In Season 5, Episode 2, Karl and Jon are joined by Allen Helton, an AWS Hero and ecosystem engineer at Momento. They discuss AWS raising GPU prices by 15% for specific instance types, accelerating cloud modernization with AWS MCPs and Quiro, AWS getting approval for three new data centers in Dublin, Ireland, Allen Helton’s blog post on optimizing image serving from S3, and recent layoffs at Amazon Web Services. And then the guys start debating whether it’s “champing at the bit” or “chomping at the bit,” completely derailing their discussion of AWS news.

04:04 - AWS raising GPU prices

This is the first specific price rise from AWS in two decades, affecting certain GPU instance types. While it only impacts a small subset of users, it sets a precedent that could make future price increases easier. The move goes against AWS's typical strategy of only lowering prices over time.

11:28 - Accelerating cloud modernization with AWS MCPs and Quiro

The article discusses how AI-powered tools like Quiro and AWS MCPs can help streamline cloud modernization processes. These tools can analyze existing systems, plan modernization efforts, and even assist in implementation, potentially reducing the time and effort required for such projects.

21:30 - AWS new data centers in Dublin

AWS received approval for three new data centers in Dublin, Ireland. This expansion will increase capacity in the region, potentially leading to better service availability and possibly lower prices. The approval comes with requirements for power agreements with local energy providers.

27:48 - Allen Helton's blog post on S3 image optimization

Allen shared his experience optimizing image serving from S3 for his blog. He implemented various techniques to improve Core Web Vitals scores, resulting in better performance and SEO rankings. The post highlights the importance of consistency in content creation and how it can lead to significant growth in readership.

37:30 - AWS layoffs

Amazon has laid off several hundred employees from its AWS division as part of a broader effort to streamline operations. While the numbers are relatively small compared to AWS's total workforce, it's part of a trend of tech companies adjusting their workforce in 2024. The layoffs primarily affected tangential divisions within AWS.

In Season 5, Episode 1, Karl and Jon are joined by Peter Sankauscas, an AWS Hero and User Group Leader. They discuss whether AI is replacing younger employees and what that could mean for businesses, OpenAI’s potential investment from Amazon, and AWS leadership changes — including Peter DeSantis’s new role. They also cover AWS flat-rate pricing plans for CloudFront and WAF, the 2026 Answers for AWS survey, and even ask whether AI data centres could be affecting the world’s weather.

04:47 - AI replacing young employees

AWS CEO Matt Garman stated that replacing young employees with AI is a bad idea for businesses. The discussion highlighted the importance of junior employees for company growth, innovation, and diversity of thought. The speakers also touched on how AI is changing customer service roles.

15:04 - OpenAI's potential investment from Amazon

The article discussed rumors of Amazon potentially investing $10 billion in OpenAI. The speakers debated the implications of this investment, including its impact on the AI industry and potential financial risks. They also discussed OpenAI's relationships with other tech giants like Microsoft.

19:38 - AWS leadership changes

Peter DeSantis was appointed to lead a new organization focusing on AI models, the Amazon Nova portfolio, and AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). The speakers discussed the significance of this role and its potential impact on AWS's AI strategy.

26:37 - AWS flat rate pricing plans

AWS announced new flat rate pricing plans for CloudFront and WAF, potentially competing with services like Cloudflare. The speakers discussed the benefits of these plans and how they might affect customer choices and costs.

35:02 - Answers for AWS survey

Peter Sankauscas explained the annual community-run survey he conducts to understand trends in AWS service usage. He discussed new categories added for 2026, such as AI SDLC, and highlighted some interesting findings from the previous year's survey, including the adoption of Graviton and the popularity of DynamoDB.

LInk to this years survey https://answersforaws.com/survey/

In Season 4, Episode 46, Karl and Jon are joined by Matheus Guimaraes, AWS Lead Developer Advocate. Together, they cover the AWS CodeCommit resurrection and roadmap, the AWS Builder Center wishlist feature, ECS Express for simplified container deployment, an ECR archiving tier for cost optimization, blue-green deployments in Aurora Global, and accelerated recovery in Route 53 to speed up DNS updates during outages. They also discuss a recent AWS outage and its impact, then wrap up by joking about launching a “Shot Clock Karaoke” segment in future episodes where they’d have to sing AWS parody songs against the clock.

09:51 - CodeCommit resurrection

AWS brought back CodeCommit due to customer feedback and demand. It's now back in general availability with a public roadmap, including features like Git LFS support and expanded regional availability. The decision to resurrect the service was based on customer needs and integrations.

