Keep in mind that the word "rational" as used in this article does not have the technical meaning we use here at LW. As a software developer, I find that a lot of bug reports I receive come from that actual users exceeding all bounds of "rational" use of the software. And most of those, I fix, and I would have been better off with top notch testing department exceeding all bounds of "rational" testing to tell me about these bugs as I write the software and before it gets deployed to customers.

I'd like to know what "software torture" means once the metaphor has been stripped. As it is, that phrase doesn't tell me what they're doing, but does tell me what I'm supposed to think about it, which combination is worrisome. Fuzz testing would probably be considered "torture" by anyone who hadn't heard of it and who didn't realize that criminals looking for software exploits were doing it too.