CrowdStrike offers a $10 apology gift card to say sorry for outage | Some of the people said that when they went to redeem the offer, they got an error message saying the voucher had been canceled
Several people who received the CrowdStrike offer found that the gift card didn't work, while others got an error saying the voucher had been canceled.
CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm that crashed millions of computers with a botched update all over the world last week, is offering its partners a $10 Uber Eats gift card as an apology, according to several people who say they received the gift card, as well as a source who also received one.
On Wednesday, some of the people who posted about the gift card said that when they went to redeem the offer, they got an error message saying the voucher had been canceled. When TechCrunch checked the voucher, the Uber Eats page provided an error message that said the gift card “has been canceled by the issuing party and is no longer valid.”
On Friday, CrowdStrike released a faulty update that rendered around 8.5 million Windows devices unusable, according to Microsoft. The update caused the affected computers to be stuck at the infamous “blue screen of death,” or BSOD, a bright blue error screen with a message that is shown when Windows crashes or cannot load because of a critical software failure.
The outage caused delays at airports in Amsterdam, Berlin, Dubai, and London, and across the United States. It also caused several hospitals to halt surgeries, and paralyzed countless businesses all over the world.
Yup, the same happened during the various COVID waves. When there are more patients than they can reasonably provide care for, they triage and ensure those with the greatest need get seen.
My wife said that the nurses' computers were down in the neonatal ICU that she works with. So they had no access to any patient's medication lists or dosages during the outage.
Seriously doubt it. Elective surgeries were likely cancelled, which could certainly prolong suffering for some, but life saving surgeries can absolutely happen and do without computers.
There were almost certainly a meaningful number of deaths in affected facilities, but a single weekend is a short enough sample that it's hard to say confidently without a lot of data. Stuff like temperature and air quality affects death rates, as does stuff like "it's already been hot for a week and the patients who were most vulnerable to heat already died". And there were a lot of tests and scans that were cancelled (or at least delayed) that would have caught something, or patients that couldn't get admitted who should have been, or a whole host of other things that are hard to measure.
Basically, there's enough actual variance and pseudo variance through factors that are hard to measure that it would take a pretty big swing to be definitive. But purely on the basis that quality of care is correlated to death rate and quality of care was meaningfully degraded, the reasonable assumption would be that there were some, even if providing data to back it would be extremely difficult.
Even if this was true, get your facts straight before you spout bullshit:
THE OFFERINGS AND CROWDSTRIKE TOOLS ARE NOT FAULT-TOLERANT AND ARE NOT DESIGNED OR INTENDED FOR USE IN ANY HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENT REQUIRING FAIL-SAFE PERFORMANCE OR OPERATION. NEITHER THE OFFERINGS NOR CROWDSTRIKE TOOLS ARE FOR USE IN THE OPERATION OF AIRCRAFT NAVIGATION, NUCLEAR FACILITIES, COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, WEAPONS SYSTEMS, DIRECT OR INDIRECT LIFE-SUPPORT SYSTEMS, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL, OR ANY APPLICATION OR INSTALLATION WHERE FAILURE COULD RESULT IN DEATH, SEVERE PHYSICAL INJURY, OR PROPERTY DAMAGE.
EDIT: OP deleted their post that said people died in hospitals because of the BSOD update, which isn't true. Even if it was, the terms of service specifically says the software is not fault tolerant and to not use where failure could result in death. For the record, I think they're handling this like shit
The drug dispensing system in the hospital I work at was shut down for several hours before they were able to override the computers and go to manual drug logging. All other electronic charting was shut down, as well as most of the imaging computers (CT is the first place you go when having a stroke). But sadly I don't have an article to send you about how crippling computer systems all over the world for emergency services, hospitals and airlines can cost human lives 🤷♂️
Your chart is stored on windows computers. The drug dispensing systems run on windows computers. Imaging (xray, ultrasound, CT, MRI) runs on windows machines. If a hospital used crowd strike, all of those go down. Source: i work at a major trauma center that was affected and took several hours to respond. OR, ER and ICU were completely frozen for several hours before they could pivot to paper charting. There aren't paper backups of every chart so orders that weren't already under way were also almost always delayed pending a verbal order from the physician.
Not to mention this "apology" has profit for Uber built into it. Or serves as a marketing campaign for them, depending on what kind of deal they offered them to use Uber gift cards for this.
Like with $10 not even being enough to order much of anything, Uber could probably still come out ahead of they offered them at less than half of the "face value". I regularly get offers for more than $10 off other food delivery services just to sign up, so I wouldn't even rule out Uber offering to do this for free just for the marketing.
Like I ignore those other offers but had to think about this one before I realized it was just as ignorable because the idea of it being "compensation" made it seem more worthwhile than a marketing giveaway would be.
Plus, I bet there's an agreement to not sue baked into this offer.
I just got hit with a really weird edge case and just barely resolved a 2 day 911 to recover. During this time we likely spent at least 10 million and that's not even the primary incident.
On Wednesday, some of the people who posted about the gift card said that when they went to redeem the offer, they got an error message saying the voucher had been canceled. When TechCrunch checked the voucher, the Uber Eats page provided an error message that said the gift card “has been canceled by the issuing party and is no longer valid.”
Is there a term for this? Giving someone something and then taking it back? I mean, there's "Indian Giving", but I want one that isn't racist, outdated, and based on a poor understanding of US History?
But “Indian Giving” as a concept was just a way to excuse giving the indians a deal then renegging on it everytime the wind blew. Classic projrction propaganda before it was invented by ivy leauge schools.
I believe that "Indian Giving" is sourced in a cultural misunderstanding between Indigenous and European societies. Indigenous societies were reciprocity based, so giving gifts should be reciprocated with a gift of like value to strengthen relationships, or increase honour (social standing). The Europeans were working in a patron-client system so a gift was seen as a way of purchasing access to power through a patron. The Europeans thought the Indigenous people were paying for access to power (like a tributary), so there's no expectation of returning a like gift. The indigenous people thought they were entering into a mutual relationship, and when a like gift wasn't returned that was seen as reneging, so they took back their 'offer'.
Lazy people with tech salaries. I have a tech salary but I'm not lazy enough to enjoy spending 80 dollars on dinner for two that would cost 35 if I drove my damn self.
Have we reached "The Producers" level of capitalism where someone has figured out how to make more money from a company tanking than from it succeeding? CrowdStrike, Twitter, Coyote Vs ACME...
Either we have a series of complete buffoons in charge of companies, or someone has found a way to profit from failure. I'm not sure which is worse.
We've been there for a while. Not what happened in the op, but a leveraged buyout into asset stripping the company and closing it down is a classic combo since the 80s. It's what all the "management consulting" firms that popped up around that time did