If Sheets works (I love simplicity) then I'll give it a go but I checked and I can't find any templates for Kanban or such.

Honestly, I feel more and more every day like old-man-shaking-fist-at-clouds! Can we not just have something that works without spying, without engagement-driven shit switched on all the fucking time?

I think of the Simpsons Mr Brown meme where he's asking "Is it me that's wrong?".

I can't be the only person that thinks this way!

I spent December last year looking for a new bank to move to. One of my criteria (not the most important but it was on the list) was better-than-SMS 2FA.

No one offers it. There may be some niche, loosely-based finance org that does but none of the banks or Building Societies do.

So, unfortunately, you need it in the UK.

Having worked in the corporate world all my working life I can safely say with confidence that big companies absolutely DO NOT move fast. Do not underestimate the power of middle-management to destroy momentum!

Solve a problem for someone and if it was a painful one, they'll pay you for it.

1. Develop discipline around the piano

2. Build my side hustle beyond a side hustle (Kopi - replicate a production DB schema and relational subsets of its data for local development in seconds)

However, we both agreed that when comparing the UK(ish) and US(ish) variants, the UK ones are much more fun and colourful: The US ones seem a little, erm, boring!

It can replicate a DB in as little as 9 seconds.

It's Open Core: Community Edition and Pro/Enterprise editions.

Still a WiP --> https://kopidev.com

The only thing it didn't have out of the box that I wanted was Microsoft Store (so that I could install Winget and Terminal) but you install it from an elevated powershell command with "wsreset -i" and that's it done.

It also has the original version of Notepad, not that abomination with the tabs and Copilot!

Oh, no Copilot whatsoever in fact.

All the instructions for IoT (including where to get it... legitimately) are on the massgrave github page and website.

And before I am accused of sailing the high seas... I'm not! The activation script just activates complicated processes built-in to Windows: it doesn't "hack" it or anything!

However, I use a Yubikey as often as I can nowadays and authenticator apps too where possible.

I'd like the option to use one but I can't :(

Not one (I last checked about a month ago!)

Security, while pretty good, is still lacking imo!

There are, however, definitely domains it can excel: things like entry-level call handlers... I think they're screwed in all honesty!

Edit: clarified some stuff...

She represents the typical domain-experts that use Excel imo. They have an understanding of some part of the business and express it while using Excel in a deterministic way: enter a value of X, multiply it by Y and it keeps producing Z forever!

You can train AI to be a better domain expert. That's not in question, however with AI, you introduce a dice roll: it may not miltiply X and Y to get Z... it might get something else. Sometimes. Maybe.

If your spreadsheet is a list of names going on the next annual accounts department outing then the risk is minimal.

If it's your annual accounts that the stock market needs to work out billion dollar investment portfolios, then you are asking for all the pain that it will likely bring.

When it comes to (traditional) coding, for the most part, when I program a function to do X, every single time I run that function from now until the heat death of the sun, it will always produce Y. Forever! When it does, we understand why, and when it doesn't, we also can understand why it didn't!

When I use AI to perform X, every single time I run that AI from now until the heat death of the sun it will maybe produce Y. Forever! When it does, we don't understand why, and when it doesn't, we also don't understand why!

We know that Brenda might screw up sometimes but she doesn't run at the speed of light, isn't able to produce a thousand lines of Excel Macro in 3 seconds, doesn't hallucinate (well, let's hope she doesn't), can follow instructions etc. If she does make a mistake, we can find it, fix it, ask her what happened etc. before the damage is too great.

In short: when AI does anything at all, we only have, at best, a rough approximation of why it did it. With Brenda, it only takes a couple of questions to figure it out!

Before anyone says I'm against AI, I love it and am neck-deep in it all day when programming (not vibe-coding!) so I have a full understanding of what I'm getting myself into but I also know its limitations!

I tend not to use libraries for JS, preferring to write actual vanilla JavaScript, hence the reason the name rubs me up the wrong way :)

It's not actively usurping Windows security.

In fact, I've read more than once that Microsoft tech support have been known to use massgrave scripts to help with activation-related issues with clients: Although I should caveat that with saying that it may have been Reddit I found that info so pinch of salt and all that...

So, my take on this is if the massgrave scripts allow activation without breaking any laws then sobeit. I'm talking about doing stuff that, while it appears dodgy, actually just manipulates the ultra-complicated processes under the hood that Microsoft has already built into the OS.

It's like publicising the workarounds for the now-mandatory Microsoft account when installing Windows 11. These involve things like reg hacks and commands: they're already in Windows so publicise them all you want imo.

I don't normally feel strongly one way or the other about stuff but this really rips my knitting!

Note: Credit to the creators for making something and puting it out there but man, that name :(

I'm using the Windows 11 Enterprise IoT LTSC with activation until 2038 right now.