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To the NY Times: please don't say they died by suicide. The passive voice makes it sound like some act of God, something regrettable but unavoidable that just s

To the NY Times: please don't say they died by suicide. The passive voice makes it sound like some act of God, something regrettable but unavoidable that just somehow happened. It's important not to sugarcoat what happened: the postmasters killed themselves because the British state was imprisoning them for crimes they didn't commit, based on evidence from a buggy financial accounting system. Don't blur the details of what happened by making it sound like a natural disaster. Horizon is the case that should replace Therac-25 as a study in what can go wrong if software developers screw up. Therac-25 injured/killed six people, Horizon has ruined hundreds of lives and ended dozens. And the horrifying thing is, Horizon wasn't something anyone would have previously identified as safety-critical software. It was just an ordinary point-of-sale and accounting system. The suicides weren't directly caused by the software, but from an out of control justice and social system in which people blindly believed in public institutions that were actually engaged in a massive deep state cover-up. It is reasonable to blame the suicides on the legal and political system that allowed the Post Office to act in that way, and which put such low quality people in charge. Perhaps also on the software engineer who testified repeatedly under oath that the system worked fine, even as the bug tracker filled up with cases where it didn't. But this is HN, so from a software engineering perspective what can be learned? Some glitches were of their time and wouldn't occur these days, e.g. malfunctions in resistive touch screens that caused random clicks on POS screens to occur overnight. But most were bugs due to loss of transactionality or lack of proper auditing controls. Think message replays lacking proper idempotency, things like that. Transactions were logged that never really occurred, and when the cash was counted some appeared to be missing, so the Post Office accused the postmasters of stealing from the business. They hadn't done so, but this took place over decades, and decades ago people had more faith in institutions than they do now. And these post offices were often in small villages where the post office was the center of the community, so the false allegations against postmasters were devastating to their social and business lives. Put simply - check your transactions! And make sure developers can't rewrite databases in prod.

