Does the Crowdstrike Outage Prove the Dangers of a Cashless Society? (theguardian.com) 155
"If there is no alternative, then the whole thing can collapse around you," says Ron Delnevo. He's the chair of The Payment Choice Alliance, "which campaigns against the move towards a cashless society."
He's part of those arguing "the chaos caused by the global IT outage last week underlines the risk of moving towards a cashless society," writes the Observer: Authorities in China and the US have fined businesses for not accepting cash. Delnevo said the U.K. should have a law requiring all businesses to take cash. Martin Quinn, campaign director for the PCA, said using cash allowed for anonymity. "I don't want my data sold on, and I don't want banks, credit card companies and even online retailers to know every facet of my life," he said. Budgeting by using cash is also easier for some, he added.
The article includes some interesting statistics from a U.K. bank trade association. "The number of people who never use cash, or use it less than once a month, reached 23.1 million in 2021, but declined to 21.6m last year." The GMB [general trade] Union said the outage reinforced what it had been saying for years: that "cash is a vital part of how our communities operate". "When you take cash out of the system, people have nothing to fall back on, impacting on how they do the everyday basics."
He's part of those arguing "the chaos caused by the global IT outage last week underlines the risk of moving towards a cashless society," writes the Observer: Authorities in China and the US have fined businesses for not accepting cash. Delnevo said the U.K. should have a law requiring all businesses to take cash. Martin Quinn, campaign director for the PCA, said using cash allowed for anonymity. "I don't want my data sold on, and I don't want banks, credit card companies and even online retailers to know every facet of my life," he said. Budgeting by using cash is also easier for some, he added.
The article includes some interesting statistics from a U.K. bank trade association. "The number of people who never use cash, or use it less than once a month, reached 23.1 million in 2021, but declined to 21.6m last year." The GMB [general trade] Union said the outage reinforced what it had been saying for years: that "cash is a vital part of how our communities operate". "When you take cash out of the system, people have nothing to fall back on, impacting on how they do the everyday basics."
Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes it does. It was pretty obvious when people couldn't buy anything without cash. Despite this some places were too stupid to manually make receipts and log transactions and process them later when things came back online, but other's weren't.
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
I did laugh a bit when I read that some people couldn't get free drinks at work because the machine refused to operate. On the other hand, if someone needed cash, and many of the ATMs weren't working... There are bigger problems here than just cash or not. We've got too many single points of failure proping up civilizatgion. Redundancy is too expensive, so it gets discarded. The route-around-errors Arpanet is now Internet with critical hubs and services.
Re:Yes (Score:5, Funny)
We've got too many single points of failure proping up civilizatgion
An interconnected civilization means everyone is within 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon.
Re:Yes (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, yes, there are always benefits I suppose.
Re: (Score:2)
Just checked and I'm currently at 98.6 degrees F. Albeit n=1, your assertion does appear to be true.
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
On the other hand, if someone needed cash, and many of the ATMs weren't working...
By then, it was too late. It's always a good idea to carry a few hundred dollars in cash "just in case". If for no other reason then when you are downtown and some drugged-up hobo confronts you, handing them cash might keep you from getting stabbed to death.
Re: (Score:2)
On the other hand, if someone needed cash, and many of the ATMs weren't working...
By then, it was too late. It's always a good idea to carry a few hundred dollars in cash "just in case". If for no other reason then when you are downtown and some drugged-up hobo confronts you, handing them cash might keep you from getting stabbed to death.
You don't necessarily need to carry it all on yourself and a few hundred might not get you that far. Stash at least a few thousands in a safe place, most likely at home.
Oh! and hobos are usually inoffensive, there are other people who are a threat although.
Re: (Score:3)
It is not that redundancy is too expensive.
It is that redundancy is seen as inefficient, and thus a cost that can be cut regardless of any knock-on effects.
Short term thinking, for the loss.
Re: (Score:2)
It is all about the cost and seen as too expensive for what it provides in the short run.
