informal. He says this is one take and "not a lab", claims block copies on ReFS can be 80–90% faster (asserted, not measured on screen), plans to move all his source to the Dev Drive, and asks viewers who do rigorous, repeatable benchmarking to publish their own results.

2023-11-02 · open the original ↗

• Word can sort a document by its headings, carrying body text along. The headings must use a built-in heading style. In Outline view (View, Outline) he collapses the document to level 1 with "Show Level", selects every heading (shift-click, or Ctrl+A), and clicks Sort. Sort is in the Paragraph section of the Home tab. He sorts by paragraphs, as text, in ascending order. Each heading's body text moves with it, as Print Layout shows afterwards. Giard says he only just learned of the feature after about 30 years of using Word, and does not know how long it has existed.
• The same sort works on one section or on lower-level headings. He adds level-2 subheadings, made by pressing Tab in Outline view, under one level-1 entry. He then selects only those and sorts them alphabetically, leaving the rest of the document in its order.

2023-10-30 · open the original ↗

• Microsoft partnership comes in several distinct business models. Swanson, a Microsoft Partner Technology Strategist focused on co-selling, lists independent software vendors (ISVs), managed service providers, distributors and resellers, system integrators and consultancies, hardware OEMs, and builders of Xbox games and Windows apps. All of them start by joining the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program (MCPP).
• Co-selling with Microsoft requires a published solution, not just membership. She says a partner must be in the program, hold a solution designation and have published a solution; it can then submit leads that are routed to Microsoft account teams, and Microsoft sends leads back. Microsoft's tech team helps get there through an architecture design session and then a "build with" plan; solutions are published through Partner Center to either Azure Marketplace (software that runs in Azure) or AppSource (consulting offers, modern work and business applications).
• Benefits grow in tiers as the partnership deepens. By her account, signing up gives Partner Center access. Partners then buy an action pack (software licences) and/or qualify for a solution designation, which comes with fees and gives advisory hours through technical pre-sales and deployment services. Partners that co-sell more can become managed partners, managed by geography or globally, and advanced specializations require an audit by a third party.
• Certifications belong to the employee, so partners must retain staff. Swanson says this is often misunderstood: an exam she passes stays with her if she changes jobs, and at the annual renewal a partner must show the certified people are still on staff to keep its designations. She has seen partners use bonuses, parties and time-limited non-competes, and says keeping employees is probably cheaper than hiring new ones.
• Partners underuse Microsoft's architects and pre-sales roadmap discussions. She says a roadmap conversation can reveal changes coming in about three months. In a hypothetical she says she made up, a partner building on the latest SQL could ship with an upcoming feature built in, instead of publishing the week before it lands. Her starting points are partner.microsoft.com ("Become a partner") and learn.microsoft.com for exam prep and Partner Center guidance.

2023-10-30 · open the original ↗

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2023-10-23 · open the original ↗

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2023-10-21 · open the original ↗

• A ZimaBoard takes 10 Gbps networking with almost no setup. The host plugged a 10-gig network card into the ZimaBoard's PCIe slot, where it was detected and configured automatically, linked it through a UniFi Switch Flex XG to his Windows PC and core switch, and measured more than 5 Gbps with the one-click OpenSpeedTest app from the CasaOS app store; the whole job took under 15 minutes.
• The 10-gig card runs hot in the ZimaBoard. The host measured the network card at up to 112°F during the test.

2023-10-20 · open the original ↗

• The host recommends the Gen 3 router only for some users. New Starlink customers should get it outright; existing users already running a Gen 2 with the Ethernet adapter into a third-party router, and RV, camping or temporary-event users, gain nothing; heavy home users with many devices, and those meshing several Starlink routers, may see better speed and range.
• Gen 3 is sold separately, with a per-customer purchase cap. It costs $199 and Starlink allows up to three; Starlink invited customers into a "limited launch" of the router by email on Tuesday, October 17th; one unit plugs into the dish and the other two serve as wired or wireless mesh repeaters. The host does not know whether Starlink is bundling Gen 3 with dishes yet, and assumes it will become standard.
• Starlink's wireless specs are a substantial step up from Gen 2. Per Starlink, it moves from Wi-Fi 5 to Wi-Fi 6, from 3x3 to 4x4 multi-user MIMO, and from 128 to 235 supported devices; the claimed range gain is hard to measure, though the host finds it plausible from the larger antenna. The environmental rating rises from IP54 to IP56, still indoor-only.
• Two built-in Ethernet ports are the host's biggest Gen 3 advantage. Gen 2 had no port and needed a separately sold accessory that was often out of stock or delayed; Gen 3's ports take wired devices or hand Starlink to a third-party router such as UniFi or Omada, ditching Starlink's Wi-Fi.
• The host advises hardwiring additional Gen 3 routers rather than meshing wirelessly. The two ports let two more routers be wired back (strictly access points, not mesh) up to about 100 m (328 ft) on Cat5e or Cat6. Gen 2 routers can mesh to a Gen 3 but stay Wi-Fi 5; Starlink's placement notes warn that more than three nodes can degrade mesh performance, and the host would move to more robust third-party access points beyond that.

2023-10-18 · open the original ↗

• Good leaders' first job is making people feel safe. Andrews draws on Stephen Porges's "neuroception", the sense of safety or danger, and Daniel Siegel's hand model of the brain: under threat we "flip our lid", and the midbrain takes over (fight or flight) or the hindbrain does (freeze and shutdown, dorsal vagal in polyvagal theory). His case is that cooperation and productivity come only from the prefrontal and cerebral cortex, so threats such as rolling layoffs hurt the work itself.
• His ten-dimension model gives ten interconnected leadership principles. The dimensions are safety, identity, messages, agency, positive social connection, environment, mission and purpose, body and brain, human needs, and strengths, and he says all are important and linked. His evidence is his own life: diagnosed autistic at 33, he had no friends until high school, and a strength in computers led him to the Philly .NET user group, speaking and the MVP award, and through them to community, purpose and income.
• Organizations should plan around capabilities rather than fixed roles. Andrews argues that junior/mid/senior developer ladders assume everyone moves toward big-picture work. A progression along detail work, or keeping a strong individual contributor out of management they don't want, would avoid the Peter principle.
• Leaders set the team's emotional tone through how they communicate. He holds up Fred Rogers's care over the messages children receive. A panicky or yelling boss unsettles staff's nervous systems, and "managers know, leaders listen and learn"; feedback framed as "a great start, here's how we can do it better" lands better than "do better". Giard adds that he wants fast feedback on mistakes, as in agile.
• Hiring for "culture fit" is inherently discriminatory. Andrews calls this view possibly controversial: culture fit looks for the workplace equivalent of genetic uniformity and is easily swayed by unconscious bias. A manager who says he can tell fit in 30 seconds is judging on gut instinct before the cortex engages, and he cites visual AI products that failed on black skin because the teams lacked diversity.

2023-10-16 · open the original ↗

• A remote RV park delivered good Wi-Fi from point-to-point-fed Aruba access points. At the Crater Lake RV park in Oregon, the service came from an omnidirectional antenna on a 30 ft pole, distributed to Aruba access points on light posts and purpose-built posts, many fed by Ubiquiti point-to-point links such as a NanoBeam with a switch in a box. The host measured above 100 Mbps all weekend, sometimes up to 300 Mbps up and down.

2023-10-16 · open the original ↗

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