Live data from Hacker News

AWS: Inaccurate Estimated Billing Data – $1.7 billion

news.ycombinator.com

181–190 of 793 posts

Re: AWS: Inaccurate Estimated Billing Data – $1.7 billion

#183

Scared me even though it was obviously a bug once I stopped to consider the magnitude ($bn). Very unfriendly that they don't allow for hard spend caps; closed my mostly dormant personal account as a result.

If they did allow hard spend caps, it sounds like today would be a global outage.

Well then hopefully next time they'll be a bit more careful when shipping billing code updates!

Re: AWS: Inaccurate Estimated Billing Data – $1.7 billion

#184
Literal basic fucking math, Amazon.

You don't need hours to recalculate billing. You need to go back to basic algebra.

Anyone using Amazon and dealing with this should be moving away from their services because something this basic going wrong means the correct people are not at the helm of the ship.

Re: AWS: Inaccurate Estimated Billing Data – $1.7 billion

#185
I almost had a heart attack because of this. I was like, did I mess up my API management? Why didn't I just use Lightsail? Those were the thoughts running through my head.

My personal website is on Lightsail, but those alerts started popping up from some test services I had set up while I was studying AI. I swear my heart nearly stopped and I cried. I really think AWS should have spending limits in place.

My bank account barely has enough for next month's rent.

Re: AWS: Inaccurate Estimated Billing Data – $1.7 billion

#186
At some point my role was to reduce our startup’s AWS bill. I managed to keep 7 figures on our books instead of handing it to AWS. But a message like that would have given me a heart attack in those days.

Long story short: it saved the company from irrelevance. “Well-architected” is for the hyperscalers’ balance sheet, not yours.

Re: AWS: Inaccurate Estimated Billing Data – $1.7 billion

#187
post #98

Woke up to a billing alarm email. Thought I had leaked my AWS keys accidentally and somehow run up 437 billion dollars of charges. Joke's on them though, I don't have 437 billion dollars Anyways I didn't need coffee. That produced an adrenaline release unlike any I've experienced before. Thanks AWS

I wonder how many people may have gotten an actual heart infarct because of that. There may be a person out there that may be dead as a result. It's entirely irresponsible of Amazon to even display such values to the user.

Ah, there'll be something in the TOS absolving them of responsibility.

Re: AWS: Inaccurate Estimated Billing Data – $1.7 billion

#188

From their status page >The second path involves rolling back a recent change to the billing computation subsystem. Want to bet AI code was involved?

I'm not a betting person but I am looking forward to the postmortem, whether or not AI was involved, and what their code to production verification stuff looks like now. This kind of thing should have been caught by automated tests.

There is an enormous amount of money invested in trying to prove the opposite, for this reason not only they will never admit it, they will actively negate AI was used. It happened before:

https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/02/24/aws-would-ra...

Re: AWS: Inaccurate Estimated Billing Data – $1.7 billion

#189

From their status page >The second path involves rolling back a recent change to the billing computation subsystem. Want to bet AI code was involved?

They'll never admit it.

Why would they? Changing colors on the status dashboard needs VP approval.
Post reply on HN