Off-by-none: Issue #279

May 14, 2024

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Amazon S3 will no longer charge for several HTTP error codes ❌

In our previous issue, AWS leveled up on the AI leaderboard, DynamoDB let you limit throughput, and a new book was started for writing Lambda Functions with Rust. This week, AWS announces a new leader, S3 fixes a major billing issue, and OpenAI releases the first version of "Her". Plus, we have plenty of content from the amazing serverless community!

Serverless News & Announcements 📣

AWS just announced that Selipsky is out, and Matt Garman is in as the new AWS CEO, effective June 3rd. I do think Selipsky provided solid leadership through this crazy AI revolution. It'll be interesting to see if Matt Garman stays the course.

In other AWS news, Amazon S3 will no longer charge for several HTTP error codes. A user pointed this out a couple of weeks ago and AWS moved pretty quickly to address it.

Also, Amazon Cognito introduced tiered pricing for machine-to-machine (M2M) usage. I'm not sure this saves you money, but at least Cognito is continuing to get some attention.

In AWS AI news, they announced Amazon Bedrock Studio preview to easily build generative AI applications. Some of this stuff is getting scary good.

Amazon Titan Text Premier is now available in Amazon Bedrock, which is designed to build RAG and agent-based generative AI applications.

There is a new Generative Engine with three synthetic English Polly voices, which sound really, really good. 🤯

Not to be outdone, OpenAI said Hello to GPT-4o, their new flagship model that can reason across audio, vision, and text in real time. Lots of use cases for this, including tutoring your kid in Math. 🤖

And finally, apparently the UniSuper Google Cloud outage was caused by an unfortunate series of events, like deleting their account and all their backups.

⚠️ Hackathon Alert: Build an app on AWS, win cash prizes, learn new tech
Diagrid is thrilled to invite you to the Diagrid Catalyst AWS Hackathon—a four-week, virtual event where you can unleash your creativity and showcase your coding skills by building or modernizing a cutting-edge application using the powerful serverless Catalyst platform, powered by open source Dapr. Get ready to collaborate, compete, and win cash prizes! Find out more and register here. Sponsored

Serverless Concepts 🏗

Here are some excellent posts to broaden your serverless knowledge:

• Unraveling the Enigma: Debunking Myths Surrounding Lambda Cold Starts by Mohit Palriwal
• Serverless: Applying Hexagonal Architecture at Multiple Levels by John Gilbert
• Serverless Test Strategy by Ben Crinion
• Spring Boot 3 application on AWS Lambda - Part 5 Introduction to AWS Lambda Web Adapter by Vadym Kazulkin
• AWS SnapStart - Part 20 Measuring warm starts with Java 17 using different Lambda memory settings by Vadym Kazulkin

Serverless Tutorials 👷‍♀️

Running code after returning a response from an AWS Lambda function
Loved this tutorial by Uri Segev that shows how to run code after the initial Lambda response. We've been doing this at Ampt using an extension since we launched our beta over a year ago, and it is a very useful pattern.

Here are some other excellent tutorials to keep you busy:

• Building Fan-Out Serverless Architectures Using SNS, SQS and Lambda (Event Driven Architecture) by Ayush Sharma
• Secure API Gateway with Amazon Cognito using SAM by Andres Moreno
• How to Save Millions of Dollars in DynamoDB Cost — Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 by Farshidoo
• Secure Pattern for Deploying WASM on S3 by Benjamen Pyle
• Yes, we built a multiplayer, squirrel-themed replica of Flappy Bird on Momento by Allen Helton
• Complex Event Filtering with AWS EventBridge Pipes, Rules and No Custom Code by James Matson
• Serverless Chatbot Streaming with AWS Lambda and OpenAI Assistants by Ben Kittrell
• Scalable Web Scraping with Serverless — Part 2 by Lev Gelfenbuim
• AWS CDK Stack Dependencies by Lee Gilmore

Serverless Reads 🤓

Why I Stay with Serverless in 2024 😎
Derek Wang explains why he's still a serverless fan, and you should be too.

Coding with a Cyborg: The Rise of the Amazon Q
Kasun de Silva is all in on Amazon Q as his coding sidekick. How about you?

Why do cloud hosting costs fly off the rails?
Start simple, don't over complicate, and try to avoid painting yourself into a corner by getting too fancy too soon. I think this advice from Chris Shaffer is spot on.

Jumping Into Serverless
Adam Frederick got his AWS Solutions Architect certification and decided to jump into the serverless waters. Does his experience resonate with you?

Podcasts, Videos, and more 🎧

Ampt Live: Creating a Serverless RSVP System for your Next Event
I built an RSVP system for my daughter's graduation party. In this live stream, I show you how I did it.

The best features of Application Composer you aren't using
Anna Spysz walks us through some of the underused features of AWS Application Composer that can take your productivity to the next level.

Self-provisioning serverless with Ampt with Jeremy Daly
Perhaps I joined this #believeinserverless live stream with a bit too much hubris. 😀 Allen's request to build a Meme Generator with Ampt should have been a breeze, but clearly I had a skills issue.

Working in the cloud - New series! ⭐
Marcia Villalba has a new series where you can learn from different people, with different backgrounds and expertise, from different countries, roles, and seniority levels, about what it's like to work in the cloud, how to get a job, and how to progress in your career.

Ready, Set, Cloud Podcast! S2E8 - All about the Believe in Serverless community
Allen Helton chats with Ben Pyle, Danielle Heberling, Andres Moreno, and James Eastham about the Believe in Serverless community including what it is, where it’s been, what it has to offer, and where it’s going.

Develop and test locally with LocalStack | Serverless Office Hours
Waldemar Hummer, Co-Founder and CTO at LocalStack, joins Julian Wood to show how LocalStack allows your developers to focus their time and effort where it counts by developing and testing locally. Very cool stuff, but I'm still a fan of testing directly in cloud sandboxes.

New from AWS 🆕

Here are a few more announcements from AWS that might interest you:

• Announcing a larger instance bundle for Amazon Lightsail
• Amazon MQ now supports RabbitMQ version 3.12
• Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL supports pgvector 0.7.0
• Agents for Amazon Bedrock now supports Provisioned Throughput pricing model
• Amazon ElastiCache updates minimum TLS version to 1.2
• AWS Cost Anomaly Detection reduces anomaly detection latency by up to 30%

Upcoming Serverless Events 🗓

May 17, 2024 - Diagrid Catalyst AWS Hackathon - Registration Closes

May 21, 2024 - ServerlessDays ANZ - Sydney, AU

May 23, 2024 - ServerlessDays Belfast 🗣️

May 23, 2024 - Moar Serverless!! 2024

May 24, 2024 - ServerlessDays ANZ - Auckland, NZ

June 13, 2024 - ServerlessDays Milano 2024 🗣️

Please send me your serverless events!

Star of the Week ⭐️

This week's star is Matt Gillard (@mattgillard). Matt is the co-host of Cloud Dialogues (a Cloud podcast aimed at executives and business leaders), an AWS Community Builder, an AWS Ambassador, and an organizer for ServerlessDays ANZ. When he's not co-leading the Cloud Native capability for the AWS consultancy Cevo based in Melbourne, Australia, he helping developers learn new ways of working with serverless to increase their delivery velocity. Thanks for all you do, Matt!

Final Thoughts 🤔

Don't forget to check out the Diagrid Catalyst AWS Hackathon. Registration closes on May 17th!

See you in the next issue,
Jeremy

I hope you enjoyed this newsletter. We’re always looking for ideas and feedback to make it better and more inclusive, so please feel free to reach out to me via X, LinkedIn, or email.