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Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

There’s a demonstrated inhumanity in attacking hospitals and children that really should earn special attention.

In the US, hospitals are highly profitable businesses driven by enriching their owners. Until that changes, they don't deserve special status.

In the other 96% of the world then.

So what about crowdstrike?

Grey area. I reckon Navy Seals fall out of the sky and give the CEO an atomic wedgie.

This violates the constitution because it is unusual (the constitution bans cruel and unusual punishments). So, we'll have to normalize this punishment.

Maybe do the board of directors as well?

It can be unusual as long as it is not cruel. It bans "cruel and unusual" not "cruel or unusual." That's why a judge can order, as punishment for shoplifting, that the perpetrator stands in front of the store with a sign saying "I shoplifted here."

By that token, it could be a cruel punishment as long as it's not unusual. Hmm...

Some may see usual punishment such as customary fines and jail time as cruel, but the usual-ness making the arguable cruelness moot is convenient as it eliminates the need to argue it.

Have you heard of American prisons?

Here's the test the Supreme Court established in 1972:

> The "essential predicate" is "that a punishment must not by its severity be degrading to human dignity", especially torture.

> "A severe punishment that is obviously inflicted in wholly arbitrary fashion." (Furman v. Georgia temporarily suspended capital punishment for this reason.)

> "A severe punishment that is clearly and totally rejected throughout society."

> "A severe punishment that is patently unnecessary."

As consequential as the crowd strike outage was, there is still a moral difference between an epic fuck up and deliberately hijacking people's data for money. Especially when it affects people's health.

Crowd strike immediately pushed a fix for the problem once they realized what happened. No, that didn't prevent the global economic costs and general chaos that was caused. But they clearly weren't deliberately trying to cause all that damage.

They accidentally outsourced QA to save a buck.

If you cut corners while still being wildly profitable it's negligent at best.

It doesn't matter, the effect was still the same. Intent is important, but it's not everything. And at this point, I'm really tired of professionals with responsibility playing dumb. "Oops, sowwy!" doesn't work for engineers when a bridge collapses. Why do programmers and executives alike get away with it?

Sure.

They're still not as bad as ransomware hackers.

Crowdstrikes actions are akin to manslaughter while ransomwaring hospitals is more akin to murder.

corporate death penalty

Or russia

regardless who, whom, and how, right ?

Yeah. I’m not picking sides nor am I advocating for an inhuman response. Just that it deserves the full attention of the media and state departments every time.

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