[fabian2k]

The cloud isn't something I'd ever use my private credit card on, there are just too many ways to screw it up if you're not very careful and know what you're doing. I don't think I would have hit this particular issue, but that is mainly because I've read a bunch of stories of this kind and BigQuery is one of the things I associate with "can get very expensive very quickly" based on those.

I know the explanations and justifications for it, but for personal use a service where I can't put a hard limit on usage is simply not acceptable for me. It's just not worth the risk.

[blibble]

if your country lets you set up and maintain an LLC easily this can be a reasonable way to manage the risk

a catastrophic mistake might result in the company going bust and all the pain associated with that

but shouldn't lose you your home (assuming you acted properly, the project using the cloud provider has to be in the aims of the company, etc etc etc)

speak to a lawyer

[crysin]

IANAL but this can be risky in the US still because if you're not careful and demonstrate a clear separation of your business funds and your personal funds it can let those pursuing you for money owed to pierce the veil, thus losing a huge benefit of the LLC.

[questionacount]

Is there a guide or someone I should talk to about how to do this?

I’ve long wondered what I can do with an LLC to protect me from debts like this but I don’t know how to get more information about it. Particularly as I’d be the sole owner I don’t really understand what the llc does/doesn’t do.

If you had just 1000$ (and made a few hundred a year) is it worth doing?

[Arnt]

Maybe, maybe not. It depends on the risk you're trying to contain, not just the routine income.

The short, short version is: You have to have a reason for the LLC that isn't just "contain some risks". Something like "this is a legal entity for my side project bilombinaboloa.com, that I'm hoping will one day become a company and make me Rich" will work, "I pay my expenses via this and take my income directly" will not.

[abeyer]

Read your sibling comment... basically doing this solely for the purpose of trying to avoid debt won't work unless the creditor is just too lazy to pursue it.

[blibble]

the word "solely" is doing a lot of work there

if you're experimenting with side project that you think has potential commercial value then this is why limited liability as a concept was invented

(as always, speak to lawyer)

[abeyer]

Of course. If you have a viable business and the debt is related to that, that's exactly what the corporate veil is for. If you just want to hedge your bets on your personal GCP bill for hobby stuff, not so much.

[blibble]

speak to a lawyer

obviously the advice will cost you but may be the best couple of hundred bucks you ever spent

it's not magic though, you do have to conduct yourself properly as a company (be that non-profit or otherwise)

[httparchive]

It wasn't personal use, for business - but I'm bootstrapping a startup, so it's a very tough lesson to learn.

[bugbuddy]

There is a really easy fix to this problem: setting billing limits. This can be done with almost all cloud providers and it takes almost no time. These incidents just show a lack of professionalism on the part of the person incurring the costs. I personally did on the first day I setup a cloud computing account when I was still doing my BS in college. It is not that hard folks. Set the billing limits.

[fabian2k]

The main reason I'd use a personal account for one of the big cloud providers would be to learn stuff. At that point a lack of professionalism is kinda expected, because learning stuff is the whole point.

And my understanding is that almost none of the way of setting limits are actual hard limits, but only alerts and some hacked-together emergency abort scripts. Correct me if I'm wrong, but can you actually limit the cost robustly for services that spend that much money in an hour or so? Doesn't help much if I get an email about it and read it two hours afterwards.

[bugbuddy]

I understand the down votes but I would still say that being aware of the rough estimate costs of each service you are using is an integral part of an engineer’s job. After all, we care a lot about CPU cycles and those are measured in femto dollars.

[fabian2k]

That's not sufficient, you also must not make mistakes.

I have very limited cloud experience, but I did make a mistake that lead to a rather slow but constant cost. The amount was small enough to not be relevant in a professional context, but the memorable part was that I could not pinpoint the source easily with the AWS tools and my limited understanding of them. The categories and labels were too broad, and it took a bit until I figured out what went wrong. There are certainly better tools to investigate this, but I didn't know them. In the end it was simply luck that the mistake still fell into an area of insignificant amounts of money, but it could have easily been significantly more if a few parameters had been different for the same mistake

[joepie91_]

You can call someone an 'engineer' with the associated responsibilities when they are getting paid for what they are doing like an engineer, in a setting that provides them with the protections of an engineer.

Until that point, they are just an individual who got screwed by disguised billing practices.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

> It is not that hard folks. Set the billing limits.

Excellent idea. Please describe how to create an account on AWS or GCP that is not allowed to spend more than $100/mo. Since it is "a really easy fix" and "takes almost no time" it should be easy to explain, right?

[kstrauser]

https://aws.amazon.com/getting-started/hands-on/control-your... tells you how to set up a budget, with notifications when you're getting close.

That's probably enough for 99% of people, and if you're highly motivated, you could make that trigger an SNS notification that trips a circuit breaker.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

No, that's really not good enough. I don't want to need to be "highly motivated" in order to set a limit, I want to say this thing cannot use more than this many dollars each month, no conditions no exceptions no questions. If I make a fun little side project and it hits the front page of HN, I don't want to quibble about whether I cut it off in time or some hacked together little script turns things off correctly, I want it capped.

[nonfamous]

You can in Azure, easily. New Azure free accounts (which most learners start with) have spending limits enabled by default. https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/cost-management-billing/ma...

[ghaff]

There are limitations to what you can get with spending limit accounts, but Azure has (always?) had more options for people looking for hard billing caps than the other two big providers.

While you can footgun yourself with hard limits I tend to think that learners/hobbyists should, in general, be able to access at least many services with an ironclad guarantee that they can't be billed for over a certain monthly amount or a total number.

I'm much more inclined to shrug if a startup screws themselves over with a hard spending limit than if a student screws themselves over because of a lack of one.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

So honestly if that's true I might have to try Azure, thanks. However, when the claim was "This can be done with almost all cloud providers" I feel comfortable wanting an answer for the other two of the big three.

[blibble]

> This can be done with almost all cloud providers and it takes almost no time.

well, other than the three market leaders (GCP, AWS and Azure)

[bugbuddy]

True these giants make their own lives easier and don’t implement much billing controls into the infrastructure. It is your money so it is your responsibility to protect it. Use billing alerts, hacks, and research things carefully before jumping with both feet.

[joepie91_]

> It is your money so it is your responsibility to protect it.

This is victim blaming.

[dekhn]

Is victim blaming inherently wrong? What about situations where the victim caused their own victimization?