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https://www.thedailybeast.com/portuguese-president-marcelo-rebelo-de-sousa-calls-donald-trump-a-soviet-asset-over-russia-ukraine-war/
Thursday, August 28, 2025
Monday, August 11, 2025
CS50's Web Programming with Python and JavaScript - FREE
This course picks up where CS50 leaves off, diving more deeply into the design and implementation of web apps with Python, JavaScript, and SQL using frameworks like Django, React, and Bootstrap.
Sunday, August 10, 2025
Great advice from Chris Hoff via LinkedIn
Nugget on 1-on-1 Conversations:
I think there's a parallel to the way I I set up my one on ones. I ask people to categorize our discussions into 3 categories: 1. Asks (for me to do something) 2. Advice (from me about how to do things) and 3. Awareness (of things they think I oughta know)
Saturday, July 5, 2025
Thursday, July 3, 2025
Sunday, June 22, 2025
Create Dynamic Contact Forms for S3 Static Websites Using AWS Lambda, Amazon API Gateway, and Amazon SES | AWS Architecture Blog
Architecture Flow
Here, we are assuming a common website-to-cloud migration scenario, where you have registered your domain name with a 3rd party domain registrar and after migration of your website to Amazon S3. From there, you switched to Amazon Route 53 as your DNS provider. You contacted your DNS provider and updated the name server (NS) record to use the name servers in the delegation that you set in Amazon Route 53 (find step-by-step details in the AWS S3 development guide). Your email server still belongs to your DNS provider as you brought that in the package when you registered your domain with a multi-year contract.
Following is the architecture flow with detailed guidance.
In the above diagram, the customer is submitting their inquiry through a "contact us" form, which is hosted in an Amazon S3 bucket as a static website. Information will flow in three simple steps:
- Your "contact us" form will collect all user information and post to Amazon API Gateway restful service.
- Amazon API Gateway will pass collected user information to an AWS lambda function.
- AWS Lambda function will auto generate an e-mail and forward it to your mail server using Amazon SES.
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Best practices: Optimize cloud spend with FinOps | Capital One
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Enter Cloud FinOps
As companies enter Level 4 of the Cloud Capability Maturity Model and look to reduce unnecessary costs and make expenditures more predictable (Moonasar, V., & Naicker, V., 2020), they will leverage the practices established by the new discipline of Cloud FinOps. Cloud FinOps, or cloud financial operations, is a set of practices and processes to optimize cloud spending and improve cost efficiency in cloud-based environments.
The primary purpose of Cloud FinOps is to help organizations manage the financial aspects of their cloud deployments and ensure that they are getting the most value for their investment in the cloud.
Optimize cloud spend with FinOps to achieve business objectives
Cloud FinOps is a multidisciplinary approach involving various organizational stakeholders, including finance, operations and IT teams. The goal is to enable these teams to work together to optimize cloud spending and ensure that the organization achieves its business objectives in the most cost-effective way possible (Storment, 2021).
The key objectives of Cloud FinOps include
Cost optimization. Cloud FinOps aims to optimize cloud spending by identifying opportunities to reduce costs and improve efficiency in cloud-based environments.
Cost accountability. Cloud FinOps provides visibility into cloud spending across the organization, enabling finance and operations teams to track and analyze cloud spending and allocate costs to the appropriate departments.
Cost governance. Cloud FinOps provides a framework for managing cloud costs and ensuring that cloud spending is aligned with the organization's overall business objectives.
Continuous improvement. Cloud FinOps is an iterative process that involves ongoing analysis and optimization of cloud spending, enabling organizations to continuously improve their cloud deployments over time.
These Cloud FinOps practices and processes allow organizations to better manage the financial aspects of their cloud deployments and ensure that they are getting the most value for their investment in the cloud. In upcoming blog posts, we will explore hidden cloud costs through the lens of Cloud FinOps.
Cloud FinOps domains
Development
Resilience
Retention
Optimization
A quick look into how Capital One manages its Cloud FinOps
Our tech teams at Capital One put Cloud FinOps processes and practices in place to manage cloud costs. Specifically, we work to:
Understand cloud usage and cost: Through ingestion of the AWS Cost & Utilization Report, Capital One has developed tooling to provide visibility and transparency into cloud spend in a way that makes sense to our business. Used by individual engineers up through the most senior executives, Capital One provides the tooling necessary to create accountability for cloud spend down to the application and resource level.