SirFatty 1y ago
"The passive voice makes it sound like some act of God, something regrettable but unavoidable that just somehow happened. " That's a really odd take.
- RandomBacon 1y ago
  > odd take It's not odd when the sentiment is widespread, for example, look at the other comments in this thread that talk about it.
  - SirFatty 1y ago
    Oh, well if everyone else is parroting it, then it must be correct.
    - reliabilityguy 1y ago
      I hope you see the irony of “ everyone else is parroting it, then it must be correct”.
    - some_random 1y ago
      You should probably just state what your opinion on it is, instead of bouncing between different complaints.
- squigz 1y ago
  It's not that odd - it's simply pointing out that phrasing can and does play a rather large role in how we internalize and react to news.
- thoroughburro 1y ago
  It was an extremely common criticism of the passive voice. Yours is the weird take.
- CivBase 1y ago
  For what it's worth, I agree. It never crossed my mind that the phrasing could lead anyone to believe the suicides were "unavoidable" or an "act of God", especially when the title clearly ties the suicides to a causation. The phrasing could be made more accusatory, but I don't think that's inherently better.
ellisv 1y ago
I don't think the NY Times reads HN comments.
cedws 1y ago
>if software developers screw up Well, yes, they did screw up, but the fallout was amplified 100x by bad management.
- mrkramer 1y ago
  "The Horizon IT system contained "hundreds" of bugs[0]." If your accounting software has hundreds of bugs then you are really in the deep shit. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal#:~:text=The%20Horizon%20IT%20system%20contained%20%22hundreds%22%20of%20bugs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal#:~...
  - PUSH_AX 1y ago
    Well not really, no one should be committing suicide due to a buggy system. If you know the details of the case it was widespread but the post office decided to gaslight everyone and put people in debt and prison. That’s what caused this, the bugs were just a catalyst for shitty humans to do shitty things
    - mrkramer 1y ago
      Yea management failed but wouldn't the most logical thing be to call in computer forensics experts and quality test the software, reverse engineering it and try to catch the bugs. This wasn't the classic case of financial fraud, this was all about faulty software.
      - voxic11 1y ago
        The Post Office management knew about the bugs but didn't want to take the blame for the accounting issues they caused (since it was management that purchased and approved the software some blame would have fallen on them).
        mrkramer 1y ago
        Fujitsu was all to blame, after all they created and maintained the software. It just blows my mind why would courts pursue the individuals and not the creator of the software, when they realized that this mess was widespread and not isolated.
xbryanx 1y ago
> please don't say they died by suicide I encourage you to read the current thinking on this evolving language, which offers some explanation as to why we're moving away from damaging language like "committing" suicide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_terminology#%22Committing%22_suicide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_terminology#%22Committ... https://www.iasp.info/languageguidelines/ https://www.iasp.info/languageguidelines/
- lou1306 1y ago
  I think they are saying that the current title ("people died ... amid scandal") muddies the water when it comes to the causal relation, arguably "people were led to suicide by baseless accusations" _might_ be a more faithful descriptor of who's at fault here, but I understand journalists don't want to risk being sued (and neither do I, hence my use of _might_)
- vanderZwan 1y ago
  I suspect the point was that they were driven to suicide. As in pushed into a corner by external, human forces.
- lanfeust6 1y ago
  "damaging", in no quantifiable way whatsoever. It's just the euphemism treadmill at work, nothing more.
  - tweetle_beetle 1y ago
    I would say it's not the treadmill at work in this case. It's not simply a replacement. The article linked by the parent comment explains it well and references plenty of considered material. But the tldr is that committing suicide aligns with an active criminal/immoral act, while dying by suicide is a factual cause of death with many possible causes. Consider how people would like your death, or the death of a loved one, described by others. And if you can't, maybe consider how others might be affected.
    - 1y ago
johnorourke 1y ago
"died by suicide" is just a modern replacement for "committed suicide", because that phrase dates back to when it was a crime, so it's regarded as making the victim look bad.
- AStonesThrow 1y ago
  [dead]
- tjwebbnorfolk 1y ago
  I say this as someone whose father killed himself when I was in 5th grade: The "victims" who suffer after a suicide are the living, not the dead. These kinds of "modernizations" are transparent PC nonsense made up by well-intentioned do-gooders who have no idea how to represent the interests of other people who have a lived experience that they don't understand. The person is dead either way. There's literally no way to sugarcoat this fact. We'd rather you just speak in plain, honest language than trying to make it sound less bad somehow.
  - stirfish 1y ago
    That's a really hard thing to go through. I'm sorry you had to bear that as a fifth grader. It's possible that both you and your dad are victims in different ways.
  - CrazyStat 1y ago
    What makes “committed suicide” any more plain or honest than “died by suicide”?
    - tjwebbnorfolk 1y ago
      I don't have a big issue with that particular phrase itself. Although the passive voice is designed to conceal or obscure the actor, which doesn't accomplish anything here. Attributing a suicide to anyone other than the actor starts to appear oxymoronic very quickly. Yes life is complex and whatnot -- that's a given, we don't need a reminder every time anything happens. But really it's the transparent and ham-handed attempts by some others to smooth over the sharp edges of reality merely by re-phrasing how things are written. People generally don't want pity, but these re-phrasings accomplish nothing other than to make clear that one person feels sorry for another.
mannykannot 1y ago
While there is no real doubt that most, if not all, of these suicides were a direct consequence of the appalling way this monumental failure and its investigation was handled, reporting the news responsibly has become a minefield in which any deviation from what is strictly known is liable to be exploited by those who do not want their role in events to become public. As you want to call a spade a spade, can we agree that the software engineer who testified repeatedly under oath that the system worked fine, even as the bug tracker filled up with cases where it didn't, is undoubtedly among those who are morally (if not legally) culpable to a considerable extent?
- noisy_boy 1y ago
  > Perhaps also on the software engineer who testified repeatedly under oath that the system worked fine, even as the bug tracker filled up with cases where it didn't I don't think you needed to ask for agreement.
  - mannykannot 1y ago
    Partly on account of the "perhaps" in the original, and partly because I have seen (elsewhere) "just doing his job" defenses. In corner cases, culpability for uncertain expertise can be a tricky issue - you may recall the case of the Italian geologists, a few years back, indicted for minimizing the risk of an earthquake shortly before one occurred - but the case here seems pretty clear-cut (again, I'm speaking morally, not legally.)
