ItsBob

It doesn't come as standard on Enterprise 11.

Source: I just installed Enterprise 11 on my desktop a week ago and I had to manually install Microsoft Store manually.

This is something I've been working on for about 6 months now.

I often come up with simple projects, lots of which go nowhere, and I thought it would be good if I could just host stuff quickly with no configuration and after some time in the shower, I came up with Nervespace.

Anyway, the wires are still hanging out and you can't create an account yet but you can try it for free by dropping your zipped .NET app on the homepage.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments.

Ta

Mick

I'm working on Fuseable [0] - Hosting .NET apps from a zip file.

Think of it like Tiiny host but for .NET

[0] - https://fuseable.net

Note: I'm still ironing out the kinks but it'll be ready for early access shortly.

I'm probably about to show my ignorance here (I'm not neck-deep in the AI space but I am a software architect...) but are they not just dedicated matrix multiplication engines (plus some other AI stuff)? So instead of asking the CPU to do the math, you have a dedicated area that does it instead... well, that's my understanding of it.

As to why, I think it's along the lines of this: the CPU does 100 things, one of those is AI acceleration. Let's take the AI acceleration and give it its own space instead so we can keep the power down a bit, add some specialization, and leave the CPU to do other stuff.

Again, I'm coming at this from a high-level as if explaining it to my ageing parents.

> I’ve never done it, but from watching friends do it, it was far too easy to deposit money, or borrow money on credit, and bet it frivolously.

A data point for you...

I was on a train earlier this year and I was standing behind someone out with their wife/girlfriend. He had his phone in his hand the whole time with a gambling app opened (the green one, PaddyPower maybe?). I couldn't read the screen exactly but there was a list of fixtures for football matches and a button next to each one. From memory, I think each button was odds for the game, e.g. 10:1 Luton win vs Exeter or something.

Anyway, the point is that (again, from memory) at least 8 times in the journey, he opened and closed the app and clicked on 10+ of these odds buttons, while in conversation with his girlfriend who had put her phone away at the start of the journey.

I vaguely recall him checking his balance at one point too.

Anyway, I thought I'd back up your story by telling one of mine where I watched someone place 50+ bets on a 30 min train journey! It's frighteningly easy (emphasis on "frightening")

Edit: This happened a while back and I remember telling this story to people at the time so the numbers may be off but they're in the ballpark!

It should still take the same ip as its reserved based on the mac address which won't change after a factory reset.

It reads exactly like that to me.

I have an HP Business Printer at home: A Laserjet M477fdw. It's brilliant and I've had it for years at this point. I also use non-HP toner. However, I have never connected it to the internet. Ever.

Since day one, I set a static IP and prevented internet access simply by removing the gateway IP (I've recently upgraded my router and blocked internet access entirely). I also use a driver from 2021.

I genuinely cannot see a need at all to connect it to the internet, let alone allow AI to have access to it.

It honestly reeks of middle-management scrabbling to find a reason to spend budget on AI! In fact, now that I think about it, this is as asinine as the Logitech subscription mouse![0]

[0] - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/07/logitech-has-an-idea...

Man, this could have been written just for me! :)

I'm so guilty of abandoning projects in the past before they're even remotely done. It's mainly due to losing interest in the subject itself rather than dealing with the bugs and legacy and bad code decisions as you get further along the journey.

I used to get bent out of shape about it and criticize myself for it but I came to realise that it meant I didn't really have enough interest in the thing I was building in the first place.

Case in point (and a bit of a shameless plug tbh) just this morning I finished, end-to-end my current project I've been working on for 4 months: a .NET hosting site like tiiny host where you drag your zipped .net project onto the page and it gets automatically hosted with a unique url and whatnot.

For the last month or so, I've been at the really fiddly stage where all the moving parts came together and they all had bugs that had to be fixed both independently and together with other bugs and finally it worked this morning (still to polish it though).

