Quack — the remote protocol that turns DuckDB into a proper client-server database — graduates from community extension to core in this release, installing and loading automatically on first use. It is still beta-flagged with possible breaking changes before v2.0, but shipping it in-box signals the project's direction: DuckDB as both embedded engine and network-accessible service. DuckLake picks up a direct benefit, able to connect DuckDB servers as catalog databases for lakehouse operations. The Iceberg integration gains MERGE INTO, INSERT and UPDATE on partitioned tables, ALTER TABLE, and GEOMETRY type support — a meaningful jump in write-path coverage that closes several gaps against Spark-based workflows. The AWS extension now supports web identity chains (IRSA) and IAM authentication for RDS and Aurora, which should remove the last friction for teams running DuckDB in EKS or Fargate environments.