iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 05/03/2026

finnish verb kiroilla /ˈkiroi̯lːɑˣ/ can mean using kiro, but more literally it means cursing or swearing 😁

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 04/01/2026

"... one of the best places to do it might be Helsinki, Finland." 🥰

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 03/01/2026

AWS CloudShell documentation says: "if you don't interact with it using your keyboard or pointer for 20–30 minutes, your shell session ends" — a perfectly reasonable timeout. When accessing CloudShell via AWS Console iOS app the shell timeouts much faster, like being away from app a minute or so 😫

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 11/12/2025

they're trying to teach formal modeling to us! I don't complain 😁 kiro.dev/blog/propert...

kiro.dev

Does your code match your spec?

Measure “correctness” with property-based testing

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 11/12/2025

Ever since I started working on AWS stuff 2017, I haven't missed a @wernervogels.bsky.social #reInvent keynote. Not this year either, even though the schedule was horrible — the keynote started at 1.30 am local time

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 09/12/2025

not bad. that is 94 kilometers / active day — is that a lot or little, I guess, it depends 😁 and there are still 22 days left in the year, you never know how far one can go

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 08/12/2025

has @github.com blocked creating new accounts in incognito mode? — verifying browser succeeds but then "Unable to verify your captcha response." is thrown

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 06/12/2025

don't know who designed this feature, but at least it is not really personalized to **me** 🫠 my **easy** endurance ride is normally 2 hours 😅 today I rided 4+ hours and even that wasn't especially "hard": strava.app.link/3oDXkYMWSYb

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 06/12/2025

when you break the @kiro.dev request quota, it still tries to generate "something" 😁 this was not intentional — just too many open IDEs open at the same time

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 05/12/2025

I gave @kiro.dev autonomous agent a little maintenance task some hours ago and left it alone ... now it is almost ready 🙌 I perhaps would have get done it myself faster and with fewer mistakes — look at the commit history of this pull request 😄 github.com/nikovirtala/... #reInvent

github.com

Migrate from projen-aws-cdk-app to projen-constructs by nikovirtala · Pull Request #303 · nikovirtala/cdk-lambda-llrt-demo

Overview This PR migrates the project template from @nikovirtala/projen-aws-cdk-app to @nikovirtala/projen-constructs in the .projenrc.ts configuration file. Changes Made Updated Projen Configurati...

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 04/12/2025

Metaprogramming. I think I've always been, for a long time without even realizing it, interested in programming the programming. Perhaps even more than the programming in the traditional sense. Which is why all these AI thingies feel kinda easy and natural — it is not that much different 🤷‍♂️

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 04/12/2025

It is gonna be a long day today. Werner is having his #reInvent keynote this time in the afternoon 3.30 pm PST which translates to 1.30 am EET 😴 It's been my habit to watch it ever since I've been working with AWS stuff and I simply can’t let the poor schedule break the streak 😁

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 04/12/2025

I learned very early this morning that Amazon #DynamoDB Streams capacity is not really unlimited and that after consuming it at 450 RPS you will be called a noisy neighbour 😅 Challenge unlocked?

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 03/12/2025

nope. I just bought UAD Showtime '64 from their black friday sale, just to get disappointed a big time. the real deal, my handwired Princeton Reverb is still a light year ahead of this model

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 03/12/2025

@kiro.dev got powers! this sounds actually very nice and practical way to share your knowledge to both the AI agents as well as to your colleagues using those agents — time to reveal some secrets I guess? 😁 kiro.dev/blog/introdu... #reInvent

kiro.dev

Introducing Kiro powers

Dynamic loading of context and MCP servers

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 02/12/2025

no kiro.dev autonomous agents for me — boo!

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 02/12/2025

My gut feeling just told me we'll be using the new #Lambda durable functions a lot in near future — very nice release! 👏 But not perfect, where is my day one #awscdk support? 😁 docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/lates... #reInvent

docs.aws.amazon.com

Lambda durable functions - AWS Lambda

Lambda durable functions extend traditional Lambda to support durable execution, enabling fault-tolerant applications that can run for up to one year.

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 01/12/2025

where is all the #reInvent buzz, if not here?