Regulations, standards, etc come to exist because when to many organizations won't do the right thing without being forced.
No, Shows Monopolies Bad (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes it does.
No, Betteridge holds and it does not. What it shows is the dangers of a monoculture or monopoly. We've known that these are dangerous in the natural world for well over a century with things like the Great French Wine Blight of the mid-19th century and more recently with the Cavendish banana. Well the same applies to complex IT systems as well: if everyone relies on the same single service and it goes offline then it creates a major problem. However, if we had 3 or 4 independent such systems then the disruption would be much less and more easily manageable. For example, it might mean that one supermarket chain may not be able to take cashless payments but other chains using different providers will be fine.
Russia escaped the recent outage without incidence because, due to sanctions, it has had to develop its own independent solution and this was unaffected. What we need is better control and break up of monopolies. This goes beyond the usual financial abuse concerns about monopolies because when it comes to critical IT infrastructure even the most competently managed, security-conscious system will occasionally go down.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
> if everyone relies on the same single service and it goes offline then it creates a major problem
Yeah, if only it wasn't a monopoly. If only there was an alternative.. hey maybe even one that didn't require being online at all? Something that doesn't rely on anyone or anything in particular. Maybe one that doesn't even require electricity, y'know just in case the single-point-of-failure that is the electrical grid konks out.
Oh wait, that's cash. What I'm describing physical currency. With cash there
Re: (Score:2)
Russia escaped the recent outage without incidence because, due to sanctions, it has had to develop its own independent solution and this was unaffected.
Because they weren't able to use crowdstrike (or at least keep it updated). It's like if I run an abacus instead of a PC I won't get a PC virus
No (Score:2)
Yes it does. It was pretty obvious when people couldn't buy anything without cash.
No. You forgot to mention that people couldn't buy things EVEN WITH CASH because many POS systems were down. E.g. airlines.
And as someone else also mentioned, the credit card systems were running fine, you know those venerable big iron just kept chugging while Windows machines were going BSOD.
The problem is "security" softwares that completely bypass the normal corporate rollout practice. Any sane company would do phased rollout, and WOULD TEST it before rolling out. Letting a "patch" that immediately BSO
Re: (Score:3)
This is a big thing. How many businesses can fail back to pencil and paper these days? How many can pull out a mechanical cash drawer and have clerks who can make change? If a business has to close shop because their Toast or Square system is offline, what would happen if something that really was a big event happened that knocked out stuff for days to weeks?
This is a lesson taught in Houston, because it was almost 1-2 weeks before a lot of Texas got power back after the hurricane went by. We are lucky
Re: (Score:2)
No. It does not. A cashless society does not necessarily need the internet. Look up:-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
There are of course other examples. They can be made to work.
Re: (Score:2)
Nope, It proves that cloud infrastructure underpinned by a single vendor is catastrophic.
This is why companies shouldn't merge. The bigger they are, the bigger the catastrophe.
This problem would not have been so widespread if there were more banks, airlines and logistics companies.
Not really (Score:5, Insightful)
The takeaway here is having a complete monoculture in software critical to the basic functioning of our economy is a bad thing. We need more antitrust law enforcement and more competition. We have been neglecting one of the basic requirements of capitalism for 40 plus years. We're just now starting to see the worst and most obvious effects of that
Re: (Score:2)
The takeaway here is having a complete monoculture in software critical to the basic functioning of our economy is a bad thing.
Not that this is unknown or surprising to anybody with a clue. In fact, it was blatantly obvious all along. But greed, arrogance, stupidity and, sorry, capitalism with is insane concentration of wealth has brought us to the brink. This event is a very minor predictor of what is to come if we do not fix things.
Re: (Score:3)
That monoculture is a drag, but most of the rest of the world is running Linux, and mostly running many of the same services, and also mostly running on amd64 or intel's knockoff of it. And there seem to be fewer big problems like this there. I've seen the redhat crowdstrike falcon kernel panic thing, but I don't know what the resolution was on that (it's only visible to their customers) so I don't know if it was feasible to fix it remotely. Anyway, I think we both know that the problem isn't only that it's
Re: (Score:2)
Anyway, I think we both know that the problem isn't only that it's a monoculture, but also that it's just generally low-quality software.