Track performance: Monthly, a partnership between tech and finance refines the forecast in order to accurately predict any budget variances for problem solving.
Make decisions real-time: Capital One developed real-time machine learning-based anomaly detection process for cloud spend. Which have resulted in anomaly corrections prior to significant financial impact.
Optimize cloud rates: Capital One has implemented an always on process to manage savings plan commitments to maximize value through bulk pre-purchases.
Optimize cloud usage: Capital One uses a set of spend efficiency metrics that allows the central team to communicate with divisions on how well they are using their cloud resources.
Align organizationally: The Capital One CloudX team is made up of a central tech team focused on tools and strategy; a finance team focused on reporting, accounting, forecasting and anomaly detection; and divisional champions who are knowledgeable about their business, opportunities and can influence strategy.
Cloud adoption offers unprecedented capabilities with planning and strategy
The transition to the public cloud offers unprecedented capabilities to the business with the ability to quickly innovate and deliver new products and services to customers. However, it comes at the risk of unexpected costs. To manage these cost challenges, enterprises must carefully plan their cloud adoption strategy, monitor their cloud usage and spending, and take advantage of cost optimization tools and services that cloud service providers offer.
Monday, June 9, 2025
Privacy Victory! Judge Grants Preliminary Injunction in OPM/DOGE Lawsuit | Electronic Frontier Foundation
"The plaintiffs have shown that the defendants disclosed OPM records to individuals who had no legal right of access to those records," Cote found.
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Tuesday, May 27, 2025
Monday, April 28, 2025
Friday, April 25, 2025
A 2-year-old U.S. citizen was deported ‘with no meaningful process,’ a judge suspects.
A federal judge in Louisiana expressed concern on Friday that the Trump administration had deported a 2-year-old U.S. citizen to Honduras "with no meaningful process" and against the wishes of her father.
In a brief order issued from Federal District Court in the Western District of Louisiana, Judge Terry A. Doughty questioned why the administration had sent the child — known in court papers only as V.M.L. — to Honduras with her mother even though her father had sought in an emergency petition on Thursday to stop the girl from being sent abroad.
"The government contends that this is all OK because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her," wrote Judge Doughty, a conservative Trump appointee. "But the court doesn't know that."
Asserting that "it is illegal and unconstitutional to deport" a U.S. citizen, Judge Doughty set a hearing for May 16 to explore his "strong suspicion that the government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process."
The case of V.M.L., which was reported earlier by Politico, is the latest challenge to the legality of several aspects of President Trump's aggressive deportation efforts.
The administration has already been blocked by six federal judges in courts across the country from removing Venezuelan migrants accused of being gang members to El Salvador under a rarely invoked wartime statute. It has also created an uproar by wrongfully deporting a Maryland man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, to El Salvador and so far refusing to work to bring him back.
According to court papers, the 2-year-old girl had accompanied her mother, Jenny Carolina Lopez Villela, and her older sister, Valeria, to an immigration appointment in New Orleans on Tuesday when they were taken into custody by officials from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Ms. Lopez Villela was scheduled for an expedited removal from the country on Friday. And in a filing to Judge Doughty, lawyers for the Justice Department claimed that she "made known to ICE officials that she wanted to retain custody of V.M.L. and for V.M.L. to go" with her to Honduras.
But in a petition filed by the child's custodian, Trish Mack, on Thursday, her father claimed that when he spoke briefly with Ms. Lopez Villela, he could hear her and the children crying. The father reminded her, the petition said, that "their daughter was a U.S. citizen and could not be deported."
The father, who was not identified by name in the petition, tried to give Ms. Lopez Villela the phone number for a lawyer, but he claims that officials cut short the call.
The detention of V.M.L. "is without any basis in law and violates her fundamental due process rights," the petition said. "She seeks this court's urgent action and asks the court to order her immediate release to her custodian Trish Mack, who is ready and waiting to take her home."
