• Nobody@lemmy.world
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    20 days ago

    This should not have happened. Google Cloud has identified the events that led to this disruption and taken measures to ensure this does not happen again.”

    Our AI golem destroyed something important again, but we’re too big to fail so our mistakes don’t matter.

    We promise it won’t happen again, but when it does happen again, it still won’t matter.

    We’re a totally safe and responsible company and should be trusted with most of the world’s data management.

    • breadsmasher@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      AI golem

      immediately pictured a living stolen golem roaming the data centre smashing stuff, while google engineers try and reason with it

    • SonnyVabitch@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      We promise it won’t happen again, but when it does happen again, it still won’t matter.

      Rest assured that when it does, we will make every effort to promise once more that it won’t happen again.

    • qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website
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      19 days ago

      No no no, they’re right, it won’t happen again.

      …but something with a very similar outcome due to a very similar, but not identical, root cause…well, no guarantees I guess.

  • cyd@lemmy.world
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    20 days ago

    Sympathies to whoever it was at the pension fund that had to work with Google’s “customer service”.

    • blackfire@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      I bet the support was like nah thats not possible we’re Google. And then they looked into it and their world crashed down around them

      • maynarkh@feddit.nl
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        19 days ago

        If you work customer support at a megacorp, you will be the least surprised person that this happened. I bet the person answered the phone with a mental attitude between “what did we fuck up this time” and “how is this a job or a company that is useful to society”.

      • Wispy2891@lemmy.world
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        19 days ago

        Customer support at Google? Most you can get is a chat with a bot that doesn’t recognize your account because it has been deleted

  • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
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    20 days ago

    Exactly the sort of thing that should NEVER be on a 3rd party system. Ever. Ever ever.

    Grumpy old sysadmin. Get offa my lawn!

  • HubertManne@kbin.social
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    19 days ago

    My wife and I talk about this. We make a mistake and the smackdown comes in a torrent of fines and interest and instant loss of things we need. Corp makes a mistake and oopsie daisy.

    • SeaJ@lemm.eeOP
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      19 days ago

      I have to imagine there will at least be a lawsuit here. It will probably amount to a rounding error on the size of the fund though.

  • Damage@feddit.it
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    20 days ago

    I have my electricity billed directly to my bank account, I hadn’t noticed that they haven’t charged me for months, and last week I received a payment notification for ~900€. I was… Surprised, to say the least.

    I think some things should require human intervention.

      • Doubletwist@lemmy.world
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        19 days ago

        There’s a phrase you might give useful/insightful.

        “Trust, but verify”

        I use auto pay extensively so that if I forget (ADHD, yay) it still gets paid. But I do (try to) check every month that all the auto pay stuff did trigger properly.

        • Kiosade@lemmy.ca
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          19 days ago

          Also ADHD here. I only use autopay for static payments. Stuff like internet, car payment, etc. Variable ones like credit card payments I choose to manually pay, so I force myself to look at it and make sure I didnt get charged for anything weird. Otherwise, my ADHD will basically never force me to actually go check the accounts, like, ever.

    • nifty@lemmy.world
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      19 days ago

      Google is effectively IBM at this point, MBAs ruin everything. Another case in point: Boeing

      • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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        18 days ago

        Slightly disagree. IBM always knew who their core users were. There is a reason why IT people bought their stuff for multiple decades. They would not end of life a product if there were people still using it.

  • MrNesser@lemmy.world
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    20 days ago

    Now I’m wondering if they can recover this from a backup or archive OR if that’s going to be an awkward call to their insurance company.

    • breakingcups@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      Well, if you bothered reading into the second paragraph, you’d have more info:

      UniSuper had a backup account with another cloud provider, and service was restored May 2.

      So Google doesn’t keep (unpaid) backups for it’s clients, and the ones UniSuper paid for were deleted along with everything else.

    • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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      20 days ago

      Or a panicked call from their insurance company. “You have a backup, right???”

    • TachyonTele@lemm.ee
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      20 days ago

      It was restored a week ago. All it did was prevent people from logging into their accounts for a few days.

      • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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        20 days ago

        Only because they restored from a separate backup with a different provider, not Google restoring a backup.

    • pHr34kY@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      They’re already back online, and they managed to do it without missing a pension payment.

    • modus@lemmy.world
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      19 days ago

      From the article, “UniSuper had a backup account with another cloud provider, and service was restored May 2.”

  • rxbudian@lemmy.ca
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    19 days ago

    Somehow I’m imagining some lowly overworked, outsourced account reviewer decided to apply the strictest consequence for some minor violation on the account and screw his employer for making his life a living hell and underpaying him.

    • andallthat@lemmy.world
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      19 days ago

      sorry for the question, I’m not a native english speaker… do you mean this as in “this is the Googlest thing ever” or “I have never read so many Google news in a week”?

      • unreasonabro@lemmy.world
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        19 days ago

        first one m8. the second one would require an s - “headlines”, although you’re right in thinking sometimes that gets dropped too, and then it’s just down to context and probability ;)

      • lagomorphlecture@lemm.ee
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        19 days ago

        The googlest thing ever. Typically English words that are borrowed from French and would take “the most” as a modifier because that’s how it’s done in French whereas English or other borrowed words take “est”. It means the same thing. With words like Google, you could do it either way but as a native speaker the most sounds better with this particular word to me.

        To say the second meaning it would be phrased more like “this is the most Googlest news week” or “this is the most Google news week”.

        • andallthat@lemmy.world
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          19 days ago

          ah man, just when I thought I had a good grasp of English… The examples of how you’d phrase the second meaning are very helpful, thanks!

          • lagomorphlecture@lemm.ee
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            18 days ago

            People will understand you no matter how you phrase it though! It’s just a matter of making sure you understand us since there can be some nuance that isn’t totally obvious.

        • ripcord@lemmy.world
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          19 days ago

          Agree except tbe French qualifier. It is just as likely someone might say “The most Microsoft thing”, which isn’t French-inherited.

  • realitista@lemm.ee
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    19 days ago

    I think that people will start learning this the hard way about the cloud. Some things are too important to trust to store on someone else’s computer.

  • ripcord@lemmy.world
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    19 days ago

    Man, this fuckup is such a gift to salespeople at AWS, Azure, to anyone selling on-prem solutions, or any kind of redundancy/backup plans.

    • Coreidan@lemmy.world
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      19 days ago

      Are there actually people out there that think differently than this? This is not a revelation.

      • guyrocket@kbin.social
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        19 days ago

        Yes, I think many people think otherwise, even in tech. To many “the cloud” is some sort of magical, mystical place data can go. And companies selling cloud services perpetuate the myth.

        This is a revelation to many people.

        • Coreidan@lemmy.world
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          19 days ago

          I don’t buy this. Companies like the cloud because they know their data is going to computers that they don’t have to manage.

          On premise means they need to manage the hardware. It means they need a staff on hand to maintain the hardware. They have to deal with all of those issues them selves.

          I am in tech consulting and I’ve never met a customer that didn’t understand what cloud actually is.

          Even my boomer relatives know this and they know jack shit about the tech world.

          • ExperiencedWinter@lemmy.world
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            19 days ago

            Most people have never given it any thought. Their photos are stored on iCloud, if you pushed them you might get them to think about it and then they would realize it’s just another computer, but most people have never even considered where the pictures go.

            • Coreidan@lemmy.world
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              19 days ago

              “Most people” is a stretch. This is a vague generalization with no data to back it up.

              • ExperiencedWinter@lemmy.world
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                19 days ago

                Sure, just like the statement “Even my boomer relatives know this and they know jack shit about the tech world.” is a vague generalization with no data to back it up.

                • Coreidan@lemmy.world
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                  19 days ago

                  The data is my own relatives. Where as you’re just pulling stuff out of your ass. Big difference.

      • WindyRebel@lemmy.world
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        19 days ago

        Yes. There are at least two people in the world that believe that it’s magic in the air.

        Edited for plurality.