Agreed. Although monopolies produce monocultures and these specific monocultures universally produced low and very low quality products. Who cares about producing quality when you can just rake in more money? Now, would it be a problem if we all ran Linux? Yes. Would it be anywhere near as bad as Windows? No. Because Linux is not a monopoly and Linux is not a strong monoculture. And it would still not be all Linux. Going from Linux to one of the FOSS BSDs is not hard. Going from Windows to a decent Unix(-li
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with Linux is that it's not compatible with insurance and legal due diligence standards. At least not the way you want to run it.
For example, the standard will say they need anti-virus software. You might argue that Linux doesn't need it, your terminals network boot from a read-only OS image that just runs a browser from RAM and is heavily locked down... But if the company doesn't have one they can't claim on their business continuity insurance and their CTO can't say it's not their fault becaus
Re: (Score:2)
no problem, I'll use clamav, it has on-access scanning too. It uses fanotify.
Re: (Score:2)
Is clamav certified? The manufacturer will need to have the right certificates, ISO 9001, audits etc.
Re: (Score:2)
A good number of folks just rebooted their systems back to the last snapshot (once they got on) of everything but the databases and let a corrected update flow. Tiering systems and division of work still
Re: (Score:2)
Why is this fake argument always made by somebody? Do people still not understand what the Linux dev model is?
Re: Not really (Score:4, Interesting)
Going from Tim Taylor to Bob Vila is just changing one contractor for another, but your odds of a good outcome and not burning your house down go up dramatically.
Re: (Score:2)
Where I worked 20 years ago, it would have been unthinkable to automatically push updates for Windows and other software to critical systems, or even workstations. When those patches came in, they would be deployed to test environments first. Not everything was rigorously tested, but the softwar
Re:Not really (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe not just a monoculture, but a culture of complacency towards those who supply the software. Perhaps that is a result of pushing everything to the cloud, where you have no choice but to trust the provider.
I'd say that the cloud has amplified and entrenched a complacency which has existed since business started to use Windows in large-scale enterprises. At some point the "everybody else is doing it" factor, along with the cost of changing OS, reached critical mass.
Where I worked 20 years ago, it would have been unthinkable to automatically push updates for Windows and other software to critical systems, or even workstations.
My first thought when I heard about the CrowdStrike debacle was along similar lines. I wondered "How could this happen to any company with an inkling of a clue?" I would think that they'd line up the update to be pushed, then push it to a small local test network before the official update and confirm correct functioning. Then, using the same servers and files, start pushing it to customers.
It seems to me that it would have been very easy and laughably cheap to prevent this disaster with a tiny bit of common sense.
Re: (Score:2)
I always try updates on a reasonably similar crash test dummy (or at least a non-critical machine) first. It's just common prudence. Even if that works out, deploy in batches, not all at once.
Does CrowdStrike even offer that sort of control to admins?
Re: (Score:2)
No. Sysadmins have literally zero control over how Crowdstrike deploys this type of update - it was bound to happen, and ideally this forces change in that posture.
Re: (Score:2)
I think their clients should migrate to a vendor that does provide staged rollouts.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't forget centralization. Had these updates been something that were on some type of ring system, it would have been different. The problem is that with so many businesses depending on centralized updates coming from Microsoft and third parties, all it takes is someone compromising a signing key and the repository, and something like this, but actually malicious and destructive could be propagated far and wide.
If we look at cryptocurrency and even bigger exchanges having their wallets' private keys com
Re: (Score:2)
IMO the problem is the one piece of popular software that meddles in driver space shouldn't be able to update at whim.
Most organisations have a tier of production and non-production with separate update plans where production lags behind so changes can be tested elsewhere prior to production.