- PaulKeeble 1y ago
  No question, they should be tried for corporate manslaughter and criminal enterprise for the cover up along with all their management. They should all be serving very long sentences, they killed many people with their lies.
- mike_hearn 1y ago
  It's quite possible he will end up going to prison, and absolutely, that would be the right outcome. It's hard to know what was going through his mind as he made that decision.
foldr 1y ago
> To the NY Times: please don't say they died by suicide. The passive voice “X died by suicide” is a sentence in the active voice. “Die” is an intransitive verb and cannot be passivized in English.
- slacktivism123 1y ago
  Please don't do this kind of tangential grammar nitpicking here. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less.
  - foldr 1y ago
    I’m not nitpicking the poster’s grammar, I’m nitpicking the claim about the grammatical structure of a particular sentence that’s the factual basis of their criticism of the article.
rolandog 1y ago
> Some glitches were of their time and wouldn't occur these days, e.g. malfunctions in resistive touch screens that caused random clicks on POS screens to occur overnight. These still occur on modern touchscreen laptops (work-provided Dell Latitude 7450 and mandated to use Windows with a lot of restrictions). It's not an everyday issue, but a once a month one. Other than that, completely agree with your assessment: the ruining of those lives was a completely avoidable tragedy that was grossly mishandled.
- whycome 1y ago
  Arguably, it happens today on a modern iPhone capacitive screen. I've had issues where the UI performs a "bait and switch" and swaps a target that I inadvertently press. ios26 is worse because of some lag at certain times.
louthy 1y ago
> massive deep state cover-up Let’s not use conspiracy-theory language. It was a coverup by Fujitsu and The Post Office. MPs and ministers (part of the state) used their parliamentary privilege to expose it after the campaign by the postmasters brought the issue to light. No ‘deep state’ conspiracy, it’s just an arse covering cover-up (pared with outright incompetence) which had particularly devastating consequences.
- Joeboy 1y ago
  "Deep state" is, or at least to be, a perfectly respectable political term for bodies that retain power across changing governments.
  - louthy 1y ago
    Or in other words: the state. No ‘deep’ needed unless you’re trying to be emotive. Fujitsu is not part of the state and although the Post Office is owned by the state, it’s a stand-alone company. > “Perfectly respectable” Maybe in some fringe circles, but this term is certainly attached to a huge amount extreme propaganda and conspiracy that attempts to undermine western democracy and institutions.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - Joeboy 1y ago
      The point, I think, is that that The Post Office acted like part of the state, notably in that they acted like an unconstrained branch of the CPS in bringing prosecutions against thousands of people. > Maybe in some fringe circles I would say the fringe circles co-opted it over the last couple of decades, and the term's obviously become heavily associated with them in some people's minds (eg. yours). But it's an older term than that. Edit: Why would the loons have adopted it, if it was such a disreputable term?
      - louthy 1y ago
watwut 1y ago
> please don't say they died by suicide. The passive voice makes it sound like some act of God, something regrettable but unavoidable that just somehow happened. I mean, common. Everyone knows what suicide is or means. No, it does not make it sound like an act of God for anyone who is above A1 level of English.
- nullc 1y ago
  Most people who commit suicide were not hounded to the end of their rope, these people were murdered by torture via the legal system. The proximal cause of their death was their own hand, sure, but their deaths should properly be seen as some form of murder or at least manslaughter. These deaths had an unambiguous causal actor other than/in addition to themselves. It's an exceptional condition particularly since if you are harassed by any ordinary person you have a multitude of recourse-- up to fleeing or going into hiding and so we should be very very hesitant to attribute suicide to the actions of a third party in general. But in the case of harassment perpetrated by or via state power the victims are far closer to an inescapable situation and because of the vastly greater power the state must carry vastly greater responsibility for the total consequences of their malicious and improper actions.
dcow 1y ago
It’s still suicide. The wrongfully imprisoned can be acquitted. That’s part of the argument against the death penalty: if justice is imperfect then don’t take actions that are permanent. You can’t classify every instance of miscarriage of justice as state murder. I really don’t see the issue you’re trying to raise. It’s more problematic to invent new language because it feels yucky than to be precise and accurate in our reporting.
- the8472 1y ago
  We are incapable of returning life-time taken. False imprisonment is still racking up centimorts instead of delivering 1 mort.
- some_random 1y ago
  I don't think they're arguing that the headline should be "13 UK postmasters murdered by the state", just that the extremely passive "died by suicide" lacks context and largely leaves out the UK Post Office's role in their death. I think they would prefer some thing along the lines of "At Least 13 People Killed Themselves After False Accusations From U.K. Post Office, Report Says".
  - dcow 1y ago
    I’m fine with that. And I agree with the sentiment, just not the conclusion that we should be reporting these as not-suicide. If the original comment was indeed that tempered then I have no issue.
    - sitkack 1y ago
      It is the passive voice, not the word suicide that is the issue.
    - rpdillon 1y ago
      It's the lack of clarity in what happened. I think the rephrasing mike suggested is much clearer: > The postmasters killed themselves because the British state was imprisoning them for crimes they didn't commit, based on evidence from a buggy financial accounting system. That's just better writing!
maweki 1y ago
The horizon post office scandal is the first thing I taught in my "database design" course, to show that we're not creating self-serving academic exercises. We are creating systems that affect people's lives. I try to give the legal and ethical perspectives. These systems should be auditable and help and not hurt people.
- sitkack 1y ago
  Or, if you are designing software to kill people, that you actually do a good job. https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/cia-allegedly-bought-flawed-software-for-attacks/ https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/cia-allegedly-bought-flawe...
  - barbazoo 1y ago
    OT but what a shit site that is. A third of the page is taken up by a “best prime day deals” countdown banner. What a consumerist piece of shit website.
    - sitkack 1y ago
      You need adblock
- mike_hearn 1y ago
  That's good to hear. I'm sure the story makes an impact!
KingOfCoders 1y ago
There is no "deep state", just the state. Calling things "the deep state" tries to partition the state in two parts, a good one and a bad one. There is also no "deep Amazon" or "deep Meta". Amazon is Amazon, Meta is Meta and the state is the state. People working for or representing the state have their own agenda, have their cliques, have their CYA like people everywhere else. And the state as an organization prioritizes survival and self defense above all other goals it might have.
