In Season 4, Episode 40, Karl and Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder Jason Wood to discuss the recent AWS outage in the US-East-1 region and its impact across multiple services. They cover simplified model access in Amazon Bedrock, the introduction of the Claude 4.5 Haiku model, the launch of Amazon EC2 Capacity Manager, new automated CloudWatch dashboards for analyzing log usage, and the latest AWS service availability updates, including those entering maintenance or retirement. Eventually, the conversation takes a lighter turn as the guys debate which countries Jon must speak in to officially graduate from a national to international conference speaker.

09:08 - Simplified model access in Amazon Bedrock 

AWS has simplified access to non-AWS models in Bedrock, removing the need for manual activation in most cases. This change streamlines the process of using AI models, though some models like Anthropic's still require a first-time usage form.

14:49 - Claude 4.5 Haiku model in Amazon Bedrock 

Anthropic has released Claude 4.5 Haiku, a more cost-effective model with performance comparable to the older Sonnet version. The speakers discussed the naming conventions and the importance of upgrading from older models before they reach end-of-life.

18:51 - Amazon EC2 Capacity Manager 

This new feature provides a single interface for monitoring, analyzing, and managing EC2 capacity usage. It combines data from various existing tools, offering a comprehensive view of capacity trends, cost optimization opportunities, and usage metrics.

24:15 - Enhanced automatic dashboard for CloudWatch logs 

AWS introduced an enhanced automatic dashboard for analyzing CloudWatch log usage. This feature provides detailed insights into log ingestion, API calls, and cost-related metrics, making it easier to optimize log management and associated costs.

30:32 - AWS service availability updates 

AWS announced changes to the availability status of several services. 19 services are moving to maintenance mode, and 4 are entering sunset phase. The speakers discussed the implications of these changes and potential alternatives for affected services.