nowahe

Not so much a killer feature, but I find that some actions in newer services are only possible to automate through Cloudformation (looking at you Workspaces), because of the time they take to open up the API.

For Workspaces it took them something like 2-3 years to release to the public API what you could do with Cloudformation

I remember watching a Defcon conference where they tested different methods for destroying a hard drive in place. And they found that thermite actually doesn't damage the platters (well at least not enough for data to be unrecoverable).

Hard drive platters are surprisingly heat/chemical resistant. I think they found that the best method was to physically destroy the platters.