LogiCast AWS News (Video)

Logicata

LogiCast, brought to you by Logicata, is a weekly AWS News podcast hosted by Karl Robinson, CEO and Co-Founder of Logicata, and Jon Goodall, Lead Cloud Engineer. Each week we hand-pick a selection of news articles on Amazon Web Services (AWS) - we look at what’s new, technical how-to, and business-related news articles and take a deep dive, giving commentary, opinion, and a sprinkling of humor. Please note this is the video edition of the Logicast podcast. For the audio only edition, please check out https://logicast.podbean.com/ read less
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Episodes

Season 3 Episode 40 - Lambda's Birthday, CloudFormation Timeline & Bedrock Agents
3d ago
Season 3 Episode 40 - Lambda's Birthday, CloudFormation Timeline & Bedrock Agents
In Season 3, Episode 40 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Chetan Hirapara. They discuss Lambda, CloudFormation Deployments, Anthropic, Amazon Q Developer plugins, Amazon Bedrock Agents and Karl suggests that you should choose a cloud provider based on your favourite colour....   06:53 - AWS Lambda turns 10: A rare look at the doc that started it - Overview of the original PR FAQ document for Lambda - Lambda was the first functions-as-a-service offering - Lambda originally only supported Node.js, now supports many more languages and frameworks - Billing granularity has improved from 250ms increments originally to 1ms now - Cold start times for Java apps reduced by 90% with SnapStart   15:49 - Peek inside your AWS CloudFormation Deployments with timeline view  - It provides a waterfall view of CloudFormation deployments - Helps identify bottlenecks and long-running operations - Can help optimize deployments by splitting stacks, parallelizing, etc.   21:11 - Amazon considering further investment in Anthropic  - Amazon invested $4 billion in AI startup Anthropic in March 2022 - Reportedly wants Anthropic to use AWS Inferentia chips instead of Nvidia - Anthropic was co-founded by former OpenAI executives - Alphabet has also invested significantly in Anthropic   28:08 - Amazon Q Developer plugins now generally available for the AWS Management Console  - Plugins allow Q Developer to interface with third-party services like Datadog and Whiz - Provides easy access to information without leaving the AWS console - Limited to fairly simple questions currently   33:50 - How Amazon Bedrock Agents work  - Agents are like small orchestration software tools - Have capabilities like memory, prompting users, invoking APIs - Built using LLMs like Titan - Continuously run to provide answers to users   Guest was Chetan Hirapara https://www.linkedin.com/in/chetan-hirapara-90344345/ https://www.youtube.com/@upskillwithchetan
Season 3 Episode 38 - Q Developer, Security Group Sharing, and Amazon's RTO
06-11-2024
Season 3 Episode 38 - Q Developer, Security Group Sharing, and Amazon's RTO
In Season 3, Episode 38 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Anna Astori. They discuss Q Developer, Amazon VPC, AWS WAF, celebrating 10 years of Amazon ECS, Amazon return to office policy and once again Karl tries to extract trade secrets from our guest!   03:05 - AWS launches in-line Q Developer AI coding assistant to take on Microsoft’s Github Copilot The speakers discuss the launch of AWS's Q Developer, an AI coding assistant to compete with GitHub Copilot. Jon is skeptical about the usefulness compared to IntelliSense. Anna agrees there are pros and cons. The new integration with CodeWhisperer model 3.5 could improve it. 13:13 - Amazon Virtual Private Cloud launches new security group sharing features  Jon explains the benefits of the new VPC security group sharing feature for connecting resources across VPCs more securely. 17:30 - How to mitigate bot traffic by implementing Challenge actions in your AWS WAF custom rules  The article explains how to use WAF challenge actions to mitigate bot traffic. Jon provides an overview of how rate limiting and bot control in WAF work. 23:52 - Celebrating 10 Years of Amazon ECS: Powering a Decade of Containerized Innovation  They discuss EC2 Container Service turning 10 years old. Jon explains the pricing and simplicity benefits of ECS compared to Kubernetes. 29:40 - Amazon workers 'appalled' by AWS CEO’s return to office remarks, urge policy reversal  Employees wrote an open letter criticizing the mandated return to 5 days a week in office. Anna and Jon discuss the discrimination concerns and why hybrid doesn't work.   Guest was Anna Astori https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-astori/ https://annaeastori.medium.com/ https://x.com/AmaMidzu
Season 3 Episode 37 - Jam, Sessions & The Nuclear Option
21-10-2024
Season 3 Episode 37 - Jam, Sessions & The Nuclear Option