19:55 - AWS Billing Transfer

AWS Billing Transfer for centrally managing AWS billing and costs across multiple organizations

24:32 - ECS Express

ECS Express is a new mode that simplifies container deployment on Amazon ECS. It creates clusters with best-practice defaults, allowing teams to focus on container deployment without extensive setup. It's suitable for production use and can be customized later.

30:55 - ECR archiving tier

Amazon ECR now offers an archiving tier for container images, addressing compliance needs and cost optimization. Images can be automatically moved to the archive based on usage patterns and easily restored when needed.

35:06 - Blue-green deployments in Aurora Global

Aurora Global now supports blue-green deployments across up to 10 regions, simplifying database updates and migrations with minimal downtime. This feature extends to schema changes, potentially solving complex database DevOps challenges.

39:26 - Accelerated recovery in Route 53

In response to recent outages, AWS introduced an accelerated recovery feature for Route 53. This allows customers to continue making DNS updates with a 60-minute SLA even if a primary region (like North Virginia) is down.

In Season 4, Episode 45, Karl and Jon are joined by AWS Hero Johannes Koch for a recap of the big AWS re:Invent 2025 announcements, including Lambda Managed Instances, Database Savings Plans, new EKS capabilities for workload orchestration and cloud resource management, and AWS AI Frontier Agents (Kiro, Security, DevOps) — and despite the looming threat of AI agents coming for their jobs, the guys decide to keep calm and carry on coding!

08:40 - Lambda Managed Instances

This new feature allows users to run Lambda functions on EC2 instances they manage. It aims to provide more control over the underlying infrastructure while maintaining Lambda's serverless model. There was debate about whether it truly eliminates cold starts and its potential use cases.

16:25 - Database Savings Plans

AWS introduced savings plans for database services like RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, and others. This allows customers to commit to usage for a 1-year term in exchange for discounted rates. While generally seen as positive, there were discussions about its limitations and potential impact on database choices.

23:56 - New EKS Capabilities

Amazon announced new features for EKS, including managed Argo CD and capabilities for deploying AWS infrastructure from Kubernetes. This was seen as part of AWS's strategy to expand EKS's control plane capabilities and take on more management responsibilities for customers.

33:28 - AWS AI Frontier Agents

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-devops-agent-helps-you-accelerate-incident-response-and-improve-system-reliability-preview/

Three new AI agents were introduced - for Kiro (code development), Security, and DevOps. These agents aim to automate various tasks and provide intelligent assistance in their respective domains. The speakers discussed the potential benefits and concerns around these new AI tools.

In Season 4, Episode 44, Karl and Jon are joined by Tech Lead for the Developer Experience team at AWS, Brian Beach. They discuss Introduction to Kiro, AWS's new AI coding assistant, Spec-driven development and its benefits, property-based testing in Kiro, MCP support and agent hooks in Kiro, upcoming AWS re:Invent conference and developer tools track, Kiro-related events and challenges at re:Invent and the guys spent a lot of time discussing which sport has the best ball for reliving plantar fasciitis symptoms...

00:00 - Intros

09:51 - Kiro General Availability

Kiro, AWS's AI coding assistant, has recently gone into general availability. It offers a spec-driven development approach, allowing developers to create requirements, technical designs, and task lists before generating code. This process helps reduce technical debt and improves code quality. Kiro also introduces property-based testing, which automates the testing process and helps ensure code correctness.

Specification-driven development & Property Based Development

46:34 - Agent Hooks

48:20 - Kiro at re:Invent 2025

The upcoming AWS re:Invent conference will feature about 75 sessions in the developer tools track. There will be various Kiro-related events, including a "House of Kiro" experience, kiosks in the AWS village, and a builder's loft at Mandalay Bay. A Kiro-themed hackathon with significant prizes will also take place during the conference.

In Season 4, Episode 43, Karl and Jon are joined by Senior Technical Account Manager at AWS, Loïc Fournier, to discuss optimizing Amazon RDS and Amazon Aurora database costs and performance with AWS Compute Optimizer, the introduction of AWS pricing capabilities in Amazon Q Developer, serverless databases and their use cases, a comparison of different storage types for databases (GP2, GP3, IO1, IO2), and AWS Q’s capabilities in providing cost insights and pricing information—before joking about using a complicated CAPTCHA to stall users for 15 seconds while their serverless database spun up.

02:39 - Optimizing Amazon RDS and Amazon Aurora database costs and performance with AWS Compute Optimizer

This article discusses how AWS Compute Optimizer now provides recommendations for optimizing RDS and Aurora databases. The tool uses machine learning to analyze metrics and provide suggestions for instance types, including Graviton options. It categorizes databases as optimized, not optimized, or idle. The feature is currently available for MySQL and PostgreSQL engines. The tool focuses on performance optimization first, with cost savings as a secondary benefit.