Production being permitted to update at the same time as non-production is bobbins. CrowdStrike isn't the only organisation guilty of this, without a non-prod testing ground anything critical can suffer this way.
We noti
Re: Not really (Score:2)
No (Score:2)
That proof is not needed as anybody smart saw this a long time ago. Those that only see it now are simply stupid.
Re: No (Score:2)
Basically this and other instances prove that cashless is a mistake. But I don't think anyone will be convinced by this or anything else. So buckle up!
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed.
Online retailers? (Score:3)
Martin Quinn, campaign director for the PCA, said using cash allowed for anonymity. ... I don't want banks, credit card companies and even online retailers to know every facet of my life, ...
Online retailers accept cash? Did I miss the slot for that on my PC? Also, I think all the credit card companies get is a vendor and the transaction amount, not an itemized list of what you bought -- someone please correct me if I'm wrong -- so they don't know every facet...
That said, I'm in favor of places having to accept cash, where possible.
Re:Online retailers? (Score:4, Interesting)
Not true. The biden administration attempted to sidestep the 2A by making a special business category for firearms they way they do for other items. The GOA took them to court and blocked it. This would allow banks to refuse to do business with businesses based solely on their constitutionally protected products. It would also potentially create a rudimentary database of who purchases a firearm based on transaction amounts.and before you say that a charge from bobs gunshop for $700 makes it obvious, many retailers use a different name on the merchant ID thats less overt. Right now its still mostly private. Currently only the dealer keeps the atf 4473 form. It is not uploaded.
So there are codes and types for different retailers based on the classification of the products they sell or industry they belong to. I discovered this only after the GOA sued the government to stop this attempt at blanket gun bans by blocking retailers access to banking.
Re: (Score:2)
No idea what the GOA is (I know Goa is a port in India - it used to be part of the Portugese empire)
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks, though I was more thinking like MasterCard doesn't get an itemized receipt of the groceries I bought at Walmart. :-)
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks, though I was more thinking like MasterCard doesn't get an itemized receipt of the groceries I bought at Walmart. :-)
You're right, they can't. Unless you use a loyalty card, which harvests every tiny detail and sells the data to anyone who'll pay. Including, but not limited to, insurers, marketers, and yes, your credit card provider.
Re: Online retailers? (Score:3)
Whatever you do (Score:4, Insightful)
No, let's blame credit cards. Then go back to bartering chickens and go back to the gold standard.
Who the absolute hell is running the interference for Microsoft and Crowdstrike?
can they detane you if the system is down? (Score:2)
can they detane you if the system is down? Say we can't make change for big bills and keep the change?
Can they kick you out mid meal?
Re: (Score:3)
I guess the spell checker is down too.
I think the word you are looking for is detain.
Cash is king (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
I still use cash for tipping staff at restaurants, because they can hide it. If you tip them electronically, they are 100% getting taxed on it. I have always paid blue collar workers in cash, and they ALWAYS appreciate it, and often give me a discount. Cash is inconvenient compared to cards, but it serves many, many useful purposes. Long live cash, and down with the creeping authoritarian spying by both governments and corporations alike, who have no business knowing all of my business.
A thriving black/gray market is a fundamental protection against oppressive government actions. Government believes you should not be able to keep anything secret from them. In reality government is often the entity people most need to keep secrets from.
Re:Cash is king (Score:5, Insightful)
I still use cash for tipping staff at restaurants, because they can hide it. If you tip them electronically, they are 100% getting taxed on it. I have always paid blue collar workers in cash, and they ALWAYS appreciate it, ...
And since that income doesn't get reported, it doesn't count toward Social Security, or any disability, and their benefit amounts will be lower.
Re:Cash is king (Score:5, Informative)
I get it's better to tip in cash, but we need to move away froma tip-based society ASAP. A society that relies on tipped workers faces several disadvantages and negative effects, both for the workers and the broader society. These include:
Income Instability:
Unpredictable Earnings: Tipped workers often face significant income variability, depending on customer generosity, shift timing, and economic conditions.
