5 ms·

> I gave up on ec2 when they started requiring you "request for quota" to start a gpu instance. Sadly, the scourge of crypto mining combined with credit card f

by my123 3y ago

> I gave up on ec2 when they started requiring you "request for quota" to start a gpu instance. Sadly, the scourge of crypto mining combined with credit card fraud makes it really hard to do otherwise for any sizeable hoster. :/

Negitivefrags 3y ago
Maybe they should let you bypass the quota system if you pay in advance via bank transfer then?
- andrewstuart 3y ago
  You'd think my > 10 year old AWS account with usage history would be enough, but apparently not.
  - ecnahc515 3y ago
    Devil's advocate: 10 year old accounts are probably just as likely as any to get hacked into and used for crypto mining, and honestly I bet a majority of their customers don't even use GPU instances.
    - ericpauley 3y ago
      Yep, Amazon's threat model has less to do with how reputable a given account is, since credential theft is rampant. Even at massive institutional customers on POs I've had to apply for quotas.
    - angus-prune 3y ago
      One could argue that older accounts are even more likely to get hacked, as they are more likely to have older passwords that are weaker that may have been leaked along the way, along with various other accumulated security issues (leaked API keys, out of date 2FA choices etc).
- derefr 3y ago
  There are a lot of systems and features that are hard (impossible?) to design in a way where you can predict (every dimension of) spend; you can only react to spend events. For example, a theoretical "prepaid AWS" might allow you to put a hold on a vCPU-month of account credits to start a 1vCPU instance. But what about the bandwidth egress fees when someone makes requests to said instance? Those are going to be completely variable, depending on how much traffic the instance receives.
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
    Yeah, but there are plenty of organizations which have very modest or predictable loads that would be significantly well served by knowing that the monthly spend was capped at $X prepaid. As a nobody, I want to use AWS, but I refuse to have the unlimited liability in case I screw up something and wake up to a $30k bill. Hell, they could even over-charge me on the credits, and I would gladly take that deal if I knew that once the kitty ran dry, services would stop. Would there be edge cases and complications to resolve (eg what about storage?). Sure, but AWS pays some smart people a lot of money to figure out tricky things.
    - scarface74 3y ago
      I work at AWS in Professional Services of course all opinions are my own. The answer for you is LightSail. LightSail is a standard VPS. But if you want to upgrade to “real AWS” later on, you can. The only thing that I’m aware of that could cause bills to go up is egress over your allowance. To be honest with you, I would be slightly afraid of screwing up and having an unexpected bill from AWS if I were doing a personal project and I do this for a living. There have been plenty of times where I left something expensive running or provisioned an expensive service (Kendra) and forgot to shut it down until I ended up on a list of “people with the highest spend” on our internal system on one of my non production accounts.
      - usr1106 3y ago
        If AWS truly cared about customers they would implement spending limits. Note the plural: Customers don't want their S3 data deleted because some GPU stuff went crazy. But AWS prefers profit.
jacurtis 3y ago
Wow, never realized that that could be a great money laundering strategy. 1. Take cash, load it onto prepaid cards. 2. Buy GPU instances. 3. Mine crypto. 4. Pay for compute with #1 5. Sell crypto 6. "Clean" cash I just don't have the mind of a criminal I guess, it sounds like this was figured out a long time ago. There are (were) enough random kids in thier basements making millions on crypto that it probably wouldn't turn too many eyebrows either by the IRS if you actually tried to report your crypto earnings cleanly, they would likely spend their efforts chasing down the people who weren't reporting.
- KomoD 3y ago
  I don't know about AWS but with GCP the instance gets suspended if you try mining
- SXX 3y ago
  Fortunatelly your evil ML plan going to fail on #1. It's basically impossible to get some cash loaded to prepaid cards anywhere. Also AWS and other hosting providers wouldn't accept prepaid cards either. Instead you just buy crypto with cash P2P and report that as mined or whatever. On other hand credit card fraud is real problem especially due to fact that Amazon don't want to add any KYC burden on their customers or try to track down any anomaly spending. After all good chunk of AWS profits come out of fact how bad people of tracking their cloud costs. If Amazon to implement built-in option to track suspicious jumps of AWS costs then it's not only gonna cut on fraud, but on overall AWS profits.
  - SilasX 3y ago
    Couldn't you also buy GPUs in person with cash and mine with them?
    - philistine 3y ago
      That's when you end up with the electricity bill of a weed farm and you get cops busting down your doors.

