Reading their comment strongly, as the guidelines suggest, it seems they want criminals to make $0 so they stop doing that. Is it not equally "cringe" to say society can't put up with some discomfort so assholes don't get free vacations and nice toys. It's a disguised trolley problem, and there's no agreed upon answer for that one either.

https://neal.fun/absurd-trolley-problems/

We all gotta do what we can to get through the day, but you can't live next to someone who has the same challenge but a different answer to some trolly problem? Is your future world just a bunch of closed communities where outsiders and ideas and their differ skin color and economic background aren't welcome?

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fc417fc802 a day ago | parent | next [-]

> it seems they want criminals to make $0 so they stop doing that

And yet arguably the criminals are unwittingly performing a useful public service we might describe as involuntary pentesting with a financial penalty on failure. The ethical way to get rid of the criminals in this scenario is to institute competent regulation (ie not mindless box ticking) and enforcement.

Hypothetically we are all arguably better off with a ransomware attack if the alternative is a cyberattack by a geopolitical adversary at a later date.

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pingou a day ago | parent [-]

How is that a useful service? This is only useful because the criminals exist and are doing it. Are killers providing a useful service because people then use protection so they don't get killed?

Or perhaps it is useful by hardening systems in case you enter a war with another country, but presumably the other country has the same problems so it's a zero sum game.

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rurban a day ago | parent | next [-]

Killers must be a useful service, because the FBI, CIA and Department of War are all relying in their services.

"By any means" is a current movie with the FBI case.

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z3c0 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

While "useful service" may be generous wording, in my own experience, when given the option between "pentesting" and "ransom+patching", most corporations would prefer the third, cheaper option: do nothing.

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pingou a day ago | parent [-]

But what would be the point of pentesting if there were no hackers?

	▲	fc417fc802 17 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Petty criminals are not the only black hat hackers that exist. An immediate monetary payout is not the only motivation for breaking into the computer system of a service that's essential to society. If we're unable to constructively reform the regulator a genuine (though politically untenable) alternative would be to remove criminal penalties for intrusion and publication of private data provided that no physical damage was done and no disruption to daily operations occurred. Effectively legalizing blackmail of data breach and cryptominers.

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lifeisloving a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah but you're proposing a trolley problem where we kill the five people on the other track so the single guy on the track can't have nice clothes lol.

Or we pay the criminals, not let innocent people die because turbo nerds care about rewarding cyber criminals who will exist no matter what.

So I guess we should just let people die though, atleast the feds will have jobs and be able to go on vacation and not those damn criminals!! Although I fail to see much difference between US law enforcement and cyber criminals, both of their existence relies on the threat of violance and the extortion of the public with that violence.

Also I'm pretty sure the FBI gave birth to the shiny hunters if you look into it for more than 10 minutes. Its a bunch of kids they basically have chosen not to punish at various points in their criminal evolution. Its almost like they need these phenomenons to exist.

My ideal society is one without crooked cops, but alas I dont think that's likely either so in the meantime, until we can find a solution to that problem we probably shouldnt punish the innocent patients of hospitals.

It seems to me that money and the status of criminals is more important to you than human life, so we should probably deal with whatever brain worm has infected you too.

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solyin a day ago | parent [-]

So you should knows that there is no convincing evidence that brain worms cause specific cultural beliefs, religions, or ideologies, but in any case:

> When disagreeing, reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Linked at the bottom of the page.

It's a stupid what-if scenario and there are endless variations. What if the ransomware attack doesn't kill anybody? What if the ransomware attack ends up saving a patient because the surgeon is given more time to think about a case so they don't make the mistake they would have? What if that hospital being shut down means a patient was sent to a different ER where the attending on duty was able to save the victim because of something unique to them from their past.

What if the cybercriminals doesn't use the money to buy nicer clothes but instead uses it to go on vacation but gets themselves killed? Are we supposed to be sad someone who inflicted pain on others died? Is all life sacred or not? Or is some more sacred than others? What if they use it to fund terrorists that end up killing lots of people, possibly even someone you know? Was it still worth it then? What if the criminals use to bomb churches and subways? What if one of the cyber criminals uses it to buy people? or kill homeless people for fun?

Another direction we can go is, I forget where this is from off the top of my head, but a human life is calculated to be worth about $10 million. So then if we're going to do another different point of view and put this into economics, we should figure out how many people shutting down the hospital will kill and see how much the group is charging and compare the two, right?

Talk is cheap and it's easy to spend other people's money or dismiss it as bits of paper. How much of your money are willing to give the criminals for the hospital to stay open? How many nights are you willing to go hungry and stay in so that the criminals can walk free? Because if it's arbitrary money that's not yours, of course it's easy to give away. It's based on a facile understanding of the world though.

If nothing is more important than saving human lives, what are you doing on HN, not curing cancer right now? People are dying!

	▲	jubilee33 a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Not touching on the rest of this back and forth but your probably wrong about parasites not affecting beliefs and critical thinking For instance toxoplasmosis https://asm.org/articles/2026/may/toxoplasma-made-me-do-it-h...
	▲	a day ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
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	▲	lifeisloving a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		No offense, Im just going to end this conversation because you dont really seem capable of thinking deeply about a topic like this. I really wish I didnt have to share a world with people like you that think the value of a human life can be reduced to numbers on a calculator.