Financial Insecurity: This unpredictability can lead to financial insecurity, making it difficult for workers to budget, save, and plan for the future.
Low Base Wages:
Subminimum Wage: In many places, tipped workers are paid below the standard minimum wage, relying on tips to make up the difference. If tips are insufficient, their total income can fall below a livable wage.
Wage Theft: Employers may engage in wage theft by failing to properly account for tips or not ensuring workers receive the legal minimum wage when tips are low.
Dependence on Customer Satisfaction:
Pressure to Please: Workers may feel compelled to tolerate inappropriate behavior or harassment from customers to secure tips, as their income depends on customer satisfaction.
Emotional Labor: The need to maintain a pleasant demeanor and cater to customers' needs, regardless of personal feelings or treatment, can be emotionally taxing.
Inequity and Discrimination:
Bias and Discrimination: Tips can be influenced by customers' biases, leading to disparities based on race, gender, appearance, and other factors. Studies show that minority workers often receive lower tips than their white counterparts.
Favoritism: Employers may give more favorable shifts or tables to employees they believe will generate higher tips, creating inequality among workers.
Lack of Benefits and Protections:
Limited Access to Benefits: Tipped workers often do not receive benefits such as health insurance, paid leave, or retirement plans, exacerbating their financial and health vulnerabilities.
Legal Vulnerabilities: They may also be less likely to report workplace issues, such as harassment or unsafe conditions, fearing retaliation or loss of income.
Economic Inefficiency:
Consumer Burden: Tipping shifts the responsibility for ensuring fair wages from employers to consumers, who may feel pressured to subsidize workers’ incomes.
Business Practices: Employers might underinvest in worker training and development, relying on tips to incentivize good service rather than creating robust management and operational practices.
Social and Cultural Implications:
Cultural Norms: The expectation of tipping can create social pressure and awkwardness, with varying norms and expectations leading to confusion for customers, especially tourists or individuals from non-tipping cultures.
Devaluation of Service Work: The practice of tipping can contribute to the undervaluation of service work, perpetuating the notion that these jobs are less worthy of fair, stable wages.
These disadvantages highlight the complexities and challenges faced by societies that rely heavily on tipping as a compensation model for service workers. Addressing these issues often involves policy changes, such as raising the minimum wage for tipped workers and ensuring they have access to essential benefits and protections.
Re: (Score:2)
I still use cash for tipping staff at restaurants, because they can hide it. If you tip them electronically, they are 100% getting taxed on it. I have always paid blue collar workers in cash, and they ALWAYS appreciate it, and often give me a discount. Cash is inconvenient compared to cards, but it serves many, many useful purposes. Long live cash, and down with the creeping authoritarian spying by both governments and corporations alike, who have no business knowing all of my business.
Slashdot is a bit schizophrenic about this stuff though.
"I want my untraceable cash!"
Doesn't mesh well with
"It's okay to censor every social media post that I deem 'misinformation'!"
Re: (Score:2)
It's almost as if Slashdot consists of multiple people, not just one
Issue is not cash but computers (Score:2)
This should be obvious that the issue is our dependence on computer systems. Whether we use cash or not, the problem is the computers and not the method of payment. Unless we're talking about using cash with mechanical, non-computerize cash registers in stores that have completely manual inventory control independent of computers.
Re: (Score:2)
This should be obvious that the issue is our dependence on computer systems.
For "computer systems" substitute "the power grid" or "the supply chain". The result is pretty much the same.
There are many ways in which modern society puts too many eggs in too few baskets - and often the baskets are under some other entity's control. Redundancy, diversity, and resilience are sacrificed for the sake of profit and short-term convenience. This is a fundamental problem with the way we've structured our society and economy.
