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The insurance thing also seems weird to me, what are you insuring against? It sounds like people are suggesting insurance against... cloud providers just decidi

The insurance thing also seems weird to me, what are you insuring against? It sounds like people are suggesting insurance against... cloud providers just deciding to randomly bill you, but that's not how it works. Are you buying insurance against having a successful business? No one is going to sell that. Are you buying insurance against being hacked? That makes sense and does exist, but only solves one very specific version of this and isn't really about cloud billing, plus it's likely not accessible to the size of business (or individual use) who get bitten by this sort of thing. Are you buying insurance against incompetence using the services? You can get professional indemnity insurance, and I guess your own LLC could probably sue your own indemnity insurance in this sort of case, but you'd need to defend the decisions as reasonable at the time and not negligent.

kccqzy 2y ago
They are just insuring against an unexpectedly large bill. That's how I read it. It doesn't even have to involve any proof or disproof of negligence. Just make it a purely financial transaction. You pay $1,000 as a premium such that if the cloud bill exceeds $10,000 the insurance will pay you half of that, up to a limit of $20,000. It makes sense as a financial product. Of course the numbers above are purely hypothetical.
- tasuki 2y ago
  No it does not make any sense whatsoever. If you wanted to sell such insurance, I'd be very happy to buy it for my upcoming $20,000 cloud bill!
- danpalmer 2y ago
  Just because it's possible to state a hypothetical financial product does not mean there's a useful product there. Why would I agree to pay up to $20k on a $50k cloud bill, when you could just choose to spend more on your cloud bill. I would be giving away free money and you'd get a discount. You have to tie it to either incorrect billing, valid billing but caused by a malicious third party (i.e. hacking), or valid billing caused by negligence, and in the latter case you would need to prove negligence otherwise it's just a business deciding to use more resources and not pay for them. In the same way, fire insurance covers your house burning down, but not if you burn it down yourself.
- Ekaros 2y ago
  Such insurance likely would require documenting full due diligence and being able to prove that you followed all instructions and known best practises at time of incident. Which likely would get the insurer out of most cases...
layman51 2y ago
I learned from this that there is something called “Errors & Omissions insurance” that professionals could buy. But in this case, it looks like the person who did the Tweet had hired a freelance software engineer through Upwork.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  E&O insurance can be pricey. Lots of people skip it. I have not been thrilled with Upwork, but that’s another story. In general, I have found that you get what you pay for.
deleted 2y ago
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kccqzy 2y ago

They are just insuring against an unexpectedly large bill. That's how I read it. It doesn't even have to involve any proof or disproof of negligence. Just make it a purely financial transaction. You pay $1,000 as a premium such that if the cloud bill exceeds $10,000 the insurance will pay you half of that, up to a limit of $20,000. It makes sense as a financial product. Of course the numbers above are purely hypothetical.

tasuki 2y ago
No it does not make any sense whatsoever. If you wanted to sell such insurance, I'd be very happy to buy it for my upcoming $20,000 cloud bill!
danpalmer 2y ago
Just because it's possible to state a hypothetical financial product does not mean there's a useful product there. Why would I agree to pay up to $20k on a $50k cloud bill, when you could just choose to spend more on your cloud bill. I would be giving away free money and you'd get a discount. You have to tie it to either incorrect billing, valid billing but caused by a malicious third party (i.e. hacking), or valid billing caused by negligence, and in the latter case you would need to prove negligence otherwise it's just a business deciding to use more resources and not pay for them. In the same way, fire insurance covers your house burning down, but not if you burn it down yourself.
Ekaros 2y ago
Such insurance likely would require documenting full due diligence and being able to prove that you followed all instructions and known best practises at time of incident. Which likely would get the insurer out of most cases...

layman51 2y ago

I learned from this that there is something called “Errors & Omissions insurance” that professionals could buy. But in this case, it looks like the person who did the Tweet had hired a freelance software engineer through Upwork.

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
E&O insurance can be pricey. Lots of people skip it. I have not been thrilled with Upwork, but that’s another story. In general, I have found that you get what you pay for.

deleted 2y ago

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