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All Posts (562)

• 

  Published on

  2025-04-22 3:36 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  dotnetNuGet

  dotnet tool install fails with "Settings file 'DotnetToolSettings.xml' was not found in the package." - what do?

  If you’ve just tried to install a .NET tool and got smacked with the dreaded error message: “Settings file 'DotnetToolSettings.xml' was not found in the package,” congratulations: You are today’s lucky recipient of yet another cryptic dotnet installer hiccup! But don’t worry, we’re about to sort this nonsense out. Namely, this article explains a couple of things you can try out to possibly fix the issue. Problem

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• 

  Published on

  2025-04-15 2:32 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  AndroidOnePlus

  How to fix YouTube stuttering on OnePlus 10 Pro?

  This article explains a couple of different ways to fix any video playback stuttering, when watched on YouTube, on your OnePlus phone. I first ran into this on OnePlus 8 Pro, but according to the chatter online, there are plenty of other OnePlus handsets with the same... Well, I'm not sure if it's a bug or issue, so let's call it a feature. Let's get to it.

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• 

  Published on

  2025-04-08 6:27 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  MicrosoftExcelMicrosoftLoop

  How to Copy-Paste a Table from Excel to Microsoft Loop Without Losing Your Mind

  Struggling to transfer tables from Excel to Microsoft Loop? Weirdly enough, you’re not alone. In this wonderful world of ours, simply copying and pasting often turns your perfectly organized rows and columns into an illegible blob. It’s frustrating, inefficient, and downright maddening for a superficially fancy and shiny new tool such as Microsoft Loop. But don’t worry—there’s a solution! With a quick detour through HTML, you can preserve your table’s structure and make Loop finally behave.

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• 

  Published on

  2025-04-01 2:26 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Clipboard History disabled - "This setting is managed by your organization?" | Easy fix!

  Reinstalling a Windows machine is always a lot of fun! And that's why I've been more and more of my time doing just that. See, my most favorite pastimes over the last few months have been staring at System Restore failing, endless reboot loops, looking for lost Bitlocker keys and finally entering them manually key-by-key, and of course the best part - waiting hours for Windows to "Reset" - all that good stuff!

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• 

  Published on

  2025-03-25 3:24 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  NetspotWindows11WindowsSearchWindowsUpdate

  Windows Search not finding anything? That might be the default now, but you don't need to accept it!

  This article explains how to tweak Windows Search so that it finds something. Or better yet - that it finds even the files that your applications are trying to HIDE from you (by storing your personal files under Application Data folder)! Microsoft is actively trying to hide these files from you, and for a reason. You should store functional files (like cache) inside %AppData%, not the user's personal documents.

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• 

  Published on

  2025-03-18 3:08 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  CopilotWindowsUpdate

  "The Copilot key isn't connected to an action. Choose what you'd like to happen when you press the Copilot key"

  So about a year ago, I paid (or made my employer pay) 4000 USD to get an AI-PC. That laptop had no AI features whatsoever, so its NPU is still in brand new condition. Great savings abound if I ever end up selling it! 😜 But about 6 months later, that pc got its first AI feature - the standalone Copilot app. I mean, I never got the fabled native app that actually integrated with Windows.

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• 

  Published on

  2025-03-11 3:25 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  SkypeForBusinessWindowsWindows11Lync2

  How to remove Skype for Business, if it sneaks back onto your machine?

  This article explains how to uninstall Skype for Business when it's not visible in your Control Panel, Settings, Installed apps or Programs and features. This article also (accidentally) underlines the futility of using a separate uninstaller application. They'll typically introduce more trouble than they're worth. Me, skilling up my knowledge worker skill tree. Me, min-maxing my knowledge worker (read: project manager) skill tree. According to Copilot, this is what it looks like.

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• 

  Published on

  2025-03-04 3:42 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  AzureDevOps

  How to output the value of a secret variable in Azure DevOps?

  This article explains how you can output the value of a secret variable stored in Azure DevOps. This applies both to secrets stored in a Variable Group, or Pipeline Variables stored as secrets. Is it safe, secure and advisable to do this? No! But is it possible? Yes it is! Let's get to it! Background There might be situations, when you want to output the value of a secret variable.

