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I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

fourlightyears.blogspot.com

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Re: I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

#571

Post by dotwaffle »

cyberax wrote: post #397
hedora wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I should also point out that I’ve used AWS at extremely large scale in the past, which is why I’m running this subproject on another cloud. As for simple permissions, go read the UNIX paper. It spends a page or two on their approach and is all you need. Then, read the paper on mapping between NTFS SMB ACLs and NFS. It’s either impossible or undecidable, depending on the deployment. IAM is from the windows acl…

IAM is NOT from any lineage. It has grown organically and is complicated, just as any other policy language. AWS even uses an automatic proof assistant to verify IAM policies. However, the secret to IAM in AWS is to NOT use IAM. Just create separate AWS accounts for separate services and only share whatever resources are needed. Then you can have dead simple IAM policies because you won't need to do granular permissi…

> Just create separate AWS accounts for separate services

My understanding is that different AWS accounts have different mappings of availability zones, so it's very easy to suddenly find yourself with an unexpected bandwidth bill due to all the cross-az traffic.

I've been irritated at AWS (and the other large cloud providers) that they charge $0.01/GB for cross-az traffic. That's $3.24/Mbps -- about the same I was paying for internet transit (as in: from London to anywhere in the world) 20 years ago, and this is just between two datacenters in the same city controlled by the same organisation, markup must be 10,000x or more considering these places are cross-connected with massive bundles of fiber!

Re: I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

#572

Post by AJRF »

AWS / GCP / Azure aren't for individuals or small businesses. They won't tell you this anywhere, and they won't stop you from signing up - but they simply do not care one iota about users with anything less than $100k billing per month.

They treat big account owners like kings, they fly them out to Formula 1 events, they get 3 day workshops in swanky retreats, because a few k spent on this equals maybe millions of dollars.

If they respond to a small business quicker they don't get anything from it. They collect a bill that if it went missing they wouldn't notice.

I am not saying this is right - but people running small businesses on these platforms are operating under false pretenses.

Re: I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

#573

Post by andrepd »

jlokier wrote: post #269
andrepd wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lesson there then, isn't there? Use GPL

The GPL has no effect on this issue. For service providers like AWS, who provide the service not the software, the GPL doesn't require them to do anything differently than with more permissive licenses.

AGPL, it is implied.

Re: I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

#575

Post by throwaway2037 »

AJRF wrote: post #572

AWS / GCP / Azure aren't for individuals or small businesses. They won't tell you this anywhere, and they won't stop you from signing up - but they simply do not care one iota about users with anything less than $100k billing per month. They treat big account owners like kings, they fly them out to Formula 1 events, they get 3 day workshops in swanky retreats, because a few k spent on this equals maybe millions of do…

All good points. What do you recommend for the "small potatoes"?

Re: I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

#576

Post by throwaway2037 »

cyanydeez wrote: post #312
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it is for the consumer. When Aldi opened in my nearest town my food bill dropped by 20%.

Aldi is a grwat example of a socially discipled capitalism.

Can you explain you intent behind "socially" in your comment? I don't understand it.

Re: I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

#577

Post by gcr »

alexey-salmin wrote: post #526
maest wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's weird to me that the Hacker News community doesn't think that sort of competition is good. Negative externalities. The company makes money using a free resource and disincentivises future development. I'm sure you can see why killing the most popular business model for open source companies is bad for the ecosystem, right?

I can't? I mean, if Amazon does commercial version of Elastic better than Elastic themselves then so be it. I don't see how one company is entitled to turn an open source project into business and the other is not. I do see issues with monopolies pushing inferior products onto users. But that would be a completely different issue, nothing to do with open source.

Don’t you see how bankrupting the Elastic devs pushes an inferior product onto users?

Re: I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

#578

Post by gcr »

alexey-salmin wrote: post #570
dns_snek wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see how one company is entitled to turn an open source project into business and the other is not. According to the original license they are both entitled to do that, that's the problem. Do you think it's sustainable for one company to make the software for free and another one to sell it for profit?

> According to the original license they are both entitled to do that, that's the problem. I really don't see how Amazon is to blame for this problem, they weren't the ones who picked the license. > Do you think it's sustainable for one company to make the software for free and another one to sell it for profit? They both sell it for profit, let the most profitable one win.

They both sell it for profit, but Amazon doesn’t contribute changes upstream, so the public + rest of the industry won’t benefit from their work. It’s not an equivalence.

Re: I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

#579

Post by AJRF »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #575
AJRF wrote: post #572

AWS / GCP / Azure aren't for individuals or small businesses. They won't tell you this anywhere, and they won't stop you from signing up - but they simply do not care one iota about users with anything less than $100k billing per month. They treat big account owners like kings, they fly them out to Formula 1 events, they get 3 day workshops in swanky retreats, because a few k spent on this equals maybe millions of do…

All good points. What do you recommend for the "small potatoes"?

Hetzner. You won't get much better support, and you will have to deal with EU legislative nonsense, but it won't be hard to do that if you are actually small.

Why do I say Hetzner?

It's very budget friendly and has a very small list of services so its much harder to screw yourself into a situation where its hard to leave.

Re: I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

#580

Post by andrewstuart »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #566

Hmm... I was very early AWS, and it might even be "the guy from the US" that spoke at the first AWS Melbourne event was me, back in 2010. I agree with few of the things that have annoyed Andrew Stuart, and brought him to leave. I disagree with a few. Let's pick one: DynamoDB was brilliant. I even knew one of the key engineers behind it, Stefano Stefani, as brilliant as he was hilariously funny as a person. It solved…

No it wasn’t you Simone. I don’t think you had joined AWS at this time. It was a nice guy I think named Mike. He has since passed away.

I think you misunderstood the blog post. I was never employed by AWS, I was a customer.

Since there’s people here from AWS I’ll give some feedback that might prevent posts like this……. if you suspend/restrict someone’s account - put yourself in their shoes - they probably want it back on line real fast. AWS needs to analyse the customer experience of restricted accounts/suspended accounts.

Go back and read the support contact records of each customer account restriction/suspension - how long did it take AWS to respond, did the customer know clearly what steps to fix it. Etc etc

Also if the support form says they’ll respond within 24 hours then really there should be a response within 24 hours. Also there shouldn’t be special insider knowledge needed to “use the chat, they actually respond to it, versus the web messages”.

You might even get customer obsessed about it. :-)

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