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Comment by mseebach | Hacker News Reader

Delta being down for four hours is not an issue of "systemic importance". Safety-related issues are already (and rightfully) publicly dissected, but it's hard to see what a post-mortem showing (what is likely to be) the interplay of a couple of subtle and individually benign problems which when hit by the power outage became a big issue will do much except enable a large chorus of armchair experts to pronounce on how this is obviously the fault of evil cost-cutting management/because they didn't use the cloud/because they used the cloud/fixed in the latest version of node.js.

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I did not say that Delta being down was of "systemic importance". However a bank being unable to send or receive payments for a week is of systemic importance; hence why I would like a regulator to decide what is of systemic importance e.g. banking, utilities, telecoms. We are getting more and more where broadband is out, banking is out, etc. and the root cause is never transparent.

If a bank's systems are down consistently, use a different bank. Where public safety is not a concern, it is not any of your business as a private citizen what the inner workings of a private enterprise are, including the cause of outages even if they affected you directly.

That being said, of course I am much more likely to patronize businesses who do give me this type of information. Given a choice between a bank with satisfactory service and amazing transparency, and a bank with great service and no transparency, I will choose the former every time.

But government regulators opening up the working of private businesses is not a proportional response to your bill pay being unavailable for a few days.

A ticketing system may not be "safety" critical, but its malfunction can cause tremendous discomfort and financial strain on people's lives. Being stranded far from home, missing an important event, or being put through hours of incredibly stressful situations is inexcusable.

Then don't ever fly Delta. Consider this your official notice.

You look at it from a narrow consumer perspective. If a bank's IT systems fail for a period then the systemic importance clause kicks in, as the wider economy may be affected. Regulation already exists e.g. You can't fix interest rates, you have to be fair to consumers, etc. In today's modern world I want regulation on how some of these enterprises are managing the technology which underpins their operations.

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