- mike_hearn 1y ago
  Fair. I use the term to refer to the parts of the state that are somehow buried deep, beyond most people's awareness. In this case the problems started with a government contractor, and were then covered up by people inside the post office. It wasn't a top-down conspiracy of politicians, or of civil servants following their orders.
- pjc50 1y ago
  Indeed. "Deep" is a weasel word. "State" is all the operations of governance which don't change when the government changes. However, the state is not a monolith. It's an organization of all sorts of sub-organizations run by individuals with their own agendas. They have names, faces, and honors: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67925304 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67925304 (The honors systems is deeply problematic because about half of them are handed out to insiders for complicity in god knows what and the other half are handed out to celebrities as cover for the first half)
- tw04 1y ago
  I'm not sure that's really fair. Within any organization there are subgroups. For instance there was an entire branch of AT&T that was dedicated to illegally spying on Americans for the NSA. Most employees of AT&T had no idea it was even going on, so to lump every AT&T employee into the same batch of "you're bad because th company you work for was doing X" when they had no idea the company was doing X isn't really fair. By the same vein, Stephen Miller trying to round up and cage innocent civilians just trying to live their life is a very different part of the government than Suzanne at NASA who's trying to better the future of mankind. To act as if there's no distinguishing between the two is just silly. Whether you have an issue with the specific term "deep state" I'll leave be. But please don't try to oversimplify large organizations. The higher up the chain the more responsibility you can place for what the organization as a whole does, but the reverse isn't true when speaking outside of their specific area of ownership.
fifteen1506 1y ago
Surely the engineer wasn't acting alone, lying in court without some inside pressure?
dagmx 1y ago
Well said. I really wish we had a better word for someone who is bullied into suicide. It’s tantamount to manslaughter imho. Recently, a snark/bullying community on Reddit resulted in the suicide of their target (a woman responsible for rescuing foxes). That kind of targeting and bullying is horrific for any individual to process, let alone people who don’t have the press teams and training that celebrities do.
- ImHereToVote 1y ago
  This sets a bad precedent. There is a wide gamut of emotional resilience in people. What is a funny insult to one person, can be rope-fuel to another. Would you want to be called that if you make a light jab at a middle aged bald guy?
  - koolala 1y ago
    Sounds unrealistic they would blame it all on one remark like that. I'd be more afraid people would kill themselves just to get retribution on their tormentors and it would increase suicides.
    - dagmx 1y ago
      Do you see a lot of people harming themselves physically and framing people in their suicides?
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - __turbobrew__ 1y ago
    A 90 year old is much more physically fragile than a 20 year old. If you hit a 20 year old and they are bruised you get an assault charge, if you hit a 90 year old and they die you get a murder charge, despite using the same amount of force. I do agree with the sibling post that suicide would be weaponized which is the real problem.
  - dagmx 1y ago
belter 1y ago
It's a surprising take to blame developers and software development for what is a prime example of corruption within the UK establishment, an uncaring and incompetent court system, and the lying senior managers of the UK Post Office. The faults were known and this is a case of cover-up. Software development was merely an accessory to the crime in this case.
- aenis 1y ago
  Read the book, if you havent already. The senior technical staff was actively obfuscating and lying. Developers knew the system had synchronization issues, operations knew as well, as they were apparently routinely doing manual data fixes in production. Senior engineering staff are the most to blame. They messed up and then covered up. The fact that their management covered up some more can be partially excused by technical illiteracy.
  - belter 1y ago
    That explanation based on lies by the tech staff, is another variation of the Volkswagen explanation that the emissions scandal, were just some low level engineers. The essence of this story is how the UK establishment can lie, and be corrupt to levels that will shame big time criminals. [1] "...Vennells was the CEO of Post Office Ltd during the latter part of the Post Office scandal, which involved more than 900 subpostmasters being wrongly convicted of theft, false accounting and fraud between 1999 and 2015 because of shortfalls at their branches that were in fact errors of the Horizon accounting software used by the Post Office.Thousands of subpostmasters paid for shortfalls caused by Horizon and/or had their contracts terminated. The actions of the Post Office caused the loss of jobs, bankruptcy, family breakdown, criminal convictions, prison sentences and at least four suicides. In total, over 4,000 subpostmasters would eventually become eligible for compensation..." "...In 2013, Post Office Limited hired forensic accounting firm Second Sight, headed by Ron Warmington, to investigate the Horizon software losses. Warmington discovered the system was flawed and faulty, but Vennells was unhappy with Warmington's report and terminated their contract. Prior to her role as CEO, Vennells was the Chief Operating Officer of Post Office Ltd, a position in which – according to the evidence of the then CEO, David Smith – she had responsibility for management of the "operational use" of the Horizon software...." "...During the case, the Post Office's conduct under Vennells's leadership was described as an instance of "appalling and shameful behaviour..." "...During her testimony, Vennells consistently stated she was unaware of the facts or, when confronted with documents that showed she had been made aware of them, said she had not understood them..." [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Vennells https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Vennells
marcosdumay 1y ago
> Horizon is the case that should replace Therac-25 as a study in what can go wrong if software developers screw up. Hum, no. Horizon had nothing to do with problems of software development. It's a case of unaccountable judges, lying attorneys, and the entire police system acting in a conspiracy to hide information and gaslight the society at large. The fact that there is a software error there somewhere isn't relevant at all.
Vegenoid 1y ago
> Some glitches were of their time and wouldn't occur these days, e.g. malfunctions in resistive touch screens that caused random clicks on POS screens to occur overnight I think there’s still a lesson to be learned here about computers needing to be locked when not in use. I find it utterly bizarre how many experienced technical employees will leave their computer unlocked when they step away from it for extended periods of time.
immibis 1y ago
This is the same organization that talks about Palestinians dying, while Hamas slaughters Jews by the millions. Don't expect unbiased voice.

