Changelog

This page documents changes made to Researcher Platform over time. We recommend that you periodically check here for any new announcements and release notes.

April 4, 2025

Amazon WorkSpaces Secure Browser best practices were added to the Researcher Platform documentation. See WorkSpaces Secure Browser. Follow these guidelines for best user experience and performance.

February 27, 2025

Amazon WorkSpaces Secure Browser now mandatory

Our beta phase for Amazon WorkSpaces Secure Browser is now concluded and VPN access to Researcher Platform is no longer supported.

Two Secure Browser portals (in different locations) continue to be available for each environment. See your research tool or dataset documentation for the specific URLs to use. See WorkSpaces Secure Browser for information about getting started with and working within Secure Browser.

February 11, 2025

Amazon WorkSpaces Secure Browser

The beta phase for Amazon WorkSpaces Secure Browser has been extended to February 27, 2025, after which it will become mandatory and access through OpenVPN will be discontinued. You will not lose any data as a result of this transition.

Two Secure Browser portals (in different locations) are now available for each environment. See your research tool or dataset documentation for the specific URLs to use.

December 2024

OpenVPN access to Researcher Platform extended

Based on your feedback on our release of Amazon WorkSpaces Secure Browser, we are making improvements to ensure a smoother transition. You will continue to have access to Researcher Platform through OpenVPN. As we make these updates, please note that your current environments and data remain unaffected. We will communicate a revised timeline soon.

November 2024

The following enhancements have been added to Researcher Platform:

Feature	Description
Amazon WorkSpaces Secure Browser	We are introducing access to Meta research tools in Researcher Platform through Amazon WorkSpaces Secure Browser. Using WorkSpaces Secure Browser will be optional until January 7, 2025, after which it will become mandatory and access through OpenVPN will be discontinued. You will not lose any data as a result of this transition. The following processes are impacted by WorkSpaces Secure Browser: See Amazon WorkSpaces Secure Browser for updated Researcher Platform access instructions. Note that VPN is no longer required. The process for exporting a Jupyter notebook now includes an emailed download link. See Export Jupyter notebooks for details. The process for uploading a file saved on your physical computer to an S3 bucket now includes an emailed command that you run on your local machine. See Upload files to an S3 bucket for details.
Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK) enhanced support	You can now download additional NLTK corpora and trained models that enable comprehensive natural language processing tasks.
Machine learning (ML) model support	You can now download pre-trained ML models into your Jupyter environment from the Hugging Face® Hub for translation, semantic analysis, and more.

Feature

Description

Amazon WorkSpaces Secure Browser

We are introducing access to Meta research tools in Researcher Platform through Amazon WorkSpaces Secure Browser.

Using WorkSpaces Secure Browser will be optional until January 7, 2025, after which it will become mandatory and access through OpenVPN will be discontinued. You will not lose any data as a result of this transition.

The following processes are impacted by WorkSpaces Secure Browser:

See Amazon WorkSpaces Secure Browser for updated Researcher Platform access instructions. Note that VPN is no longer required.
The process for exporting a Jupyter notebook now includes an emailed download link. See Export Jupyter notebooks for details.
The process for uploading a file saved on your physical computer to an S3 bucket now includes an emailed command that you run on your local machine. See Upload files to an S3 bucket for details.

Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK) enhanced support

You can now download additional NLTK corpora and trained models that enable comprehensive natural language processing tasks.

Machine learning (ML) model support

You can now download pre-trained ML models into your Jupyter environment from the Hugging Face® Hub for translation, semantic analysis, and more.

August 2023

The Asynchronous queries feature was added to Researcher Platform. This feature decouples query submission from the fetching of query results, enabling you to run queries in the background while you continue working in your Jupyter notebooks or doing other tasks.

June 2022

The following new features have been added to Researcher Platform:

Feature	Description
GPU server option	While CPUs handle a wide variety of tasks quickly, GPUs are better for applications that require parallel processing of large amounts of data, including mathematical computation. For your Jupyter notebook server, you can choose the type of server that is best for your work.
Export Jupyter notebooks	You can export your Jupyter notebooks in a way that keeps the code intact, but scrubs the outputs in conformance with privacy rules.
Install Python packages yourself	You can install Python packages available in the Python Package Index (PyPi) into your Jupyter environment using the Pip package manager class.
Install R packages yourself	You can install R packages into your Jupyter environment using our Conda and CRAN package manager classes.