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Global IT outage shows dangers of cashless society, campaigners say
- undebuggable 2y agoThe things do not fallback but rather propagate causing an avalanche. The only alternative to electronic payments which always boil down to some form of VISA or Mastercard card, is cash.
- inkyoto 2y agoCash has to be dispensed first, and ATM's run on Windows, and so do banking terminals at bank branches. I do not have the information about what happened to the ATM's during the meltdown on Friday, but the bank branches where CrowdStrike had been deployed were rendered inoperable. So, no, cash is not going to help.
- undebuggable 2y agoYou withdraw cash every single time you need it?! The point of cash is that you don't ping the systems on every transaction and you decide how frequently it's withdrawn.
- inkyoto 2y agoAnswering the question with a question: do you withdraw hundreds or thousands in your local currency and keep it all under the mattress for that random black day? Cash has a habit of running out from time to time, most annoyingly when it is needed and the amount of cash on hand is $0.50 – $1 short, hence the universal uptake of electronic payments. There is no going back.
- uhjk 2y ago[dead]
- rbanffy 2y agoIt highlights the risk of a fragile infrastructure.
- gjsman-1000 2y agoAll infrastructure is fragile and always will be. Bridges collapse; police go corrupt; electricity has outages; gasoline suffers price shocks; governments have a 100% failure rate; an 1870s-style solar flare would send us back to medieval times. All we can do is: A. Diversify, under the belief nothing is infallible; and even perfect engineering can experience catastrophic failure B. Enjoy what we have today, knowing it is a gift, not a right Also, while we blame CrowdStrike, let’s not forget that SSH was within weeks of being backdoored on a global scale. The power that would have unleashed (and proxy power, I.e. breaking into CloudStrike and then Windows by extension) very well could have ended the internet.
- dave4420 2y agoSome infrastructure is more fragile than others. 2020s UK electricity infrastructure is more reliable than 1980s UK electricity infrastructure, for example.
- rbanffy 2y agoAnd with the push towards renewables and battery storage, 2040's energy grid is expected to be MUCH more robust than 2020's.
- phyalow 2y agoThe inevitable march of entropy.
- Angostura 2y ago> A. Diversify, under the belief nothing is infallible; and even perfect engineering can experience catastrophic failure Hence keeping cash alive has it’s advantages
- 1970-01-01 2y ago
- hdhshdhshdjd 2y agoThe cash is subject to inflation and poor central banking decisions. To be really safe, let’s just go back to a barter system. Just bring five eggs to the pub and get a pint.
- goatlover 2y agoAnd what do I give the power company?
- nicce 2y agoYou promise to cut the trees under their power cables on your land
- verandaguy 2y agoWhat if you rent or own a condo? What if you don’t own tree cutting equipment? What if you have a disability that prevents you from cutting trees? What if your property doesn’t have trees to cut?
- eponeponepon 2y agoIt's fine, it's worked for millennia - you simply gather your many belligerent sons, hand them large clubs and send them to batter the power company's director till he gives in.
- hdhshdhshdjd 2y agoTen eggs per power, obviously.
- majorbugger 2y agoYou're fighting a strawman. Noone is advocating pure cash here, just that the cash should remain an option.
- hdhshdhshdjd 2y ago
- whalesalad 2y agoShows the dangers of infrastructure running on Windows. There are ways to build resilient systems that can survive shit like this. Look at the internet. Look at the phone system.
- gjsman-1000 2y agoLast month; SSH was nearly backdoored with nobody noticing. SSH, open source software, and one of the most important pieces of software ever written for security, was extremely close to failure. If that had happened, an attacker very well could have ended the entire internet as we know it. Imagine if that hacker merely used that backdoor to get into Windows Update servers, Google Play servers, or sent out a CrowdStrike update. We were within weeks of nothing being safe.
- undebuggable 2y agoA round decade after Heartbleed... it just periodically reminds that it needs some attention and love. People just use it paying nothing.
- hypeatei 2y agoNo security vulnerability, even an OpenSSH bug, would result in the internet being taken down overnight. There are organizations and people who apply "security in layers" mindset so that one slip up doesn't result in a complete takeover of systems.
- connor4312 2y agoCrowdstrike could have deployed the same broken code in their Linux or macOS agents. Nothing much for Windows to do if a kernel driver is segfaulting (when disabling it could be dangerous for users.)
- whalesalad 2y agomacOS and Linux do not have nearly as much a need for ridiculous endpoint security tools like this to begin with. The world running on Windows is a monumental waste of resources and a huge security threat. This will happen over and over again. The fact that even dummy little terminals that are strictly responsible for showing flight arrivals and departures was impacted by this is hysterical. Why was that not an android or chromeos device with an immutable filesystem, A/B blue green update strategies etc.
- billy_bitchtits 2y agoThe bitcoin network managed just fine. Tick tock next block.
- wepple 2y agoMy barter system of growing vegetables to trade with managed just fine too. But it was useless for buying gas with, unfortunately.
- ben_w 2y agoThe bitcoin network can't handle just income and (possibly even or) rent/mortgage payments in just the Netherlands. If it had to also cover an average of one meal payment per person per day, it couldn't handle just Coventry. Extra payment layers quickly start to look like banks with all the same kinds of expectations and failures popping up.