SirFatty 1y ago

"The passive voice makes it sound like some act of God, something regrettable but unavoidable that just somehow happened. " That's a really odd take.

RandomBacon 1y ago
> odd take It's not odd when the sentiment is widespread, for example, look at the other comments in this thread that talk about it.
- SirFatty 1y ago
  Oh, well if everyone else is parroting it, then it must be correct.
  - reliabilityguy 1y ago
    I hope you see the irony of “ everyone else is parroting it, then it must be correct”.
  - some_random 1y ago
    You should probably just state what your opinion on it is, instead of bouncing between different complaints.
squigz 1y ago
It's not that odd - it's simply pointing out that phrasing can and does play a rather large role in how we internalize and react to news.
thoroughburro 1y ago
It was an extremely common criticism of the passive voice. Yours is the weird take.
CivBase 1y ago
For what it's worth, I agree. It never crossed my mind that the phrasing could lead anyone to believe the suicides were "unavoidable" or an "act of God", especially when the title clearly ties the suicides to a causation. The phrasing could be made more accusatory, but I don't think that's inherently better.

ellisv 1y ago

I don't think the NY Times reads HN comments.

cedws 1y ago

>if software developers screw up Well, yes, they did screw up, but the fallout was amplified 100x by bad management.

mrkramer 1y ago
"The Horizon IT system contained "hundreds" of bugs[0]." If your accounting software has hundreds of bugs then you are really in the deep shit. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal#:~:text=The%20Horizon%20IT%20system%20contained%20%22hundreds%22%20of%20bugs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal#:~...
- PUSH_AX 1y ago
  Well not really, no one should be committing suicide due to a buggy system. If you know the details of the case it was widespread but the post office decided to gaslight everyone and put people in debt and prison. That’s what caused this, the bugs were just a catalyst for shitty humans to do shitty things
  - mrkramer 1y ago
    Yea management failed but wouldn't the most logical thing be to call in computer forensics experts and quality test the software, reverse engineering it and try to catch the bugs. This wasn't the classic case of financial fraud, this was all about faulty software.
    - voxic11 1y ago
      The Post Office management knew about the bugs but didn't want to take the blame for the accounting issues they caused (since it was management that purchased and approved the software some blame would have fallen on them).
      - mrkramer 1y ago
        Fujitsu was all to blame, after all they created and maintained the software. It just blows my mind why would courts pursue the individuals and not the creator of the software, when they realized that this mess was widespread and not isolated.

xbryanx 1y ago

> please don't say they died by suicide I encourage you to read the current thinking on this evolving language, which offers some explanation as to why we're moving away from damaging language like "committing" suicide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_terminology#%22Committing%22_suicide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_terminology#%22Committ... https://www.iasp.info/languageguidelines/ https://www.iasp.info/languageguidelines/

lou1306 1y ago
I think they are saying that the current title ("people died ... amid scandal") muddies the water when it comes to the causal relation, arguably "people were led to suicide by baseless accusations" _might_ be a more faithful descriptor of who's at fault here, but I understand journalists don't want to risk being sued (and neither do I, hence my use of _might_)
vanderZwan 1y ago
I suspect the point was that they were driven to suicide. As in pushed into a corner by external, human forces.
lanfeust6 1y ago
"damaging", in no quantifiable way whatsoever. It's just the euphemism treadmill at work, nothing more.
- tweetle_beetle 1y ago
  I would say it's not the treadmill at work in this case. It's not simply a replacement. The article linked by the parent comment explains it well and references plenty of considered material. But the tldr is that committing suicide aligns with an active criminal/immoral act, while dying by suicide is a factual cause of death with many possible causes. Consider how people would like your death, or the death of a loved one, described by others. And if you can't, maybe consider how others might be affected.
  - 1y ago

johnorourke 1y ago

"died by suicide" is just a modern replacement for "committed suicide", because that phrase dates back to when it was a crime, so it's regarded as making the victim look bad.