I usually don't get to that stage and have abandoned a great many things over the years but this project has captivated me from the start with only a minor loss in productivity (due to a health issue with a family member tbh).

I'm now at the fear stage the author mentions - will anyone want to use it? We'll soon find out!

The long and short is that I discovered that I abandoned things frequently in the past but I realise I just wasn't that into the ideas! I don't worry about it as much now.

But, great article :)

I've used this many times myself and it works great.

However, as I mentioned below, I read something recently that says local account options are being removed in an upcoming version (I can't find the article now).

I presume it means the binaries are being removed from the ISO so this may no longer work (except for Enterprise and LTSC I'd imagine).

I read recently somewhere that this has been removed in the latest (alpha?) build now... their intention is clear: this install belongs to Microsoft, not you!

Microsoft shenanigans is the reason I switched recently to a Chromebook (Acer 516 GE 16GB - bought for £400 on EBay) and with minor exceptions it's been really easy.

I am a .NET dev who needs to remote into work via Citrix. I work locally on my own .NET stuff in JetBrains Rider and I can do it on the Chromebook now.

It's not perfect but, damn, it's really close: After installing the Linux Dev Environment I have all the tools I need.

The only issue is that sometimes when I open Rider, the font sizing is off - sometimes it's small, other times it's large. But Ctrl + MouseWheel takes care of it. Once or twice I had to restart the linux VM (right click, Close Linux and it's done) but that's it.

Anyway, the point is that nowadays there is becoming less and less reason to stay on Windows and I think Microsoft knows this too, hence trying to lock you into their ecosystem as much as possible and trying to dangle things in front of you to keep your attention.

But who would have thought that for £400 I can run all my .NET stuff on a Chromebook. Not only that, I switched from a 14700K on Windows to a 1260p running ChromeOS and coding/compiling is just as fast. It's nuts.

Side-note: Windows peaked at 2000...

Thanks. Just getting rid of the showstopping bugs at the moment... as always, works great on my local dev machine :)

It'll be running on Hetzner in the background so I'm just working on getting all the moving parts synchronized (and writing the docs!) and it will be ready for early access.

Hopefully in a month or so.

A drag and drop hosting solution for .NET projects - Like tiiny.host but for .NET.

Should be ready for early adoption in a month or so.

It was one of those shower thoughts along the lines of "I wonder if it's possible to drag and drop host .net projects..." :)

I'm currently working on a .NET hosting solution where you zip your published .NET app and then drag the zip file onto the site and it's automatically hosted and a unique URL is created. Takes about 3 seconds once the zip file is uploaded.

Kind of like tiiny.host but for .NET... it's almost ready too :)

It was one of those "I wonder if this is possible" type of ideas I had in the shower and would you believe it... it bloody works :)

I agree: it won't happen overnight.

It will happen within a handful of years though. Too much potential for control to let it pass...

> It's worth noting that this is 100% about providing more information to vehicles rather than requiring vehicles to use the feature.

I'm calling it here and now: this absolutely will become mandatory in the nearish future. 100%.

Same as in Europe with the speed regulator thingy in the cars... advisory at first now mandatory in many places.

What about a partial vacuum?

Perhaps there is a hapy medium between air resistance and cushioning? Reducing the air by an amount might help.

Although, I'd be surprised if they hadn't thought of this already :)

I see it frequently myself: a parent in the supermarket pushing a child in a buggy/pram and the child is watching something on the phone... usually with high volume.

I used to get angry but I genuinely feel sorry for the child now: I suspect they will have zero attention span when they grow up and probably won't read books etc - There is no long-term upside to it.

I think that parents have the overwhelming bulk of the responsibility for what their kids have access to but as I've said to my parents in the past: "You're up against Nobel Prize winners who work for an organization with the goal of getting you addicted to <insert_app_here>".

When you have thousands of devs trying to break your will power, you're really gonna struggle.

