The news that interested me the most last week was the DuckLabs acquisition. AWS has signed a definitive agreement to acquire DuckLabs, the Amsterdam-based company behind DuckDB, the popular open source analytical database that runs in-process and executes SQL directly against files like Parquet, CSV, and JSON. DuckDB stays open source under its independent foundation and the MIT license, and over time AWS plans to combine its speed at everyday queries with the enterprise scale of services like Amazon S3, Amazon Redshift, and Amazon Athena.

Co-founded by Hannes Mühleisen and Mark Raasveldt, DuckDB runs locally or on Amazon S3, which makes it remarkably fast for the everyday queries (a terabyte or less) that make up the bulk of real-world analytics. It also happens to pair beautifully with AI agents, which “poke” and experiment their way through data much like humans do. The co-founders will continue leading its technical direction while AWS combines DuckDB’s speed with analytics services like Amazon EMR, AWS Glue, and Amazon SageMaker. For the bigger picture on why this matters, Andy Warfield, Vice President and Distinguished Engineer shared his thoughts on the post DuckDB and the changing physics of analytics on All Things Distributed.

Now, let’s get into this week’s AWS news…

Last week’s launches
Here are some launches and updates from this past week that caught my attention:

• Amazon ECS now automatically detects and recovers container instances that lose agent connectivity – Amazon ECS now continuously monitors agent connectivity to the control plane and surfaces a new AGENT_CONNECTIVITY health event across AWS Fargate, Amazon ECS Managed Instances, and Amazon ECS on EC2. On Fargate and Managed Instances, ECS handles recovery automatically, draining tasks, launching replacements, and deregistering the impaired instance. On EC2, you can wire the event into your own workflow. Available at no additional cost in all AWS Commercial and AWS GovCloud (US) Regions.
• AWS Lambda introduces public preview runtimes, starting with Node.js 26 and Python 3.15 – You can now test upcoming Lambda runtimes before they reach general availability. Preview runtimes use the same identifier as the eventual GA version, so your functions graduate automatically with no action required. Third-party tools and deployment frameworks can also validate compatibility ahead of GA. Not meant for production yet (breaking changes are possible), but a great way to get ahead of your next upgrade. Available in all AWS commercial, AWS GovCloud (US), and China Regions.
• AWS IoT Core adds a native InfluxDB rule action – You can now route time-series data from your IoT devices straight into InfluxDB (Amazon Timestream-managed or self-hosted) without writing custom code or standing up an intermediate service. IoT Core formats data into InfluxDB’s line protocol and supports device-side and server-side batching. Available in all AWS Regions where Amazon Timestream for InfluxDB is offered.
• Amazon GameLift Servers now includes enhanced DDoS protection – Your game servers now get automatic protection against network and transport layer (layers 3 and 4) DDoS attacks – UDP reflection, SYN floods, and similar vectors – with nothing to enable or opt into. Built on top of AWS Shield Standard with gaming-optimized traffic shaping, it turns on the moment your servers start running (Server SDK 5) at no extra cost. It’s available in all supported GameLift Servers Regions except China (Beijing) and China (Ningxia).
• Amazon SageMaker HyperPod expands support for Ray – You can now run Ray workloads on SageMaker HyperPod with built-in observability, resilient training, and accelerated inference. Create and manage Ray clusters from Amazon SageMaker Studio, attach JupyterLab or your local IDE so a multi-node cluster behaves like a local dev environment, and get auto-provisioned Grafana dashboards. Node auto recovery, hung job detection, and tiered checkpointing keep large training runs healthy, while Ray Serve adds a tiered KV cache for inference. Your existing open source Ray code runs unchanged. Available for HyperPod clusters orchestrated by Amazon EKS.

For a full list of AWS announcements, be sure to keep an eye on the What’s New with AWS page.