AStonesThrow 1y ago
[dead]
tjwebbnorfolk 1y ago
I say this as someone whose father killed himself when I was in 5th grade: The "victims" who suffer after a suicide are the living, not the dead. These kinds of "modernizations" are transparent PC nonsense made up by well-intentioned do-gooders who have no idea how to represent the interests of other people who have a lived experience that they don't understand. The person is dead either way. There's literally no way to sugarcoat this fact. We'd rather you just speak in plain, honest language than trying to make it sound less bad somehow.
- stirfish 1y ago
  That's a really hard thing to go through. I'm sorry you had to bear that as a fifth grader. It's possible that both you and your dad are victims in different ways.
- CrazyStat 1y ago
  What makes “committed suicide” any more plain or honest than “died by suicide”?
  - tjwebbnorfolk 1y ago
    I don't have a big issue with that particular phrase itself. Although the passive voice is designed to conceal or obscure the actor, which doesn't accomplish anything here. Attributing a suicide to anyone other than the actor starts to appear oxymoronic very quickly. Yes life is complex and whatnot -- that's a given, we don't need a reminder every time anything happens. But really it's the transparent and ham-handed attempts by some others to smooth over the sharp edges of reality merely by re-phrasing how things are written. People generally don't want pity, but these re-phrasings accomplish nothing other than to make clear that one person feels sorry for another.

mannykannot 1y ago

While there is no real doubt that most, if not all, of these suicides were a direct consequence of the appalling way this monumental failure and its investigation was handled, reporting the news responsibly has become a minefield in which any deviation from what is strictly known is liable to be exploited by those who do not want their role in events to become public. As you want to call a spade a spade, can we agree that the software engineer who testified repeatedly under oath that the system worked fine, even as the bug tracker filled up with cases where it didn't, is undoubtedly among those who are morally (if not legally) culpable to a considerable extent?

noisy_boy 1y ago
> Perhaps also on the software engineer who testified repeatedly under oath that the system worked fine, even as the bug tracker filled up with cases where it didn't I don't think you needed to ask for agreement.
- mannykannot 1y ago
  Partly on account of the "perhaps" in the original, and partly because I have seen (elsewhere) "just doing his job" defenses. In corner cases, culpability for uncertain expertise can be a tricky issue - you may recall the case of the Italian geologists, a few years back, indicted for minimizing the risk of an earthquake shortly before one occurred - but the case here seems pretty clear-cut (again, I'm speaking morally, not legally.)
PaulKeeble 1y ago
No question, they should be tried for corporate manslaughter and criminal enterprise for the cover up along with all their management. They should all be serving very long sentences, they killed many people with their lies.
mike_hearn 1y ago
It's quite possible he will end up going to prison, and absolutely, that would be the right outcome. It's hard to know what was going through his mind as he made that decision.

foldr 1y ago

> To the NY Times: please don't say they died by suicide. The passive voice “X died by suicide” is a sentence in the active voice. “Die” is an intransitive verb and cannot be passivized in English.

slacktivism123 1y ago
Please don't do this kind of tangential grammar nitpicking here. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less.
- foldr 1y ago
  I’m not nitpicking the poster’s grammar, I’m nitpicking the claim about the grammatical structure of a particular sentence that’s the factual basis of their criticism of the article.

rolandog 1y ago

> Some glitches were of their time and wouldn't occur these days, e.g. malfunctions in resistive touch screens that caused random clicks on POS screens to occur overnight. These still occur on modern touchscreen laptops (work-provided Dell Latitude 7450 and mandated to use Windows with a lot of restrictions). It's not an everyday issue, but a once a month one. Other than that, completely agree with your assessment: the ruining of those lives was a completely avoidable tragedy that was grossly mishandled.

whycome 1y ago
Arguably, it happens today on a modern iPhone capacitive screen. I've had issues where the UI performs a "bait and switch" and swaps a target that I inadvertently press. ios26 is worse because of some lag at certain times.

louthy 1y ago

> massive deep state cover-up Let’s not use conspiracy-theory language. It was a coverup by Fujitsu and The Post Office. MPs and ministers (part of the state) used their parliamentary privilege to expose it after the campaign by the postmasters brought the issue to light. No ‘deep state’ conspiracy, it’s just an arse covering cover-up (pared with outright incompetence) which had particularly devastating consequences.