In Season 3, Episode 37 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Ryan Pothecary. They discuss CloudQuest and AWS Jam, AWS Session Manager, Amazon CloudWatch Evidently and AppConfig, Amazon going nuclear, Amazon's returning to office policy and Karl hopes Amazon can finally realise the Back to the Future Mr Fusion reactor...    06:22 - Enhance your real-world skills with AWS Cloud Quest and AWS Jam  - CloudQuest provides gamified learning for AWS certifications like Cloud Practitioner - Jams are in-person problem solving events, Logicata is hosting a Jam soon - Pricing for CloudQuest seems expensive compared to alternatives like Udemy courses   13:49 - Secure SSH Access to EC2 Instances with AWS Session Manager  - Session Manager provides secure remote access without exposing SSH ports - It logs all activity for auditing and compliance - Allows access through console, CLI, port forwarding   22:29 - Support for Amazon CloudWatch Evidently ending soon  - Evidently allowed testing variations of apps/websites to improve performance - Being replaced by Amazon AppConfig which provides similar functionality - Shows AWS consolidating services and giving notice before deprecation   27:01 - Amazon goes nuclear, to invest more than $500 million to develop small modular reactors  - To provide power for energy-hungry data centers and AI/ML workloads - Investing in grid power, not owning reactors directly - Small modular reactors easier to build and operate than large ones   33:24 - Amazon AWS CEO: Quit if you don't want to return to office  - Strong statement against remote work from Amazon leadership - Cites need for in-person collaboration and innovation - Unlikely to work as well outside the US due to logistics - Remote teams can still innovate without being co-located - Impact on attracting talent remains to be seen   Guest was Ryan Pothecary https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanpothecary/ https://dev.to/ryanpothecary
Season 3 Episode 32 - Step Functions Validation, Lambda Layers & Neon Signs
02-09-2024
Season 3 Episode 32 - Step Functions Validation, Lambda Layers & Neon Signs
In Season 3, Episode 32 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Rishab Kumar. They discuss Validation API for Step Functions, Lambda Layers, Quick Setup programmatic deployment, new certifications and courses, Challenger for Observability and the Logicata guys get serious neon sign envy...   Articles: 04:53- Announcing Validation API for AWS Step Functions  The new validation API for AWS Step Functions allows validating state machines before deployment to catch errors early. It was noted this could be useful to integrate into CI/CD pipelines. 09:19 - Why You Should Use AWS Lambda Layers  Using Lambda layers allows packaging dependencies separately from function code. This enables faster deployments when only code changes, limits package size so the console editor can still be used, and allows sharing dependencies between functions 16:51 - Deploy AWS Systems Manager Quick Setup programmatically across your AWS Organization AWS Systems Manager Quick Setup can now be deployed programmatically via CloudFormation, CDK, CLI etc. This makes it easier to enable SSM access across an organization or onboard new accounts. 23:35 - New courses and certification updates from AWS Training and Certification in August 2024 New AWS certifications and courses were announced, including AI/ML related ones like Certified Machine Learning Engineer Associate. This reflects the growing demand for cloud skills in these areas. 30:37 - AWS named as a Challenger in the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Observability Platforms  AWS was named a Challenger in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Observability, reflecting their improved capabilities and execution in this space even if not yet a leader.   Guest was Rishab Kumar: https://linkedin.com/in/rishabkumar7 https://rishabkumar.com/ https://x.com/rishabincloud https://youtube.com/@rishabincloud
Season 3 Episode 31: Macs, Loops, and Misconfigurations
27-08-2024
Season 3 Episode 31: Macs, Loops, and Misconfigurations
In Season 3, Episode 31 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Luis Valdivia. They discuss MacOS CI/CD, Upgrading Lambda Functions, Lambda Loop Detection, Chatbot for Security Events, ALB Misconfiguration Exposure and Jon describes how he's training his kids in the art of medieval combat...   Articles: 05:04 - Add macOS to your continuous integration pipelines with AWS CodeBuild  They discuss a new AWS CodeBuild feature that allows adding MacOS to continuous integration pipelines for building iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS, and MacOS applications and talk about challenges with using MacOS for builds.   15:48 - Leverage Amazon Q to upgrade Lambda runtime functions  They discuss using Amazon Q to help upgrade Lambda runtimes like moving from Python 3.7 to 3.12 and debate whether AI like Q is ready to fully take over coding.   22:35 - AWS Lambda introduces recursive loop detection APIs  They discuss a new recursive loop detection API in AWS Lambda and whether it is necessary and helpful for developers.   29:01 - Manage security events in Slack, Teams, or Amazon Chime using AWS Chatbot and Amazon Q They discuss using AWS Chatbot with Amazon Q to manage security events in Slack/Chime.    33:28 -Thousands of Apps Using AWS ALB Exposed to Attacks Due to Configuration Issue  They discuss a report about potential misconfigurations exposing thousands of AWS environments due to issues with Application Load Balancers.    Guest was Luis Valdivia: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luis-valdivia-humareda/
Season 3 Episode 30 - Serverless Security, Multicloud and AWS Earnings
05-08-2024
Season 3 Episode 30 - Serverless Security, Multicloud and AWS Earnings
