We're going to need default hard budget caps on pretty much everything (simonwillison.net)

Article summary

The article discusses the need for default hard budget caps on pay-by-usage services and APIs to prevent unexpected and excessive charges. The author argues that soft caps, which only send warnings, are not sufficient and that hard limits are necessary to protect users from financial shocks. AWS and Google Cloud have recently introduced spending limits and spend caps, respectively, which allow users to set monthly financial caps on specific services. The author believes that these features should be the default and that users should have to opt-in to remove them.

Main themes

• hard budget caps
• pay-by-usage services
• cloud computing
• financial risk
• regulation
• competition

What commenters say

• Some commenters argue that hard budget caps are essential to prevent unexpected and excessive charges, while others believe that they should be opt-in.
• Competition, rather than regulation, is seen as a more effective way to prompt reform in the industry.
• The lack of hard budget caps can lead to surprisingly large bills, which can be devastating for individuals and small businesses.
• Some argue that it should be illegal for companies not to have hard budget caps, while others believe that this would be an overreach of regulation.
• The use of virtual cards is seen as a potential solution, but not a foolproof one, as companies can still send invoices for excessive charges.
• The parallels between electrical infrastructure, which has built-in safety measures like circuit breakers, and cloud services, which lack similar protections, are noted.
• There is a debate about whether good things, like hard budget caps, can survive in a free market, or if they require regulation to thrive.