Google accidentally deleted a $125 billion pension fund's account
(qz.com)
from SeaJ@lemm.ee to world@lemmy.world on 14 May 2024 05:05
https://lemm.ee/post/31910025
from SeaJ@lemm.ee to world@lemmy.world on 14 May 2024 05:05
https://lemm.ee/post/31910025
#world
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“Accidentally”
“Deleted”
That too.
Wondering if they maybe divested Google, lol.
“Reaped” is the word Google are using.
“A”
“274”
wait, shit…
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.
Or a panicked call from their insurance company. "You have a backup, right???"
It was restored a week ago. All it did was prevent people from logging into their accounts for a few days.
Only because they restored from a separate backup with a different provider, not Google restoring a backup.
Well, if you bothered reading into the second paragraph, you’d have more info:
So Google doesn’t keep (unpaid) backups for it’s clients, and the ones UniSuper paid for were deleted along with everything else.
Reading an article ! How dare you sir !
Ain’t nobody got time for that!
Amazing how Google doesn’t get product management right
They’re already back online, and they managed to do it without missing a pension payment.
From the article, “UniSuper had a backup account with another cloud provider, and service was restored May 2.”
Sympathies to whoever it was at the pension fund that had to work with Google’s “customer service”.
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
Customer support when you are a paying customer is great.
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”.
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
When you pay a lot, the support is a lot better…
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.
immediately pictured a living stolen golem roaming the data centre smashing stuff, while google engineers try and reason with it
That’s Elon at Twitter. He was the one yanking cables.
Good thing Twitter only hosts useless garbage.
Rest assured that when it does, we will make every effort to promise once more that it won’t happen again.
That’s a big relief
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.
And im going, so how much of the pension fund is missing?
Exactly the sort of thing that should NEVER be on a 3rd party system. Ever. Ever ever.
Grumpy old sysadmin. Get offa my lawn!
Devotion to Duty
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.
Why I will not trust autopay.
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.
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.
Generally any big bill I want to pay by hand.
This is the most Google headline I read in a while
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”?
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 ;)
thank you!!
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”.
Agree except tbe French qualifier. It is just as likely someone might say “The most Microsoft thing”, which isn’t French-inherited.
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!
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.
What if I told you "the cloud" is just someone else's computer.
Are there actually people out there that think differently than this? This is not a revelation.
Yes
They are called CEO CIO or CTO
Yes. There are at least two people in the world that believe that it’s magic in the air.
Edited for plurality.
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.
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.
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.
“Most people” is a stretch. This is a vague generalization with no data to back it up.
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.
The data is my own relatives. Where as you’re just pulling stuff out of your ass. Big difference.
thosenerdygirls.org/logical-fallacies-8/#:~:text=….
You’ll have to do better than that because you’re essentially saying the same thing as “most people don’t know the sky is blue.”
Prove it. Otherwise you’re just projecting your insecurity of not knowing how basic computer stuff works.
To extend your analogy, you first said “Even my non-artist relatives know the sky is green” then I said “most people know the sky is yellow”. Why would I need to “prove” my statement any more than you should? You think it’s my job to educate you or something? If you want to know go do some research, otherwise we can just agree that we have different views, but I’m not about to go do your homework for you.
ROFL. More projection.
Google is effectively IBM at this point, MBAs ruin everything. Another case in point: Boeing
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.
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.
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.
“accidentally”
just like i accidently forgot to mail my rent check on time.
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.
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.
<img alt="" src="https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/58057bc0-3856-4983-a4f7-3dedb16860ad.jpeg">
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.
why do we allow tech companies to hold money. I feel like thats only going to be a bad idea.
How do you find out that someone didn’t actually read the article? Oh, right. Look at the comments.
in my defense, 90% of articles written these days are 80% filler text, 70% not talking about the fucking thing in the headline, and about 50% AI generated… So uh.
Too true, my friend. :)
it’s so fucking weird, because everytime i obviously don’t read an article, people shit on me immediately, but then the second i point out that all articles are ass these days, except for technical write ups, everybody seems to immediately like me again, and i don’t understand why.
Do people are masochistic for shitty article? Or do most people just treat articles like they do social media, and immediately throw shit around the second it gets big, or thrown out. It’s a weird environment, i’ll say that much.
All this does is highlight best practice for data backups. Accidents happen, be prepared.