The Internet of Things attacked a major DNS node, Nintendo announced its new console, and VMWare will run on AWS.

IoT DNS

I wasn’t going to write about more IoT stuff this week, but then Mirai and friends decided to take down DNS servers that were used by very big sites. So, while I was happily sleeping, many people found that sites like Twitter and GitHub were inaccessible.

I’ve gone over most of the relevant things here already in previous weeks, and the only new thing of note that has come out of this is how it looks like all the affected devices came from a single manufacturer. Which of course makes it so that people will blame that specific company when it’s just a symptom of the underlying lack of security in general.

So instead of repeating myself I’ll only point to a couple of articles written about this attack. Understand, this isn’t because it’s not important. It is. And it’s scary in what it means. I’ve just written enough about it for now.

Nintendo Switch

Where everyone in the gaming world seems focused on adding VR, Nintendo went once again a different route. And I like it. Instead of going for the console with the biggest hardware specs the Nintendo Switch has something neither the PS4 nor Xbox One has: a touchscreen.

The idea is that you have this tablet-like device that you can carry around and plug into a home base. Similar to how I described smartphones will eventually be used as consoles. Additionally, it wouldn’t be a new Nintendo console if there wasn’t something new about the controller. This time their “Joy-Con” can be attached to the device, separated so you have two pieces (for use in either hand or even different players), or attached together as a more traditional controller.

Now, while I like the concept of the Switch, it’s success is going to depend on a number of important factors. Like the Wii, it’s not aimed at the hardcore gamers but the more casual ones. And of course the people who want the classic titles: a new Mario, Zelda, or Pokémon game is always popular. Nevertheless, I don’t think the price (however much it might be) or these titles will determine its success. No, I think the most important thing is what was generally Nintendo’s weakest point: the software.

Nintendo has never been good at software. The operating systems for its consoles aren’t any fun, and the many complaints about web services and even the transfer of games and settings from the Wii to Wii U have left a bad taste. A big part of all this is the software to make everything work seemless, from console mode to handheld and back. I really hope they’ll pull it off, and that the hardware will be good enough as well. It doesn’t look like the tablet has a touch screen, and we have no idea yet about things like battery life either. So let’s see what will happen.

AWS VMWare

There has been quite a bit of news from AWS lately, but as usual let’s focus only on part of it. Well, I can’t let a new region without mention. So as of now there’s another region in the USA, located in Ohio and known as us-east-2. This of course is a big thing¹, but the more interesting news is the upcoming VMWare on AWS.

VMWare on AWS, aside from having an annoying name to type, is designed to run VMWare well… on AWS. This means that you can move existing virtualization into the cloud without a lot of work. The advantage for users here is obvious: it allows you to quickly move out of existing data centers, or spread your load between AWS and your data center, and you can make use of other AWS services easier as you remove the latency. Similarly the advantage for AWS is to quickly get more people into their ecosystem, but I don’t see the advantage for VMWare.

In the short run there obviously is an advantage for VMWare. They get to keep customers around for longer than if those same customers decided to go all in on a cloud provider. In the long run though, this can only be a losing strategy and they must see that as well. Once your workload is already in the cloud, especially one that has a way to import VMWare images, it’s only a matter of time before it becomes easier and more economical to stop using this extra layer. And that is why this move puzzles me a bit. Either VMWare knows something I don’t (very likely), or this is a very stupid move on their part.

Ok, one more small AWS mention because it’s such a nice idea. Aurora, the highly available MySQL compatible database from AWS, now allows you to use Lambda functions with stored procedures. This means that instead of having your stored procedures limited to pure database functionalities (and languages) you can make it do anything you want that’s available through a Lambda function. Aside from the fact that this offers you so much capabilities, this also means your stored procedures can be less complex and more version controlled. Of course, calling a Lambda function is a lot slower than most stored procedures will be so it’s not a total solution.