Mats E.

The writing style in AI generated text is unmistakably non-personal and boring. With more content (posts, blogs, code) being made by AI I fear more people will attempt to mimic the same style.

Let's not forget to have room for personality, flair, linguistic diversity and typos.

Already tired of seeing AI written summaries in pull requests descriptions. Just feels so non-personal and bloated.

I would (almost) rather see "fix stuff" than to see a no-context summary of the diffs with endless file and line references.

GitHub - matsest/bicep-deploy-whatif-without-write-demo: Demo of running Bicep What-If deploy without write permissions Demo of running Bicep What-If deploy without write permissions - matsest/bicep-deploy-whatif-without-write-demo

Ever wanted to do a @biceplang.bsky.social What-If Deployment without Write permissions? 💪

Now you finally can! Using the newly released ValidationLevel deployment option you can e.g. more securely run a what-if to validate change from a PR:

#azure #biceplang

github.com/matsest/bice...

On the left, the lie.
On the right, reality.

1 year ago ~to the day~

Release v2.1 · matsest/gh-runner-az-private-network-demo This release adds support for specifying default outbound access and NAT Gateway deploy to prepare for the requirement of explicit outbound access: On September 30, 2025, default outbound access f...

Just released an update to my demo repo for @github.com hosted runners with #Azure Private Networking to now support explicit outbound access using a NAT Gateway (default outbound access will be retired September 30th 2025).

#githubactions #biceplang #powershell

Everyone so excited about MCP as the latest AI awesome sauce

Me: looks like an API gateway

@monkchips.com: SOAP for AI tools cool cool

Time to answer all the same questions again

Harden-Runner detection: tj-actions/changed-files action is compromised - StepSecurity tj-actions/changed-files

This is an particularly ugly example of a GitHub Actions supply-chain attack.

All tags updated to point to malicious version. Commit introduced via false renovate commit.

www.stepsecurity.io/blog/harden-...

More info in repo issue: github.com/tj-actions/c...

Thanks! Feel free to create an issue or a PR if you come across anything that doesn't work or should be improved 😉

and I managed to sneak in a fun little excercise in subnet math 🤓

Link to the PowerShell function here: github.com/matsest/gh-r...

..and I've added some nicely formatted output with URLs to #Azure and #GitHub 🪄

GitHub - matsest/gh-runner-az-private-network-demo: Demo for Azure private networking for GitHub-hosted Runners Demo for Azure private networking for GitHub-hosted Runners - matsest/gh-runner-az-private-network-demo

Want to try out Azure Private Networking for GitHub-hosted Runners?

With the use of @biceplang.bsky.social, @github.com APIs and some PowerShell I made a end-to-end deployment of both the required Azure and GitHub configurations.

Up and running in less than 1 minute! ⚡
github.com/matsest/gh-r...

come on dude we’re running out of cards

Billing is more or less static since it does not scale to zero. So not much different from a small VM in my experience.

Depending on your usecase I would consider Container Apps. More batteries included, better scaling up and down and with a more usage based billing.

Oh boy, working in "serious IT" sounds like a miserable place to be 🤦

Oh no they've invented a much cheaper Bluetooth radio before any of us figured out how to make a product as useful as AirPods with our expensive Bluetooth radios

...and there's the end credits. Still holds up as a fantastic game, even in 2025.

As I'm sharing some of the skepticism on current state of AI, this was a positive take to read.

Invest in core skills. Build transferable knowledge. Both soft skills, and a solid understanding of fundamentals within your field will make you resilient to current fads.

css-tricks.com/the-importan...

I partly understand it, coming from a Linux background myself, but in total I agree with you, especially on cmdlet names. Super useful!

Personally I see it in a CLI setting. Would love to have more use of long+short-form parameter names for cmdlets, similar to --name/-n, --silent/-s etc.

That's also a good tip! Variable validations are great!

A feature too rarely used in a lot of PowerShell code i see around.

...and third maybe due to the very verbose syntax, especially for those utilizing it mostly for interactive command line shells.

(although aliases is underutilized in PowerShell as well! - bsky.app/profile/jsno...)

A quite good summary of PowerShell.

I think it's underrated as a powerful cross-platform, high-lvl scripting language w/lots of advanced features under the hood. But many devs and engineers shy away from it.

Maybe due to the (outdated) Windows-only association. Others maybe due to things like this

That's a good point - it's a much better check to use that method in this case.

I often tend to use typed variables, as PowerShell can be a bit too relaxed with implicit type conversions, but it's too bad that script analyzer don't pick cases like this stuff up, and no runtime warnings is printed.

From the docs: "But PowerShell is very generous and allows for variables to be any type. If you decide to strongly type a value type, it cannot be $null. PowerShell converts $null to a default value for many types."

IMO PowerShell is too generous in these cases! 😁

I agree! The lack of consistency in these type of language features is not very nice.

The example code is based off an actual code I debugged where some logic where built around a [string] type and where assignment of $null was used. Took some time to figure out it the first time.

Correct! It will also work "as expected", i.e. evaluating to $null, if the parameter has no type cast.

It's described specifically in the Value Types section here learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powers...

Would be more clear if assigning $null to a typed variable/param would cast a explicit error 🫠

Powershell code: [CmdletBinding()] param ( [string]$MyParam = "foo" ) if ($MyParam -eq "foo"){ $MyParam = $null } if($null -eq $MyParam){ Write-Host "The value is null" -ForegroundColor "Green" } else { Write-Host "The value is NOT null" -ForegroundColor "Red" }

A #powershell thing that's confused me several times (and I was reminded of today)...

What do you think the output of this script will be? And why? Is it as expected? 😉

(PowerShell 7.4, code is in alt-text)

@jdhitsolutions.com @mrpowershell.bsky.social @steviecoaster.dev #pwsh

Myself holding my new-born child

Happy New Year!

The greatest gift of last year came just a few days before Christmas, and I'm grateful I got the chance to have a total of 3 weeks of time off to take care of our little one and spend time with the family.

Now reading myself for getting back to work again 😴