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• 

  Published on

  2025-03-03 12:40 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  BloggingKrojamsoftLongpathtoolOpinion

  Long Path Tool - an unfortunate review

  In one of my article's comments section, I've been suffering from semi-automated spam advertising "Long Path Tool". It's a tool that can be used to create symlinks for files located deep in folder structure - a simple use case with a lot of free tools available to resolve the same issue, and all of them work just fine and contain the same value proposal. I guess this is the reason why the developers have had to resort to shady practices to advertise their solution.

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• 

  Published on

  2025-02-26 3:36 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  AndroidCopilot

  Copilot Android app refusing to take pictures? I have the dumbest fix you'll ever hear, but it'll work, trust me.

  This article explains how to work around the issue where the Copilot app fails to take pictures. Sounds boring, right? But hey - even with all of the gripes I have about Copilot, I do use it daily, and I'd really like it to work. Because when it does work - well, about 50% of the times it does work - it's really helpful, and it does make me more productive overall. Okay. That's enough of a sales pitch.

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• 

  Published on

  2025-02-25 3:29 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  DellWindows11

  Adventures in the Windows 11 24H2-land: How to restore your webcam after February 2025 Patch breaks it?

  This article explains how to get your built-in webcam back after a Windows 11 update (in my case, February 2025 Cumulative Update package) hides/disables it. The weird thing is, the camera is visible in the Device Manager. No app can see it though. And trying to update the driver through Device Manager is no use, as it's apparently already using the latest driver version. Background I can appreciate Windows removing any extraneous web cameras I might have - or rather, might've had.

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• 

  Published on

  2025-02-18 3:29 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  DevhomeMicrosoftStoreDevEnvironment

  Have you heard? Dev Home is going away before it even arrived!

  Microsoft has just retired the Windows Dev Home experience before it ever came out of Preview -status. And before it ever became that useful. Or even functional, if you ask me. It was a good idea (or maybe even a really good one), that never really materialized. I mean, I gave the app a go a while ago, and it didn't really do anything. Or the little it did were things easier to do elsewhere - or changes that didn't persist.

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• 

  Published on

  2025-02-11 4:43 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  HomeAssistantHomeAutomationSQL

  Taming my Home Assistant database growth

  This article explains how to carefully limit your Home Assistant database growth without losing data you actually care about for analysis and automations. And because data is the new oil, pretty much all of the data feels valuable when you are deciding what to keep. Most people have to tackle this issue with their Home Assistant instance, unless they're running with the default settings - where recorder will purge everything except LTS data after 10 days. But I don't accept the defaults.

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• 

  Published on

  2025-02-04 3:41 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  DevdriveWindows

  Dev Drive performance increase in real life scenarios?

  This article shows a few benchmarks I have run on the performance improvement that Dev Drive offers, using a real-life project I am (well, was) working on some time ago. The simple examples in this article should give you some guidance on what kind of performance you should be able to expect after adopting Dev Drive. YMMV and the usual caveats apply, but hey - it's still data you can use to decide if it's worth the (minuscule) set up cost.

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• 

  Published on

  2025-01-28 4:19 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  BlazorSessionsTeamsToolkit

  Join my session at CTTT25 this week: Level Up Your Teams Extensibility Game with Blazor | Session materials from Cloud Technology Townhall Tallinn 2025!

  This week I'll be attending Cloud Technology Townhall Tallinn 2025. It's my first time in this event that's practically next door in the beautiful town of Tallinn! Although I guess the name was kind of a dead giveaway already, right? I'll be speaking about Blazor and Teams development stuff. This time I'll try to avoid any demo effects - had a couple the last time I've talked on this topic! But I think it'll be a blast!

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• 

  Published on

  2025-01-21 1:32 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  Deco

  How to identify which wifi band your Decos are using?

  This article explains how you can identify which wifi bands your TP-Link Decos are using, without using a WiFi Analyzer or other such tools. I'll also explain why you might need this information - in my case it was about interference (because of course it was!) And as usual, this article wouldn't have even been needed, if Copilot didn't try to misdirect me when I asked it the very same question, that is in the title of this post: How to identify which wifi band your Decos are using?