Having computer systems as nearly-worldwide single points of failure i
Re: (Score:2)
Probably around 10 years ago I was travelling and when checking into a hotel, their credit card service was down. One of the people at the desk went into the back and brought out a quite old credit card imprint thing (the slidey ones with carbon paper) and used that to take my credit card info. Probably easier in that case since they didn't need payment immediately, but it was possible
How about failover to backup servers? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Typically software like Crowdstrike is deployed on servers and automatically applies updates, and there ARE valid reasons for that:
their primary purpose is to protect systems from bad actors/malicious penetration attempts.
The defense is basically always a step behind.
These frequent updates are a way of staying just a step behind rather than a leap.
That said - it IS stupid to have critical production systems updated without control.
Just like any prudent enterprise has a lab/testing environment that can have
If you want electronic payments only... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Somebody will need to get paid - if the government does it, the censorship will get worse as will the chilling effect of the government literally tracking your every purchase directly. If a new freedom-loving organization pops up that refuses to sell your information or use it in house for targeted advertising, the rates are going to go up and merchants won't accept the card.
The real state option is to legislate that any credit card company with over a certain percentage of market share carry all legal tra
...it pays to discover (Score:3)
other independent alternatives, to keep Visa & Mastercard under control
It pays to Discover an alternative. Some Amex cardmembers are so satisfied they don't leave home without it.
Re: (Score:2)
How about a personal check?
"Cashless" (Score:2)
I've dealt with a number of merchants recently with cashless operations. Almost without fail, if the POS is down they start accepting cash. A few even have fallback old-school imprint paper card processing. A higher-value merchant even had an emergency Venmo backup.
Talking to one owner, they can only make it work for a day or two max, and the costs are noticably higher to make it work. They only do it because the sunk fixed costs are high enough once they plan to open that closing early is a bigger hass
Re: "Cashless" (Score:3)
This is naive, cash does not scale (Score:5, Interesting)
Which brings up the second, and real issue, any chain store relies heavily on their PoS system which went down and is where the real issue lies. It does the pricing, the book keeping and the inventory (and usually forecasting). Nothing price tags anymore, so that 30 sec to pay with cash just became 1-2+ minutes while the clerk figures out the prices, tallies them up, figures out the tax (which in some places is variable depending on what you're buying). Manually booking flights for a major airline? You can just forget about it.
You think want a cash based society, but you really, really don't. It's going to cost you, personally, a significant amount of time and it also going to drive up the prices you pay. You want the system to be as redundant and fail safe as possible. Cashless apps/cards should be able to work independently for a time, PoS systems should be able to work even if the back office goes down, etc.
There is nothing special about cash. We have it because we reached a point where barter was inefficient. No one wants to be lugging 5 pounds of flour and vegetables around hoping the merchant will accept them. We've reach a point where cash is no longer an efficient way of supporting 8 billion (and growing) people.
(*) Merchants do want to track cash flows and spending habits, especially larger merchants... but they generally keep this data for themselves. Payments systems are generally not getting as much of this data as many people think. It was a struggle just to get data that was required for regulatory compliance (can't apply rebates/etc to alcohol & tobacco).
Re:This is naive, cash does not scale (Score:5, Insightful)
A cash-based society keeps a cashless society honest.
I mean that if excesses start to occur in the cashless society, with extravagant fees, excessive downtime, excessive permission limitations - people can switch to cash. The cash-based society acts as a brake on those problems.
Re: (Score:2)
cash based system has those same issues- fees, downtime, permission limitations.
For a retailer to handle cash- it takes time to process the cash transactions, they pay fees to banks and cash transport companies, to purchase rolls of coin/small bills for change, deposit, withdraw, etc... at the end of the day- the retailer has the same if not more in costs for handling more cash than electronic transactions which themselves are stupidly high- plus they have to eat the costs of accepting fraudulent cash. If A
Stop yelling "The Sky is Falling!" It isn't. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
This is a (granted, pretty egregious) one-off.
So was the last one-off, and the one before that, and the one before that.
People who dont carry cash (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked as a grocery store cashier in college and our card network at work went down a few times during that period. It was amazing to me how many people couldnt pay even very modest sums because they dont carry any cash at all. Seems crazy to me, not only are there times cash comes in handy even when everything is working the way it should but its a good way to end up screwed in the case of a major disaster or wide spread power, internet, or network outage.
