I’m back! Apologies if I missed any posts from the past week. I picked a few each day while I was away. Back to regular service tomorrow. 
Top Links
- Join the .NET & C# Teams at Microsoft Build 2025 (.NET Team)
- Windows App SDK 1.8.0 Experimental 1 (1.8.250410001-experimental1) 🧪 Release (Roy MacLachlan)
- Build MCP Remote Servers with Azure Functions (Matt Soucoup)
- React Compiler RC (Lauren Tan & Mofei Zhang)
- GitHub Copilot Highlights in Visual Studio 17.14 Preview 3 (Available Now) (Katie Savage)
- New Windows Arm64 Hosted Runners for GitHub Actions Accelerates Developer Workflows (David Whaley)
- Preview 2 of the .NET AI Template Now Available (Jordan Matthiesen)
- Syncfusion’s Free Tools Every Developer Should Know (Meena Alagiah)
- Better Logic For Showing Auth Windows With Your Local MCP Server (Den Delimarsky)
- Introducing the Azure MCP Server (Rohit Ganguly)
- Toolbox Support for Explicit Assembly References in Windows Forms Out-of-Process Designer (Merrie McGaw)
Web & Cloud Development
- Secure Remote MCP Servers With Entra ID And Azure API Management (Den Delimarsky)
- Using Azure Container Apps to Handle Memory Intensive Blazor UI (Michael Washington)
- Getting Started with WhatsApp Messaging in Azure Communication Services feat. Microsoft Software Engineer Gloria Li (ACS Team)
- Blazor Basics: Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) with Blazor WebAssembly (Claudio Bernasconi)
- Implement client assertions for OAuth client credential flows in ASP.NET Core (Damien Bowden)
- Getting Started with .NET on Azure Container Apps (Frank Boucher)
- Astro 5.7 (Matt Kane, Florian Lefebvre, Emanuele Stoppa & Nate Moore)
- Using YARP as BFF within .NET Aspire: Integrating YARP into .NET Aspire (Tim Deschryver)
- Major Updates to VS Code Docker: Introducing Container Tools (fiveisprime)
- Speed Up React Development Using 39 New UI Blocks in Syncfusion’s UI Kit (Meena Alagiah)
- Azure Toolkit for IntelliJ: Introducing the enhanced Java Code Quality Analyzer! (Sameeksha Vaity)
- Configuring ASP.NET Core Forwarded Headers Middleware (Tore Nestenius)
- Understanding GraphQL in .NET: When and why to use it (Ali Hamza Ansari)
- Announcing a New Release of the Auth0 OIDC Client for .NET (Andrea Chiarelli)
- NetEscapades.​AspNetCore.​SecurityHeaders 1.0.0 has been released (Andrew Lock)
- What’s New in .NET Aspire 9.2: Infrastructure Diagrams Made Easy (funkysi1701)
- How the Copilot team leverages .NET Aspire (Katie Savage)
- Contextual logging with console.context() (Patrick Brosset)
WinUI, .NET MAUI & XAML
- Using MVVM Toolkit in .NET MAUI Applications (Héctor Pérez)
- CodeRush for Roslyn: XAML support (Rory Becker)
- Build an AI-Powered Air Quality Dashboard: Real-Time Analytics & Predictive Insights with WPF Spline Chart (Saiyath Ali Fathima M)
- WPF in .NET 9.0: Hyphen-based Ligatures (Thomas Claudius Huber)
- .NET MAUI in .NET 10 Preview: A Focus on Quality and the Developer Experience (Vinoth Kumar Sundara Moorthy)
- Get Started with AI imaging in the Windows App SDK (Microsoft Learn)
Visual Studio & .NET
- Nadaraya-Watson Kernel Regression Using C# (James McCaffrey)
- How to Export XML to Excel in 3 Easy Steps using C#? (Mohan Chandran)
