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AWS: Inaccurate Estimated Billing Data – $1.7 billion

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

#433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wanna bet the description of this job post will be updated by the end of the day? "Software Development Engineer II, AWS Invoicing" https://www.amazon.jobs/de/jobs/10428480/software-developmen... "...Our platforms are powered by generative AI, large language models, knowledge graphs, and agentic architectures that dynamically compose specialized agents based on context. We apply these capabilities across three reinfo…

That job description feels so far beyond parody that I could scarcely believe it until opening the link! What a world.

Seriously! If I were making a joke I would say something like

> Build AI-driven continuous validation frameworks powered by agentic workflows and large language models that autonomously manage…

But that’s word for word a 250k+ TC job in the big ‘26.

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

#434
post #350

It's crazy enough this will be fixed soon. Years ago I found an actual hidden error in my bill. (This was early 2010s). The system was calculating the EC2 reservation savings incorrectly for some of my servers. I was crunching all their detailed usage data on a regular basis in an 18 tab spreadsheet and couldn't get it to fully reconcile. I spent months trying to track down the discrepancy. Once I found it, I had to…

>> It's crazy enough this will be fixed soon.

Its going on for 12 hours. Looks like the humans can´t understand the agentic code that was checked in....

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

#436

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...

Yep, the truth is nobody cares when people start submitting dozens of PRs a day with a bunch of AI-generated code reviews attached to it, all saying everything looks good. I'm witnessing this happening at my workplace right now: Sr/Staff uses Claude to generate 10 pages of design document, Jr uses Claude/Cursor to generate a humongous commit based on this document and create a PR, then bunch of automated AI-based code reviews kick in and say this looks good, another Sr/Staff takes a glance and rubber stamp it, while looking at the company's stock value and/or OpenAI/Anthropic job description.

It's a shit show.

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

#437
post #323
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 went through a two month long fight with AWS over a compromised account. I lost 20K even when my previous usage for the last 3 years was like $20/month, and I had more invoices coming worth tens of thousands of dollars. AWS refused to help until I stopped the breach myself, which required me to spend several all nighters after work learning how to script for AWS infra. They also refused to close my account after th…

I had a similar situation where some dormant account was still charging my credit card.

The account was probably real, made for some purpose 15 years ago. I had ignored the charge for years because it was like $7 a month. Then it went to $300/month, making it worth the time. I could find no invoice email and none of my AWS accounts lined up with the bill.

I tried contacting support, but without the account number involved they had no way to help. I disputed the charge, the bank refunded that month and then went right back to charging the next month(my credit card helpfully accepted the charges despite the dispute).

I had to cancel the credit card entirely to make it stop.

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

#438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

US Navy now doesn't care either. Using Palantir's Maven Smart System, which incorporated Anthropic's Claude AI model, to identify and evaluate targets - which blew up the girls elementary school in Minab.

Use AI => No War Crimes!

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

#439
post #138
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

If you owe AWS 437k bucks, that’s a big problem for you If you owe AWS 437B bucks, that’s a big problem for AWS

This number is obviously absurd but for other normal amount (say 2 million which can definitely happen with a mistake), can't they claim it in court that will bankrupt you even if your entire worth is just 100K for example?

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

#440

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.

I've found personally it's better to use AI to build a deterministic script for calculations like that. (anything that manipulates data should be a script not an AI).
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