3 ms·

I'm surprised we don't have something like this in the U.S. Just last week I was withdrawing cash from an ATM because I was worried the power would be out for a

• lxgr 3y ago
  Almost-ubiquitous, almost-free network connectivity can be a curse when it comes to the development of resilient systems. The US has had free local calling for many decades now, so online card authorizations were always much cheaper than in many other countries, even long before the internet. Still, there were some applications: The article mentions laundromats, but as far as I know, US military ships have also had a similar system. There’s an interesting recent legislation proposal today that argues for a very similar system, but primarily for the sake of privacy (although network/power failure resiliency would be nice secondary benefits): https://ecashact.us/ https://ecashact.us/