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Tuesday, April 22, 2025
U.S. Constitution - Fourteenth Amendment | Resources | Constitution Annotated | Congress.gov | Library of Congress
Fourteenth Amendment
Section 1
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
Section 3
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4
The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5
The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-14/ | |
U.S. Constitution - Ninth Amendment
Ninth Amendment
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-9/ | |
Sunday, April 6, 2025
Justice Dept. suspends lawyer who acknowledged deportation was a mistake
Story by Perry Stein, Katie Mettler
The Justice Department suspended a veteran lawyer after he said in court that officials mistakenly deported a man to prison in his home country of El Salvador and conceded that he did not know the legal basis for the expulsion.
Erez Reuveni had worked at the Justice Department for nearly 15 years, most recently as the acting deputy director of the Office of Immigration Litigation. A Justice Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel matter, said he was put on indefinite leave.
In response to questions about Reuveni, Attorney General Pam Bondi said: "At my direction, every Department of Justice attorney is required to zealously advocate on behalf of the United States. Any attorney who fails to abide by this direction will face consequences."
Reuveni appeared in federal court in Maryland on Friday after the government's extraordinary admission that it should not have deported Kilmar Abrego GarcÃa on March 15 as part of a surprise airlift of purported gang members to the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador.
Reuveni acknowledged the mistake in court Friday and told a judge that he did not know what authority the U.S. used to deport Abrego GarcÃa. Six years ago, an immigration judge found that Abrego GarcÃa had testified credibly that he could be harmed or killed by gang members in El Salvador and should not be removed.
"My answer to a lot of these questions is going to be frustrating," Reuveni told U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in federal court in Maryland. "And I'm frustrated that I don't have answers to a lot of these questions."
Reuveni is the latest career staffer to be fired or removed from their position for being viewed as disloyal or ill equipped to carry out President Donald Trump's agenda. The New York Times first reported on his removal.
Typically, career staffers at the Justice Department are tasked with handling cases that they may disagree with, but they are expected to follow legal ethics and the professional standards set out by the American Bar Association.
On her first day as attorney general, Bondi issued an agencywide directive that demanded "zealous advocacy" of Trump's agenda from the department's more than 10,000 lawyers.
Xinis on Friday ordered the Trump administration to arrange the return of Abrego GarcÃa, who is married to a U.S. citizen, by no later than 11:59 p.m. Monday.
The Trump administration immediately appealed that ruling. The Justice Department said in a filing Saturday — which Reuveni did not sign — that the judge's order was "indefensible" and that the United States does not have "control over Abrego GarcÃa."
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has said the government has no power to return Abrego GarcÃa because he is in the custody of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.
"We suggest the Judge contact President Bukele because we are unaware of the judge having jurisdiction or authority over the country of El Salvador," Leavitt said in an email.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers acknowledged in court records several days ago that they were aware of internal forms forbidding them from sending Abrego GarcÃa to El Salvador and called his removal an "oversight."
Reuveni was one of three attorneys who signed the court filing that said Abrego GarcÃa was removed because of an "administrative error." The lead attorney on the filing — Yaakov Roth, the acting assistant attorney general — was recently tapped by the Trump administration to serve in the department.
Rueveni was recently promoted to acting deputy director of the Office of Immigration Litigation, known as OIL. In announcing the promotion to staff, a Justice Department leader praised Reuveni's work as a "top-notched litigator who has taken on some of OIL's most challenging cases" over the past 15 years, according to a copy of the message shared with the Washington Post.
In court on Friday, Reuveni appeared frustrated with being put in the position to argue that the United States had no authority to try to secure Abrego GarcÃa's return from El Salvador.
At the end of the hearing, Reuveni made a plea, asking the judge to give the administration a few days to secure Agrego GarcÃa's return without court interference. He told the judge that had been his recommendation to government officials, whom he referred to as his clients.
"Good clients listen to their lawyers," Xinis said.
Tuesday, April 1, 2025
I gotta do a Better Job with my Example Events
When I create a ConferenceParties.com site for a conference, like RSA or Google Cloud Next, or AWS Summits, I add an example banner and example party listing. This is to help marketing folks understand they could have a Banner Ad on the site.
While searching for events to add to my RSA Parties site I found this listed:
This is my Example banner and listing
I guess I GOTTA make this more obvious. 😅
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