They have the same upvotes because they were submitted at the same time. They were submitted at the same time because they were both just posted on the AWS blog. People are watching the AWS blog right now because there's an AWS conference happening right now, and new product announcements happen at conferences. There's a large segment of HN users that are interested in AWS and other infrastructure topics, and would upvote both stories. I'm one of them; I upvoted them from the /new queue when both were at 2 points. I don't work for Amazon and never have. You see the exact same pattern during Apple's conferences, Microsoft's conferences, etc.

> and look, we have a new user who just created an account to say he was waiting for this on the other thread

Maybe he or she was waiting for this? Why does everything need to be a conspiracy to promote corporate America? Granted you could be right but I'd bet on the simple reason first (someone submitted it and it was upvoted).