Most people think the cloud is just files floating in the sky. Spoiler: it's not. In this episode, I’m breaking down what “the cloud” really is, why everything you’ve been told is probably wrong, and why it's the engine behind everything from Netflix to AI to your online checkout. This is the kickoff to WTH is the Cloud?! a fun series that makes cloud technology make sense.
Ever wonder why some teams intentionally break their own systems? Welcome to the world of chaos engineering — a practice that's not just for Netflix-scale infrastructure, but for any team that wants to build resilient, reliable applications. In this session, we'll demystify chaos engineering and explain why intentionally breaking things is actually the smart move. You'll learn what chaos engineering really is (in plain English, no buzzwords), why waiting for production failures is a terrible strategy, how to start experimenting with controlled failure locally, before it happens in the wild, real-world examples of chaos experiments that catch bugs you'd never find in traditional testing, and tools and techniques to get started without blowing up your infrastructure. Through practical demos using LocalStack's cloud emulation and chaos engineering tools, we'll simulate failures like network latency, service outages, and resource exhaustion right from your laptop. If you've ever said "it worked on my machine" only to watch it crash in production, this talk is for you—let's break things intentionally so they don't break unexpectedly.
Testing in the cloud = slow builds, fragile staging, surprise bills. Let’s talk about how developers are flipping the script and using local cloud environments to test smarter, faster, and cheaper — without breaking production. Bonus: You’ll learn how LocalStack lets you simulate AWS on your machine. Game changer.