Other AWS news
Here are some additional posts and resources that you might find interesting:

• Happy 20th birthday, Amazon EC2! – Amazon EC2 turns 20. Channy Yun looks back at how EC2 grew from a single m1.small instance type in one Region to more than 1,200 instance types across 39 Regions, along with the custom silicon journey from the first Graviton to Graviton5 and Trainium3. A fun and worthwhile read on the service that still underpins so much of AWS – including Amazon ECS, Amazon EKS, AWS Lambda, Amazon SageMaker, and Amazon Bedrock.
• Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD): an open specification for agent discovery – As organizations scale up agents, tools, and MCP servers, those resources end up scattered across clouds, on-premises infrastructure, and SaaS platforms – each with its own registry and metadata. ARD is a new open specification (Apache 2.0) that defines a common way to describe and discover agentic resources, so publishers “describe once” and consumers “discover everywhere” – think DNS, but for agents. AWS contributed feedback but doesn’t own the spec, and it complements the AWS Agent Registry by letting you federate across catalogs without migrating.
• Get started with the Agent Toolkit for AWS in the AWS CLI – A single AWS CLI command (aws configure agent-toolkit) now equips AI coding agents like Kiro, Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor with curated, up-to-date AWS knowledge and a secure connection to thousands of AWS APIs through the AWS MCP Server. If you build with an AI coding assistant, this helps it choose the right services, use modern APIs, and follow security best practices – so it gets AWS code right more often the first time.

Upcoming AWS events
Check your calendar and sign up for upcoming AWS events:

• AWS Summits – Free in-person events where builders come together to learn, connect, and explore the latest in cloud and AI. Upcoming stops include Zurich (September 2), São Paulo (September 3), Tel Aviv (September 10), and Dubai (September 30). Can’t attend in person? You can stream sessions through the Global Livestream and On-Demand Hub. I’ll be presenting two sessions on generative AI and Amazon Bedrock at the São Paulo Summit – if you’re there, come say hello.
• AWS Community Days – Community-led conferences where content is planned, sourced, and delivered by community leaders. Upcoming events include JAWS SONIC 2026 in Tokyo (September 5) and Warsaw, Poland (September 8).

Join the AWS Builder Center to connect with builders, share solutions, and access content that supports your development. Browse here for upcoming AWS-led in-person and virtual events and developer-focused events.

That’s all for this week. Check back next Monday for another Weekly Roundup!

— Daniel Abib

This post is part of our Weekly Roundup series. Check back each week for a quick roundup of interesting news and announcements from AWS!

The post AWS Weekly Roundup: Welcome DuckLabs to the team, Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD), and more (August 31, 2026) appeared first on The NOKIA Blog.

Today, I’m happy to announce a new capability to resolve location data for Amazon Sidewalk enabled devices with the AWS IoT Core Device Location service. This feature removes the requirement to install GPS modules in a Sidewalk device and also simplifies the developer experience of resolving location data. Devices powered by small coin cell batteries, such as smart home sensor trackers, use Sidewalk to connect. Supporting built-in GPS modules for products that move around is not only expensive, it can creates challenge in ensuring optimal battery life performance and longevity.

With this launch, Internet of Things (IoT) device manufacturers and solution developers can build asset tracking and location monitoring solutions using Sidewalk-enabled devices by sending Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Wi-Fi, or Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) information to AWS IoT for location resolution. They can then send the resolved location data to an MQTT topic or AWS IoT rule and route the data to other Amazon Web Services (AWS) services, thus using different capabilities of AWS Cloud through AWS IoT Core. This would simplify their software development and give them more options to choose the optimal location source, thereby improving their product performance.

This launch addresses previous challenges and architecture complexity. You don’t need location sensing on network-based devices when you use the Sidewalk network infrastructure itself to determine device location, which eliminates the need for power-hungry and costly GPS hardware on the device. And, this feature also allows devices to efficiently measure and report location data from GNSS and Wi-Fi, thus extending the product battery life. Therefore, you can build a more compelling solution for asset tracking and location-aware IoT applications with these enhancements.

For those unfamiliar with Amazon Sidewalk and the AWS IoT Core Device Location service, I’ll briefly explain their history and context. If you’re already familiar with them, you can skip to the section on how to get started.

AWS IoT Core integrations with Amazon Sidewalk
Amazon Sidewalk is a shared network that helps devices work better through improved connectivity options. It’s designed to support a wide range of customer devices with capabilities ranging from locating pets or valuables, to smart home security and lighting control and remote diagnostics for appliances and tools.

Amazon Sidewalk is a secure community network that uses Amazon Sidewalk Gateways (also called Sidewalk Bridges), such as compatible Amazon Echo and Ring devices, to provide cloud connectivity for IoT endpoint devices. Amazon Sidewalk enables low-bandwidth and long-range connectivity at home and beyond using BLE for short-distance communication and LoRa and frequency-shift keying (FSK) radio protocols at 900MHz frequencies to cover longer distances.