In Season 3, Episode 30 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Warren Parad. They discuss AWS Step Functions Encryption, AWS Parameter Store Sharing, AWS Touts Multi-Cloud Capabilities, AWS Quietly Freezes Services, AWS Q2 2022 Earnings and Jon has a proper rant about the deprecation of CodeCommit...      Articles: 04:03 - Strengthening data security in AWS Step Functions with a customer-managed AWS KMS key  They discuss a recent AWS blog post about encrypting AWS Step Functions state machines using AWS KMS keys. They debate the usefulness and security implications of this new feature.   11:57 - Introducing Parameter Store cross-account sharing  They discuss a new capability from AWS to share Parameter Store parameters across accounts. They debate whether this simplifies operations or creates potential security issues.   17:39 - AWS and Multicloud: Existing capabilities & continued enhancements  They discuss a recent AWS blog post about their multi-cloud capabilities and tools. They consider whether the major cloud providers are becoming commoditized.   25:16 - AWS quietly freezes CodeCommit, Cloud9, SimpleDB and more, customers complain about lack of notice  They discuss AWS deprecating several services like CodeCommit and Cloud9 without notice. They express frustration at the lack of communication.   34:12 - Amazon’s cloud unit reports 19% revenue growth, topping estimates  Thy discuss Amazon's latest quarterly earnings report, which exceeded expectations largely driven by AWS growth.   Guest was Warren Parad:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/warren-parad/ https://warrenparad.net https://dev.to/wparad
Season 3 Episode 28 - Simplified OIDC, Redshift Serverless, and AI Content Localisation
23-07-2024
Season 3 Episode 28 - Simplified OIDC, Redshift Serverless, and AI Content Localisation
In Season 3, Episode 28 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Joshua Walker. They discuss AWS IAM OpenID Connect, Amazon Redshift serverless, AWS WAF challenge and capture actions, Media content localization with AWS AI services, Top 10 AWS news stories of 2024 and Jon challenges AWS' definition of Serverless, again...   Articles Discussed: 04:40 - AWS Identity and Access Management simplifies management of OpenID Connect identity providers  The article discusses how AWS IAM is simplifying the management of OpenID Connect identity providers by automating certificate management. This will make it easier to securely connect external identity providers.     10:26 - Amazon Redshift Serverless with lower base capacity available in the Europe (London) Region The article announces that Amazon Redshift serverless now has a lower base capacity available in the London region. This allows users to run analytics more cost-effectively.     15:11 - Protect against bots with AWS WAF Challenge and CAPTCHA actions  The article explains how to use AWS WAF challenge and capture capabilities to protect against bots by requiring suspicious traffic to solve a challenge. This is less disruptive than blocking all traffic.    21:16 - Media content localization with AWS AI services and Amazon Bedrock The article demonstrates using AWS AI services like Transcribe and Translate to automatically localize text content from English to Korean. This makes it easier to reach broader audiences.    26:40 - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jwtechdev/
Season 3 Episode 26 - GuardDuty, Serverless and Sovereign Cloud
10-07-2024
Season 3 Episode 26 - GuardDuty, Serverless and Sovereign Cloud
In Season 3, Episode 26 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Igor Soroka. They discuss Amazon GuardDuty, New Lambda Logging Controls, Refactoring to Serverless, Aurora Global Database, the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, and the guys get sidetracked by Catalan taps...   Articles Discussed: 5:33 Amazon GuardDuty Runtime Monitoring Now Supports Ubuntu and Debian Operating Systems  Key points: - Previously only supported Amazon Linux - Helps monitor and respond to potential threats like suspicious network activity, crypto mining, etc. - Uses existing security agent, 30 day free trial - Pricing is $1.50 per vCPU for first 500 vCPUs per month, drops for larger volumes   12:45 - New Lambda Logging Controls   Key points: - Can now choose JSON or plaintext formatting - Can set log levels like debug, error, etc. - Supported in Python, Java, and Node.js - Makes logging easier without needing additional libraries - Can aggregate logs from different functions   18:21 - Refactoring to Serverless from Application to Automation  Key points: - Discusses "service factoring", replacing app code with automation - Serverless allows abstracting away infrastructure details - Entire architectures can be built using serverless components - Improves apps through increased automation   24:11 - Using Aurora Global Database for Multi-Region Applications  Key points: - Provides hot-hot disaster recovery to secondary region - Local endpoints provide fast response times - Engineering to replicate globally is complex - Useful but expensive to run dual full infrastructure   29:16 - Initial Services for AWS Europe Sovereign Cloud  Key points: - New sovereign cloud being built in Germany - Announces initial services like EC2, EKS, Lambda, etc. - Functionally similar to AWS US GovCloud - Provides data residency for EU regulations - Impressive initial service list, no major omissions   Guest was Igor Soroko https://www.linkedin.com/in/igor-soroka/ https://www.soroka.tech/blog/graphql-serverless-appsync