It seems like AWS is renaming some of their services to refer to the underlying open-source software by name. This makes sense when AWS is just running the underlying software for the customer without too much changes, like Amazon Managed Grafana, Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka.
Today we are announcing the rename of Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics to Amazon Managed Service for Apache Flink, a fully managed and serverless service for you to build and run real-time streaming applications using Apache Flink.
As a long time Amazon and AWS user, I have accumulated more than a few Amazon-related accounts. Recently I also had to work with other colleagues who are not so familiar with the Amazon services and accounts ecosystem. Here is an attempt to make sense of it all:
Amazon
AWS
APN
SSO
Adhoc
Retail
Amazon.com Amazon Prime
Y
Cloud
AWS Console
Y
Education
AWS Academy
Y
Training
AWS Training and Certification
Y
Y
Y
Training
Skill Builder
Y
Y
Y
Event
AWS JAM
Y
Y
Y
Mapping of services to accounts
Hopefully it helps someone who’s figuring out which account to login to which service.
This is good news as it further expands the capabilities of web apps. This addresses a longstanding request for web apps to deliver notifications. Note that web push only works if the web app is added to Home Screen. It is to limit web apps that aggressively ask for too many permissions.
With iOS and iPadOS 16.4 beta 1 comes support for Web Push for Home Screen web apps, Badging API, Manifest ID, and more.
Finally. Amazon Web Services has released a new feature called Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) resource map, which simplifies the VPC creation experience in the AWS sonsole. This feature displays existing VPC resources and their routing visually on a single page, allowing users to quickly understand the architectural layout of the VPC.
The new VPC creation experience streamlines the process of creating and connecting VPC resources with just one click, even across multiple Availability Zones (AZs). The VPC resource map also allows users to quickly understand the architectural layout of the VPC, including the number of subnets, which subnets are associated with the public route table, and which route tables have routes to the NAT Gateway. Additionally, users can customize a Name tag per resource in the preview and easily change the default CIDR value and subnet mask. The Amazon VPC resource map is now available in all AWS Regions where Amazon VPC is available.
When I first know about Tailscale, I didn’t “get” it. I read that it is like VPN but not quite the same as your traditional VPN, but I don’t know the details. But since there are a lot of rave reviews from HN users I got curious. After trying it out, I am immediately sold. I have now installed it on all my personal devices.
Tailscale is a revolutionary new way of connecting devices together. Once setup – and it’s very easy to set up – your devices behave just like they are on the same network. No complicated VPN to setup, or persistent connection issues, or remembering IP addresses to access your devices. It just works.
Tailscale is akin to VPN what Dropbox is to file synchronizing.
Tailscale offers a wide range of benefits for businesses and individuals alike. One of the key benefits of Tailscale is that it allows users to access their networks and devices without the need for traditional VPN software. This means that users can access their networks and devices from any device, including smartphones, tablets, and laptops, without the need for additional software or configuration. This makes it extremely convenient for users who need to access their networks and devices while on the go.
Another benefit of Tailscale is that it offers top-of-the-line security. Tailscale uses state-of-the-art encryption to ensure that all data transmitted over the network is secure and protected from cyber threats. This makes it ideal for businesses and organizations that handle sensitive data and need to ensure that it is protected at all times.
The best part is Tailscale is extremely easy to use. It has a simple and intuitive user interface that makes it easy for users of all skill levels to set up and use.
I highly recommend trying it out to just to see how it works. Tailscale is free for personal use.
By now, text to speech systems are quite common and widely in use. Tiktok has this feature added as part of their app some time ago. Amazon Polly – Amazon’s version of text-to-speech service – was launched in 2016 and supports quite a large number of languages.
Just this week, AWS announced the availability of a female Cantonese voice to Polly. Upon reading about this, I have to test it out. For the test, I took a sample text from YES 933 facebook page and fed it to Polly. I must say I’m very impressed with the results.
Of course, Amazon Polly is not the first or only Cantonese text-to-speech service out there, but it’s definitely one of the most natural sounding one I’ve heard. Looking forward for more languages to be support.
Footnote: there are some minor modifications to the text to achieve the desired result, eg. to get pauses in the right places, to say nine-three-three instead of nine hundred thirty three etc. But otherwise only default settings are used.
This is a non-exhaustive comparison of the popular AWS compute options. Hopefully it will help someone who’s also evaluating the various options for running your workload in AWS.
EC2 is the oldest and the most popular option as it is the easiest to start with. However you do have to manage a lot of things if you are choosing this option (OS, scaling, HA, etc). As a developer who may not be so familiar with cloud architecture, this can be daunting. Over the years, AWS has been making it easier to deploy code and make it scale. The latest compute product App Runner is a super simple way to write web applications in AWS. Though there are some who reported teething issues using it, I have no doubt those will be fixed in due time when it hits general availability.
By default, IAM users will not be allowed to access the Billing dashboard. This is true even if the user has AdministratorAccess permission. If you use AWS as a non-root/owner account user, but require access to billing and payment, here’s how you can do it.
By default, IAM users and roles within an AWS account can’t access the Billing console pages. This is true even if the IAM user or role has IAM policies that grant access to certain Billing features.
The last step is to enable this permission. To do so,
Sign in as root/account owner
Click on your username on the top right and select Account
Scroll down to IAM User and Role Access to Billing Information
Click Edit, check Activate IAM Access
Update
And it’s done. You can now login as the IAM user and access the billing dashboard.
Once configured, AWS GuardDuty will now scan EBS volumes for malware and report its findings when it detects suspicious activities. If you haven’t enable it already, you should do so.
When you have GuardDuty Malware Protection enabled, a malware scan is initiated when GuardDuty detects that one of your EC2 instances or container workloads running on EC2 is doing something suspicious.
From data privacy and data residency to digital sovereignty, change is happening, and not necessarily in a good way. The wild west that characterize the Old Internet is being chipped off one block at a time. Some predicts this will lead to the end of general computation and further entrench incumbents, making it even more difficult for new players to break in.
Nations are accelerating efforts to control data produced within their perimeters, disrupting the flow of what has become a kind of digital currency.