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• 

  Published on

  2025-01-14 5:33 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  DNSGitHub

  Don't assign root domain to GitHub Pages if you use it for email!

  Just a quick tip I learned the hard way: if you want to host a website on GitHub Pages, make sure to only point the www-subdomain, and not the "naked", apex domain, in case you're using it for email mailboxes. I learned the hard way that the A records pointing to GitHub's IPs will cause all email, and I really mean ALL email, to be blocked. Not outgoing email - but incoming! But as usual, we need to take a step back. What was I trying to do? Background

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• 

  Published on

  2025-01-07 5:06 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  BitwardenGoogleChromePasswordsOpinion

  Experiences from migrating to Bitwarden

  I recently (finally) moved to a commercial Password Manager after I got tired of having to copy-paste everything from KeePass in my apps on Windows and letting the only company on Earth that has to remind themselves in their slogan NOT to be Evil handle all of my web/Android passwords. KeePass was feeling pretty clumsy and outdated, and Google just more and more evil. And actual, REAL Password Managers have more features than these free options, too.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-12-31 4:24 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  RussiaukrainewarYearReviewOpinion

  2024 Year Review - and 20 years in business!

  Wow, that's quite a headline for a 30-something to write, right? But the very real side effect of being a weird kid and starting freelancing when I was on 8th grade is that it's now just over 20 years since I finished my first paid website projects. This year everything lined up nicely and I could publish an article on Christmas Eve, and this one on New Year's Eve (in Finland, we do love celebrating everything in advance, and then being hungover on the actual occasion). Anyway.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-12-24 3:38 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  GitHubGitHubActions

  Merging on GitHub Actions fails with "could not read Username for 'https://github.com': No such device or address"?

  This article is going live 24th of December in 2024. That's when we in Finland celebrate Christmas (yes - we celebrate on Christmas Eve, so that we can just chillax on Christmas day, either hungover, playing with our new toys, or both). I'll have you know I wrote this article a few days in advance.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-12-17 8:43 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  CopilotMicrosoftEdge

  How to close the Sidebar in Microsoft Edge

  This article documents, how to close the Sidebar in Microsoft Edge. Because for whatever reason, Edge really does not make it obvious what the keyboard shortcut is, or if there even is one! I know what you're saying. And believe me, that's exactly what I'm thinking: Back to the "Project Manager" -level blog posts, are we? But when something is grinding my gears, I feel like I need to get rid of it. And this is one of those posts.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-12-10 3:55 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  Surface

  How to stop Surface Headphones from autoplaying audio when you place them on the desk?

  This article explains how to fix Surface Headphones autoplaying semi-random things when you remove them from your ears and place on the desk. And by that, I mean autoplaying even when you've explicitly stopped anything from playing. Or even when it first stops playing something else. It's delightfully consistent in the most random way ever! It's simply funtastic that someone actually designed this user experience - I'm sure it works perfectly on a mac, and probably is great even on iPhone...

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• 

  Published on

  2024-12-03 4:51 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  WindowsWindows11

  "Phone Link" permanently disabled and Windows claiming "Some of these settings are managed by your organization"? (Probably) an easy fix!

  This article explains one possible fix to a problem you might have with Microsoft's "Phone Link" app. Namely, the app might disappear and refuse to come back. Windows might even stop you from trying to re-enable it with an error along the lines of "Some of these settings are managed by your organization". But as usual - let's take a step back and take a 10 000 ft view first, shall we? Problem This problem surfaces in an annoying way.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-11-26 3:09 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Refreshing DefaultAzureCredential in Visual Studio

  This article explains how to refresh the Visual Studio credentials on your development machine to keep your application using some sort of an authentication implementation relying on DefaultAzureCredential working.

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• 

  Published on

  2024-11-19 7:55 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  CopilotMicrosoftTeams

  M365 Copilot claiming "You have turned off web search in the work mode"? Easy fix!

  This article explains how to enable Web Search for Microsoft 365 Copilot, when Copilot for Microsoft 365 thinks it's disabled for whatever reason. But fear not! Most of the time there's just a simple switch you need to flip to enable M365 CoPilot to access Web results for you. But let's take a step back, open our Co-Pilot apps and do the unthinkable - ask it to access some forbidden knowledge. On the public interwebs.

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