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It's a good lesson in cloud computing to know how much you're spending on services. Usually if you're a single person and you leave an expensive product runnin

It's a good lesson in cloud computing to know how much you're spending on services. Usually if you're a single person and you leave an expensive product running unknowingly, AWS support have been kind and refund you the money and take the loss as 'customer made an error' type transaction. It's not like they hold the debt over your head for life. I think the article is a bit extreme to highlight the person's reaction, it's pretty easy bait for most people to swallow. Realistically though, if you can't afford $20, how on earth did you afford a credit card to sign up for AWS in the first place? There are people comparing this person's response with the Robinhood investor that lost money and took their life. The real issue here is a mental health problem and better awareness around that - AWS is a cheap scapegoat we can all blame to ignore the real issue at hand...

paranoidrobot 5y ago
The problem is only partially "know how much you're spending on services". There's a big problem of: There's a huge amount of AWS that even if you configure it "right" - still leaves you with potentially unlimited liability. Take a simple example of using Cloudfront and S3 together to host a basic website. There's a good well documented way of securing this all "right". However that doesn't protect you from "slashdotting" - perhaps you put an image on your site and it gets linked from the frontpage of Reddit. You go from paying a few $/month, to suddenly overnight having potentially hundreds or thousands of dollars of spend because tens of millions of people have viewed your image. AWS Billing alerts are not going to save you, because once they (eventually, maybe a day or so late) fire, and assuming you immediately see that notification, figure out what it is being accessed, and remove that file (or just turn off the bucket/cloudfront entirely) - the bills could have gone way up. It gets worse when you're talking about other AWS services. The whole point being that billing caps, along with billing alerts that are actually timely, are actually necessary. You shouldn't have to depend on the grace of AWS Customer Service to not force you to decide whether to pay rent, eat, or your massive credit card bill. > Realistically though, if you can't afford $20, how on earth did you afford a credit card to sign up for AWS in the first place? The example was $200. And for a lot of people, particularly students and other people new to development - $200 can be a large chunk of money. Part of the problem is that you go to AWS Conferences and talks, and they talk about how there's all this amazing stuff, and encourage people to sign up and try it out. What they never do is tell you "Oh, by the way, this demo costs $x/hour". I'd love to see some kind of taxi-meter style box behind the presenter/in the corner of webcasts showing how much the AWS Bill would be for the demo.
- tedk-42 5y ago
  Taking your cloudfront example, the free tier covers 50GB data out at 2 million requests - so your image would need to be less that 25KB to be under the free tier limit. Taking a 4MB image, that would equate to around 8TB which is priced at under $1. Make that 20 million views and you hit $10 - oof! --- $20 or $200 doesn't matter - how on earth could you have a credit card if you can't afford to pay off $200? --- AWS is great and people are free to try it out. They should also be aware that things cost money and not to put their credit card down for services without being fully aware of the costs associated. It's like buying a property for investment then complaining to the real estate agent later down the line for a number of issues the property has that require maintenance down the line. What's wrong with buyer beware? Why can't people/big companies offer services without people crying foul about 'getting hurt from bill shock'? Where's the personal responsibility and accountability for your own actions and decisions gone? AWS aren't scheming to scape little bits of money from small time developers. They're interested in catching big fish companies who are looking to choose their platform / service offering in the cloud computing space. If you think these small time developers with 'bill caps so i don't overspend' is at the top of their feature priority list you've got the wrong idea about the business.
  - paranoidrobot 5y ago
    > $20 or $200 doesn't matter - how on earth could you have a credit card if you can't afford to pay off $200? Who cares how they got the card, maybe it's a debit card, maybe it's their parent's or partners. Maybe they've got one that only allows a very low limit of charges. The point is that there's a whole ton of people for whom $200 isn't a "Oh, well, that's a learning exercise - better be more careful next time". > What's wrong with buyer beware? Buyer beware is fine where all parties are fully aware of all repercussions. However, you'll note that this doesn't apply to certain kinds of transactions, particularly financial transactions. In some cases, you're either required to go through an expert who can advise you on the downsides and risks, or the seller is required to ensure that the buyer is fully informed of the risks. It's the same reason we have warning signs on a whole bunch of things about how they could injure themselves. Without the ability for someone to limit the damage, someone could be up for thousands of dollars in spend without being aware of how they even got there. > AWS aren't scheming to scape little bits of money from small time developers It's not even students and other inexperienced people that end up in bill-shock. I've dealt with well-experienced senior developers who've gone off to an AWS Conference and spent a day or three being lulled by the story about how X is the new hotness, and would solve all the problems we have. The AWS reps have all confirmed the story that X is the new hotness, and it's perfect for some new solution - and they've got some big name customer who's implemented it and saved millions Vs their legacy on-site solution. The AWS reps also hand out tens of thousands in account credits like they're mentos, with the message "Go play, see if it works for you". Those senior developers have taken a look at the pricing on the thing, thought they understood it, and then fired up a demo to prove it out. When the billing starts to come in, there's been shock from them that they spent so much in so little time. The pricing on things is quite opaque with one headline price for something, but doesn't include that you'll also need to consider the pricing for other bits. The billing is often delayed quite signfiicantly, and alerting is only useful as an indicator of how much you've fucked up, rather than a way to prevent it. So, yeah, with AWS marketing all their solutions as being much lower cost, while at the same time not making it clear on what things do cost, and not making tools that you can prevent major fuckups -- they definitely do need to shoulder some blame.