Re: (Score:2)
I always keep a couple of 100 dollar bills hidden in my wallet "just in case".
It proves the risk of reliance on a third party. (Score:5, Insightful)
Back to that cash thing, cash is an agreed form of barter between two parties.
'Cashless' is an agreed form of barter between two parties and the network between them and the payment processor, then the network between the processor for each side, then the network and devices between the processors and the first two party's banks. And at any point another party like a government or broken data collection 'credit rating' agency could deny the transaction. And this all assumes the hardware to do all this networking isn't down because someone didn't test an update before deploying it to half of some of the parties. Or someone took out the network with a backhoe or boat anchor. Or that oops there is a power outage somewhere. FFS what a house of cards.
Re: (Score:2)
Back to that cash thing, cash is an agreed form of barter between two parties.
There's no written rule that the bater needs to be cashless. There's also no written rule that an account needs to be closed at the time of purchase (in fact only the cheapest most worthless items are purchased in this fashion). Checks are a good example of how cash isn't necessary simply because card doesn't work. It was an agreement of closing an account at a later time.
Yes I managed to purchase gasoline on a day when the card networks were down in Australia and I had no cash on me. I did return a few day
Not really (Score:5, Informative)
Lots of modern stores are dependent on the computer systems for more than just taking payments. Items don't have price tags, there's no price sheet (big-box stores couldn't reasonably have such anyway), so if there's an issue with the point-of-sale systems, they just close the store.
Re: (Score:2)
There is no backup plan anymore. It's going to be this reliance on computers to do anything that will break society due to some single point of failure.
Re: (Score:2)
35 years ago when I worked in a convenience store our very primitive POS systems had stored PLUs for pricing things. Pack of premium brand smokes? 1 and then the small button. Three pack special price? 1 medium. Carton? 1 large. Same with generic brand smokes - though those were 2 and not 1, so 2+small, 2+large etc. All done local to that machine.
I would bet that the issue with that now is that many POS systems have become Windows desktops running some software on top of it all (I know this is what the
No (Score:2)
No.
There's other ways to solve that problem.
Further evidence that... (Score:2)
A lot easier for an abstraction to collapse (Score:4, Interesting)
A cashless society works while the power grid is on, and multiple complex components are working in tandem.
And also, you need permission from, and need to pay, the middlemen who are running the network that allows you to exchange currency. Rather than simply handing the counter-party your slips of paper in order to obtain the thing you value.
Fight Club (Score:2)
This is the entire plot of Fight Club, isn't it?
Post-nuke payment system (Score:2)
When machine guns appeared, people also said that war was now impossible, since there would be too many casualties. And what? Every soldier now has a portable machine gun.
Homo Sapiens is just a cunning, aggressive ape, prone to gathering into huge social groups and subsequent mass psychoses.
My point is that the cash would be necessary in a post apocalyptic world.
China (Score:2)
> Authorities in China...have fined businesses for not accepting cash
Maybe, but it isn't illegal to not accept cash. It is only illegal to not accept cash, if you accept other forms of payment, in the physical store.
If a store only allows online ordering, then it's fine to not accept cash (obviously), even if the product is from a physical store.
The motivation, it seems, is because a not insignificant number of people are not online, so they only order in person, usually with cash. Cards are relatively r
Sad take (Score:3)
It proves to me that if I were in charge I'm outsourcing everything.
Somehow Microsoft seems to be getting the biggest blame, followed by crowd strike.
Nobody is blaming outsourcing. If I had an in house solution twice as reliable, it'd look bad if we were the only company out, everyone gets to blame crowd strike, and because they're not the only company it's credible
The Swindon Ecperiment (Score:2)
There was a cashless experiment in the UK in the 90s, where people could transfer money card to card without the need of any network connection or central bank involvement.