31:47 -Introducing AWS pricing capabilities in Amazon Q developer

This article introduces new pricing capabilities in Amazon Q, allowing users to ask natural language questions about AWS pricing and receive instant cost insights. Users can inquire about cost comparisons between services, optimal regions for deployments based on pricing, and get accurate, up-to-date pricing information directly from AWS APIs. This feature aims to simplify the process of estimating costs for various AWS architectures and workloads, making it easier for architects and developers to provide quick pricing estimates to businesses.

In Season 4, Episode 42, Karl and Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder Sujal Shaw to discuss a range of new AWS developments. Topics include the New AWS Region Planner for easier regional planning and global deployments, EC2 Auto Scaling warm pool support for mixed instance policies, the AWS European Sovereign Cloud white paper, and the new underwater AWS Fastnet cable featuring robust armoring. They also explore the challenges younger developers face when deploying to AWS. The team was delighted to make it through the episode without any gremlins—despite Karl’s makeshift mobile studio setup in Madrid!

04:12 - AWS Region Planner

AWS introduced a new tool for centralized information on service and feature availability across regions. It helps architects avoid feature parity issues between regions and plan global deployments more efficiently. The tool shows availability status (available, planning, not expanding, or planned) for services and features in different regions.

11:34 - EC2 Auto Scaling Warm Pool Support

AWS announced warm pool support for auto scaling groups with mixed instance policies. This feature combines the benefits of warm pools (faster instance launch) with mixed instances (flexibility in instance types). It allows for both speed and cost savings by keeping a mix of pre-warmed instances ready to launch instantly using the most effective combination of on-demand, spot, or savings plan instances.

16:59 - AWS European Sovereign Cloud

AWS published a white paper detailing the upcoming European Sovereign Cloud. It will be operated by EU residents and citizens, with no critical dependencies on non-EU infrastructure. The cloud aims to address data residency and sovereignty concerns for European organizations, particularly government and regulated industries.

25:30 - AWS Fastnet Underwater Cable

Amazon is equipping a new underwater cable (AWS Fastnet) with robust armoring to prevent cuts. The cable will run from Maryland, US to Ireland, capable of transporting over 320 terabytes per second. The armoring aims to protect against potential threats like fishing anchors or intentional damage, improving durability and reducing maintenance downtime.

32:26 - Challenges of Deploying to AWS

Corey Quinn's article discusses the complexity of deploying to AWS, arguing that younger developers may not tolerate the steep learning curve. The article highlights the numerous steps and services (IAM, VPCs, etc.) required before actual development can begin. It suggests that easier deployment options like Vercel or Heroku, which abstract away complexity, may be more appealing to new developers.

In Season 4, Episode 41, Karl and Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder Fabien Zucchet to discuss AWS Lambda’s increased payload size for asynchronous invocations and what it means for developers building event-driven applications. They cover the new metrics dashboard for AWS Step Functions, best practices for handling sensitive log data in Amazon CloudWatch, and insights into a major AWS service outage and its widespread impact. The episode wraps up with a look at Amazon’s stock jump despite recent challenges, as the trio reflect on the resilience of cloud providers in a constantly evolving market. And then the guys joked about how their video call issues were secretly caused by discussing cloud outages, as if the streaming platform was taking revenge.

03:57 - AWS Lambda payload size increase

AWS Lambda increased its maximum payload size from 256KB to 1MB for asynchronous invocations. The speakers discussed potential use cases and pricing implications, noting that while it solves a problem, it may not be widely necessary and could lead to increased costs for some users.

13:21 - AWS Step Functions metrics dashboard

AWS announced a new metrics dashboard for Step Functions. The speakers viewed this as a positive development, improving observability and providing better insights for users, especially those operating at scale.

17:19 - Handling sensitive log data in Amazon Cloudwatch

The article discussed methods for masking sensitive information in Cloudwatch logs. The speakers highlighted the importance of this feature for compliance with regulations like GDPR and protecting personally identifiable information (PII).

23:56 - AWS service outage

A major AWS outage occurred due to a DNS race condition, affecting multiple services. The speakers discussed the complexity of operating at AWS's scale and the cascading effects of the outage on various dependent services.

33:29 - Amazon's stock performance

Despite recent challenges including the service outage and layoffs, Amazon's stock jumped due to accelerated AWS cloud growth. The speakers discussed how layoffs can paradoxically lead to stock increases and the continued strong performance of AWS as a key driver of Amazon's success.