Social media has passed me by (almost 50yo) and I have zero interest in it but I have no doubt that if I did start using it, their algorithms would break me down, no matter how strong willed I am.

Unfortunately, like all addictions, the solution is probably abstinence.

Exactly. If you want a great example of this, look no further than Jira!

I don't want it to look like I'm picking on you here (see my other comment above) but that's a naieve take on things.

Not sure you realise but in the corporate world it's about politics and money. People (above entry-level staff) do things to look good to their boss. That's it! And saving money is a great way of getting promoted: "Look boss, I just saved us $500k a year in license fees!".

Saving $X per year using a "free" tool from Microsoft will always trump anything you pay for especially if you are all in on Azure, O365 already. It's a no-brainer.

Not only that, once the decision is made, it will likely never be changed until the higher-up that made the decision moves on, quits, or is fired, no matter how wrong or bad the decision was (well, within reason, of course!)

I'd love it to be as simple as making a good case for the competition, and I've had to make that case many times over the years, but the reality is that a bundled product from Microsoft will win in a place that uses other Microsoft stuff, vs a paid product thats 100x better, faster, stronger, whatever.

> it means that the value that people got from your app, was not enough to fight a free product

The problem you have is that the people making the finance decisions are often far-removed from the ones making value-based decisions.

The ones making the decision from a finance-perspective look at the offering from Microsoft, realise that it does video and chat for free (well, they're paying for O365 anyway) and that's it.

They don't care (or know!) that it's a resource hog, buggy etc. The value from the OP's product would not even be a consideration even if it was 100x "better" (use your own definition of "better" here!)

So I think it's unfair to use that comparison in this case

I second this but with a tiny addition: for software, I have a 4th column called "Bugs" and any time I come across a bug, I chuck it in there and get round to it eventually.

Quite possibly my favourite game growing up (especially Tribes 2!)

In fact, I downloaded Tribes 2 a while back and was playing against bots just a few months ago.

The game is dated but it was still fun... in fact, I've often thought of trying to remake it in Unity or something!

Maybe one day.

> I'm not sure there is a solution to this problem, unless we accept to lose a lot of features in our products and switch to E2E services.

I'm not so sure.

Based on the figures I could find for 2021, Google's ad revenue was about $60B with approx 3B users (I asked various chat bots...).

So, if you extrapolated and did some slightly dodgy maths (there were other factors but I can't be arsed typing them) it would cost about $6-$7 per month per user if Google stopped all ads, and by extension, tracking & data mining - This is for Google to maintain their current figures.

Take these figures with a big pinch of salt though...

That $ figure is across the whole of Google. So that is for every single product they have but if you just use Gmail then it might only be $2 a month.

So, if Google wanted to make the same money without tracking, ads etc, they could but the temptation to sell your data and mine it would be strong!

Anyway, my point is that it's possible to do it but would people pay for it? I pay for my email with Fastmail so there is a single data point for you :)

Could they use the high-res orbiter photos, and the lower-but-still-really-good ground-based photos and use some sort of AI algo to enhance the ground-based ones?

The idea being that they have high-res reference photos that are a one-shot deal but can take regular earth-based ones auto-enhance them from now on.

It could then show changes over time in high res?

I'm showing my limitations here, obviously, but I know what I mean... it makes sense in my head :)

I agree with your assessment of fuel prices and whatnot but I just checked Autotrader. I set 11k as the price, SUV body type and there are 63 electric cars to choose from. Over 40 are MG...

If I change it to Diesel I get over 11k cars available. 171 Santa Fe models.

The range on those MG's is about 180 miles too: 3 times this year I've driven to Aberdeen - I'd run out of juice on the way in the EV. I get just over 400 in my diesel.

The energy density of batteries isn't comparable to ICE cars.

An 11k EV is not a patch on a 11k diesel.

> There are a million EVs already out there yet I’m the only one on my street of 100 houses with one

You have a driveway (I assume) so you can make use of it but would you still buy one if you had a flat?

