How to run Tailscale on AWS Lambda
24 Jun 2025 18:41 | aws | tailscale
Just in case anyone thought I was joking about running Tailscale on AWS Lambda, this is how: aws-lambda-python312-tailscale
[read more...]Tailscale ephemeral nodes as the ultimate MMORPG superweapon
22 Jun 2025 12:46 | aws | tailscale
People often talk about Tailscale but don't seem to mention its ephemeral nodes and their awesome power as an MMORPG weapon so I thought I'd address that. There are many MMORPGs but my all-time favourite is AWS which I play as an extremely stingy but also quite rich and entitled hacker. This character choice works well within the game dynamic as the object of the game is obviously to run your workload for as little financial outlay as possible.
The bog standard default way of running things on AWS is to use EC2, but one glance at the in-game pricing for this will make you quickly realise this is not a viable way to win. Managed services can sometimes be a good cost-effective alternative, but for those of us playing super stingy characters who just want their personal stuff to run for as close to free as possible, these too are usually unviable options. Serverless is therefore where the real action is at and how you can truly win at this game.
It's not without its limitations though and there are many crafty ways the game monetises its side channels and ancillary services in order to extract profit from the player. Take for example AWS Lambda, on the surface for smaller workloads this can be close to essentially free compute. That only works until you need a state store though, and depending on what you're doing pay-as-you-go DynamoDB can quickly add up to unacceptable costs. My in-game bill was recently creeping over the $5/month mark so I decided to have a think about my strategy and see if I could level up by levelling down my bill. The observant reader might wonder if hours of my time are really worth the potential cost savings here, all I can say is that some people will just never understand gaming.
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