by my123 3y ago

Negitivefrags 3y ago

Maybe they should let you bypass the quota system if you pay in advance via bank transfer then?

andrewstuart 3y ago
You'd think my > 10 year old AWS account with usage history would be enough, but apparently not.
- ecnahc515 3y ago
  Devil's advocate: 10 year old accounts are probably just as likely as any to get hacked into and used for crypto mining, and honestly I bet a majority of their customers don't even use GPU instances.
  - ericpauley 3y ago
    Yep, Amazon's threat model has less to do with how reputable a given account is, since credential theft is rampant. Even at massive institutional customers on POs I've had to apply for quotas.
  - angus-prune 3y ago
    One could argue that older accounts are even more likely to get hacked, as they are more likely to have older passwords that are weaker that may have been leaked along the way, along with various other accumulated security issues (leaked API keys, out of date 2FA choices etc).
derefr 3y ago
There are a lot of systems and features that are hard (impossible?) to design in a way where you can predict (every dimension of) spend; you can only react to spend events. For example, a theoretical "prepaid AWS" might allow you to put a hold on a vCPU-month of account credits to start a 1vCPU instance. But what about the bandwidth egress fees when someone makes requests to said instance? Those are going to be completely variable, depending on how much traffic the instance receives.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
  Yeah, but there are plenty of organizations which have very modest or predictable loads that would be significantly well served by knowing that the monthly spend was capped at $X prepaid. As a nobody, I want to use AWS, but I refuse to have the unlimited liability in case I screw up something and wake up to a $30k bill. Hell, they could even over-charge me on the credits, and I would gladly take that deal if I knew that once the kitty ran dry, services would stop. Would there be edge cases and complications to resolve (eg what about storage?). Sure, but AWS pays some smart people a lot of money to figure out tricky things.
  - scarface74 3y ago
    I work at AWS in Professional Services of course all opinions are my own. The answer for you is LightSail. LightSail is a standard VPS. But if you want to upgrade to “real AWS” later on, you can. The only thing that I’m aware of that could cause bills to go up is egress over your allowance. To be honest with you, I would be slightly afraid of screwing up and having an unexpected bill from AWS if I were doing a personal project and I do this for a living. There have been plenty of times where I left something expensive running or provisioned an expensive service (Kendra) and forgot to shut it down until I ended up on a list of “people with the highest spend” on our internal system on one of my non production accounts.
    - usr1106 3y ago
      If AWS truly cared about customers they would implement spending limits. Note the plural: Customers don't want their S3 data deleted because some GPU stuff went crazy. But AWS prefers profit.

jacurtis 3y ago

Wow, never realized that that could be a great money laundering strategy. 1. Take cash, load it onto prepaid cards. 2. Buy GPU instances. 3. Mine crypto. 4. Pay for compute with #1 5. Sell crypto 6. "Clean" cash I just don't have the mind of a criminal I guess, it sounds like this was figured out a long time ago. There are (were) enough random kids in thier basements making millions on crypto that it probably wouldn't turn too many eyebrows either by the IRS if you actually tried to report your crypto earnings cleanly, they would likely spend their efforts chasing down the people who weren't reporting.

KomoD 3y ago
I don't know about AWS but with GCP the instance gets suspended if you try mining
SXX 3y ago
Fortunatelly your evil ML plan going to fail on #1. It's basically impossible to get some cash loaded to prepaid cards anywhere. Also AWS and other hosting providers wouldn't accept prepaid cards either. Instead you just buy crypto with cash P2P and report that as mined or whatever. On other hand credit card fraud is real problem especially due to fact that Amazon don't want to add any KYC burden on their customers or try to track down any anomaly spending. After all good chunk of AWS profits come out of fact how bad people of tracking their cloud costs. If Amazon to implement built-in option to track suspicious jumps of AWS costs then it's not only gonna cut on fraud, but on overall AWS profits.
- SilasX 3y ago
  Couldn't you also buy GPUs in person with cash and mine with them?
  - philistine 3y ago
    That's when you end up with the electricity bill of a weed farm and you get cops busting down your doors.