flyinghaggis

@kennysarmy Yeah, they used to do a product called Replit "Teams for Education" which was designed for teachers running programming classes but they've deprecated it. I'd guess that's possibly why your Head of Computing wants to move away from it to locally installed IDE's. There's a paid for commercial version but I don't think even that has all of the functionality that the previous education offering did unfortunately hence the scramble for alternatives. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- https://blog.replit.com/update-on-teams-for-education Wed, Dec 6, 2023 The Replit Team On November 14th we notified users that Teams for Education will be deprecated. This deprecation notice means that Teams for Education will no longer receive any updates or bug fixes, new Team creation is disabled, and it will stop functioning at a later date. We understand that this change is challenging, and we are committed to supporting you throughout this transition. Teams for Education will decommission following this timeline: November 14th, 2023: Teams for Education users notified of deprecation November 15th, 2023: Teams for Education deprecated, new team creation disabled By the end of March, 2024: Teams for Education administrators will receive a resource kit containing the Teams for Education documentation, tools, and instructions to download their Teams for Education data, and other resources End of March, 2024: Teams for Education documentation will be removed from docs.replit.com. August 1, 2024: Teams for Education will be removed from the Replit product and data deleted. The resource kit will give you the necessary tools to preserve your data. There is no action required until receiving a resource kit. Teams for Education will remain accessible and data available until the August 1, 2024 removal date.

Risks of allowing students acecess to Replit in what context?

Yeah, one to keep an eye on I think. The only update is from the UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) who seem to be trying to down play the whole incident? "Everyone's medical/private data is on the dark web, it's not a big deal, this happens all the time...":confused: Cyber expert urges against 'panic' over NHS data leak https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clw08q19n9ro Mr Martin, who left the role in 2020 and is now a professor at the University of Oxford, said: "It's a very difficult situation but experience from the rest of the world suggests that even when this data is dumped on the dark web, relatively little direct harm occurs. "A good example is Australia, where over a third of the population's full medical records were leaked onto the dark web." Mr Martin said a concerted government-led effort minimised the impact of the Australian leak. "Police and other authorities were clear that there'd be consequences if there was any sort of extortion," said Mr Martin. "Although it's very unpleasant, the data just sort of sat there and there's no evidence of any direct harm, even though nearly 10 million people's full medical records were affected. "People shouldn't panic. There isn't going to be a Google searchable database of people's medical records or people's bank details. That's not the way this works. "It is relatively rare, not unknown, but relatively rare for individuals to suffer direct sort of harm, embarrassment or extortion."

That's quite disconcerting and must be a worry for patients in that region Wonder how the hackers managed to access the data and if other NHS systems could be at risk? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cglvpnpxx87o

Some discussions about Replit alternatives and options for securing locally installed IDEs in this thread. /forums/coding/235550-bye-bye-replit.html We still haven't found anything which can directly replace Replit unfortunately.....

We looked at Colab and it's pretty good but our computing department are adamant they require Visual Studio Code / Pycharm so Colab isn't an option unfortunately.

I'm guessing that, like Apple Silicon and mobiles, it'll just be an SoC likely with integrated RAM and storage built onto the chip? However, Qualcomm did mention in a press release that some of the ARM/Snapdragon laptops may come with discrete Nvidia/AMD Graphics as an option so there might be potential for other upgradeable parts? Every design I've seen with the chip has been in a laptop though it would likely be a good fit for a mini/micro PC form factor? Initial reports are the pricing could be steep but if popular presumably we'll see cheaper options down the line. Could be a good fit for Chromebooks in future as well?

We've setup a lab plan (after some back and forth with our Microsoft Reseller to get the subscription setup). The next issue we encountered is that, not unsurprisingly, Azure Lab Services require Microsoft accounts for login. We're primarily a Google Workspace based school so I'm not keen to create full on unrestricted Office365/Microsoft accounts for pupils just for Azure Labs? Google Workspace doesn't seem to have a direct equivalent of Azure Lab Services or at least not one aimed at end users from what I can see. I'm not sure if there are any other options for logging into Azure Lab services? Had a look at Github login but that's also blocked for school/organisation MS domains and only seems to work for personal accounts. I guess most schools are probably using Microsoft/Office365 so it won't be an issue for them

Prior ARM chips running Windows have all had abysmal performance and compatability compared to x86 but it genuinely looks like this time could be different. Not only is the power usage much lower but the CPU/GPU performance is actually superior in many situations. Going to be interesting to see how the compatibility pans out for non-native x86 only apps when laptops release later this year.

We're considering using Azure Labs as a replacement for Virtualbox aswell so would be keen to hear if you feel it's a suitable alternative to VirtualBox. Do you know if the downloaded RDP files from Azure labs use the regular port 3389 to connect or are then encapsulated in HTTPS/etc somehow. If so I guess you could look at options to block port 3389 on client workstations (local firewall, switch ACLs, etc )which would help secure them.

Is anyone using VMware with HPE Simplivity nodes? We have 2 ESXi hosts (72 cores in total) running vSphere Standard. I'm not sure if the standard licence will work or we need to contact HP directly for a specific one? I'm not familiar with the process as they came with a 5 years licence/subscription included which is due to expire this year!

We've been using an older version of RoyalTS but it no longer supports RDP in Server 2022 so have been looking at alternatives. Quite impressed by the functionality the free version of Remote Desktop Manager offers!

Only if I upgrade my motherboard I'm currently using 2014 early spec 2133Mhz DDR4 Memory (and a SATA SSD) at the moment!

Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised how cheap M2 Drives and DDR5 RAM are these days!

