Announcing Amazon EC2 M4 and M4 Pro Mac instances

By Dustin Ward

As someone who has been using macOS since 2001 and Amazon EC2 Mac instances since their launch 4 years ago, I’ve helped numerous customers scale their continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipelines on AWS. Today, I’m excited to share that Amazon EC2 M4 and M4 Pro Mac instances are now generally available. Development teams building…

Accelerate serverless testing with LocalStack integration in VS Code IDE

By Dustin Ward

Today, we’re announcing LocalStack integration in the AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio Code that makes it easier than ever for developers to test and debug serverless applications locally. This enhancement builds upon our recent improvements to the AWS Lambda development experience, including the console to IDE integration and remote debugging capabilities we launched in July…

Ask Ralph: Where style meets AI—a new era of conversational commerce

By Dustin Ward

Over the past few years, AI has seamlessly woven itself into the fabric of our daily routines, transforming the ways we access information and organize our lives. From intelligent search engines to virtual assistants that help us plan trips, AI is behind the effortless convenience we now expect. It’s also transforming the way we shop.…

Azure mandatory multifactor authentication: Phase 2 starting in October 2025

By Dustin Ward

As cyberattacks become increasingly frequent, sophisticated, and damaging, safeguarding your digital assets has never been more critical, and at Microsoft, your security is our top priority. Microsoft research shows that multifactor authentication (MFA) can block more than 99.2% of account compromise attacks, making it one of the most effective security measures available. As announced in August…