Windows offers a wide array of security-related features and configuration options, but many are either disabled by default or not configured correctly. While Microsoft’s Security Baselines provide valuable guidance, the free Harden Windows Security tool offers a significantly faster and more comprehensive way to implement robust security settings.

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AWS now allows automatic deletion of associated Amazon EBS snapshots when deregistering EC2 AMIs, reducing storage costs and simplifying cleanup. Previously, snapshots had to be manually deleted, risking orphaned resources. This feature is long overdue. In a previous post, I introduced a Bash script that deleted the snapshot when an AMI was deregistered. The script should still work, but now you can automatically delete snapshots in the AWS Console and the AWS CLI.

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Warp, the top terminal app with AI support, has introduced new features in its GA release, including MCP support and Refine for AI responses. The Preview release now allows image uploads and the saving of reusable AI prompts. I also found a few new features that weren’t mentioned in the Launch Log 3 post.

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Activating the built-in Administrator account in Windows 11 can be essential for IT administrators in specific scenarios. This comprehensive guide explores the differences between the built-in Administrator and user-created administrator accounts, outlines secure methods to enable the account, and discusses best practices to mitigate potential security risks. Whether managing system recovery, configuring deployments, or troubleshooting complex issues, understanding how to activate and manage the Windows 11 Administrator account safely is crucial for maintaining a secure and efficient IT environment.

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Mountpoint for Amazon S3 (mountpoint-s3) now allows you to mount an S3 bucket in AWS at EC2 instance boot time via fstab. However, it remains non-POSIX compliant, so standard filesystem operations like deleting or renaming files still do not work. In contrast, the open-source alternative s3fs-fuse offers substantial POSIX support but comes with its own drawbacks.

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Enabling Administrator protection in Windows 11 significantly improves security by addressing critical User Account Control (UAC) weaknesses. Unlike UAC’s split-token model, where elevated processes share the user’s session and can be exploited by malware, Administrator Protection creates a separate, system-managed administrator account (SMAA) that generates isolated, just-in-time admin tokens for each task, which are destroyed immediately after use.

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Creating an AI agent in Amazon Bedrock involves a relatively complex process. The example in this post has been simplified for clarity. Once you have your first Agent setup working, exploring all the features that AI agents in AWS offer becomes much easier. The Bedrock Agent I discuss uses a Lambda function, which can be triggered by the AI model when the user prompt indicates its usefulness. An AWS Lambda function is a serverless compute service that runs your code in response to events without provisioning or managing servers. These functions may involve complex logic, enabling the AI agent to perform sophisticated tasks autonomously.

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Entering a PIN is one of the authentication methods available through Microsoft’s Windows Hello. It offers a simplified sign-in experience, especially for devices that lack biometric capabilities. This option must be explicitly enabled in domain-joined environments or those using Entra ID. However, its functionality is significantly restricted on virtual machines hosted on Hyper-V.

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The Gmail MCP server covered in this post lets you access Gmail from any AI client that supports MCP. I found the MCP server more capable than Google's integration with Gemini in Gmail. The AI-powered search feature proved to be helpful, but the MCP server also offers several other valuable commands. In this post, I used Claude Desktop. However, once you install the MCP server and set up the Gmail API, you can access Gmail through MCP from any compatible AI application by copying the MCP JSON. I expect that the ChatGPT app and even Windows 11 will add MCP support very soon.

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Fedora and Arch Linux, two popular Linux distributions, are now officially available for the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). In the past, installing Fedora or Arch on WSL involved extra effort. Users needed to manually download and import tarballs or rely on unofficial Microsoft Store versions, many of which required payment. The introduction of WSL 2.4.4 marked a shift by adding native support for tar-based distributions, which package their OS files in a tar archive. This update allows distro developers like Fedora and Arch to offer official, free WSL versions.

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OpenAI recently introduced the Agents SDK, a Python-based framework that enables developers and DevOps engineers to build AI agents. The example in this post showcases a script that uses the OpenAI Agents SDK to connect an AI agent to Anthropic’s filesystem MCP server. This integration enables the AI agent to analyze the contents of a monitoring log.

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Microsoft has recently launched Edit, a lightweight terminal editor for Windows and Linux. It revives the spirit of the MS-DOS Editor, which debuted in 1991 as a full-screen text editor for DOS and early Windows systems. Edit eliminates the need to leave the terminal to edit files. While Edit doesn't feature a traditional GUI, it supports tab management and can be navigated using a mouse. On Linux, the open-source tool can be seen as an alternative to nano.

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The leader in coding models has rolled out Claude Code to the public. Anthropic's terminal-based AI coding assistant automates editing, testing, and managing git workflows using natural language commands. Although you cannot install Claude Code as a VS Code extension via the marketplace, its integration into the open-source IDE is straightforward, and the user experience closely resembles GitHub Copilot, Cline, or Roo Code. My review of the preview version was somewhat critical because I dislike coding in the terminal. However, Claude Code now integrates well with VS Code and JetBrains, so I changed my original verdict.

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Windows Server 2025 introduced several advancements that make containerized workloads more flexible, secure, and customizable. One notable feature is the addition of Features on Demand (FoD) in Nano Server containers. This feature allows you to customize Nano Server containers by adding only the necessary components while keeping your container images small and optimized. In this guide, we’ll explore how to enable and use Features on Demand within Nano Server containers, providing real-world use cases that demonstrate this feature's power. We will also examine how it impacts container image sizes.

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OpenAI's Sam Altman envisions a future where countless AI agents operate autonomously across the internet, managing tasks on behalf of users and interacting with each other to perform complex operations without human intervention. Realizing this vision necessitates a new internet protocol that supports the sophisticated communication required for AI systems. Google’s new Agent2Agent (A2A) Protocol addresses this need by providing an open standard that enables autonomous AI agents to communicate across diverse systems. This post delves into the necessity of A2A, its current supporters, distinctions from Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP), the types of data it handles, and offers a straightforward example to illustrate its application.

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Windows Server 2025 introduces several new features and security improvements for Active Directory, including a new functional level and the Database 32k Pages feature. To take advantage of these features, you must first upgrade all domain controllers (DCs) and migrate Active Directory to Windows Server 2025. In this article, I'll guide you through the step-by-step migration process.

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In a remarkably short period, MCP has established itself as the standard for secure and efficient connections between AI models and external data sources and tools. Microsoft has integrated MCP into VS Code, Windows will get it, OpenAI plans to implement it for ChatGPT, and the top terminal application, Warp, has introduced MCP support in its Preview version. I installed the official Perplexity MCP server for my test and incorporated it into Warp.

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Instead of walking through the entire wizard in Hyper-V Manager to create a virtual machine, you can speed up the process using Quick Create. By default, this tool uses virtual hard disks (VHDX) provided by Microsoft. Alternatively, you can set up a custom gallery and populate it with your own images.

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The relatively new VS Code technical terms chat participants, chat variables, and slash commands can be accessed with the prefixes @, #, and / in GitHub Copilot. This post explains the differences and gives usage examples.

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