- ReSharper 2025.1: Initial C# 14 Support, Performance Updates, and Comprehensive Quality-of-Life Enhancements and dotCover, dotMemory, dotPeek, and dotTrace 2025.1 Have Arrived! and Rider 2025.1 Is Here: Improved Solution Explorer, New AI Assistant Features, Game Dev Updates, and More! (Oluwatise Okuwobi)
- CodeRush for Visual Studio – New Options Layers (Rory Becker)
- Use EF Core to easily save dates as UTC & show in local time (David Grace)
- C# 13 – Discover the C# 13 new features in this two-part series (Tom Deseyn)
- JetBrains Toolbox App 2.6 Is Here With Remote Development Support (Aleksandra Krupskaya)
- CSLA 2-tier Data Portal Behavior History (Rocky Lhotka)
- Extensions get an update in .NET 10 (Steven Giesel)
- The Fastest Way to Get a String’s Length in Microsoft .NET (David McCarter)
- Mastering xUnit v3: What’s New and How to Leverage It in Your .NET Projects (Eli Lopian)
- Introducing Incrementalist, an Incremental .NET Build Tool for Large Solutions (Aaron Stannard)
- AutoMapper and MediatR Licensing Update (Jimmy Bogard)
- Why It’s Time to Migrate from System.Data.SqlClient to Microsoft.Data.SqlClient (pskountrianos)
- The Strong ARM of .NET: Wrestling with x64 and Arm64 Desktop App Deployment (Rick Strahl)
AI
- Multiagent Research – An exploration of using multiple agents collaborating to perform research (Jennifer Marsman)
- Which AI model should I use with GitHub Copilot? (Cassidy Williams)
- Integrate Custom Azure AI Agents with Copilot Studio and M365 Copilot (Hannah Abbott)
- Google Gemini 2.5 Pro arrives in JetBrains AI Assistant (Oksana Mandryka)
- o3 and o4-mini: Unlock enterprise agent workflows with next-level reasoning AI with Azure AI Foundry and GitHub (Steve Sweetman)
- Start building with Gemini 2.5 Flash (Tulsee Doshi)
- .NET AI Chat Web App Template Preview 2 Released with Qdrant and .NET Aspire Support (Almir Vuk)
- GitHub Models in GitHub Actions (Peli de Halleux)
- Geometric Deep Learning: AI Beyond Text & Images (Exxact Team)
- Your politeness could be costly for OpenAI (Anthony Ha)
- Can You Run the Llama 2 LLM on DOS? (EditorDavid)
- Semantic Kernel adds Model Context Protocol (MCP) support for Python (Eduard van Valkenburg)
- Semantic Kernel Python Now Speaks Google’s A2A Protocol and Integrating Semantic Kernel Python with Google’s A2A Protocol (Evan Mattson)
- Making AI smarter with an MCP server that manages short URLs (Frank Boucher)
- The Auth0 MCP Server is here! (Jessica Temporal)
- Augmented Coding: an Experience Report (Jessica Kerr)
- College students in the U.S. are now eligible for the best of Google AI — and 2 TB storage — for free (Josh Woodward)
- Mastering GitHub Copilot: Your Ultimate Guide to the AI-Powered Coding Revolution (Kunal Chowdhury)
- How AI Is Reshaping the Software Development Life Cycle (Lee Faus)
- OpenAI pursued Cursor maker before entering into talks to buy Windsurf for $3B (Marina Temkin)
- A specialty-specific approach with Microsoft Dragon Copilot (Marjorie Veihl)
- If LLMs Can Code, Why Are We Building More IDEs? (Mark Downie)
- AI Isn’t Just a Tool — It’s Your Newest Teammate (Munish Munagala)
- Technical debt and AI slop (Seth Godin)
- AI Agents: The Multi-Agent Design Pattern – Part 8 (Shivam Goyal)
- Build an AI App That Can Browse the Internet Using Microsoft’s Playwright MCP Server & Semantic Kernel — in Just 4 Steps (Sophia Lagerkrans-Pandey & Akshay Kokane)
Design, Methodology & Testing
- Azure Boards + GitHub: Recent Updates (Dan Hellem)
