This recent NYTimes article about using Go lang describes deployment as a simple process of putting a binary on S3.
Since programs compile down to a single binary, we can include all the third-party libraries we want and deployment is just a matter of putting our binary on S3, no bootstrap actions required.
What type of environment would one need to setup on S3 and how would you put a binary on S3 and run it? Is someone able to fill in the details
S3 stands for Simple Storage Service and that's all it is. It's a place to put files where they can be served on the web with some simple configuration options (for permission/headers etc). It doesn't have the ability to run a compiled binary.
What the author of that article is referring to is that he can share the application (with ops or anyone really) by putting it on S3. The advantage being a greatly simplified deployment process, as it's just a single file (contrast to a ruby/PHP app where you would need to deploy all the individual source files together).
You could substitute S3 in his article with Dropbox/email or any way of sharing files.
The reason he mentions S3 is probably because it forms part of a automated pipeline. e.g.
As someone else mentioned in comments, you could use a deployment automation tool like fabric or capistrano to automate all of this for you.
TL;DR You can't run the go binary on S3 (or any code/executables), he means he uses S3 to share the build artifact.
What he means is that S3 is where you store a single binary, and deployment is basically downloading it and running it.
That's how I do it as well :)