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If your productivity ground to a halt on Friday because of the worldwide epidemic of Windows crashes caused by a glitched-out software update, the company that admitted fault for the problem, Crowdstrike, may have just offered to make it up to you with the modern equivalent of a gift shop teddy bear wearing a little t-shirt that says "I'm beary sorry": a $10 UberEats gift voucher. 

It's such a small and, well, thoughtlesstoken that it's arguably worse than nothing — especially since at least some of these vouchers appear to not actually work, according to TechCrunch.

On Friday, technicians and bystanders around the world watched as monitors displayed the "blue screen of death" (BSOD) on an estimated 8.5 million Windows machines, signifying catastrophic failure. The computerized paralysis led to widespread chaos at major airports including Amsterdam, Berlin, Dubai, London, and all over the U.S. Hospitals had to reschedule procedures, businesses were stopped in their tracks, and this author even faced delays while trying to check in at jury duty.

The email containing the vouchers appears to have gone out on Tuesday. CrowdStrike's attached message acknowledged that the glitch led to "additional work," and offered "heartfelt thanks and apologies for the inconvenience." To make it up to users, the email said, "your next cup of coffee or late night snack is on us!" Then it provided instructions for redeeming the gift card online.

However, Crowdstrike may soon have to apologize for a potentially botched apology, because some recipients are saying their apology gifts were cancelled before they ever got a chance to use them. When TechCrunch tested one of the vouchers, they received a message saying the card had been "canceled by the issuing party and is no longer valid." 

Crowdstrike CEO George Kurtz has already pledged full transparency about what went wrong, and it looks like he'll be pressured to make good on that pledge, since the U.S. Congress is calling upon him to testify before a House committee. 

As of Wednesday, the company had explained that the problem was triggered when an urgent "Rapid Response Content" update was in the works, and the content validator failed to notice the destructive code before the update was unleashed on the world. Exactly how, systemically speaking, Crowdstrike's quality control process contained such a massive hole remains to be explained.

The $10 voucher is a small token gesture obviously not meant to make amends for the full magnitude of the disruption. It appears instead to represent CrowdStrike's attempt to nonetheless remain liked by affected partners and clients. The canceled redemptions, however, suggest that even a minuscule act of contrition from Crowdstrike may include a glitch.

UPDATE: Jul. 24, 2024, 1:31 p.m. PDT Crowdstrike provided the following statement: "CrowdStrike did not send gift cards to customers or clients. We did send these to our teammates and partners who have been helping customers through this situation. Uber flagged it as fraud because of high usage rates."

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