massive IT outage hits the world

Exodi

HillStreetBlues said:

There is certainly more incentive not to cause a major muck up in either Russia or China.

Plus let's be honest, they wouldn't tell the world even if they did.

Let's not forget that China, with some of the most densely populated regions on Earth, reported extremely low Covid cases and currently still sits at an incredible rank #92 for reported cases, narrowly beating Réunion (which has 0.06% of the population): https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

DullGreyGuy

TELLIT01 said:

The wonders of modern technology.  I wonder how those who brag about never carrying cash are getting on.

Perfectly fine thanks @tellit01, Tesco, Coop and TFL were all working fine in the morning and when got to the pub in the evening they'd had no problems all day too whereas those that only use cash weren't accepted on Friday or for the last 6 years or the rest of the weekend as they are a cashless business. 

The only impact it had on me was the GP surgery and parts of the NHS system being down but our local hospital uses MyChart which didnt go down so was able to prove my treatment plan and get treated. 

Diversification will always help protect against these types of risks. 

DullGreyGuy

Sea_Shell said:

My laptop wants to do an update.  Windows.

I've ignored it for a couple of days, but I hope this is not connected in any way and no reason I shouldn't run it.

It wasnt directly a windows problem... it was a problem with some Anti-Virus software that is sold on a Security As A Service basis and so only impacting corporates. The same software didnt cause problems on Mac, Linux or other *nix systems and in principle couldn't cause the same problem because of the different setup of windows -v- nix. 

I very much doubt any people are buying a SECaaS for home computers, their middle tier solution is $189 per device per year or $99/device/year for small businesses 

Exodi

TELLIT01 said:

The wonders of modern technology.  I wonder how those who brag about never carrying cash are getting on.

I expect any old-timers that spend every waking hour praying for any reason to keep using paper money over digital transactions in an increasingly digitized economy will organically fizzle out over the next few decades (unless you intend to indoctrinate your children to reinforce that they also need to stuff cash under their mattress for when the world ends to keep it going a little bit longer).

I don't carry cash, and I could count how many times in the past year I've thought "I wish I had cash right now" on one hand, and in effectively all these cases it was due to a piece of old equipment (e.g. parking machine, vending machine, gym room locker, etc).

But this isn't a new phenomena, all generations think their tech/processes/etc were best.

It wouldn't suprise me in 30 years when I'm retired and it's possible to pay for something by thinking about it, that I'll be grumbling to my kids about the good ol' days of using a plastic card with numbers on it to pay for things.

TELLIT01

Exodi said:

TELLIT01 said:

The wonders of modern technology.  I wonder how those who brag about never carrying cash are getting on.

I expect any old-timers that spend every waking hour praying for any reason to keep using paper money over digital transactions in an increasingly digitized economy will organically fizzle out over the next few decades (unless you intend to indoctrinate your children to reinforce that they also need to stuff cash under their mattress for when the world ends to keep it going a little bit longer).

I don't carry cash, and I could count how many times in the past year I've thought "I wish I had cash right now" on one hand, and in effectively all these cases it was due to a piece of old equipment (e.g. parking machine, vending machine, gym room locker, etc).

But this isn't a new phenomena, all generations think their tech/processes/etc were best.

It wouldn't suprise me in 30 years when I'm retired and it's possible to pay for something by thinking about it, that I'll be grumbling to my kids about the good ol' days of using a plastic card with numbers on it to pay for things.

I do pay for the majority of purchases by card, but to assume card payment will always be available is risky, as last weekend showed.  There's a large garden centre near us which never reintroduced cash payment following the Covid pandemic.  They lost their internet access one Bank Holiday weekend and had to close for 3 days at the busiest time of the year.  Not having a fallback plan either as an individual or business seems very short sighted to me.

victor2

TELLIT01 said:

Exodi said:

TELLIT01 said:

The wonders of modern technology.  I wonder how those who brag about never carrying cash are getting on.

I expect any old-timers that spend every waking hour praying for any reason to keep using paper money over digital transactions in an increasingly digitized economy will organically fizzle out over the next few decades (unless you intend to indoctrinate your children to reinforce that they also need to stuff cash under their mattress for when the world ends to keep it going a little bit longer).

I don't carry cash, and I could count how many times in the past year I've thought "I wish I had cash right now" on one hand, and in effectively all these cases it was due to a piece of old equipment (e.g. parking machine, vending machine, gym room locker, etc).

But this isn't a new phenomena, all generations think their tech/processes/etc were best.

It wouldn't suprise me in 30 years when I'm retired and it's possible to pay for something by thinking about it, that I'll be grumbling to my kids about the good ol' days of using a plastic card with numbers on it to pay for things.

I do pay for the majority of purchases by card, but to assume card payment will always be available is risky, as last weekend showed.  There's a large garden centre near us which never reintroduced cash payment following the Covid pandemic.  They lost their internet access one Bank Holiday weekend and had to close for 3 days at the busiest time of the year.  Not having a fallback plan either as an individual or business seems very short sighted to me.

It's the old "disaster recovery" planning. Very few small businesses have such a plan. Unless you've got a business that must be running 24/7, it often requires little more than documenting what you would do. Like where could you hire a generator from (and connect it up) or what is a suitable MiFi device to use if your Internet line gets severed...
There's much more to it than that obviously,  but it isn't rocket science. 

MouldyOldDough

Exodi said:

HillStreetBlues said:

There is certainly more incentive not to cause a major muck up in either Russia or China.

Plus let's be honest, they wouldn't tell the world even if they did.

Let's not forget that China, with some of the most densely populated regions on Earth, reported extremely low Covid cases and currently still sits at an incredible rank #92 for reported cases, narrowly beating Réunion (which has 0.06% of the population): https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

Some people say that China (and North Korea) have under-reported the number of Covid cases - with a true figure of at least 1000x that claimed.

But who am I to query the great leaders ?

vacheron

I was very impressed at my local Asda superstore a few years ago when they had a payment process outage while we were in the store and by the time we came to pay about 20 minutes later a manager was pushing a cart behind the 20 or so checkouts and handing out card impression machines and piles of carbon payment slips and pens to each cashier.

I was also able to enjoy going into "old man mode" and explain to my wife (10 years younger than me) how they worked and why the numbers are rasised on cards with a pre-authorisation limit... and also why I still insist she signs the back of her cards when they arrive despite her isistence of "why? nobody else ever checks or even touches them"!  

victor2

These days, with products not even having a price label, just a bar code, your average supermarket would presumably be pretty stuffed if their till systems went down.

onomatopoeia99

vacheron said:

I was very impressed at my local Asda superstore a few years ago when they had a payment process outage while we were in the store and by the time we came to pay about 20 minutes later a manager was pushing a cart behind the 20 or so checkouts and handing out card impression machines and piles of carbon payment slips and pens to each cashier.

Cards are increasingly not having the embossed numbers on them so won't work with the impression machines.  Certainly my main credit card doesnt, nor does my current account debit card, so it's the chip or nothing.