Very cool, if true

Aaand fixed. I think.

The issue is that the timezone of the feeds server is wrong. And, I think, varying. I *was* applying a 4 hour timezone difference, as it was claiming to be in GMT while actually being in New York. It's now actually in GMT. But, I think, switched back to New York time a few days ago, before returing to actual GMT.

And when it goes wrong, I then run the day's post manually. And when I did that yesterday I forgot to include the "NumberEntries" parameter.

(You can see the line that's doing that work here: https://github.com/andrewducker/AzurePowershellLinkPoster/blob/master/PostLinks/PostLinks.ps1#L29 )

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simont

Ah, the style of Powershell that looks like an actual program! Don't see that every day.

I'm congenitally unable to read any text or code without also proofreading it, so have a bonus drive-by nitpick: "DeletetionTrigger" on line 72 looks like a typo.

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No merge request? I am shocked!

But yes, it is a spelling mistake, but it's mostly there because the line of hyphens tells Dreamwidth that the email footer is about to begin and therefore to chop off anything after that point. Vital when I was running the code manually from a corporate location, otherwise the post had a thirty line disclaimer on the end.

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simont

No merge request?

Sorry! I wasn't 100% sure whether there might be code elsewhere that recognised exactly that string and would need to be changed in sync, or some such.

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Not serious! I don't think a typo actually needs a merge request.

And no other code depending on it - pretty much all of the code is in that one file. The rest is all the stuff that Azure requires in order to get a function running on a schedule.

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Oh! I'm curious what kind of PowerShell you *do* see every day!

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simont

Well, all right, on a typical day I don't see any PS at all. But when I do, it's normally in the "glue code" style: the reason someone was using PS at all was because it has convenient APIs to talk to lots of different classes of thing, and they needed to make those worlds connect together. So it doesn't normally have anything as organised as loops or sensibly named variables; it's just a handful of commands that get stuff from here and send it out to there, the source and destination being things that would otherwise have a hard time talking to each other. If you're really lucky there might be an error handler to abort on failure half way through.

Most of the things I actually know about Powershell came from a book called "Learn Windows PowerShell 3 in a Month of Lunches" (Jeffrey Hicks). That's approaching PS almost exclusively from the angle of "look at all the things Powershell can talk directly to": it's not until chapter 21 (out of 28) that the author even starts talking about saving PS commands in a script file instead of just entering them at the interactive prompt, and even then, the first subheading stresses "Not programming, more like batch files". I think there's one full-length script in the whole book that shows an example of an actual program, with function definitions, try-catch blocks and a while loop. And that's in chapter 26 "Using someone else's script", and none of that stuff is even explained – that was the first hint in the whole book that exceptions are even a thing in Powershell. "Loop" and "exception" don't even appear in its index!

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Ah, gotcha. I had that book too, and very useful it was. But definitely didn't cover huge amounts of what we did with it. Last job ended up with dozens of modules and scripts to make up our build system. It was very useful.

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simont

That book definitely struck me as being aimed at the kind of sysadmin-only person who thinks Proper Programming is scary, and trying to sell PS on the basis of all the useful things it can do which aren't programming.

I presume there's some entirely different book out there which teaches the other half of the language!

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Bound to be. I think I got it mostly from online references though. That was pretty much the last tech book I bought!

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jducoeur

Yeah -- when I first learned Powershell, I was completely blown away by the idea of being able to actually program the shell, in a respectably real language.

Been many years since I've touched it (I generally use Ammonite these days, to do the same sorts of things in Scala), but at the time it was pretty amazing, and it really surprises me that so few people take real advantage of it.

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Yeah, lots of Unix people are unhappy it's not Bash, lots of Windows people are unhappy it's not a GUI. Not enough people who look at it for its own thing.

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Definition of a Yacht
"What exactly makes a yacht a yacht, and not just a big boat? There is no nailed down definition of what makes a yacht a yacht, but most boaters consider a yacht to be any type of sea vessel that is used strictly for recreational or pleasure purposes like cruising, entertaining, water sports, fishing, or year-round accommodations"

https://vanislemarina.com/when-is-a-boat-a-yacht/#:~:text=There%20is%20no%20nailed%20down,%2C%20or%20year%2Dround%20accommodations.

