David Whiteside

AWS Jam Sessions are hands-on, gamified events designed to test your knowledge of AWS services, security, architecture, and operational best practices. Competing in a Jam requires a mix of AWS expertise, problem-solving skills, quick thinking, and teamwork. If you want to maximize your chances of winning, here’s a strategic guide to your next AWS Jam Session. What to expect AWS Jam Session teams must solve under time constraints. Challenges range from security incident response and infrastructure automation to networking and AI/ML deployments.

Managing Python dependencies in isolated environments is a common practice in software development. But what if you need a quick, temporary virtual environment that you can discard after use? Here’s a simple tool and workflow to create throw-away Python virtual environments. The Problem While Python’s built-in venv or tools like virtualenv are excellent for managing environments, they require setup and cleanup. For quick experiments or isolated dependency installations, this process can feel cumbersome.

As part of the Ansible 2.12 release, pkcs11/smartcards are now supported by Ansible. Now you can use smartcards and other devices that support pkcs11 (Yubikey) to configure systems with Ansible. Setup your middleware for pkcs11, below is how to install opensc on a Mac using homebrew. $ brew install opensc To use pkcs11 for authentication set the ANSIBLE_PKCS11_PROVIDER environment variable $ export ANSIBLE_PKCS11_PROVIDER=/usr/local/lib/opensc-pkcs11.so $ ansible-playbook -u USERNAME -b -k -K PLAYBOOK.