More like it shows dangers of using only one provider for almost all IT infrastructure.
this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2024
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Privacy
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There's more to it. The mono-culture is one thing, but rolling out the update to millions of computers on the same days sounds like a bad idea.
Fun fact in 2008, with nuclear submarines, the mono-culture was not that bad yet.
It's interesting to note the UK went with a Windows XP variant and not Windows Vista, which is marketed as the more reliable OS. The USA never made the same calculations: The American Navy runs on Linux.
Navy: "we use Arch btw"
No wonder those Navy touchscreen controls killed people...
I personally have never had good luck with Linux touchscreens...
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Not necessarily one provider but one point of failure. In this case it was the update system that allowed one company to push something to production on other companies systems.
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No, that is not correct. Global outage shows the dangers of centralized systems would be a better headline. Monero Worked all day throughout the entire outage with no problems.
Even central currencies can work if you can make offline and peer to peer payments.
Not easy to pull off cryptographically, though.
True, but do you really expect them to let you use a central bank digital currency peer-to-peer and not have some way of revoking your access to it? If so, you're absolutely nuts, LOL.
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... And if the systems you actually interact with go down, you can get fucked as well.
If you want to buy food with Monero and the payment processor for the local shop doesn't work, even if it's a local machine sitting in the back office, you still can't buy anything.
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*global IT outage shows dangers of monopolies.
One problem no one has mentioned, is that it also makes life a lot harder for homeless people. I guess they need to open a bank account and start writing their account number on a cardboard.
This actually reminds me of when I went to a restaurant a while ago. I had some physical money to spend, so I figured I'd take it with me and pay with that. At the end of the meal, while my friends paid with a card, I asked if I could pay with cash. Immediately, the waiter's demeanor changed and he looked almost... disgusted? I don't even know. Then he asked me in a tone that matched his expression if I didn't have a card, and I answered something like "Well, I do, but it would be more convenient for me to pay with cash, if that's okay". Then he, for some reason, repeated the question, and I answered similarly. He didn't say anything and just avoided looking at me. While a friend next to me was paying I asked again, "so, can I pay with cash?", and without looking at me, he just barely shook his head yes. So I paid with cash, and then I awaited my 3€ change back (in my country it's not usually custom to tip because waiters actually get paid full salaries). Eventually he came back with our receipt, but no change. I just left without saying anything - at this point I wasn't going to argue about 3€ - but I'm most definitely not coming back to that place.
Still don't know what the dude's problem was, but it did leave me wondering how are homeless people expected to pay for anything, if even a person who isn't homeless can receive such cold treatment just for choosing to pay with cash.
One problem no one has mentioned, is that it also makes life a lot harder for homeless people.
But to those who organise those systems, they're not consumers with disposable income or a credit line to spend. They are happy for them to fall through the cracks and people not using cash penalises them further by eradicating charity and widening divisions.
It is functioning as designed.
I would have ripped him a new one right there and then in front of everyone. And I would not have asked more than once, I'd just drop my share in cash on the table and be done with it.
That's wild
I would of given that person a piece of my mind. I don't know about different customs but to me that's very disrespectful. They would've gone with no tip or a very small one. I only tip bigger when they pass the baseline of not being rude.
cashless society is a really stupid idea. it's not worth sacrificing privacy and stability for a tiny bit of convenience.
I don't understand why we can't have multiple forms of payment. I'll keep cash and cards so I have options
Same here. In a more general way, I don't understand why people can't simply let things coexist in peace. Just because one doesn't like or use something, doesn't mean that others shouldn't. I'm getting tired of that behavior in our society, to be honest.
Need to send a friend some money? How about you download this proprietary app made by some random company who takes a cut out of the middle. Cash is so outdated we need to use phones for no reason
Does anyone actually want a cashless society though?
I don't carry cash for the same reason I don't carry my socket wrench. I use it for specific things at specific times but I don't need it day to day. That doesn't mean I think socket wrenches should be outlawed.
Governments love the idea. It's much easier to collect taxes or punish dissidents in a cashless society.
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Maybe if somebody needs something we could just give it to them.
Socialism!!! 🤮🤮🤮🤯🤯🤯🤢🤢😷🤒
Think of the shareholders!!!
Agreed. I would love to see a law requiring businesses to accept cash where possible. That sort of law already exists at state and local levels in the US, would like to see it adopted in the UK.
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One of the biggest rules in IT is always have a backup.
A cashless society has no backup.
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What good is cash gonna do if the networked cash register doesn't open anymore?
I think it is important to have cash as a backup.
A couple of years ago there were some issues with card reading terminals in Germany. Due to a faulty security certificate these card reading terminals were not operational for about a whole month. Many stores were affected, because they almost all use ones from the same manufacturer. The only reason why it wasn't such a big deal was that people were carrying cash around anyway and were able to switch the method of payment easily. Having cash worked as a backup.
Bitcoin wasn't down. Hasn't had a single hour of downtime or hack since it started 15 years ago in 2008. No bank holidays. Clear and transparent supply, 100% open source code. Not run by any single government, corporate board, or CEO. Sends money across the globe in under a second for pennies in fees, all you need is a phone. Powerful stuff.
I see this comment every now and then, and it always forgets the cost of the transaction, confirmation time, and of course, the need for miners to exist to process these confirmations/transactions. The energy cost is extraordinary, and the end user is taxed for the use of their own dollars.
It's not really feasible on a broad scale. Bitcoin is a holding stock, not a valid currency. Its value only increases because it manufactures its own scarcity. And as its scarcity increases, it naturally moves toward centralization since mining becomes too large an activity for the individual to reap any benefit. You can argue for proof of stake to eliminate the need for mining, but then you open the doors to centralization more immediately.