Else with 3 masts, it might be thought a ship. Or some sort of schooner maybe.

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I think it is a schooner. It looks like it has a sail plan of fore-and-aft rigged on all 3 masts.

A frigate has guns. In the 18th and 19th Century they were ships with between 20 and 40 smaller guns and usually squared-rigged; smaller than a line-of-battle ship. Also in British parlance a 5th or 6th rate. Used for recon, signalling relays and commerce interdiction.

In the 20th and 21st century they are smaller escort ships (smaller than a destroyer) used for anti-submarine or anti-aircraft protection.

It is not a frigate.

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I was not, to be clear, serious about it being a frigate. That was more of a "If I was a billionaire, building my own large ship for wandering the oceans..."

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I would not trust a billionaire not to have actually kitted their superyauct out as a frigate.

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dewline

Nor would I.

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simont

I mean sooner or later you'll want to have a secret identity as a superhero or supervillain (delete as appropriate) and then you'll be glad you did.

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I think I'm going to go for both.

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agoodwinsmith

Hah. I read "superyauct" as "saucyboat" and there we have it. When it is that big, it's a Saucyboat.

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Surely it's only a Saucyboat if it's from Le Saucisson region of France, otherwise it's just a sparkling gravy train.

But Saucyboats ahoy from henceforth.

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That's insanely brilliant.

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I totally expect they DO have guns. Just how big, that we don't know...

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I weould be amazed if they didn't have some sort of longer range defensive capabilty and a seriously over-spec sensor package. Some of it unlicensed. There must be a genuine risk of kidnapping or targetted piracy and it's better to be alive to ask forgiveness than dead having not asked permission.

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It would only make sense.

I'm not sure what options there are for sensors. Obviously any villains would not have their AIS on, radar is ok but misses small craft, esp in higher waves and wooden/plastic boats do not show up well AT ALL. Small sailing boats like mine actually usually carry specific radar reflectors so we can be seen.

If I was going to try a Superyacht kidnap piracy thing, for quietness I'd probably get close with a small sailing boat at night, (ideally with wooden mast, boom) maybe drop a diver from a distance while moving, come round on a 2nd pass to pick up my guy and my prey. Mid grey/blue hull, ditto sails. Try to avoid tacking (noise of gear and flapping sails) while anywhere too close. Hmm. Needs ideally pretty light winds else I might be going too fast for them for pickup...

(Any sort of prop noise is really audible from within a boat, even just to ears, never mind surveillance gear)

But a few savvy guys on watch with good IR gear might easily see us, I don't know...

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I think probably IR and some low-light level motion detectors from a 360 video feed would be most useful for spotting a small sail craft.

You'd be okay with a high-false positive rate. The saucyboat is unlikely to be on some sort of stealt mission so as the boat security detail your first response is almost certainly a hail followed up by a request to keep clear.

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How well do motion detectors work when both the boat and the surrounding area are constantly in motion?

I'm willing to bet "Not that well".

You can probably get something up and running with some more complex visual processing. Nowadays probably fairly easily trainable.

IR, obviously, would work rather well, unless people were actively trying to foil it.

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Hmm. If motion detection not fooled by waves. I have no idea if that's tricky. Though it plausiblly might be. Plus the sailboat isnt that close, it's dropping a diver. Who would probably be easier to spot at some point...

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I'm thinking of some analysis and detection software sitting on top of the video feed. So not detecting motion per se but specific types of motion or probably excluding certain types of motion, like waves, so you're left with only interesting motion to draw the attention of the security team to.

But if you are dropping the diver say a kilometer away then your boat is probably not close enough to trigger the detectors or not close enough for the misison to be disrupted by being hailed and then changing course.

Diver detection systems exist but I'm not sure how commercially available they are even if you are a billionaire. Hull mounted underwater cameras might pick up motion caused by 1 or 2 large humans close to the boat.

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