That’s true, but how often have you heard a finance team member wanting a CSV file so they can more easily process the data using Pandas or visualize it with MatPlotLib? How many accountants or finance people (especially those that ask for everything in Excel) do you know that is comfortable writing even a single line of Python code? How many of the finance team’s Excel-based tools will Python integrate well with? What feature(s) does Python within Excel provide that Excel (formulas, pivot tables, VBA, Power Query, Power Pivot, etc.) does not provide that someone on the finance team would need? What advanced charting/dashboarding functionality does Python in Excel provide that isn’t better accomplished in PowerBI (if not handled by standard Excel charts/graphs)?

Don’t get me wrong - Microsoft’s implementation of Python in Excel has its merits and will solve some problems that otherwise would not be possible in Excel and will make some people happy. However, this is not the solution most people were expecting, asking for, or find useful.

I agree with everything you said, but (in Microsoft’s eyes) this is a feature - not a bug.

Without this cloud component, how could:

• Microsoft make sure that the accounting team does not introduce a malicious/old Python library into the Excel file?
• Microsoft protect its users from writing/running inefficient, buggy, or malicious Python code?
• Microsoft provide a Python runtime to users who do not know how to install Python?
• Microsoft charge to run code that you wrote in a free, open source software programming language on a device that you own?

Over a year later and I still do not understand what the use case for this is.

A lot of the examples/documentation that was made by Microsoft for this seems to focus on data analysis and data visualization. Anyone in those fields would probably prefer to get the data out of Excel and into their tool/pipeline of choice instead of running their Python code in Excel. That also makes the big assumption that the data being used is fully contained within the Excel file and that the libraries used within the code are avalaible in Excel (including the library version).

For anyone looking to learn/use Excel better, I doubt the best use of their time is learning a new programming language and how Excel implements that programming language. They would likely be better off learning Excel’s formulas, pivot tables, charts, etc. They could even learn Power Query to take things to another level.

For anyone looking to learn Python, this is absolutely a terrible way to do so. For example, it abstracts away library maintenance, could provide modified error messages, and makes the developer feedback loop more complicated.

If you want to automate Excel then this realistically allows for very little new functionality that did not exist prior to this feature. Using other Python libraries like OpenPyxl and xlWings will still be required to automate Excel.

I am sure there are edge cases where this iteration of Python in Excel is perfect. However, this feels like a checkbox filler (“yeah, Excel supports Python now”) than an implementation of an actual useful feature. A fully featured and supported Python library that manipulates Excel/Excel files would have been a much more exciting and useful feature - even if it had to be executed outside of Excel, like OpenPyxl.

This is awesome! I wonder how it will compare to the competition when it’s generally available.

Does anyone have any information about the other offerings mentioned in the blog post?

In the future, we intend for Appointment to be part of a wider suite of helpful products enhancing the core Thunderbird experience. Our ambition is to provide you with not only a first-rate email application but a hub of productivity tools to make your days more efficient and stress-free.

The improvements sound great.

I did not look through the details, but it’s strange that one of the features is that Cloudflare R2 will be used to improve download speeds and reduce API calls to Github while at the same time adding a new requirement of adding a personal Github API token.

Hopefully one day the Github requirement will be removed. It would be nice if projects/code stored on Gitlab, Codeberg, or other Git services like Gitea or Forgejo could be used without having to mirror/fork the project onto Github.

Ultra-wideband

In addition to other use cases, it is used to precisely identify where a device is in relation to another one.

I think there may be an issue where F-Droid is not properly recognizing the 64-bit version of Findroid. Maybe Droid-ify and/or the version of Android you are using won’t allow 32-bit apps to be installed.

Just to clarify - this is just an update that (I believe) is only available on IzzyOnDroid’s F-Droid Repo, which previously had prior Findroid versions available. This new v0.15.0 is not available on the main F-Droid Repo.

Is anyone only able to download the 32-bit version of this app via F-Droid? It looks like a 64-bit version has been made available starting with v0.3.0 and is also available on this new version.

I did not know about autolinks - thanks for the link!

It is interesting how different parsers handle this exact situation. I usually am cautious about it because I typically am not sure how it will be handled if I am not explicit with the URL and additional text.

I’m curious about this. The source text of your comment appears that your comment was just the URL with no markdown. For your comment about a markdown parsing bug to be true, shouldn’t the URL have been written in markdown with []() notation (or a space between the URL and the period) since a period is a valid URL character? For example, instead of typing https://google.github.io/styleguide/cppguide.html., should [https://google.github.io/styleguide/cppguide.html.](https://google.github.io/styleguide/cppguide.html) have been typed?

Yes, I am using PersistentVolumes. I have played around with different tools that have backup/snapshot abilities, but I haven’t seen a way to integrate that functionality with a CD tool. I’m sure if I spent enough time working through things, I may be able to put together something that allows the CD tool to take a snapshot. However, I think that having it handle rollbacks would be a bit too much for me to handle without assistance.

Thanks for the reply! I am currently looking to do this for a Kubernetes cluster running various services to more reliably (and frequently) perform upgrades with automated rollbacks when necessary. At some point in the future, it may include services I am developing, but at the moment that is not the intended use case.