If you want cashless, this is the only workable solution.
long live cash (Score:2)
- Transactions are unhackable. No need to worry about who stole your credit card info every time a retailer suffers a security breach.
- Transactions not stored in any bank's database forever, to be sold to unknown third parties at any time in the future, for any purpose.
- No middleman taking a percentage of every transaction, cleverly hidden from the consumer, generating a 2% drain on the economy.
- Does not rely on any network or other technology - works even when the internet goes down.
- Always know exactl
Really? (Score:2)
'No middleman taking a percentage of every transaction'
Nah - the costs of handling transactions were still present for retailers: the cash had to be banked, there was a risk of it being stolen, the bank charged for accepting the cash etc. As an added bonus you at least get a record of everything that is sold and when (OK - that's Point of Sale tech rather than 'cashless', but they kinda follow.
Re: (Score:2)
All good points. Cash isn't frictionless, either.
I wonder if anyone has ever done a cost comparison to the 2.5-3% that is normally charged for credit card transactions. Bear in mind that, if a store's margin is, say, 10%, then this fee amounts to more like 25-30% of profits.
Re: (Score:2)
Right... because that never ever happens with credit cards.
Oh wait, it does. The difference is that, when your credit card details get stolen, you can spend the next few months sorting out the subsequent disaster.
Re: (Score:2)
In real life, you are physically vulnerable as you walk down a street.
In the electronic world your accounts are vulnerable to essentially anyone worldwide.
There's more people worldwide, than there are on any 1 street.
Physical custody of piece of paper (er, plastic)
and it's usable when the the power or computers are down.
Re: wallet (Score:3)
I can and do stash ready cash in more places than my wallet for various uses where cash is king like buying items off Craigslist or at auctions where cash is cheapest. It's trivial to have a few grand handy so I do and if it comes to grief access to my wallet compartmentalizes the damage.
Unlike electronic methods I retain personal control of my cash until traded (or stolen) but I can easily mitigate the risk of theft by methods from creative concealment to lethal force and of course living in very low risk
Not necessarily (Score:2)
While it is convenient to think that this spectacular blowout demonstrates the risk of a cashless society, there might be another issue on display as well. A lot of the discussions so far suggest that the popular management practice of running the organization so lean as to be on the edge of collapse may be a factor. An untested update was pushed into global production -- AFAK. When I worked in financial services, this would have been a hanging offence. But even then were the arguments with management that
Not really (Score:2)
Paperless ticketing (Score:2)
I remember boarding planes with paper tickets. I was watching a travel video on Youtube where the person was stuck at Orlando airport during the outage. The planes were running fine. Air and ground traffic control was fine. Even the bags were getting where they needed to go. The only processes they couldn't do were issue new boarding passes, modify seats, or check people on to the airplane.
This seems like a process that could have some sort of analog backup. A clipboard and a check sheet, for instance. If y
Makes no difference (Score:2)
Bitcoin worked fine. (Score:2)
No issues.
You can always write a check (Score:2)
An old fashioned personal check might be one way around the situation.
However with the recent Patelco screwup (ransomware on their computers) it could cause a delay before it could be cashed.
Monopoly Capitalism (Score:3)
No.
It shows the danger of a monopoly IT ecosystem.
Microsoft has turned a resilient Internet into a single point of failure with spectacular results.
Why does Windows even need this "Crowd strike" (aptly named) software?
MacOS and Linux don't have it or need it.
I am still amazed that people rely on Windows software for mission critical applications. Haven't they learned anything over the past 30 years?
Re: (Score:2)
It was third party software that caused this.
If someone made some Linux software that loaded a kernel module, which loaded random files from the file system and executed them, and then pushed out an update without testing it, that caused this module to crash the kernel, the same problem would have happened.
Re: (Score:3)
If you're using the minimum functionality then you probably don't need third party kernel modules that load random untested updates, Linux or Windows.
The OP was pointing out that device manufacturers have gotten lazy, using full desktop operating systems where they don't need to, and there's a price for that.