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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 (techcrunch.com)

submitted 5 months ago by ForgottenFlux@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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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the Uber Eats page provided an error message that said the gift card “has been canceled by the issuing party and is no longer valid.”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.

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[-] AlexWIWA@lemmy.ml 245 points 5 months ago

In terms of PR, this is literally worse than doing nothing

[-] DudeDudenson@lemmings.world 84 points 5 months ago

Reminds me of the pizza party my call center threw once. We had to pay for the pizza and bring our own drinks

[-] jaybone@lemmy.world 20 points 5 months ago

That’s when you bring a handle of vodka and piss all over the call center yelling “here’s my drink!”

[-] Passerby6497@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago

Wow, so the 'pizza party' was basically a pizza pot luck?

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[-] Entropywins@lemmy.world 27 points 5 months ago

That seems to be their modus operandi...crowdstrike literally worse than doing nothing

[-] AFC1886VCC@reddthat.com 9 points 5 months ago

Truer words could not be spoken.

[-] rem26_art@fedia.io 160 points 5 months ago

Bro $10 and its not even real money??? You can't buy anything for $10 on Uber Eats even if the coupon worked.

[-] LadyMeow@lemmy.blahaj.zone 72 points 5 months ago

Lmao, i thought for sure this was an onion article…

[-] Crashumbc@lemmy.world 17 points 5 months ago

Exactly, they probably got a discount from Uber on the cost for that reason.

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[+] Sendpicsofsandwiches@sh.itjust.works 91 points 5 months ago

[deleted]

[-] RegalPotoo@lemmy.world 70 points 5 months ago

Citation needed.

I've seen reports of hospitals delaying non-essential and elective surgeries, but no reports of emergency care being impacted

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 25 points 5 months ago

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.

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[-] xantoxis@lemmy.world 66 points 5 months ago

Oops, never mind, you don't even get the $10.

[-] TheDarksteel94@sopuli.xyz 39 points 5 months ago

Did anyone actually die because of it? I couldn't find any reports on that. Maybe that's just because Google is useless, idk

[-] Darrell_Winfield@lemmy.world 40 points 5 months ago

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.

[-] xtr0n@sh.itjust.works 12 points 5 months ago

It’s really hard to know for sure. Some percentage of elective surgeries or procedures end up detecting something life threatening. If the canceled procedures were rescheduled promptly then the outcomes probably haven’t changed in a meaningful way. But in the US, stuff is booked out months in advance so it may be impossible to get everyone rescheduled for something in the next week or two.

[-] conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works 20 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

That's really hard to evaluate.

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.

[-] JCreazy@midwest.social 21 points 5 months ago

I've heard this a lot but haven't seen any mention of anyone dying. Do you have a source?

[-] Jessica@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

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.

https://www.crowdstrike.com/terms-conditions/

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

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[-] TheGiantKorean@lemmy.world 75 points 5 months ago

This is worse than getting a pizza party for turning a profit.

[-] mp3@lemmy.ca 23 points 5 months ago

Or an encourage-mint

[-] Quicky@lemmy.world 69 points 5 months ago

Did they try redeeming it up to 15 times?

[-] Passerby6497@lemmy.world 57 points 5 months ago

$10 wouldn't even cover 10 minutes of admin time to fix the problem. It's honestly a bigger insult than nothing or just flipping the bird.

[-] hydrospanner@lemmy.world 30 points 5 months ago

It also wouldn't cover a meal from Uber Eats.

Definitely worse than nothing.

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[-] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago

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.

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[-] roosterduck@lemmy.blahaj.zone 57 points 5 months ago

this genuinely seems satire theres no way

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[-] Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 51 points 5 months ago

Way to stay on brand guys!

[-] jaybone@lemmy.world 50 points 5 months ago

Wow $10. Mom can finally get that operation she was waiting for, before all the nurse stations BSOD’d.

[-] Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world 50 points 5 months ago

It's just one ~~banana~~ global computer outage, Michael. How much could it cost -- $10?

[-] Ghyste@sh.itjust.works 46 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

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.”

The humor writes itself.

[-] ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 37 points 5 months ago

The fact that they even fucked up an insultingly low priced voucher is impressive. They keep showing their incompetence I guess lol!

[-] CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 9 points 5 months ago

Someone has taken up Musk's challenge for a "destroying an established company any % speed run."

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[-] SendMePhotos@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago

Probably would've been better to not issue that at all.

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[-] Tylerdurdon@lemmy.world 35 points 5 months ago

At this rate, they'll have a crowd of striking people outside their office in no time!

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[-] HawlSera@lemm.ee 32 points 5 months ago

Wow... fuck....

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?

[-] aalvare2@lemmy.world 51 points 5 months ago

If there’re no other alternatives, then I propose that going forward the new term for this should be “Crowd Striking”

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[-] postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 17 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

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.

[-] HawlSera@lemm.ee 11 points 5 months ago

Indeed, that's why I was asking for a non-offensive version of the term to apply when people actually give you something and take it back.

[-] Taniwha420@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago

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'.

Glad to have an anthropologist kick my ass.

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[-] Odelay42@lemmy.world 29 points 5 months ago

You can't get anything from Uber eats for less than $30 in my city.

$10 wouldn't even cover ONE of the service fees.

[-] conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works 18 points 5 months ago

I love when they send me 40% off coupons and it's still so expensive it's not worth it.

[-] tja@sh.itjust.works 10 points 5 months ago

$30‽ Wo even is ordering there? Why?

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[-] FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.io 20 points 5 months ago

Fucking, wow. Of course they did.

[-] realitista@lemm.ee 17 points 5 months ago

Classic Crowdstrike!

[-] CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 15 points 5 months ago

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.

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this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2024

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