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AWS: Inaccurate Estimated Billing Data – $1.7 billion

news.ycombinator.com

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

#421

Post by ihateolives »

lukaslueg wrote: post #17

Apparently what used to be `GB of storage consumed` is confused with `Bytes of storage consumed`, leading to a cool off by 2*30 error. > You're right to question my calculation. The MCP server failed to connect when I tried to look up the field definition. I guessed instead of validating. This is on me. But look at all the revenue!

Just today I gave my local agent a CSV which listed a bunch files with of human readable size units and asked it to count rows in each GB range. Sounds simple enough but it completely miscalculated, because it parsed MB as GB for some reason. In hindsight it would've be quicker just to do it in Excel or something.

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

#422

Post by theflyingelvis »

jayanmn wrote: post #355
yuchen20 wrote: post #62

I got 3 consecutive emails warning that my budget crossed its $18 threshold. Opened it up: cost was 78 million. Thought it was a phishing attempt, logged into my actual account, and... still 78 million. EMOTIONAL DAMAGE.

Enterprise account . We got - 3trillion and change

3.7 billion. Offered to pay it in monthly installments. Haven’t hears back

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

#423

Post by johnbarron »

LetsGetTechnicl wrote: post #408
root-parent wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is, the only purely deterministic thing, will be token consumption...

How can a random generator be deterministic?

Truth is, you can never know: https://imgur.com/random-number-generator-bwFWMqQ

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

#424

Post by nonameiguess »

chairmansteve wrote: post #392
sscaryterry wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure! What could possibly go wrong?

Drones are already vibe targeting in Ukraine/Russia.

I don't want to say this was ever or will ever be a good idea, but the reality of warfare is a lot of the time dudes were just running into an alley and firing off mortars without trying to look or think of what they were shooting at anyway. I doubt the Taliban gave a shit about false positive rates when they were cutting the hands off of anyone who voted. They got the point across either way.

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

#426

Post by chanux »

root-parent wrote: post #277
raverbashing wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI slop. Or just a distracted dev

>> Or just a distracted dev And a distracted tester? And a distracted pipeline of regression tests? No, the truth is way worst...

What if there's only half a dev and a swarm of agents after the layoffs?

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

#427

Post by gaudystead »

unethical_ban wrote: post #348
aerhardt wrote: post #303

One can almost smell the vibes. This is peanuts compared to a major cybersecurity catastrophe that’s surely in the making. To give credit to the technology and the people using it - and I’m not being facetious - it’s actually incredible that at the current levels of usage the unprecedented catastrophic event has not yet happened.

It was the mid 2010s when I sensed a lot of SaaS becoming popular. Just host your ticketing systems, your IT management planes, your security management consoles, your SOC, all off-premises. I wonder if businesses are thinking of ever swinging back to locally hosted, with the increased hostility of the Internet re: AI, vulnerabilities, DoS, and so on.

I'm sure some businesses are considering moving back to on-prem, but for many, I suspect the cost to find onboard, and pay the SMEs to keep those systems running well enough to not fail due to one reason or another isn't as appetizing to them as the ability to offload that work, along with the legal responsibility.

When something goes wrong, pointing the finger at someone else is far easier for most than pointing it at yourself.

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

#428

Post by nrmitchi »

""" If you own the bank $1000, thats your problem.

If you owe the bank $1.7B, thats the banks problem. """

What I would be curious about (and I'm sure AWS will never share) is where the incorrect number came from. If the number is somewhat consistent between some groups of accounts, my first guess would be they started summarizing billing across all accounts in whatever cell/grouping/heirarchy AWS architected internally.

Which is just funny.

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

#429

Post by 6stringmerc »

Thanks for sharing.

I’m currently dealing with Verizon Wireless and their “Jabronibot” claiming I have a fictional account balance due. It has been sent to collections, but still is being asked for by their legacy system.

The case studies of “Agents in Billing Departments” and potential shareholder lawsuits / E&O claims / reputational damage will be interesting to me. I worked in “risk management” products years ago and this kind of liability is not easily dollar traded away via contract. Will accountability stick to the Decision Makers or will they try to surrogate to the Service Providers? Hmm.

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

#430

Post by isodev »

petercooper wrote: post #187
binaryturtle wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe AWS is also “for entertainment purposes only”

https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/05/copilot-is-for-entertainme...

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