Jason Vriends

Lay Pastor, Senior IT Strategist, Keto Advocate, Flight Enthusiast, Cloud Architect & Engineer.

[Jason Vriends @JasonVriends]

I’ve been playing with Cursor AI lately, and it’s completely transformed my coding process. As a fork of Visual Studio Code, Cursor AI pairs the familiar VS Code environment with powerful AI capabilities, leveraging models like Claude 3.5 Sonnet to accelerate development. I’ve gone from spending months to just days building full Django Python applications—and it’s been a game-changer.

How it works: With context-aware autocomplete (Cursor Tab), I get multi-line suggestions that feel spot-on. The in-editor chat helps me debug and generate code on the fly, while the 'Agent' mode understands my entire codebase to refactor or build features fast. I can tag files with @ symbols, ask project-specific questions, and apply edits seamlessly—no more juggling external tools. Plus, it plays nice with all my favorite VS Code extensions.

For any developer looking to supercharge their workflow with AI while keeping the flexibility of a solid IDE, Cursor AI is a must-try.

https://t.co/wD79xMHMEz

[Akshay 🚀 @akshay_pachaar]

Microsoft has released its own document parser for LLM use!
.
.
Introducing MarkItDown, a 100% open-source, one-stop solution for effortlessly converting any file to Markdown—perfect for text analysis, indexing, and more!

Here’s what makes it special:

↳ Converts PDF, Word, Excel, PPT, images, audio to markdown
↳ Extracts EXIF, OCR, and transcripts automatically
↳ Available via CLI, Python API, or Docker
↳ Offers LLM-based image descriptions
↳ Supports batch conversions

Link to the repo in next tweet!
_____
Find me → @akshay_pachaar ✔️
For more insights & tutorials on AI and Machine Learning.

[Azure Governance @AzureGovernance]

With the GA of Change Actor, identifying who made changes to your Azure resources, and how they were made, just became easier!

With Change Analysis, you can now see who initiated changes and with which clients.

https://t.co/PP7oCmchDg

[Tom Warren @tomwarren]

scoop: security is now officially a top priority inside Microsoft. Starting today, the software giant is now tying its security efforts to employee performance reviews. Full details below 👇 https://t.co/7Z86LLXjbx

[Microsoft SharePoint @SharePoint]

We are excited to announce the general availability of Microsoft 365 Backup and Microsoft 365 Backup Storage! 🎉
https://t.co/VdB7xk7Wpw

[Merill Fernando @merill]

I ❤️ today's blog post on Entra ID licensing

[Jason Vriends @JasonVriends]

@reprise_99 @MicrosoftPress I would love a copy (especially if signed).

[Matt Zorich @reprise_99]

We are often engaged with organizations that have lost complete control of their Microsoft Entra ID tenant, I wrote a comprehensive blog post on lessons learned from real world engagements to try to help reduce the risk of the same happening to you https://t.co/Z00BulYbuN

[Jan Bakker @janbakker_]

Let's have a first look at the new Conditional Access controls integrating with Entra Global Secure Access!

https://t.co/jEaJz4xmvI

[Speaker 25 @rodtrent]

Microsoft Entra Permissions Management integration with Microsoft Defender for Cloud (Preview) https://t.co/rMrVOb0neY

#MicrosoftEntra #MicrosoftSecurity #Cybersecurity #Azure #AzureAD #Identity #CloudSecurity

[Yan Cui @theburningmonk]

wow, THIS. IS. HUGE!! 🤯

I need to check this out myself, but at first glance, this should make importing existing resources so much easier and requires no manual actions

https://t.co/r4IbjABCEY

[Marc Brooker @MarcJBrooker]

"The Amazon Time Sync Service now gives you a way to synchronize time within microseconds of UTC on Amazon EC2 instances.... customers can now access local, GPS-disciplined reference clocks on supported EC2 Instances." https://t.co/t7b4KAjfnc

[Jason Vriends @JasonVriends]

✔️Announcing Azure Integration Environment in public preview
✔️Attach and Detach VMs to and from Existing Virtual Machine Scale Sets, in preview

[Jason Vriends @JasonVriends]

Azure Platform Updates that were announced in the last two weeks:
✔️Azure Monitor Logs archive provides up to 12 years of retention
✔️Azure support for TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 will end by 31 October 2024

[Jason Vriends @JasonVriends]

✔️Azure Kubernetes Fleet Manager
✔️Kubernetes AI toolchain operator
✔️Cost analysis add-on for AKS, in preview
✔️Azure Container Storage is now available with Azure Linux container host
✔️Azure Logic Apps workflow assistant in public preview, in preview