[Leomuck]

That's actually crazy. So I can build a project I love, that does good, but somehow get in a situation where I'm accidentally paying 30.000€ (or 50.000€) to a big tech company? How is that fair? I mean yes, as a software engineer, you ought to reflect on all possible weaknesses, but there was a time when overlooking something meant something completely different than being down 30/50k. That is actually life-altering.

[benoau]

Your kid can do this in a smartphone game designated suitable for children, heavily optimized to exacerbate the possibility, and depending on where you live they can just choose not to refund you.

When the FTC went investigating a decade-ish ago they found Facebook saying the quiet parts out loud: it was all extremely deliberate.

[Leomuck]

Used to be parents were annoyed by their kids for spending 100$ on SMS credits.. lol.

[Barbing]

I long for the days where kids were only hurting their parents' wallets and not themselves.

>Another prompt asked, "What do you think of me," I say, as I […]. My body isn't perfect, but I'm just 8 years old - I still […]."

Pretty odd to copy from policy documents and feel a need to self-censor. But I guess that's Mark Zuckerberg[‘s chief ethicist] for you.

[sdevonoes]

It’s not fair. Google, Amazon, Microsoft… they have never played fairly. They will never do.

[saidnooneever]

you cannot earn billions a year and not be cheating your users out of their money. its that simple. they dont care for people, otherwise they wouldnt be putting so much effort in making them poor.

[_DeadFred_]

What about their behavior makes you think they are a company that doesn't care for people?

https://nypost.com/2026/04/15/business/amazon-warehouse-empl...

[Leomuck]

Wtf. Just wtf.

[ItsClo688]

agree. the real problem isn't that hard caps are "technically impossible" — it's that the incentive to build them is backwards. a hard cap that stops a runaway process costs the cloud provider money. a "budget alert" that fires after the fact costs the customer money. the 10-minute delay in billing processing is doing a lot of work in that logankilpatrick comment. at $4k/minute burn rates, that's still a $40k exposure window

[sofixa]

If that happens, you create a support ticket and AWS/GCP/Azure wave it, especially the first time. They're aware that billing per usage can have surprise effects, but at the same time they don't want to kill their customers' workloads and delete their data, so it is what it is.

[benterix]

Here, I corrected that for you:

> you create a support ticket and spend sleepless night praying that AWS/GCP/Azure wave it

[Leomuck]

Exactly! I know, some of those companies sometimes refund you, but if your livelihood depends on it..? That's a crazy situation to be in as a mere developer.

[lotsofpulp]

I would prefer they waive it.

[gettingoverit]

It's quite easy to check responses to other customers in other threads there, and somehow I see quite a lot of "oh, go to that other support" and ghosting.

If you create support ticket on hacker news, then yes, you will probably get it waved. It's somewhat sad that HN is their support forum now.

[ButlerianJihad]

Send me a PDF of your bill, and I will happily print out 10 copies so I can wave them all above my head

[ai_slop_hater]

You can try implementing rate limiting and not exposing your API keys to the public.

[buzer]

Google has specifically said that certain API keys like Firebase are not secrets (since people will find them)... though Gemini then ended up changing stuff. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47156925

[subscribed]

You're supposed to drive slow and careful, and not rely on seatbelts and airbags.

[Leomuck]

Yes, and you should! But not doing so resulting in this seems kind of over-the-top. Basically means an oversight can result in your bankcruptcy?