In August 2019, I walked into an early learning center in Philadelphia with a blank reporter’s notebook, a camera and a whole lot to learn.

Prior to that, I’d covered K-12 education and a bit of higher ed. The worlds of child care and early childhood education were foreign to me. I didn’t know the lingo or the layout. And, as I’d learn moments later, I didn’t have the slightest idea what it entailed to care for and engage babies and toddlers.

Fast forward six years, and now my favorite part of my work as an education journalist is meeting and writing about young children and their caregivers.

It wasn’t long after that program visit in Philly that I began to feel this way. Back then, few news outlets consistently published stories about the early years. EdSurge won grant funding to cover early childhood, and because no one on staff had covered the field before, we were given a sizable budget for travel. The idea was that I’d learn the beat in context. I went to early care and education programs all over the country — in homes, centers, schools and churches. I saw what an early learning environment looked like. I heard the sounds — oh, the glorious sounds of laughter and squeals of delight, the tears of a toy snagged unjustly or an unwanted nap. I smelled the smells. I noted the physicality of the job. I watched closely enough to realize that, as the children played — whether inside or outside, independently or in groups, structured or unstructured, real or imaginative — they were developing critical life skills.

From Utah to Ohio to New Jersey, I was filled with wonder during those initial months on the early childhood beat. I loved watching the way young children think and move about the world. I could not believe the depths of patience their teachers had. I puzzled over how, despite everything I learned about the significance of the early years for brain development and long-term success, child care was sorely underfunded, leaving families, educators and kids to figure it out for themselves.

It is one thing to write about babies’ brain development and skill acquisition, to cover the backwardness of the U.S. early care and education system, to report on the impossible choices parents are asked to make. It’s another to live it.

When I became pregnant with my first child in 2024, I told my husband that, as soon as we heard the baby’s heartbeat, I wanted to begin our child care search.

We hadn’t even told most friends and family when we began touring early learning centers in Denver. I expected to join long waitlists. I expected it would become our biggest or second-biggest expense, after housing. I’d been writing about these realities for years, after all.

But even I was shocked to be told, by more than one program director, that they likely wouldn’t have a slot for our son — who was due in spring 2025 — until 2027 or 2028.

And when we eventually decided to pursue a nanny share — in which our child and another child receive care from the same nanny in one of the family’s homes — I was prepared for a high-stakes hiring process. But I didn’t realize, until I got into it, just how difficult it would be to find someone with whom I felt I could entrust the single most precious thing in my life. Or how conflicted I would feel to be at my desk, writing about other child care arrangements for other people’s kids, when I could hear my own baby laughing and crying and babbling right upstairs.

Then there is the baby himself.

I think back to what I didn’t know and what I assumed back in 2019, and I shake my head. Little kids don’t just come online one day, around age 4 or 5, even though that’s how the education system in America treats them.

Some weeks into his life, I watched my son discover his hands. And then I watched him use those hands to reach for a bell that hung over his playmat. After he figured out how to touch it, he learned to grasp it, and after he learned to grasp it, he mastered ringing it. Now, at 7 months old, he uses those hands to pick up board books and hold camping mugs and shake rattles and grab my face. He picks up foods like crusty bread and roasted carrots and strips of scrambled egg and brings them to his mouth to eat. I marvel.

I’ve heard experts explain for years that close caregiver relationships are what a child needs most in the first year of life. But in recent months, I’ve come to see firsthand how much comfort and encouragement and joy mine and my husband’s presence provide our son. I see him look to us for reactions. Now that he’s crawling, he follows us from room to room. Now that he’s reaching, I know when he wants to be held. Now that he’s been in a nanny share for some time, I know that he’s built a relationship with the nanny because he lights up when she arrives for the day.

I can’t say for certain that early childhood reporting has made me a better mom. Perhaps, in subtle ways, some kernels of knowledge have carried over. But I feel quite sure — at the very least hopeful — that motherhood will make me a more perceptive reporter, keenly aware of the stakes in early childhood and more empathetic to those the field touches.

On that subject, this is my last piece as a senior reporter for EdSurge. It has been a great run, with nearly 300 published stories over more than seven years. I’ve covered K-12 and early childhood education here with enthusiasm and commitment, even amid company mergers, a global pandemic, layoffs, and many seasons of change in my personal life.

The early childhood beat has grown up a bit in that time too, with many major newsrooms now devoting full-time positions to the field.

EdSurge will continue to cover early care and education after my time here is up. And in my next chapter as a journalist, so will I. I expect our paths will cross again and again.

