Global IT outage shows dangers of cashless society, campaigners say
Global IT outage shows dangers of cashless society, campaigners say
Cash provides essential fallback when digital payments break down, Payment Choice Alliance points out
More like it shows dangers of using only one provider for almost all IT infrastructure.
…why not both?
Because if everyone used cash, schedule systems, records systems, communication systems around the world, breakdown still.
If there's a verity of software vendors used in these systems, and financial systems, you don't get simultaneous global breakdowns any more.
Basically. Using cash won't prevent this from happening. Using several interoperable software providers and systems will.
Choice sounds like something people should not be fighting over :)
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...
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.
This
*global IT outage shows dangers of monopolies.
Why do you hate the "free market"
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. I guess they need to open a bank account and start writing their account number on a cardboard.
And you need a permanent address for a bank account. Unfortunately, that's a feature of the cashless movement not a bug. Anything to make the lives of people experiencing homelessness harder.
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 right. Little turd is way out of line lol
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.
Not sure why you are being downvoted.
I guess depends what you would have said...
Either way, in the US you can just remind them they are legally obligated to take cash. Put down the cash, snap a picture and leave.
If they call police, allow them to explain to a government official how they refused to accept the legal tender in this here country 🐸
I generally don't advise schooling staff but this one is disrepect of liberty, and I don't care, they can get fucked for being a bootlicker.
Shit is disgusting, your preference on my payment method is not a thing and you are beyond out of line with such behavior. Freedom ain't free folks
There are more cashless options than using banks.
In some countries you can use phones (and phone credit, more or less) as your payment option. Doesn't even have to be a smart phone, though that makes it easier.
Beggers on the street with QR codes printed out. Or their phone number on cardboard.
And in other countries, you can use the local equivalent of the Uber app instead of a bank account.
Cashless is good. Safer for the homeless (harder to rob) and still easy to give money to them.
To use phones people need to first buy them and regularly recharge them. Homeless people already have hard time to find other necessities.
Also in some countries you don't have any option to get any sim card and use it without first registering to your name and your address.
For the safety aspect yes, it is harder to rob them of their money but the phones are very easy to steal.
Cashless is only good if you already have some base level of comfort and do not care about your financial privacy. Every cashless transaction you make is recorded, tracked and sold via however many middle man you use.
I am not saying everyone has to use cash but people should have the freedom to choose how they want to pay.
Username checks out.
Let me just pull my phone out, download this money transfer app with an abysmal privacy policy. Now let me register an account and input every personal detail known to man. What's this? I need my government issued ID? I'll inform the beggar I'll just pop to my house to grab it. Got my ID, now I'll complete a liveness test because god forbid that I might be a robot. I may as well send them an ass swab because they need to "know their customer" so well. I just need to link my bank account and enter an OTP that'll take 5 more minutes to arrive. Finally, I can donate to the beggar after messing around with a poorly printed QR code on a cardboard sign.
OR I can just pull out my wallet and hand them a $10 note. I'm going to pick the 10 second process with fewer steps over the 30 minute process any day of the week. Having options is important, especially if your phone dies for whatever reason. A cashless society is just a way for card companies and payment processors to continue making a quick buck in the name of convenience. Both card and cash have their uses, and it should be up to the consumer to decide which to use.
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
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.
Maybe if somebody needs something we could just give it to them.
Socialist scum.
What are you going to say next, that housing is a human right? That food and water should be free? That the economic surplus should first go to the people in need?
You forgot your /s.
Socialism!!! 🤮🤮🤮🤯🤯🤯🤢🤢😷🤒
Think of the shareholders!!!
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.
... 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.
Monero isn't bad but I don't think it is great for easily buying things. At the end of the day trying to use two different currencies is hard. Also Monero gets a bad name because it is used primarily for illegal transactions. It is simply two complex and has no accountability
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.
There already is a lawyer in the UK that says that.
One would think that there would be more than just one lawyer who says that.. Oh well.. :)
Interestingly, the EU is moving in the other direction, with many places requiring that you accept card payments, with cash being optional.
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.
One of the biggest rules in IT is always have a backup.
A cashless society has no backup.
Then don't get rid of cash. We can do both you know
The backup with a crypto, such as Monero or Bitcoin, would be to print out a paper wallet and then load the money onto it. LOL.
- take "this"... 2..... 3....
- profit
What good is cash gonna do if the networked cash register doesn't open anymore?
They have paper and pens that they can track their transactions until the system is fixed.
A cashless society is so stupid beyond words. In order to create one you must also create a full surveillance society to protect it, and even that would be ineffective to stop it from being hacked.
Just to be clear we are a mostly cashless society and the majority of currency is not physically in existence around the world and somehow it manages to be protected by and large.
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.
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.
This ordeal has made me think, I think I'm gonna just pull out $10 a week from my check and put it in a box, eventually I'll have a stash and if shit goes down at least I'll have that, and I already have a small collection of silver (and uhh....brass, copper, and lead...) that I could trade for things.
One EMP and ** Poof ** It's all gone
More or less the opening line of Dark Angel, iirc
So is the water supply, food and electricity. I don't want to think about it.
See, we don't have to use nuclear warheads anymore. Everyone, please dispose them safely
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.
My friends and I used to call those machines ker-chunkers. 😂
Knuckle-buster was the industry term, and they were already obsolete 20 years ago...
I've heard it mentioned as a "fly swatter" in my mother's tongue.
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.
I live outside of time, outside of currency...
No kings, no presidents, no senators... Just... Coreys.
I'll pay with gold bars
I'm biased. I hate digital money for stalkerware.