I am not currently familiar enough with the CI/CD pipeline (currently Renovatebot and ArgoCD) to reliably accomplish automated rollbacks, but I believe I can get everything working with the exception of rolling back a data backup (especially for upgrades that contain backwards incompatible database changes). In terms of storage, I am open to using various selfhosted services/platforms even if it means drastically changing the setup (eg - moving from TrueNAS to Longhorn, moving from Ceph to Proxmox, etc.) if it means I can accomplish this without a noticeable performance degradation to any of the services.

I understand that it can be challenging (or maybe impossible) to reliably generate backups while the services are running. I also understand that the best way to do this for databases would be to stop the service and perform a database dump. However, I’m not too concerned with losing <10 seconds of data (or however long the backup jobs take) if the backups can be performed in a way that does not result in corrupted data. Realistically, the most common use cases for the rollbacks would be invalid Kubernetes resources/application configuration as a result of the upgrade or the removal/change of a feature that I depend on.

There are several proprietary options (many/most of which you cannot host). Looking for Amazon Wishlist alternatives should help in putting together a list of potential options. Some additional projects which are open source and selfhostable that you could also start with include:

• Christmas-Community
• Gifthunter
• Listidge
• Listslist
• PHP Gift Registry
• Pønskelisten
• Wishlist App

Everything I mentioned works for LAN services as long as you have a domain name. You shouldn’t even need to point the domain name to any IP addresses to get it working. As long as you use a domain registrar that respects your privacy appropriately, you should be able to set things up with a good amount of privacy.

Yes, you can do wildcard certificates through Let’s Encrypt. If you use one of the reverse proxies I mentioned, the reverse proxy will create the wildcard certificates and maintain them for you. However, you will likely need to use a DNS challenge. Doing so isn’t necessarily difficult. You will likely need to generate an API key or something similar at the domain registrar or DNS service you’re using. The process will likely vary depending on what DNS service/company you are using.

Congrats on getting everything working - it looks great!

One piece of (unprovoked, potentially unwanted) advice is to setup SSL. I know you’re running your services behind Wireguard so there isn’t too much of a security concern running your services on HTTP. However, as the number of your services or users (family, friends, etc.) increases, you’re more likely to run into issues with services not running on HTTPS.

The creation and renewal of SSL certificates can be done for free (assuming you have a domain name already) and automatically with certain reverse proxy services like NGINXProxyManager or Traefik, which can both be run in Docker. If you set everything up with a wildcard certificate via DNS challenge, you can still keep the services you run hidden from people scanning DNS records on your domain (ie people won’t know that an SSL certificate was issued for immich.your.domain). How you set up the DNS challenge will vary by the DNS provider and reverse proxy service, but the only additional thing that you will likely need to set up a wildcard challenge, regardless of which services you use, is an email address (again, assuming you have a domain name).

Raspberry Pi + PiHole + PiVPN = Network Gateway Drug

Although, PiVPN is winding down so you might want to find something different instead. Setting up a regular Wireguard VPN isn’t so bad, but it may be simpler to setup a Tailscale Tailnet.

https://github.com/owntracks/android

The F-Droid version (which is available on IzzyOnDroid’s repo) utilizes OSM. You’ll need a server to sync the data to though and it likely does not have all of the features that Life360 has.

Calls made from speakers and Smart Displays will not show up with a caller ID unless you’re using Duo.

Is it possible to use Duo still? Google knows it discontinued/merged Duo with Google Meet nearly 18 months ago, right?

I think that @theomegabit@infosec.exchange is asking for Proton to become an OAuth/OIDC provider. This would allow you to sign into any service, app, platform, etc. that supports it using your Proton account. Some common providers that are widely supported are Google, Apple, Github, Facebook, and Microsoft.

It is generally considered more secure than using “regular credentials” like username/email and password when using several services. There are a few downsides to this though. One of those downsides is that your OAuth/OIDC provider will have record of all your accounts used through OAuth/OIDC. For example, @theomegabit@infosec.exchange would like to avoid Google knowing about the various services used.

I’m still not sure what point you are trying to make. Your initial claim was:

Although Mozilla encrypts the synced data, the necessary account data is shared and used by Google to track those.

@utopiah@lemmy.ml asked:

Are you saying Firefox shares data to Alphabet beyond Google as the default search engine? If so and if it applies to Sync (as if the question from OP here) can you please share sources for that?

You stated:

Mozilla does, sharing your account data

You also provided evidence that Mozilla uses Google Analytics trackers on the Firefox’s product information website. I mentioned that it’s not sufficient evidence of your claim as the trackers are independent of Firefox the browser and Sync. Additionally, the use of trackers for websites is clearly identified on Mozilla’s Privacy Policies and there is not much else mentioned on the Privacy Policies outside of those trackers and Google’s geolocation services in Firefox.

You’ve also mentioned Google’s contract with Mozilla, which is controversial for many people, but isn’t evidence of Mozilla providing user data to Google even in conjunction with the previously mentioned trackers. You then discussed various other browsers, but I’m not sure how that is relevant to your initial claim.

While it seems we can both agree that Mozilla and it’s products are far from perfect, it is looking like your initial claim was baseless as you have yet to provide any evidence of your initial claim. Do you have any evidence through things like code reviews or packet inspections of Firefox or Sync that hints Mozilla is sharing additional information to Google? At this point, I would even accept a user(s) providing evidence of some weird behavior like the recent issue where google.com wouldn’t load in Firefox on Android if someone could find a way to connect the weird behavior to Mozilla sharing data with Google.