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 29/11/2025

Item-level access control for #DynamoDB — it is my long time wish from @awscloud.bsky.social do you think we will get it this year? #reInvent

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 28/11/2025

if I don't tell, or use it without customizations, nobody can say if it was me or LLM — it is pretty easy to put LLM to produce things with your style

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 26/11/2025

dunno who should hear this but the @awscloud.bsky.social cloudwatch application signals provides pretty good level of observability to your systems straight out of the box and only using the auto instrumentation — surprisingly easy way to get started with opentelemetry! 👏

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 24/11/2025

Lambda Kafka Event Source has been somewhat behind in error handling capabilities compared to AWS native event sources, but not anymore: aws.amazon.com/about-aws/wh... — we got configurable retries, bisect batch on function error, partial batch responses and Kafka as failure destination 🙌

aws.amazon.com

AWS Lambda announces enhanced error handling capabilities for Kafka event processing - AWS

Discover more about what's new at AWS with AWS Lambda announces enhanced error handling capabilities for Kafka event processing

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Reposted by Niko Virtala

mr. TIM @timkellogg.me · 19/11/2025

if you give an engineer a problem to solve but not enough time to understand the details, the solution will be over complicated. That’s just how it works, it can’t work any other way. Simplicity is hard and takes time, an unknown amount of time

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 18/11/2025

looks like I'm a full-time @kiro.dev user now — fun, but on the other hand nothing really changed 🤷‍♂️

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 16/11/2025

AmazonQUsageLimitError: Monthly limit reached.

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 02/11/2025

psst @awscloud.bsky.social our level of expectation for standard observability just got higher

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 02/08/2025

and next we have SMCP (secure model context protocol) and MCPS (model context protocol secure) 😂

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 23/07/2025

What perfect albums came out when you were 16? 2001:

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 18/07/2025

"Every ride should be enjoyed to its fullest" — Adrian Hands

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 28/06/2025

I'm about to participate long unsupported cycling event and have a problem: how to plan the cycling and breaks? How fast do I need to cycle to get decent sleep? — and so on.

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Reposted by Niko Virtala

Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 19/06/2025

I just released my edit of "In Praise of 'Normal' Engineers": why the best engineering orgs in the world are the ones where ✨normal engineers✨ can consistently move fast, ship code, fix shit, help their users, and move the business forward...a little more, every day. charity.wtf/2025/06/19/i...

charity.wtf

In Praise of “Normal” Engineers

This article was originally commissioned by Luca Rossi (paywalled) for refactoring.fm, on February 11th, 2025. Luca edited a version of it that emphasized the importance of building “10x engi…

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 17/06/2025

Amazon EventBridge Pipes has Kafka (both MSK and self-managed) source — Kafka as a target would be great addition 🙏

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 13/06/2025

what have I done? — in the last week an army of german sap bots(?) have started following me? 😅

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 28/05/2025

what's the current state of art what comes to observing AWS Lambda Functions with Node.js 22.x runtime and ES modules using OpenTelemetry? — does it work already without bigger hurdles?

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 26/05/2025

it is interesting how context matters when debugging with AI — in this case Q I spent somewhile today to figure out today why my TypeScript (JavaScript) Kafka consumer couldn't deserialize a record with Avro schema... then I implemented the same using Kotlin, and Q found the problem immediately 🤯

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 16/05/2025

@mreferre.bsky.social this Q thingy is pretty good. right now I only wish the VSCode plugin agentic mode would have a similar option to run commands autonomously as the CLI version has [t] — now the flow keeps waiting for me to run them and that unnecessary interruption is just a waste of time

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 23/04/2025

It's sad to watch as someone develops a system that doesn't have proper principles and also the willingness to give up on those things that even remotely resemble principles. Then they wonder why is it so damn hard and slow to develop and run it.

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 24/03/2025

This is probably very much a philosophical question, but why do people try to model a non-structural world and its natural order (someone could call it chaos) by structural means and by trying to restructure it? — Why can't they accept it?

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Niko Virtala @nikovirtala.io · 22/03/2025

which is ultimately more important: solving the customer's problem or the developer experience? I guess... I hope you know my answer 😅

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