• Control Resonant does not use generative AI content “at all”
• Remedy interim CEO Markus Mäki confirmed that there is “varied interest” in the tech at the company
• He adds that the company is following AI progression to see if anything can be used “ethically” that would “add player value”

Remedy interim CEO Markus Mäki has confirmed that the studio’s next major title, Control Resonant, does not utilize generative AI. However, he admits that there is interest in the tech at the company.

Speaking during Remedy’s most recent earnings Q&A (via Game Developer), Mäki discussed the divisive technology that has been seeping into every facet of the games industry over the past few years.

The fake goods crisis cuts two ways. Luxury brands lose more than $30 billion a year to counterfeits, while buyers in the booming $210 billion second-hand market have no reliable way to verify that what they’re purchasing is genuine. Veritas wants to solve both problems with a solution that combines custom hardware and software.

The startup claims that it has developed a “hack-proof” chip that can’t be bypassed by devices like Flipper Zero, a widely available hacking tool that can be used to tamper with wireless systems. These chips are linked with digital certificates to verify the authenticity of the products.

Vertitas founder Luci Holland has experienced life as both a technologist and an artist. She has worked in different artistic mediums, including mixed media painting and metal sculpture. She has also worked at Tesla as a technical product manager and has held several business development, community growth, and product management roles at tech companies and venture funds.

Holland noted that traditionally, luxury goods makers use various symbols or physical marks to authenticate their products. However, with the growing demand for these goods, counterfeiters have learned to create convincing copies of these marks along with high-quality fake certificates. These goods are often called “superfakes.”

Holland mentioned that she spoke with maisons — established luxury fashion houses — that said that some of their locations had to stop authenticating goods because fakes were becoming too convincing to reliably detect. She said that drawing on her experience in both the tech and art worlds, she wanted to solve the problem.

“For me, as someone who has a background in being a designer and then also has experience in tech, I saw this problem and thought about the different ways we could solve it. I think what’s truly innovative is we’ve used and combined elements from both hardware and software to create this solution that helps protect brands in this way to convey the information,” she said.

“When I think of counterfeiting and I think of the most iconic and legacy brands,” she added, “a lot of these brands have been around for over 100, 150 years. These brands deserve the most advanced protection to protect these designs.”

Veritas worked with different designers to create a chip that is minimally disruptive to the product creation process. The chip is the size of a small gem and can easily be inserted even after a product is made without compromising its integrity. The chip incorporates NFC, or Near Field Communication — the same short-range wireless technology used in contactless payments. This means you can tap your smartphone on the item to verify its authenticity.

Holland said that for security purposes, the startup developed a custom coil and a bridge structure. If someone attempts to tamper with the product, the chip goes dormant and hides the codes related to the product. On the software side, the product information is linked to the Veritas back end, which monitors scanning behavior to prevent fraud. The company also creates a blockchain-based digital clone of the product for possible digital art gallery shows or metaverse activities.

The company didn’t reveal who it is working with, but said that brands can use its software suite to get information about all the chipped products, add team members to manage items and add product information along with the product story — details that can also be used to connect with their community. The startup said that some partners use this to engage customers through exclusive invitations or early access to new products.

While the counterfeiting market is big, Holland thinks the market still needs education around why it needs robust tech solutions.

“It is shocking to see that some of the shelf solutions, like NFC chips that brands are using, are actually so vulnerable and could easily be bypassed. This is the one thing most people don’t know, and we want to educate the ecosystem to adopt safer solutions,” Holland said.

Veritas said that it raised $1.75 million in pre-seed funding led by Seven Seven Six, along with Doordash co-founder Stanley Tang, skincare brand Reys’ co-founder Gloria Zhu, and former TechCrunch editor Josh Constine. The company plans to use the funding to expand its two-person team.

Seven Seven Six’s Alexis Ohanian said that he was impressed by the combination of design taste and technology expertise of Holland. He thinks that brands know that fake goods are a problem and are constantly looking for robust solutions.

“It’s absolutely an arms race [against fake goods makers], but we’re used to fighting those and consistently winning in tech — and luxury brands need all the help they can get,” Ohanian said.

Microsoft wants to introduce smartphone-style app permission prompts in Windows 11 to request user consent before apps can access sensitive resources such as files, cameras, and microphones.

The “Windows Baseline Security Mode” and “User Transparency and Consent” initiatives represent a major shift for the operating system that now powers more than 1 billion devices.

Windows Platform engineer Logan Iyer said that this new security model was prompted by applications increasingly overriding settings, installing unwanted software, or even modifying core Windows experiences without obtaining user consent.

After the transparency and consent changes roll out, Windows will prompt for permission when apps try to install unwanted software or access sensitive resources, as on smartphones, allowing users to change their choices at any time after accepting or denying access requests.