Still can't overcome the fact that (compared to ice cars and spec being somewhat equal) EV's are way more expensive to buy, more expensive to insure [0], more expensive to repair [0] (especially after a bump/crash), have less resale value than ICE cars, burn forever if set on fire.

ICE cars are not going away any time soon and gov trying to ram it down our throats will just cost billions and will turn people off (I don't want one, for instance). The car industry is pushing back too... reality is setting in.

For me, if I had to pick the primary reason why I think they're dead is price. My car, for example, was an 8 yo Hyundai Santa Fe 2.2 Diesel with 80k on it when I bought it. I paid 11k for it 2 years ago. I own it outright. It's 10 years old now and you wouldn't know it.

I've paid £900 for tyres, tracking and aircon recharge and about £160 a month on fuel since I bought it. It's had 2 MOT's too but didn't have to get anything fixed.

You just can't get equivalent EV's for that kind of money and for many, that kills them stone dead.

[0] - https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/news/361588/why-electric-car-i...

The pre-heating/de-icing does sound nice, I'll give you that but EV's just do not work if you live in a flat and unfortunately in and around the cities in the UK there are millions living in flats.

Of course, many living in flats won't have a car so that's moot but walk up any street with Victorian 4 floor flats and you'll not see a single parking space available outside them: they're all taken, all the time, but not necessarily by the people that live immediately next to them.

Even if they do manage to park right outside their flat, they won't be trailing a cable from their window :D

For me, EV's do not make sense for a significant portion of the people driving in the UK. Perhaps the majority. I don't have numbers to back that up but my argument about flats still stands.

What I do think makes sense is hybrids (assuming cost parity!). Put a small 30-mile battery in new cars. Let it charge from braking. Use it only when going from 0 - 30 or even just below 30 only and I bet you'd significantly reduce your fuel bills (and carbon if that's part of your reasoning for purchase).

I drive a 9 yo Hyundai diesel so I have a cheap car anyway.

> 15-20 minutes is a lot closer to realistic.

Blimey! Lord only knows where you live that it can take that long. I can count on one hand the number of times it's taken anything like 10 minutes over the years and they were during crises!

In reality, even if I have to wait for a free pump, my car is at 100% range in 5 mins when I pay at the pump by using my credit card.

I want my car filled to the brim any time I go to the petrol station (gas station to our friends over in the colonies :D). That's just how I roll. And I know many others who are the same. I also know some that just put in £10-£15 at a time, mainly due to finance constraints tbh.

To "fill" an electric car to 100% isn't feasible in 2 hours, let alone 5 mins. Even if it took just 20 minutes to "fill" it is still shit compared to my current diesel.

As a consumer, if I have to join a queue for hours [0] then to hell with that! However, with my diesel, it's literally 5 minutes once a week and I'm full up.

In addition, I run my car until 50 - 100 miles left in the tank and I don't get bent out of shape when the light comes on at < 50 miles. In an EV I'd shit bricks if that happened. I'd have to change my behaviour to many smaller topups.

The simple fact is that we have a chicken and egg scenario with EV's vs charging points/charging time at this time and I don't see it changing any time soon.

Anecdote: I just remember something I saw 3 weeks ago. I was in a town near where I live. I parked up to walk to a shop about 2 mins away and I walked past a girl at a charging station staring at the big charger thingy while on her phone. I couldn't hear what she was saying but I could see that the charging flap on her car was open. I was in the shop for about 10 minutes and came back the same way and she was still there, this time poking away at her phone and the cable still wasn't in her car but the charging flap was still open. No idea what the problem was but it caught my attention. Anyway, just thought I'd share.

Edit: Something else to mention - Many people round where I live are in Victorian flats with almost no parking nearby. It's not umcommon to park streets away from where you actually live... they'll not buy electric for the most part.

[0] - https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/video-massive-line-of-e...