Billing Bug

This is of extreme interest to me:

On the morning of July 17, a redditor who normally pays Amazon Web Services about five cents a month opened their inbox to a wall of billing alerts and a running tab of $2.5 billion. Their whole setup was a single S3 storage bucket, untouched since 2023 and not even public.

https://boingboing.net/2026/07/19/aws-billing-bug.html

I pay AWS about fifteen cents a month. (At first it was $5/month. To Amazon’s credit, they weren’t kidding when they said costs would be greatly reduced.) Like that redditor person, all I use are S3 storage buckets, but some of mine are public.

AWS has greatly increased its security protocol, which I have completed. The fact that an internal problem at Amazon can cause such a billing mess is disquieting. I don’t need this sort of a hassle.

For a while, I’ve been contemplating cancelling my AWS account that I’ve held since almost the inception of the service. This event has given me the sense of urgency to do that.

5280 Feet on Foot in 3:42.66

I may have next to no interest in professional team sports, but as a former marathon runner of very average ability*, I appreciate this accomplishment.

* There’s a formula that says to take your half-marathon (13.1 miles) time, double it, and add ten minutes for a marathon. It never worked for me.

Thanks to training with a running club, at 5’10” and weighing 162 lbs. (BMI 23.2), I was averaging 7 minutes/mile. That led to my personal best half-marathon time of 93 minutes. Which implied that I should have been able to complete a full 26.2 miles in 3h:16m. Uh, no. I was never able to manage that.

Taco Friday

A follow-up to yesterday’s post about the breakout of Cyclospora illnesses. It seems that Taco Bell was, in fact, a primary source of infection, albeit not at all their fault.

The blame apparently is with an outfit called Taylor Farms. With such a strong, verifiable link, it shouldn’t have taken so long to figure this out.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/16/health/cyclospora-outbreak-shredded-lettuce

Remember Covid?

More than 400 cases in four states (Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky) seem to be linked to a common source, which has not yet been identified, according to the C.D.C.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/15/well/eat/cyclospora-stomach-bug-what-to-know.html?unlocked_article_code=1.yFA.ynUQ._Hns1iZ-991v&smid=url-share

Can we stop trying to evaluate and explain events based upon pre-Trump criteria? The CDC of the not too distant past would have certainly, by now, identified the specific source(s) of the Cyclospora contamination. Instead, they’re leaving it to Taco Bell to take action without guidance.

The CDC no longer has enough competent epidemiologists, or sufficient funding, to do its work. Because of Donald J. Trump, and no on else. RFK, Jr. wouldn’t be where he is without Trump. It’s his fault, so please stop claiming the difficulty is primarily a matter of the bacteria being “tricky.”