4 ms·

What a load of absolute garbage. Banking has some of the slowest to migrate MAINFRAME workloads. These keep track of things in order, atomic transactions, sync

What a load of absolute garbage. Banking has some of the slowest to migrate MAINFRAME workloads. These keep track of things in order, atomic transactions, synchronous writes to HA solutions. "When you pull cash from an ATM or swipe your card at the coffee shop, the machine needs to determine the precise time that the transaction occurs to, for example, prevent it from being over-drawn." Absolutely and completely false. You do the withdrawal inside an atomic transaction on deposit balance. This is 101 type stuff - how is this garbage getting to HN?

viro 5y ago
> how is this garbage getting to HN? huh? what do you mean? I'm pretty sure comments can say w/e nonsense the user wants ... as long as it doesn't break rules.
- whoknowswhat11 5y ago
  Clickbait articles with clearly ridiculous assertions (without GPS the bank won't know if you overdrew your account).
dogma1138 5y ago
I’m not sure why you are being so hostile, but the GP is quite correct. Clock sync error is one of the most common reasons why credit card terminals fail to process a transaction. GPS is one of the most common ways to set up a clock, and whilst the terminals and ATMs usually don’t get GPS time directly but through an NTP server the NTP servers do set their time via GPS. Even if you have an atomic clock it’s usually set via GPS first. GPS time is why you can actually get a coax to an external GPS antenna in most datacenters today. After banks and stock exchange another victim of the clockpocalypse would be the Internet at large since whilst TLS itself doesn’t require time synchronization other dependencies such as certificate validation do. Most modern computers are really really bad at keeping exact time without synchronization, it wouldn’t take much to knock them all out of sync and if GPS goes down it would be really really bad… Oh and if that isn’t enough then modern cellular networks are also extremely dependent on GPS for both keeping time tolerances in check and for many other reasons. If Russia knocks out GPS or there is a global GPS outage it will wreck the global economy in a manner that I don’t think most people can even comprehend.
- whoknowswhat11 5y ago
  You cannot overdraw your account because your computers clock is wrong. You cannot overdraw your account because there is an issue with a credit card terminal around clock sync. This simply cannot happen. If it can, let me suggest that whoever is writing the account debit code wrap the balance check and debit in a transaction. You can easily stick a rackmount atomic clock in your data center. NTP can source from a variety of sources. There are digital RADIO time signals. On a given exchange, again, you can still trade stocks. Folks forget that there used to be open outcry trading. Even without that an order book can be operated successfully without GPS. Credit card terminals do not require clock sync with GPS links, they do not have GPS antennas in most cases. If they need precise time, they can timestamp when going through authorization steps to approve the transaction. It's weird, as someone I guess older, the new generation seems to build such fragile system and think only such ultra complex systems are usable. Yes, things like Google's Spanner are cool. Yes, performance would degrade without GPS (maybe - I can think of some work arounds). But not everyone needs globally distributed consistent databases. You'd be surprised at how much of banking, stock exchange work does NOT depend on anything like these tools. I wish the HN comments would focus on the many pretty obvious options one could deploy if GPS went away if you even believed that the current system means your bank account will be overdrawn because of a lack of GPS.
  - dogma1138 5y ago
    No one said you can overdraw your account but the terminal would simply refuse to connect or the transaction would be rejected by the server due to clock sync issues. Also no one said that the terminals get a GPS signal either but if the clock is off on them vs the server they will fail, I have worked on a lot of payment systems. Rackmount atomic clocks still need a GPS signal today to be set or they have to be pre-set in a central location and then distributed. Time syncing used to be a PITA and now it’s easy due to GPS so pretty much every protocol has a very narrow time tolerance. My work HP laptop drifts 3-5 min over the weekend of the VPN because it’s not set to an external time server and all hell breaks loose. Yes civilization will not end over night but it would have a major impact we will find ways to get by but there will be havoc and the financial damages will be in the trillions heck the disruption to shipping and logistics alone would be immense nearly every one and every thing today is reliant on GPS either directly or indirectly.

viro 5y ago

> how is this garbage getting to HN? huh? what do you mean? I'm pretty sure comments can say w/e nonsense the user wants ... as long as it doesn't break rules.

whoknowswhat11 5y ago
Clickbait articles with clearly ridiculous assertions (without GPS the bank won't know if you overdrew your account).

dogma1138 5y ago

I’m not sure why you are being so hostile, but the GP is quite correct. Clock sync error is one of the most common reasons why credit card terminals fail to process a transaction. GPS is one of the most common ways to set up a clock, and whilst the terminals and ATMs usually don’t get GPS time directly but through an NTP server the NTP servers do set their time via GPS. Even if you have an atomic clock it’s usually set via GPS first. GPS time is why you can actually get a coax to an external GPS antenna in most datacenters today. After banks and stock exchange another victim of the clockpocalypse would be the Internet at large since whilst TLS itself doesn’t require time synchronization other dependencies such as certificate validation do. Most modern computers are really really bad at keeping exact time without synchronization, it wouldn’t take much to knock them all out of sync and if GPS goes down it would be really really bad… Oh and if that isn’t enough then modern cellular networks are also extremely dependent on GPS for both keeping time tolerances in check and for many other reasons. If Russia knocks out GPS or there is a global GPS outage it will wreck the global economy in a manner that I don’t think most people can even comprehend.

whoknowswhat11 5y ago
You cannot overdraw your account because your computers clock is wrong. You cannot overdraw your account because there is an issue with a credit card terminal around clock sync. This simply cannot happen. If it can, let me suggest that whoever is writing the account debit code wrap the balance check and debit in a transaction. You can easily stick a rackmount atomic clock in your data center. NTP can source from a variety of sources. There are digital RADIO time signals. On a given exchange, again, you can still trade stocks. Folks forget that there used to be open outcry trading. Even without that an order book can be operated successfully without GPS. Credit card terminals do not require clock sync with GPS links, they do not have GPS antennas in most cases. If they need precise time, they can timestamp when going through authorization steps to approve the transaction. It's weird, as someone I guess older, the new generation seems to build such fragile system and think only such ultra complex systems are usable. Yes, things like Google's Spanner are cool. Yes, performance would degrade without GPS (maybe - I can think of some work arounds). But not everyone needs globally distributed consistent databases. You'd be surprised at how much of banking, stock exchange work does NOT depend on anything like these tools. I wish the HN comments would focus on the many pretty obvious options one could deploy if GPS went away if you even believed that the current system means your bank account will be overdrawn because of a lack of GPS.
- dogma1138 5y ago
  No one said you can overdraw your account but the terminal would simply refuse to connect or the transaction would be rejected by the server due to clock sync issues. Also no one said that the terminals get a GPS signal either but if the clock is off on them vs the server they will fail, I have worked on a lot of payment systems. Rackmount atomic clocks still need a GPS signal today to be set or they have to be pre-set in a central location and then distributed. Time syncing used to be a PITA and now it’s easy due to GPS so pretty much every protocol has a very narrow time tolerance. My work HP laptop drifts 3-5 min over the weekend of the VPN because it’s not set to an external time server and all hell breaks loose. Yes civilization will not end over night but it would have a major impact we will find ways to get by but there will be havoc and the financial damages will be in the trillions heck the disruption to shipping and logistics alone would be immense nearly every one and every thing today is reliant on GPS either directly or indirectly.