- Open Source and Container Security Are Fundamentally Broken (Benji Kalman)
- Securing our future: April 2025 progress report on Microsoft’s Secure Future Initiative (Charlie Bell)
- Dev Mode – Easily turn dev mode on and off (Daniel Roe)
- How to Write Actionable Bug Reports (Chris Sells)
- How to make your images in Markdown on GitHub adjust for dark mode and light mode (Cassidy Williams)
- Lost In Translation Or Where do bugs come from? (Gil Zilberfeld)
- When to choose GitHub-Hosted runners or self-hosted runners with GitHub Actions (Ken Muse)
- Racing into 2025 with new GitHub Innovation Graph data (Kevin Xu)
- Understanding Microservices: Core Concepts and Benefits (Milan Jovanović)
- CI/CD Security Best Practices (Olga Bedrina)
- Cleaning up gone branches (Phil Haack)
Mobile, IoT & Game Development
- Ensure your Firebase Cloud Messaging notifications reach your users on Android (Sumit Chandel & Alice Yuan)
- Firebase Studio: Everything You Need to Know About (Vladislav Guzey)
- Flutter Developers, Meet AI: Smart, Fast PDF Form Filling (Deepak G)
- How to build a home recording studio with Raspberry Pi 500: choosing your equipment (K. G. Orphanides)
Screencasts & Videos
- Technology & Friends – Adi Polak on AI Agents and the Necessary Data Infrastructure (David Giard)
- A Year in Review: Microsoft’s Latest CMake Improvements in Visual Studio and VS Code | Pure Virtual C++ (Visual Studio Team)
- Code Cleanup in Visual Studio | Visual Studio Toolbox (Robert Green & Shawn Wildermuth)
- Upskill your team on Azure Databricks with an on-demand webinar and Microsoft Learn (Anavi Nahar)
- Introduction to the C# SDK for Model Context Protocol (MCP) (James Montemagno)
- .NET 10 Preview 3 – Extension Properties & Null-Conditional Assignment for C# 14! (.NET Team)
- .NET Conf: Focus on Modernization – Day 1 (.NET Team)
- Responsible AI & Synthetic Data with April Speight, on Mr. Maeda’s Cozy AI Kitchen (John Maeda)
- Intro to .NET Aspire – Modern app development doesn’t have to be painful | Future Tech 2025 (Maddy Montaquila)
- Scott & Mark Learn To… ShaderGlass and Vibe Coding (Scott Hanselman & Mark Russinovich)
Podcasts
- The Modern .NET Show – Google Gemini in .NET: The Ultimate Guide with Jochen Kirstaetter (Jamie Taylor)
- The Hanselminutes Podcast – Computer Science for Kids with Jen Looper (Scott Hanselman)
- Merge Conflict – A chat with Larry Osterman on Microsoft’s Transformation, AI, & Interviewing (James Montemagno)
- Merge Conflict #459 – Red Robin’s Auto Scaling Problems (James Montemagno & Frank Kreuger)
- The PowerShell Podcast – The PowerShell Podcast Summit sessions with Adam Rivera, Asmar Fontenot, & Luis Orta (James Petty)
- RunAs Radio Episode #980 – How to Not Hate PowerShell with Barbara Forbes (Richard Campbell)
- .NET Rocks! – Audio-Video in .NET with Elias Puurunen (Carl Franklin & Richard Campbell)
- Dev Leader Podcast – Psychology To Software Engineering – Interview With Sofia Sarhiri (Nick Cosentino)
- April Yoho: GitHub in 2025 – Azure & DevOps Podcast Episode #346 (Jeffrey Palermo)
- The Cloud Pod Episode #300 – The Next Chapter: How Google’s Next-Level Next Event Nexted All Our Next Expectations – and What’s Next Now That Next Is Past (Justin Brodley, Jonathan Baker, Ryan Lucas & Matthew Kohn)
Community & Events
- Microsoft targets ‘low performers’ in a sensational new memo (FE Business)
