this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2024
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[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I wasn't mocking your argument, I was agreeing with you and clarifying that my feeling was about who I'm most "irritated" with, not about responsibility or legal culpability.

My example was for simplicity, not mockery.
The power going out is the power companies fault, so I'm most mad at them. The store didn't have a generator because they trusted the power company, so my cake got ruined. I'm still mad at them but less so because they weren't the cause of the problem, even though they could have done more to prevent this from impacting me.
Culpability wise, I can only make demands of the store and hope that enough other people do so that they in turn demand answers from the power company.

There are actually a fair number of certifications, including ones from government agencies, relating to software development, deployment, and related practices. That so many organizations didn't have the ones relating to protection from supply chain issues is distressing, to say nothing of it slipping through quality control in the first place.

Please, if you think we're in a place in this thread where I'd be mocking you, re-read it with the understanding that I agree with you entirely on legal and structural issues, and at most just have a different opinion about where the balance of "fuck you"s go. I think I put more scorn towards the vendor because doing the thing is worse than failing to prevent the thing. Also, I work at a parallel company and so I'm more familiar with exactly how much you have to be fucking up for this to happen because I spent the last three days dealing with the more minor controls that prevent this from happening. Everyone has outages because you can't prevent 100% of errors, but it's on the vendor to build to the spec of their most sensitive customer and ensure that outages don't keep a doctor from patient records.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

I wasn't mocking your argument, I was agreeing with you and clarifying that my feeling was about who I'm most "irritated" with, not about responsibility or legal culpability.

Okay, sorry for that. It happens to me sometimes to be mocked without me seeing prior cause for this. Thank you for clarifying that.

If a shop can't sell me cakes, then it's inconvenient. If a hospital is not able to keep people alive, that's where things get intolerable. Them not having access to their PCs is a hospital thing. If they cannot use them they should not use them. If it's a cost saving measure at the cost of people's lives, then I want heads to roll. Literally, preferably.

For the icecream, yes. If I want icecream and the shop doesn't have any because of a power grid failure, then I blame the power company more. The generator would be overkill, as it needs constant maintanance and checkups; immense running costs. This would not be justifiable for something like ice cream.

The hospital needs to be way more thorough with their supply chains. This discrepancy of responsibilities towards patients/customers is why I thought I was mocked, sorry again for that.

I called the certification processes "lacking" because they are very often out of date, if at all applied, like you said. The timeframe for product certifications needs to be drastically reduced for software products. I am aware that those checks need time the developers often don't have, but that doesn't matter. If that is a crucial issue, then they should stay the fuck away from critical infrastructure.