paranoidrobot 5y ago

The problem is only partially "know how much you're spending on services". There's a big problem of: There's a huge amount of AWS that even if you configure it "right" - still leaves you with potentially unlimited liability. Take a simple example of using Cloudfront and S3 together to host a basic website. There's a good well documented way of securing this all "right". However that doesn't protect you from "slashdotting" - perhaps you put an image on your site and it gets linked from the frontpage of Reddit. You go from paying a few $/month, to suddenly overnight having potentially hundreds or thousands of dollars of spend because tens of millions of people have viewed your image. AWS Billing alerts are not going to save you, because once they (eventually, maybe a day or so late) fire, and assuming you immediately see that notification, figure out what it is being accessed, and remove that file (or just turn off the bucket/cloudfront entirely) - the bills could have gone way up. It gets worse when you're talking about other AWS services. The whole point being that billing caps, along with billing alerts that are actually timely, are actually necessary. You shouldn't have to depend on the grace of AWS Customer Service to not force you to decide whether to pay rent, eat, or your massive credit card bill. > Realistically though, if you can't afford $20, how on earth did you afford a credit card to sign up for AWS in the first place? The example was $200. And for a lot of people, particularly students and other people new to development - $200 can be a large chunk of money. Part of the problem is that you go to AWS Conferences and talks, and they talk about how there's all this amazing stuff, and encourage people to sign up and try it out. What they never do is tell you "Oh, by the way, this demo costs $x/hour". I'd love to see some kind of taxi-meter style box behind the presenter/in the corner of webcasts showing how much the AWS Bill would be for the demo.

tedk-42 5y ago
Taking your cloudfront example, the free tier covers 50GB data out at 2 million requests - so your image would need to be less that 25KB to be under the free tier limit. Taking a 4MB image, that would equate to around 8TB which is priced at under $1. Make that 20 million views and you hit $10 - oof! --- $20 or $200 doesn't matter - how on earth could you have a credit card if you can't afford to pay off $200? --- AWS is great and people are free to try it out. They should also be aware that things cost money and not to put their credit card down for services without being fully aware of the costs associated. It's like buying a property for investment then complaining to the real estate agent later down the line for a number of issues the property has that require maintenance down the line. What's wrong with buyer beware? Why can't people/big companies offer services without people crying foul about 'getting hurt from bill shock'? Where's the personal responsibility and accountability for your own actions and decisions gone? AWS aren't scheming to scape little bits of money from small time developers. They're interested in catching big fish companies who are looking to choose their platform / service offering in the cloud computing space. If you think these small time developers with 'bill caps so i don't overspend' is at the top of their feature priority list you've got the wrong idea about the business.
- paranoidrobot 5y ago
  > $20 or $200 doesn't matter - how on earth could you have a credit card if you can't afford to pay off $200? Who cares how they got the card, maybe it's a debit card, maybe it's their parent's or partners. Maybe they've got one that only allows a very low limit of charges. The point is that there's a whole ton of people for whom $200 isn't a "Oh, well, that's a learning exercise - better be more careful next time". > What's wrong with buyer beware? Buyer beware is fine where all parties are fully aware of all repercussions. However, you'll note that this doesn't apply to certain kinds of transactions, particularly financial transactions. In some cases, you're either required to go through an expert who can advise you on the downsides and risks, or the seller is required to ensure that the buyer is fully informed of the risks. It's the same reason we have warning signs on a whole bunch of things about how they could injure themselves. Without the ability for someone to limit the damage, someone could be up for thousands of dollars in spend without being aware of how they even got there. > AWS aren't scheming to scape little bits of money from small time developers It's not even students and other inexperienced people that end up in bill-shock. I've dealt with well-experienced senior developers who've gone off to an AWS Conference and spent a day or three being lulled by the story about how X is the new hotness, and would solve all the problems we have. The AWS reps have all confirmed the story that X is the new hotness, and it's perfect for some new solution - and they've got some big name customer who's implemented it and saved millions Vs their legacy on-site solution. The AWS reps also hand out tens of thousands in account credits like they're mentos, with the message "Go play, see if it works for you". Those senior developers have taken a look at the pricing on the thing, thought they understood it, and then fired up a demo to prove it out. When the billing starts to come in, there's been shock from them that they spent so much in so little time. The pricing on things is quite opaque with one headline price for something, but doesn't include that you'll also need to consider the pricing for other bits. The billing is often delayed quite signfiicantly, and alerting is only useful as an indicator of how much you've fucked up, rather than a way to prevent it. So, yeah, with AWS marketing all their solutions as being much lower cost, while at the same time not making it clear on what things do cost, and not making tools that you can prevent major fuckups -- they definitely do need to shoulder some blame.