Oh yes, it is also feels so good that the richer have priority on transactions because they can pay exorbitant fees while you sometimes need to wait more than a month for a transaction to be confirmed.
I had to make a transaction to a private tracker and I don't want to go through it never again.
I see this comment every now and then, and it always forgets the cost of the transaction, confirmation time
With Bitcoin lightning the confirmation time is under a second and you pay pennies in fees as you don't make the transaction on the main chain. Even main chain is like $1.50 for a 10 minute confirmation time which for many transactions like an international wire is still a great deal.
The energy cost is extraordinary, and the end user is taxed for the use of their own dollars.
The energy cost to maintain the base chain is <1% of global energy use, mostly from renewables at off-peak hours since miners have to chase the cheapest electricity. Remittance services and other funds transfer companies also use energy and human capital to move value around, it's not free. A single on-chain tx can open a lightning channel which can contain and secure trillions of transactions off-chain. Processing these transactions takes the energy equivalent of sending an e-mail. Users are "taxed for the use of their own dollars" in regular currency as well. Who pays that tax and the amount of that tax varies by context.
It can't scale
In the last two months alone, Nostr users (decentralized twitter clone like Mastodon) sent each other 3 million tips over Bitcoin lightning. It absolutely scales. And there is plenty of more room to grow.
Its value only increases because it manufactures its own scarcity.
Its value also comes from its use as a transactional network and from it's political neutrality geopolitically speaking. And from the known supply which nobody can manipulate. It's not purely scarcity.
naturally moves toward centralization since mining becomes too large an activity for the individual to reap any benefit
And yet mining is still distributed globally. Any person, company, or country with spare energy resources can buy an ASIC and mine. Mining pools have become more centralized, but a lot of work has been done on that in recent years and that trend is reversing as a result.
Bitcoin lightning is absolutely hilarious. Your solution to Bitcoins problems is - not using Bitcoin. Wow, galaxy brain move.
The energy cost to maintain the base chain is <1% of global energy use, mostly from renewables
Yeah, that's bullshit. First of all, 1% of energy use for a network that serves a few million transactions per day is really bad. A single 1kW node in Visa's datacenter churns through that in an hour.
Second, it's not renewables. It's everything they can get for cheap. And that's often enough coal, gas, oil. Also, they're driving up power demand as a whole, which means fossil energy is actually needed longer.
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As long as you ignore its problems it's great. I'm sure you do.
Meanwhile the rest of us who don't live in cloud Cuckoo land have to deal with your shitty system that takes 45 minutes to process a transaction and requires the burning down of several rainforests per transaction. So we can see it is probably not a good idea.
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"under a second for pennies in fees"
LOL you either kidding yourself or had never transfer Bitcoin.
At a high demand time, it could take hours to complete a transaction (if it even went through at all) and with an outrageous fee up to dozens of dollars.
Bitcoin has never been known for time efficient nor competitive fees (except for maybe in the beginning when nobody uses it).
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There is so much wrong with that firehose of nonsense you just said I don't have time to correct it all. So I'll focus on this one point:
Bitcoin may not be run by "a single government" but it is run by a small group of billionaires. You're a fool if you believe widespread adoption of it can improve things for regular people.
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It would be fine if not everyone had the same exact setup. Also you can have cashless payments why still supporting cash. They aren't mutually exclusive
Also you can have cashless payments why still supporting cash. They aren't mutually exclusive
Yes, but "cashless society" means one devoid of cash payments. Some countries are talking about getting rid of cash entirely. Cash payments and digital payments both being used in concert is what we have now, there would be no need to "transition to a cashless society" from that to that again, the difference is they want to end cash, entirely, all of it, gone, only digital payments. Thus making "cash" and "cashless society" quite mutually exclusive, actually.
I don't want a cashless society. That's a European thing for the most part.
I want a debit card alternative that doesn't have the same draw backs. I want a solution that doesn't require proprietary banking apps to use.
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Me, wanting to abolish currency entirely...
The economy is so fucked i essentially interact with friends and family on a barter system anyway. I bake them cookies and cakes and they let me use their laundry machines.
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Even cash breaks down pretty quickly in a hypothetical situation where you have something similar occur that lasts for an extended period. When banks' systems are impacted, how do I get more cash from my account with them when whatever amount I had when the system went down runs out? I haven't had a physical passbook for an account in a good 20 years.
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Can't remember which one but credit cards were offline for a time with something and places that still had the carbon paper roller things stashed away took them out and used them. They should keep those things around.
Serious privacy issues around copying cards. That means the store has to retain a physical copy of the full embossed card number.
There were boxes full of them in the backroom.
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Would Taler be more resilient than a typical EMV/AmEx card? It's designed as an online payment system but it's less centralised, so that could help.
It's already an attractive project due to its privacy feature, and due to it being more regulation-friendly that cryptocurrencies. If it's resilient enough it could act as a digital cash.
To me Taler is not a cash alternative, but a card alternative, besides cash. It's better then cards, probably for everyone involved, but it isn't better than cash.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
Campaigners say the chaos caused by the global IT outage last week underlines the risk of moving towards a cashless society.
Supermarkets, banks, pubs, cafes, train stations and airports were all hit by the failure of Microsoft systems on Friday, leaving many unable to accept electronic payments.
The Payment Choice Alliance (PCA), which campaigns against the move towards a cashless society, lists 23 firms and groups, at least some of whose outlets take only credit or debit cards.
Cash payments increased for the first time in a decade last year, according to UK Finance, which represents banks.
The GMB Union said the outage reinforced what it had been saying for years: that “cash is a vital part of how our communities operate”.
In March, McDonald’s, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Gregg’s suffered problems with their payment systems.
The original article contains 416 words, the summary contains 135 words. Saved 68%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
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