Joeboy 1y ago
"Deep state" is, or at least to be, a perfectly respectable political term for bodies that retain power across changing governments.
- louthy 1y ago
  Or in other words: the state. No ‘deep’ needed unless you’re trying to be emotive. Fujitsu is not part of the state and although the Post Office is owned by the state, it’s a stand-alone company. > “Perfectly respectable” Maybe in some fringe circles, but this term is certainly attached to a huge amount extreme propaganda and conspiracy that attempts to undermine western democracy and institutions.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - Joeboy 1y ago
    The point, I think, is that that The Post Office acted like part of the state, notably in that they acted like an unconstrained branch of the CPS in bringing prosecutions against thousands of people. > Maybe in some fringe circles I would say the fringe circles co-opted it over the last couple of decades, and the term's obviously become heavily associated with them in some people's minds (eg. yours). But it's an older term than that. Edit: Why would the loons have adopted it, if it was such a disreputable term?
    - louthy 1y ago

watwut 1y ago

> please don't say they died by suicide. The passive voice makes it sound like some act of God, something regrettable but unavoidable that just somehow happened. I mean, common. Everyone knows what suicide is or means. No, it does not make it sound like an act of God for anyone who is above A1 level of English.

nullc 1y ago
Most people who commit suicide were not hounded to the end of their rope, these people were murdered by torture via the legal system. The proximal cause of their death was their own hand, sure, but their deaths should properly be seen as some form of murder or at least manslaughter. These deaths had an unambiguous causal actor other than/in addition to themselves. It's an exceptional condition particularly since if you are harassed by any ordinary person you have a multitude of recourse-- up to fleeing or going into hiding and so we should be very very hesitant to attribute suicide to the actions of a third party in general. But in the case of harassment perpetrated by or via state power the victims are far closer to an inescapable situation and because of the vastly greater power the state must carry vastly greater responsibility for the total consequences of their malicious and improper actions.

dcow 1y ago

It’s still suicide. The wrongfully imprisoned can be acquitted. That’s part of the argument against the death penalty: if justice is imperfect then don’t take actions that are permanent. You can’t classify every instance of miscarriage of justice as state murder. I really don’t see the issue you’re trying to raise. It’s more problematic to invent new language because it feels yucky than to be precise and accurate in our reporting.

the8472 1y ago
We are incapable of returning life-time taken. False imprisonment is still racking up centimorts instead of delivering 1 mort.
some_random 1y ago
I don't think they're arguing that the headline should be "13 UK postmasters murdered by the state", just that the extremely passive "died by suicide" lacks context and largely leaves out the UK Post Office's role in their death. I think they would prefer some thing along the lines of "At Least 13 People Killed Themselves After False Accusations From U.K. Post Office, Report Says".
- dcow 1y ago
  I’m fine with that. And I agree with the sentiment, just not the conclusion that we should be reporting these as not-suicide. If the original comment was indeed that tempered then I have no issue.
  - sitkack 1y ago
    It is the passive voice, not the word suicide that is the issue.
  - rpdillon 1y ago
    It's the lack of clarity in what happened. I think the rephrasing mike suggested is much clearer: > The postmasters killed themselves because the British state was imprisoning them for crimes they didn't commit, based on evidence from a buggy financial accounting system. That's just better writing!

maweki 1y ago

The horizon post office scandal is the first thing I taught in my "database design" course, to show that we're not creating self-serving academic exercises. We are creating systems that affect people's lives. I try to give the legal and ethical perspectives. These systems should be auditable and help and not hurt people.

sitkack 1y ago
Or, if you are designing software to kill people, that you actually do a good job. https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/cia-allegedly-bought-flawed-software-for-attacks/ https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/cia-allegedly-bought-flawe...
- barbazoo 1y ago
  OT but what a shit site that is. A third of the page is taken up by a “best prime day deals” countdown banner. What a consumerist piece of shit website.
  - sitkack 1y ago
    You need adblock
mike_hearn 1y ago
That's good to hear. I'm sure the story makes an impact!

KingOfCoders 1y ago

There is no "deep state", just the state. Calling things "the deep state" tries to partition the state in two parts, a good one and a bad one. There is also no "deep Amazon" or "deep Meta". Amazon is Amazon, Meta is Meta and the state is the state. People working for or representing the state have their own agenda, have their cliques, have their CYA like people everywhere else. And the state as an organization prioritizes survival and self defense above all other goals it might have.

mike_hearn 1y ago
Fair. I use the term to refer to the parts of the state that are somehow buried deep, beyond most people's awareness. In this case the problems started with a government contractor, and were then covered up by people inside the post office. It wasn't a top-down conspiracy of politicians, or of civil servants following their orders.
pjc50 1y ago
Indeed. "Deep" is a weasel word. "State" is all the operations of governance which don't change when the government changes. However, the state is not a monolith. It's an organization of all sorts of sub-organizations run by individuals with their own agendas. They have names, faces, and honors: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67925304 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67925304 (The honors systems is deeply problematic because about half of them are handed out to insiders for complicity in god knows what and the other half are handed out to celebrities as cover for the first half)
tw04 1y ago
I'm not sure that's really fair. Within any organization there are subgroups. For instance there was an entire branch of AT&T that was dedicated to illegally spying on Americans for the NSA. Most employees of AT&T had no idea it was even going on, so to lump every AT&T employee into the same batch of "you're bad because th company you work for was doing X" when they had no idea the company was doing X isn't really fair. By the same vein, Stephen Miller trying to round up and cage innocent civilians just trying to live their life is a very different part of the government than Suzanne at NASA who's trying to better the future of mankind. To act as if there's no distinguishing between the two is just silly. Whether you have an issue with the specific term "deep state" I'll leave be. But please don't try to oversimplify large organizations. The higher up the chain the more responsibility you can place for what the organization as a whole does, but the reverse isn't true when speaking outside of their specific area of ownership.

