Technology

Given that the infrastructure description included the DataTalks.Club website, this resulted in a full wipe of the setup for both sites, including a database with 2.5 years of records, and database snapshots that Grigorev had counted on as backups. The operator had to contact Amazon Business support, which helped restore the data within about a day.

Non-story. He let Terraform zap his production site without offsite backups. But then support restored it all back.

I'd be more alarmed that a 'destroy' command is reversible.

Whoever did this was incredibly lazy. What you using an agent to run your Terraform commands for you in the first place if it's not part of some automation? You're saving yourself, what, 15 seconds tops? You deserve this kind of thing for being like this.

We used to say Raid is not a backup. Its a redundancy

Snapshots are not a backup. Its a system restore point.

Only something offsite, off system and only accessible with seperate authentication details, is a backup.

Stop giving chat bots tools with this kind of access.

"and database snapshots that Grigorev had counted on as backups" -- yes, this is exactly how you run "production".

You either have a backup or will have a backup next time.

Something that is always online and can be wiped while you're working on it (by yourself or with AI, doesn't matter) shouldn't count as backup.

We don't need cautionary tales about how drinking bleach caused intestinal damage.

The people needing the caution got it in spades and went off anyway.

Or maybe the cautionary tale is to take caution dealing with the developers in question, as they are dangerously inept.

At least you had backup, right?

Oh, yeah, that's right. You were dumb enough to give AI full access to your production system so likely you're dumb enough to not have backups of anything either.

I take it Claude has full access to all of your git repositories as well so that it could wipe those too?

You got what you deserve

Anyone who lets AI do this is absolutely inept, lazy, or deserving.

In its default configuration, it stops at EVERY STEP. Do you want to run this command, do you want to update this file, here's the file I want to modify and the patch i'm going to use with adds and deletes in green and red.

If you're using it in unsafe permissions mode, click yeah sure allow Claude to run whatever the fuck it wants in this directory, or just hitting yeah sure go ahead every time, it's your own damn fault.

It's self-driving for the terminal. Don't you dare take your eyes off the road or hands off the wheel.

This keeps happening. I can understand using AI to help code, I don't understand Claude having so much access to a system.

Jesus Christ people. Terraform has a plan output option to allow for review prior to an apply. It's trivial to make a script that'll throw the json output into something like terraform visual if you don't like the diff format.

I've fucked up stuff with Terraform, but just once before I switched to a rudimentary script to force a pause, review, and then apply.

Remember when Gemini got caught in a loop of self-loathing and nuked itself?

According to mousetrap manufacturers, putting your tongue on a mousetrap causes you to become 33% sexier, taller and win the lottery twice a week.

While some experts have argued caution that it may cause painful swelling, bleeding, injury, and distress, and that the benefits are yet to be unproven, affiliated marketers all over the world paint a different, sexier picture.

However, it is not working out for everyone. Gregory here put his tongue in the mousetrap the wrong way and suffered painful swelling, bleeding, injury and distress while not getting taller or sexier.

Gregory considers this a learning experience, and hopes this will serve as a cautionary tale for other people putting their tongue on mousetraps: From now on he will use the newest extra-strength mousetrap and take precautions like Hope Really Hard that it works when putting his tongue in the mousetrap.

Whoever gave it access to production is a complete moron.

Mistakes happen. But how do you go 2.5 years without proper backups?

You’ve heard of vibe coding. Allow me to introduce despair coding.

My CTO keeps telling me I need to try agenic coding, and I keep telling him I won't touch shit until I have an isolated VM to use it in, because I'm not letting some fucking clanker nuke my scripts/documentation/mailbox/whatever for no reason.

Too bad there's never any free time to set that shit up. Oh damn........

Whether human, AI, or code, you don't give a single entity this much power in production.

have you heard of not giving the keys to your wacky robot wizard instead

Good. Anyone foolish enough to write code with a slop machine produces only slop. That garbage should've been deleted anyway.

That's entirely ignoring the fact that this person didn't have any backups elsewhere.

If you can't think, you can't code.

Who let's AI anywhere near production environments? Fully deserved

Nobody wants to point out that Alexey Grigorev changes to being named Gregory after 2 paragraphs?

Slop journalism at its sloppiest. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that this story was entorely fabricated.

Given that the infrastructure description included the DataTalks.Club website, this resulted in a full wipe of the setup for both sites, including a database with 2.5 years of records, and database snapshots that Grigorev had counted on as backups. The operator had to contact Amazon Business support, which helped restore the data within about a day.

sigh, SNAPSHOTS ARE NOT BACKUPS!

If your dumb fucking ass let an ai near your work AND you didn't have any recent backups that it couldnt have access to; you're really extra fucking stupid.

It seems that every few weeks some developer makes this same mistake and a news is published each time.

Skill issue

I don't feel an inkling of sympathy. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

You're absolutely right! I made a fatally flawed decision by removing the production environment. The consequences likely have high impact. I'm sorry. Would you like me to log these mistakes to prevent further missteps or would you like me to write up an outline for the redeployment process?

but should serve as a cautionary tale.

Jesus there's a headline like this every month, how many tales people need to learn???