Windows Baseline Security Mode will enable runtime integrity safeguards by default, ensuring that only properly signed apps, services, and drivers can run, but still allowing users and IT administrators to override these safeguards for specific apps when needed.

“Just like they do today on their mobile phones, users will be able to clearly see which apps have access to sensitive resources, including file system, devices like camera and microphone, and others. If they see an app that they don’t recognize, they will be able to revoke access,” Iyer said.

“Users will have transparency and consent control over how apps access their personal data and device features. They will receive clear prompts to grant or deny apps permission to access protected data and hardware. Users will also be able to revoke permissions they have previously granted.”

The changes will roll out as part of a phased approach developed “in close partnership” with developers, enterprises, and ecosystem partners, with Microsoft planning to adjust the rollout and the controls based on feedback.

The action is part of Microsoft’s Secure Future Initiative (SFI), launched in November 2023 after the Cyber Safety Review Board of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security tagged the company’s security culture as “inadequate.” The board’s report was issued following an Exchange Online breach by Storm-0558 Chinese hackers who stole a Microsoft consumer signing key in May 2023 to gain widespread access to Microsoft cloud services.

As part of this initiative, Microsoft also announced plans to secure Entra ID sign-ins against script-injection attacks, has disabled all ActiveX controls in Microsoft 365 and Office 2024 Windows apps, and has updated Microsoft 365 security defaults to block access to SharePoint, OneDrive, and Office files via legacy authentication protocols.

“Apps and AI agents will also be expected to meet higher transparency standards, giving both users and IT administrators better visibility into their behaviors,” Iyer added. “These updates raise the bar for security and privacy on Windows, while giving you more control and confidence in how your system and data are accessed.”

Modern IT infrastructure moves faster than manual workflows can handle.

In this new Tines guide, learn how your team can reduce hidden manual delays, improve reliability through automated response, and build and scale intelligent workflows on top of tools you already use.

Get the guide

Cloud infrastructure is messy. When an alert fires “EC2 instance unresponsive” or “High CPU utilization”, the initial triage often feels like an archaeological dig. Analysts have to leave their ticketing system, authenticate into the AWS console (cue the MFA prompts), hunt for the specific resource ID, and remember the correct CLI syntax to get the ground truth.

This context-switching tax is heavy. It extends Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) and burns out analysts who spend more time gathering data than fixing problems.

This article explores a pre-built Tines workflow—Investigate AWS issues with CLI data using agents—that eliminates this manual data gathering by bringing the CLI directly to the case.

The problem: The “context gap” in incident response

In many organizations, there is a disconnect between where work is tracked (Jira, ServiceNow) and where the data lives (AWS, Azure, internal logs).

A “simple” investigation often involves:

• Access Friction: Logging into multiple consoles and assuming roles.
• Syntax Struggles: Wasting cycles figuring out the correct CLI syntax and flags to look up information, rather than simply retrieving the answer.
• Security Risks: Giving analysts broad read-access to production environments just to check a status.

Manual processes like these are the enemy of scale. As noted in a recent Tines case study, for a major crowdfunding platform, moving from manual spreadsheets to orchestration reduced unpatched vulnerabilities by 83% in just 90 days.

The lesson? “Focus on security work rather than the mundane tasks behind it.”

The solution: automated CLI execution via agents

The Investigate AWS issues with CLI data workflow bridges the gap between your ticket and your cloud environment. It uses Tines agents—secure, lightweight runners that can send commands to AWS using secure credentials—to execute CLI commands safely within an intelligent workflow and return the results to the analyst.

Instead of the analyst going to the CLI, the CLI comes to the analyst.

Here is an overview of how the workflow operates:

1. The trigger – The workflow initiates when a new case or ticket is created regarding an AWS resource. This could be triggered automatically by a CloudWatch alarm or manually by an analyst noticing an anomaly.

2. The Agent intermediary – Tines doesn’t need direct, over-privileged access to your cloud. Instead, it instructs a Tines agent running with specified read-only access to AWS. This ensures your cloud credentials stay local and secure.

3. Dynamic command generation – The workflow doesn’t rely on rigid, pre-defined scripts. Instead, the “magic” lies in the agent’s ability to construct the necessary CLI command from scratch based on the context of the ticket. Whether you need to inspect an S3 bucket policy or check an EC2 instance’s security group, the agent intelligently forms the correct syntax and executes it, providing a level of flexibility that static automation can’t match.

4. AI formatting & enrichment – Raw CLI output (often dense JSON) is difficult for humans to parse quickly. The workflow uses Tines’ transformation capabilities (or an optional AI step) to parse this data into a clean, readable summary or table.

5. Case update – The formatted findings are appended directly to the Tines Case or your ITSM tool. The analyst opens the ticket and immediately sees the current state, security groups, and public IPs of the instance—no login required.