- verandaguy 2y agoThe Bitcoin network is slow to verify and has the environmental impact of a medium-sized industrialized economy just to run the thing. It's also exceptionally volatile compared to fiat currencies (though at this point pretty stable compared to other cryptocurrencies), and the fact that it's deflationary makes it difficult to justify as a solution in a still-growing worldwide economy.
- timbit42 2y agoLightning Network?
- FpUser 2y ago>"Global IT outage shows dangers of cashless society" No shit Sherlock. It takes pure genius to guess that we've had, and will always have technological / infrastructure failures. For our particular case politicians who are pushing for elimination of cash are either criminals or brain dead imbeciles. Not sure which case is worst.
- mcny 2y agoIt highlights the dangers of a mono culture as well. Most importantly though, I remember my history professor who always said, "follow the money!" Do the CEO and the board have to pay (either in money out of pocket or time served in prison) for these problems (outages / oil spills / global warming / what not)? If not, what incentive do they have to make the likelihood of these problems dial down to zero? I like this article https://archive.ph/1ekmk https://archive.ph/1ekmk
- zoobab 2y agoNo fines, no prison.
- hoffs 2y agoIt's up to the customersthat were affected, they could sue for damages, but doubt many will do
- mcny 2y agoI anal so I don't really know what I am talking about but I am hoping for criminal liability as opposed to civil liability. For example, I am thinking if I kill someone with no next of kin, I still have criminal liability even if nobody from the victim's family is there to sue me.
- didntcheck 2y agoThe company does have to use its assets to pay anything it's liable for, yes. It sounds like essentially arguing against the concept of limited liability for the owners and investors? I would regard LL as generally a good thing. Without it, it would be a much bigger ask for anyone to start up a business when they're putting their own house and everything at risk. And I expect it would lead to an even further skew of already-rich people dominating investment and company ownership
- bryanlarsen 2y ago> start up a business when they're putting their own house and everything at risk Every hardware startup founder I've been involved with has used their house and/or their retirement savings to back their operating loan. I think the advantages of incorporation have been well established by now, and believe that partly removing limited liability would not significantly effect incorporation rates.
- thrill 2y agoIt certainly shows the dangers of non-rigorous testing before transmission and non-rigorous testing before acceptance, but first-to-market and ignoring technical debt will remain the business mantra.
- bamboozled 2y agoAmen. 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. Cash is also the only payment system I can think of which is truly “private”. I think this is important too.
- gtk40 2y agoYou're probably right, but it doesn't always feel that way when you have serial numbers on every piece of currency. And coins are so uselessly low value today that they're hard to use.
- bamboozled 2y agoIt’s pretty hard to track serial numbers , you can easily wash the money” yourself ?
- inglor_cz 2y agoSome ATMs likely already track serial numbers, so you know when the banknote left the bank's custody and who withdrew it, using which card. You can also track serial numbers when businesses return daily cash collections to their bank. Especially the biggest denominations won't be passed back to other customers in the meantime, but rather sent back to the bank early.
- greenthrow 2y agoIs it really private? You have to use it in person and every place of business has cameras nowadays.
- 1_1xdev1 2y agoIt’s way more private than all of your transaction history rolled up by your card issuer. Does some central authority have access to and the compute power to correlate all of the data available in those video feeds? No
- hypeatei 2y agoI still use cash at a few small businesses who don't take cards because of fees and management overhead. Perhaps if we capped fees and made accepting cards (or any type of electronic payment) more of a utility then it wouldn't be so cumbersome and costly.
- elforce002 2y agoHear, hear! There are no outages, hacks, etc... when using cash. I use credit cards as much as anyone else but also use money at every opportunity. Shops need to use collect on delivery as a form of payment too.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoCashless societies are dangerous purely for reasons of privacy and freedom. The ability to trade without government oversight matters. I am appalled to see government run services, hospitals, and stores near me start to refuse cash. That shouldn’t be legal. Not to mention, cashless systems like Visa and Mastercard and PayPal are subject to private overlords that may scrutinize or ban your transactions.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 2y agoActually the ultimate fallback is force. So to really diversify you should stock up on weapons and ammunition and gather a group of likeminded people and train together in a fortified location. Of course, that is likely to have its own issues.
- sllabres 2y agoI found this page [1] interesting in regard to cash supply in Sweden, as it is a country always reported with a high affinity to online payment and statistics [2] (from 2019) seems to support that statement. [1] https://www.riksbank.se/en-gb/payments--cash/payments-in-sweden/payments-report--2024/the-riksbanks-work-and-policy/more-measures-needed-to-protect-cash/the-riksbanks-responsibility-for-cash-has-been-clarified/ https://www.riksbank.se/en-gb/payments--cash/payments-in-swe... [2] https://www.statista.com/chart/17307/paying-with-cash-europe/ https://www.statista.com/chart/17307/paying-with-cash-europe...
- ksec 2y agoPeople always have to learn it the hard way. For a lot of people new to HN or may not remember, from 2014 - 2018, the whole Silicon Valley and tech industry, included but not limited to HN were ALL for cashless society. Pages and Pages of comment on HN were all about how great cashless society would be. And Apple wanted to be a big part of this. In 2015 Tim Cook said he wants a cashless society by 2025.