Due to a simple bug, Screen Studio app did generate over 2 petabytes of network traffic

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Screen Studio, a macOS screen recorder app, inadvertently generated 2 petabytes of network traffic on Google Cloud due to a bug in its auto-updater. The issue arose from a missing code line that failed to stop downloads after the update file was obtained, causing repeated downloads every 5 minutes. This led to significant financial costs and user consequences, highlighting the importance of setting cloud alerts and carefully managing auto-updater codes.

One line of code that did cost $8,000

Tragic context - app running in the background for weeks

Reminds me of a typo of mine leading to generate over 10k certificates (1 EUR per cert at that time). Luckily we spotted it soon enough to revoke them all right on time, so we didn’t need to pay for them. But yeah, be careful guys - we have more power than we sometimes think :)

if (true) {
}
was missing :D

Both satisfying and terrifying read. Take my upvote!

Thanks for sharing this, But would have been much better if you would have included the code snippet / or sample snippets where you did modified the code.
I’m unsure about others, but I like to have a look at the sample code which will help me not to repeat the same mistake instead of just having something in mind - to always be better programmer - a code snippet will actually give you proper memory bias toward better method.