The benefits

Implementing this workflow drives efficiency across the entire incident lifecycle:

• Zero-touch context: Analysts start their investigation with the data already in front of them. There is no “gathering phase,” only a “solving phase.”
• Secure access: You don’t need to grant every junior analyst read access to the AWS console. The Tines agent handles the privilege, acting as a secure proxy for specific, approved commands.
• Standardized documentation: Every investigation has the exact same data snapshot attached. This creates a perfect audit trail, which Tines Cases captures automatically.
• Collaborative resolution: By pulling data into Tines Cases, teams can comment, tag, and collaborate in real-time on the “new or unknown,” preventing the siloed communication that happens when data is stuck in a terminal window.

How to build it

This workflow is available as a template to jumpstart your intelligent workflow journey.

Step 1: Import the story Visit the Tines Library and search for Investigate AWS issues with CLI data using agents. Click “Import” to add it to your tenant.

Step 2: Connect Your AWS Credential To allow the agent to interact with your environment, connect a secure AWS credential (like an IAM role or access key) directly within the Tines tenant. No complex infrastructure deployment or external runners are required.

Step 3: Modify Recommended Commands The template includes a list of example commands to help guide the agent, but these aren’t the only ones it can use. You can edit this list to steer the agent’s behavior, specifying commands you would like it to use more frequently based on your team’s most common tickets

Step 4: Review Case Format The workflow is already pre-wired to send findings to Tines Cases, so no manual connection is needed. However, you should review the Case layout to ensure it suits your analysts. You might want to adjust the order of fields or how the AI summary is presented to ensure the most critical data is visible at a glance.

Step 5: Test and define Run the workflow with a dummy ticket. Verify that the agent executes the command and that the output is formatted correctly in the Case view.

Conclusion

The difference between a stressed SOC and an efficient one is often the “mundane tasks.” When analysts have to manually fetch data for every alert, they drown in noise.

By orchestrating these routine checks with Tines and Tines agents, you flip the script. You give your team the context they need instantly, allowing them to focus on the high-value decision-making that actually protects the organization.

As the crowdfunding tech company discovered, intelligent workflows don’t just save time. When implemented properly, they fundamentally change the security posture.

For a deeper look at how Tines Cases can centralize your investigation data, check out this product spotlight: Tines Cases | Product Spotlight. This video demonstrates how the Cases interface consolidates data, making it the perfect destination for the automated AWS insights generated by this workflow.

Sponsored and written by Tines.

Microsoft is investigating an outage that blocks some administrators with business or enterprise subscriptions from accessing the Microsoft 365 admin center.

While the company has yet to disclose which regions are affected by this ongoing service degradation, it is tracking it on its official service health status page to provide impacted organizations with up-to-date information.

“Some users in the North America region may be unable to access the Microsoft 365 admin center. We’re reviewing service monitoring telemetry to isolate the root cause and develop a remediation plan,” Microsoft said when it acknowledged the issue.

“Initial reports indicate that the issue is occurring in the North America and Canada regions. We’ll provide more information once identified.”

Although Microsoft didn’t disclose how many customers are impacted, the company has classified this issue as an incident, which usually involves noticeable user impact.

On the outage-tracking website DownDetector, thousands of Microsoft customers have reported issues, including connection problems and an extremely slow admin portal.

In an update to the original incident report, Microsoft said that the outage also affects the M365 app and that it’s now collecting telemetry data to identify the root cause.

“Users able to access the admin center may be experiencing degraded functionality. As functionality is degraded, users may be unable to raise support tickets through the Microsoft 365 admin center. Additionally, users may be unable to access the M365 app,” Microsoft noted.

“We’re continuing to analyze diagnostic data from the Microsoft 365 admin center infrastructure, with a current focus on usage patterns and Central Processing Unit (CPU) utilization levels. Additionally, we’re reviewing HTTP Archive (HAR) files provided by impacted users to support our investigation.

More than a year ago, in January, Microsoft addressed another critical service issue that blocked login attempts and prevented users and administrators from accessing Microsoft 365 services and the admin center.

In July 2025, it mitigated a similar outage that triggered ‘Runtime Error’ messages, preventing access to the admin portal.

Over the weekend, the company restored Microsoft Store and Windows Update services that had been taken down after a data center power outage, causing “failures or timeouts when installing or updating Microsoft Store apps, or when downloading Windows updates.”

This is a developing story …

Modern IT infrastructure moves faster than manual workflows can handle.

In this new Tines guide, learn how your team can reduce hidden manual delays, improve reliability through automated response, and build and scale intelligent workflows on top of tools you already use.

Get the guide