- Return-to-Office Policies Are Impacting Neurodivergent Workers (EditorDavid)
- Pure Virtual C++ 2025: Full Schedule (Sy Brand)
- CFPB workers are receiving mass layoff notices (Lauren Feiner)
- A New Form of Verification on Bluesky (Bluesky Team)
- Cracking the code: How to wow the acceptance committee at your next tech event (Rachel Cohen)
- Over 700 events and protests across the US mark ‘A National Day of Action’ (Wes Davis)
- Join us at Microsoft’s campus for the Ultimate Partner LIVE event! (susantommy)
- Microsoft Implements Stricter Performance Management System With Two-Year Rehire Ban (msmash)
Database
- Your SQL Server Needs Spring Cleaning, Too. (Brent Ozar)
- All About SQL Server Stored Procedures: Temporary Object Performance (Erik Darling)
- Exploring the SQL Server CHOOSE Function (Louis Davidson)
- Announcing the Release of SSMS 21 Preview 6 (M. Barickman)
- Streamlining SQL Server Upgrades with SSMS Migration component (neelball)
- Introducing Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server for Azure Database for PostgreSQL (Preview) (Shreya Aithal)
- Introduction to SQL Commands, Part 2: Adding, Updating Data (Brien Posey)
SharePoint, M365 & MS Teams
- Boost your Microsoft Teams Skills with our Last Chance Offer for Microsoft 365 Conference (Karuana Gatimu)
- Introducing the Microsoft Graph API usage report (Jeremy Kelley)
- Microsoft 365 Copilot Power User Tips (Zachary Cavanell)
- Microsoft 365 Certification control spotlight: General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (Krishna Mawani)
PowerShell & Terminal
- PowerShell Universal v5.5 and Creating Dynamic Forms with Dynamic Parameters in PowerShell Universal (Adam Driscoll)
- Docker x Warp (Olivia Johnston)
Miscellaneous
- Get started with quick machine recovery in Windows (Riddhi Ameser)
- Hitler’s Terrible Tariffs (Timothy W. Ryback)
- Shein and Temu to raise prices for US shoppers in response to tariffs (Aisha Malik)
- Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5562 (Dev Channel) and Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.3872 (Beta Channel) (Amanda Langowski & Brandon LeBlanc)
- 8 Free Career Development Courses From LinkedIn – Offer Ends May 7 (Aminu Abdullahi)
- WD Launches HDD Recycling Process That Reclaims Rare Earth Elements, Cuts Out China (BeauHD)
- Releasing Windows 11 Build 22631.5261 to the Release Preview Channel (Brandon LeBlanc)
- Text extractor in Snipping Tool begins rolling out to Windows Insiders (Dave Grochocki)
- Notion Mail is a minimalist but powerful take on email (David Pierce)
- The Bees Are Disappearing Again (EditorDavid)
- In Major Ruling, Judge Finds Google ‘Willfully Acquired and Maintained Monopoly Power’ Over Digital Ad Market (J.R. Johnivan)
- Hertz says hackers stole customer credit card and driver’s license data (Jess Weatherbed)
- How to Protect Yourself From Phone Searches at the US Border (Lily Hay Newman & Matt Burgess)
- The ongoing story of seconds on the taskbar (Raymond Chen)
More Link Collections
- Interesting links of the week 2025-17 (Michael Eaton)
- AWS Weekly Roundup: Upcoming AWS Summits, Amazon Q Developer, Amazon CloudFront updates, and more (April 21, 2025) (Channy Yun)
- F# Weekly #16, 2025 – Rider 2025.1 & SqlHydra 3 (Sergey Tihon)
- Reading Notes #644 and Reading Notes #645 (Frank Boucher)
The Geek Shelf
Learn WinUI 3, Second Edition (Alvin Ashcraft)