Sidewalk now provides coverage to more than 90% of the US population and supports long-range connected solutions for communities and enterprises. Users with Ring cameras or Alexa devices that act as a Sidewalk Bridge can choose to contribute a small portion of their internet bandwidth, which is pooled to create a shared network that benefits all Sidewalk-enabled devices in a community.

In March 2023, AWS IoT Core deepened its integration with Amazon Sidewalk to seamlessly provision, onboard, and monitor Sidewalk devices with qualified hardware development kits (HDKs), SDKs, and sample applications. As of this writing, AWS IoT Core is the only way for customers to connect the Sidewalk network.

In the AWS IoT Core console, you can add your Sidewalk device, provision and register your devices, and connect your Sidewalk endpoint to the cloud. To learn more about onboarding your Sidewalk devices, visit the Getting started with AWS IoT Core for Amazon Sidewalk in the AWS IoT Wireless Developer Guide.

In November 2022, we announced AWS IoT Core Device Location service, a new feature that you can use to get the geo-coordinates of their IoT devices even when the device doesn’t have a GPS module. You can use the Device Location service as a simple request and response HTTP API, or you can use it with IoT connectivity pathways like MQTT, LoRaWAN, and now with Amazon Sidewalk.

In the AWS IoT Core console, you can test the Device Location service to resolve the location of your device by importing device payload data. Resource location is reported as a GeoJSON payload. To learn more, visit the AWS IoT Core Device Location in the AWS IoT Core Developer Guide.

Customers across multiple industries like automotive, supply chain, and industrial tools have requested a simplified solution such as the Device Location service to extract location-data from Sidewalk products. This would streamline customer software development and give them more options to choose the optimal location source, thereby improving their product.

Get started with a Device Location integration with Amazon Sidewalk
To enable Device Location for Sidewalk devices, go to the AWS IoT Core for Amazon Sidewalk section under LPWAN devices in the AWS IoT Core console. Choose Provision device or your existing device to edit the setting and select Activate positioning in the Geolocation option when creating and updating your Sidewalk devices.

While activating position, you need to specify a destination where you want to send your location data. The destination can either be an AWS IoT rule or an MQTT topic.

Here is a sample AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) command to enable position while provisioning a new Sidewalk device:

$ aws iotwireless createwireless device --type Sidewalk 
  --name "demo-1" --destination-name "New-1" 
  --positioning Enabled

After your Sidewalk device establishes a connection to the Amazon Sidewalk network, the device SDK will send the GNSS-, Wi-Fi- or BLE-based information to AWS IoT Core for Amazon Sidewalk. If the customer has enabled Positioning, then AWS IoT Core Device Location will resolve the location data and send the location data to the specified Destination. After your Sidewalk device transmits location measurement data, the resolved geographic coordinates and a map pin will also be displayed in the Position section for the selected device.

You will also get location information delivered to your destination in GeoJSON format, as shown in the following example:

{
    "coordinates": [
        13.376076698303223,
        52.51823043823242
    ],
    "type": "Point",
    "properties": {
        "verticalAccuracy": 45,
        "verticalConfidenceLevel": 0.68,
        "horizontalAccuracy": 303,
        "horizontalConfidenceLevel": 0.68,
        "country": "USA",
        "state": "CA",
        "city": "Sunnyvale",
        "postalCode": "91234",
        "timestamp": "2025-11-18T12:23:58.189Z"
    }
}

You can monitor the Device Location data between your Sidewalk devices and AWS Cloud by enabling Amazon CloudWatch Logs for AWS IoT Core. To learn more, visit the AWS IoT Core for Amazon Sidewalk in the AWS IoT Wireless Developer Guide.

Now available
AWS IoT Core Device Location integration with Amazon Sidewalk is now generally available in the US East (N. Virginia) Region. To learn more about use cases, documentation, sample codes, and partner devices, visit the AWS IoT Core for Amazon Sidewalk product page.

Give it a try in the AWS IoT Core console and send feedback to AWS re:Post for AWS IoT Core or through your usual AWS Support contacts.

— Channy

The post Introducing AWS IoT Core Device Location integration with Amazon Sidewalk appeared first on The NOKIA Blog.