Thread

1. brap · 1791102425 · focus · HN ↗

   When I first started working with cloud providers it was shocking to discover this feature doesn’t exist, basically anywhere.

   It’s such a basic thing, not having it has to be deliberate to make you accidentally spend more than you’d like.

   1. foldr · 1791106390 · focus · HN ↗

      >It’s such a basic thing, not having it has to be deliberate to make you accidentally spend more than you’d like.

      This is unlikely. The big cloud providers routinely cancel bills based on accidental usage. The real explanation is just that it's technically difficult to calculate all usage in real time and shut down systems immediately as soon as a certain cap is reached.

      1. nicce · 1791111383 · focus · HN ↗

         > This is unlikely. The big cloud providers routinely cancel bills based on accidental usage

         That is not an evidence alone. They also don't cancel bills in many cases. Most people also just swallow the damage and pay. Like gym subscriptions where people just pay because cancelling was too hard and they postpone the canceling because it takes so much effort. And they also think it is their fault of not cancelling, because it took that much of effort.

         > The real explanation is just that it's technically difficult to calculate all usage in real time and shut down systems immediately as soon as a certain cap is reached.

         That is trivial to add these days. Cloud providers usually say that "we care about your business and don't want to make your systems go down unexpectedly if you did not pay your bills".

         1. foldr · 1791116231 · focus · HN ↗

            How do you know that it's trivial to add?

            The difference between Amazon and gym subscriptions is that Amazon can easily make more money by upselling to happy customers than it can by screwing individuals or small businesses out of relatively small amounts of money for their accidental usage.

            1. pixl97 · 1791120150 · focus · HN ↗

               Before AI that is.

               In cpu compute margins are high and there is a lot of excess compute, you can give some away and make money.

               In the age of AI this is gone. These companies have taken on huge debts. The operating margins are going to crash as interests increase. AI enabled fraud is going to make stolen service even more common.

               1. foldr · 1791121079 · focus · HN ↗

                  That may be true, but I don't think it really affects the point. "Make people use our services accidentally and then force them to cough up" is just never going to be a good business plan for AWS. AWS makes money selling to big customers who willingly come back for more. AI might make it harder for AWS to turn a profit, but it's not going to make a lack of hard usage caps suddenly become central to AWS's business strategy.
            2. pessimizer · 1791141848 · focus · HN ↗

               Banks like overdraft fees. Amazon can upsell to unhappy customers if the switching costs are high enough.

               Hell, hard caps can be an upsell.

   2. Terretta · 1791121440 · focus · HN ↗

      Mistaken view.

      I was a member of AWS customer advisory board for years. Two dozen of largest enterprises and unicorns and so on. Nobody wanted the billing department "inline" of systems controls.

      AWS provides all the controls you need to flip the switch yourself, and provides the CDK / TF / etc. patterns for it. Plenty GitHub projects to host your own light switch service.

      Don't relinquish the switch.

      1. kemitchell · 1791123402 · focus · HN ↗

         Might you recommend any talks or writing on the AWS advisory board and how it works? I found Amazon’s reference page on it, but it’s scant.
      2. callmeal · 1791123666 · focus · HN ↗

         > Two dozen of largest enterprises and unicorns and so on. Nobody wanted the billing department "inline" of systems controls.

         And of course, two dozen enterprises trump hundreds if not thousands of other small businesses right? Did AWS think of, oh I don't know, a 'feature flag' or somesuch thing that enterprises and unicorns are so fond of to provide this feature to those who don't have VC money to flush?

         1. Terretta · 1791125532 · focus · HN ↗

            Again, they give you the tools for this. You can understand your usage by API, you can set threshold actions on it, you can switch things on and off, and applyable templates exist, all of which are under your control and "out of band" from the systems delivering traffic or compute to your paying customers.

            1. dwedge · 1791126359 · focus · HN ↗

               Using these tools can you switch everything off immediately (or at least within a minute) of total billing going over $X? Because if not, you're being disingenuous

               1. dcminter · 1791128707 · focus · HN ↗

                  Not to mention that one of the things people want a hard limit for is to limit the financial blast radius of misconfiguration. Saying "oh sure, you can cobble that together yourself" is super missing the point.
            2. oblio · 1791133623 · focus · HN ↗

               Stop defending a dark pattern that is making them a lot of money.
      3. devsda · 1791128522 · focus · HN ↗

         Amazon didn't have to build a hosted db, queue, mail or anything else that is value add as long as it provides basic hosted compute, storage and network.

         But it still does and can only claim having those after building them.

         Their customers have been asking for that hard cap feature for a long long time, not building that feature while saying customers have all the tools to build it themselves is just a deliberate misdirection at this point.

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