fifteen1506 1y ago

Surely the engineer wasn't acting alone, lying in court without some inside pressure?

dagmx 1y ago

Well said. I really wish we had a better word for someone who is bullied into suicide. It’s tantamount to manslaughter imho. Recently, a snark/bullying community on Reddit resulted in the suicide of their target (a woman responsible for rescuing foxes). That kind of targeting and bullying is horrific for any individual to process, let alone people who don’t have the press teams and training that celebrities do.

ImHereToVote 1y ago
This sets a bad precedent. There is a wide gamut of emotional resilience in people. What is a funny insult to one person, can be rope-fuel to another. Would you want to be called that if you make a light jab at a middle aged bald guy?
- koolala 1y ago
  Sounds unrealistic they would blame it all on one remark like that. I'd be more afraid people would kill themselves just to get retribution on their tormentors and it would increase suicides.
  - dagmx 1y ago
    Do you see a lot of people harming themselves physically and framing people in their suicides?
- deleted 1y ago
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- __turbobrew__ 1y ago
  A 90 year old is much more physically fragile than a 20 year old. If you hit a 20 year old and they are bruised you get an assault charge, if you hit a 90 year old and they die you get a murder charge, despite using the same amount of force. I do agree with the sibling post that suicide would be weaponized which is the real problem.
- dagmx 1y ago

belter 1y ago

It's a surprising take to blame developers and software development for what is a prime example of corruption within the UK establishment, an uncaring and incompetent court system, and the lying senior managers of the UK Post Office. The faults were known and this is a case of cover-up. Software development was merely an accessory to the crime in this case.

aenis 1y ago
Read the book, if you havent already. The senior technical staff was actively obfuscating and lying. Developers knew the system had synchronization issues, operations knew as well, as they were apparently routinely doing manual data fixes in production. Senior engineering staff are the most to blame. They messed up and then covered up. The fact that their management covered up some more can be partially excused by technical illiteracy.
- belter 1y ago
  That explanation based on lies by the tech staff, is another variation of the Volkswagen explanation that the emissions scandal, were just some low level engineers. The essence of this story is how the UK establishment can lie, and be corrupt to levels that will shame big time criminals. [1] "...Vennells was the CEO of Post Office Ltd during the latter part of the Post Office scandal, which involved more than 900 subpostmasters being wrongly convicted of theft, false accounting and fraud between 1999 and 2015 because of shortfalls at their branches that were in fact errors of the Horizon accounting software used by the Post Office.Thousands of subpostmasters paid for shortfalls caused by Horizon and/or had their contracts terminated. The actions of the Post Office caused the loss of jobs, bankruptcy, family breakdown, criminal convictions, prison sentences and at least four suicides. In total, over 4,000 subpostmasters would eventually become eligible for compensation..." "...In 2013, Post Office Limited hired forensic accounting firm Second Sight, headed by Ron Warmington, to investigate the Horizon software losses. Warmington discovered the system was flawed and faulty, but Vennells was unhappy with Warmington's report and terminated their contract. Prior to her role as CEO, Vennells was the Chief Operating Officer of Post Office Ltd, a position in which – according to the evidence of the then CEO, David Smith – she had responsibility for management of the "operational use" of the Horizon software...." "...During the case, the Post Office's conduct under Vennells's leadership was described as an instance of "appalling and shameful behaviour..." "...During her testimony, Vennells consistently stated she was unaware of the facts or, when confronted with documents that showed she had been made aware of them, said she had not understood them..." [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Vennells https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Vennells

marcosdumay 1y ago

> Horizon is the case that should replace Therac-25 as a study in what can go wrong if software developers screw up. Hum, no. Horizon had nothing to do with problems of software development. It's a case of unaccountable judges, lying attorneys, and the entire police system acting in a conspiracy to hide information and gaslight the society at large. The fact that there is a software error there somewhere isn't relevant at all.

Vegenoid 1y ago

> Some glitches were of their time and wouldn't occur these days, e.g. malfunctions in resistive touch screens that caused random clicks on POS screens to occur overnight I think there’s still a lesson to be learned here about computers needing to be locked when not in use. I find it utterly bizarre how many experienced technical employees will leave their computer unlocked when they step away from it for extended periods of time.

immibis 1y ago

This is the same organization that talks about Palestinians dying, while Hamas slaughters Jews by the millions. Don't expect unbiased voice.