I also have a Quest 3 so would be interested to hear what you end up going for. My "gaming PC' is 10 years old so it's now at the point where it's no longer capable of actually running anything. I've kept putting off upgrading it in the hope that GPU prices would fall but it doesn't look like there's any chance of that happening. Feels like £500+ mid range graphics cards are here to stay unfortunately. If I was to build a PC I'd probably go with something similar to what you've spec'd. Maybe :- Case = Probably either re-use my NZXT H510 (which I'd recommend) or buy a new Fractal Torrent as I like the look of them for airflow/design. Mobo = Not sure what's good these days. I'd assume anything with adequate connectors/ports would do the job. PSU = I've heard the Corsair RM 850x series are good/quiet CPU = Probably an i7 of some variety would be a safe bet. Memory = 32GB (2x16Gb) DDR5 RAM SDD = 1TB+ M2 SSD at a decent speed. Graphics card = GeForce 4070 I've sped'd up a few PC's but the price always puts me off once I tally it up. Half the issue is that IMO the Quest 3 is actually pretty good as a standalone headset on it's own plus I also own a PS5 so I don't really "need" a gaming PC. It's more of a want for PC/ PCVR exclusive titles!

I noticed today that the DfE guidance explicitly states that Schools should be running unknown code/applications in a sandboxed enviromnent if anyone else is being pushed to install coding apps directly onto school computers following the demise of Replit. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/meeting-digital-and-technology-standards-in-schools-and-colleges/cyber-security-standards-for-schools-and-colleges

I often wondered how large a monitor you could go for before it becomes awkward! Does that fit on you desk OK as having measured my home setup it felt like anything larger than about a 40" 16:9 display would be impractical? Do you use any kind of Windowing/App Resizing software, modified resolution, font scaling or similar on the 55" TV? Has anyone else tried using large 4K TV (40"+) as an alternative to a multiple monitors?

We recently switched from Spanning (due to price rises) to Avepoint (https://www.avepoint.com/uk). The GUI isn't quite as functional /featured (file search , etc) as Spanning unfortuantely though but the pricing is more compeititve and it offers the functionality we need from a Google Workspace backup.

As others have said I've tried multiple monitor setups, and currently have dual 24" 1080p screens on my workstation at work, but never really liked the layout. I've personally always found that multiple 24" monitors are too wide to use comfortably/practically. I've used a 34" (3440x1440) Ultrawide Monitor at home for the past 7-8 years and find it far more comfortable and convenient than multple displays. I also have a 13" laptop on a stand which I occasionally use as a seconday monitor alongside my ultrawide if I ever need an additional display.

Our Core switches (HP 8206zl & HP 5406R) are coming up for 10 years old as well. They've been rock solid but we've started experiencing failures in other similarly aged hardware (some of the satellite switches HP 2920's) so, being critical infrastructure, we've been getting quotes to replace them. They're working fine but I'm nervous that at some point it's going to be seen as reckless running critical hardware that long, without security updates/support plus obtaining spare parts might become an issue. We looked at a pair of HP 6405's but the cost is well beyond our current planned budget by the time you factor in the required fibre/ethernet modules and SFPs I think we'd assumed we could get like for like performance and fibre modules much cheaper now, given we're comparing new with 10 year old hardware, but that's not looking like it's the case unfortunately. Is it worth considering brands other than HP/Aruba? What everyone else doing when it comes to replacing 10+ year old switch infrastructure? As crazy as it sounds running 10+ year old kit (with spare hardware on standby) is starting to feel like the more sensible option! Certainly the most cost effective.......

Tried this and with our IDE (Pycharm) it also launches the Python binary so blocking network connectivity for Python using the client Firewall could be an option. Providing the computing department aren't using scripts/programs which try to connect to websites or read/write files as part of them.

In theory you can do this if you go to the admin console, move the user to a different organisation unit and disable services other than the ones required (so that only Gmail is enabled for that org unit they're now in). I think that would accomplish what you're after. https://admin.google.com/ac/appslist/core

That does seem like the best option though I'm still a bit unsure how best to achieve it. Contemplating using the Windows Firewall or our AV software to block the "python.exe" somehow? Or is there a better way of achieving this? Though I'm not sure if I'll be able to block it completely from the network as the IDE will still need to be able to read/write files on the pupils network share plus potentially access the server for printing. If I simply block network connectivity completely it'll likely break those features. Though possibly Python.exe is separate from the Pycharm/VisualStudio IDE's executable? Or will the IDE create a separate program executable/process once compiled code is executed?

That's definitely an option as there's potentially quite a small subset of pupils who require access to computing/programming apps especially at certificate level year groups.

I guess my main concern wasn't so much that they could cause issues with the local host computers but that they'd run network scanning/probing applications/scripts and connect to servers/Active Directory/3rd party servers/devices/etc which could cause networking problems and impact other users and systems. How would that work in terms of setup? Putting NTFS permissions on specific lib file? Maybe if we could restrict Python/IDE's/etc apps from being able to communicate over the network somehow that might be an partial solution. I'm not familiar with how the Python compiler?/interpreter? links into the IDE so could be tricky to establish exactly which apps/exe's need to be blocked. Plus, it may generate complaints if I start restricting things and it prevents the IDE application from saving files to their home folder/etc. I can imagine sandboxing an exe would work well for many apps but it seems like it would be a much more difficult thing to setup when dealing with programming IDEs/interpreters and users running their own scripts and code. That's probably the solution ultimately as I doubt I'll ever be absolutely confident that pupil's running code/applications freely on the school network can be entirely risk free if the school insists on it.