Taler is one of the coolest projects I've seen
Achieving a moneyless society after one big overlong network outage.
I’m not in favor of a cashless society but looking at how Apple and Google are pushing their wallets (and how practical it is) you guys need to come to piece with the fact that cash might die with the millennial generation. Most Gen X don’t have / want a physical wallet and money needs to be digital.
With that said, I believe this Crowdstrike fiasco just proved that the biggest threat to IT lies inside the companies themselves and on the managers who decide to use this kind malware without properly understanding the risks. Yes, I’ve said it and I’ll say it again Crowdstrike is malware, anything that messes with Windows at that level is malware, there’s no other description and shouldn’t be allowed by Microsoft to exist.
Im the Xer type with no smartphone and prefers the wallet. I remember so many shows or street people with paranoia would have the horror of government trackers but I find the horror of corporate trackers to be much worse and far to real now.
Yeah, those same people totally paranoid about govt tracker are now carrying smartphones around no problem, how ironic isn’t it? :)
Industry standard solution that protects companies against malware is malware? Any proper AV will have unrestricted access to system. Only other option is for companies to completely lock down your device.
Yes. It is.
Any system with this level of access to the system should be opensource and tested against actual workloads before shipping updates to prod.
Something like ebpf would make more sense too.
Here’s the thing, malware protection is supposed to deliver protection and one important aspect of that is making sure there’s business continuity… what they did was to completely fuck over their customers in that aspect, they become the problem and I bet that most companies running their solution would never suffer any catastrophic failure this bad if they didn’t run their software at all. No hacker would be able to take down so many systems so fast and so hard.
I carry cash and so do many of the younger people I know. It is handy sometimes and happens to be private.
Me too, but we're not the majority.
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.
The only crypto that is kind if useful is Monero and that's because it is really private and anonymous. The problem with private and anonymous is that is ends up becoming a tool for crime.
I really like Talers approach with protecting the buyer not the seller. From a mass surveillance and advertising perspective they only see half the picture which makes the deep surveillance hard. Also it keeps businesses honest and supports rule of law.
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.
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.
This is why Taler was created. It is a payment system not a payment form
45 minutes to process a transaction and requires the burning down of several rainforests per transaction.
Don't listen to people who are critical of a thing if they clearly don't even understand the basics of how it works. On main chain, a Bitcoin transaction typically take up to ten minutes (the time between blocks). It can take longer if you set a super low fee, but you can guarantee your payment goes into the next block by paying an average fee, usually around $0.75. Your wallet does this all automatically.
On lightning where most transactions occur these days (secured by main chain) transactions settle fully in under a second. Do your own research.
Besides, we all know Bitcoin only takes a single rainforest per transaction, it's been that way since the great rainfork which is ancient history at this point.
"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).
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).
At least you admit people use it. Bitcoin lightning enables transactions in under a second for pennies in fees, it's been around for 5+ years. Your information is outdated. In the last two months, Nostr users alone (decentralized twitter clone like Mastodon) sent each other 2.6 million tips (individual transactions) over Bitcoin lightning. None of that requires an on-chain transaction, none of it required high fees. It works. It scales. It continues to improve.
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.
Crypto won't scale
The computational requirements are high and its value fluctuates way to much. Also bitcoin isn't even private and you are basically shouting to the world every time you make a payment.
Crypto won’t scale
And yet every year, for 15 years, the transaction capacity has continued to increase. Networking protocols (TCP/IP, SMTP, etc) also didn't scale to "internet scale" in the first 15 years. They just kept adding new layers to the stack and optimizing it until it did. Just like Bitcoin added Lightning, Taproot, etc to improve scaling.
In the last two months, Nostr users alone (decentralized twitter clone like Mastodon) sent each other 2.6 million tips (individual transactions) over Bitcoin lightning. None of that requires an on-chain transaction, none of it required high fees. It works. It scales. It continues to improve. Lightning has capacity for trillions more transactions because capacity is not tied to chain space.
Also bitcoin isn’t even private and you are basically shouting to the world every time you make a payment.
Bitcoin is pseudonymous. If you make a wallet, nobody knows you own that wallet unless you tell them (or a third party like an exchange), but the balance and transactions on-chain are visible. There are ways to make your transactions more private, like coinjoin, you can have multiple addresses with multiple coins.
With lightning, transactions are opaque except to you and any nodes you route through, because lightning transactions don't go on chain. This also means nobody knows your current balance. If you make a transaction between two lightning nodes that share a channel, nobody knows that transaction was made outside of those two nodes. Privacy continues to improve, see BOLT 12 for the latest upgrades in this area.
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!
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.
Cash alternative
I don't think replacing cash is a good idea
Taler is closer to an EMV card alternative, rather than a cash alternative.
Hopefully cash remains. But regions and businesses are already starting to go cashless, so I'd rather have Tale as an option.
Regarding homeless people I'd say just carry a bunch of 2 euro coins. You can get them in a roll against a small payment at exchanges and it'll last you a long time. That way you can also budget your donations.
If you’re against cashless you’re a criminal or a tax evader, which is also criminal.
What a horribly flawed opinion to have.
The ability to pay with cash is great just in case a country's cashless system(s), especially the one you use the most, goes down for any reason. Gives a backup just in case you need to pay for stuff locally like at a store but your digital money is essentially in limbo until the system(s) is/are fixed.
Amazon didnt pay a penny in taxes where i live, theyre giant criminals yet they dont need to use cash to evade taxes.
Like drugs have never been bought on card, and money washed through banks...
It may be the case that people do not want every single step they take to be monitored as it currently is.
You might not have a phone or be charged per use of card.