Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

McDonald's Technology Outage Forces Restaurant Closures

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 19 posts

Re: McDonald's Technology Outage Forces Restaurant Closures

#4

Post by dylan604 »

joezydeco wrote: post #3

Cloud goes up, cloud goes down. Same story, different day. At least it's not aws-east-1 today.

All of these things that refuse to work without network connection is just mind boggling. I understand the need/want for the companies to have all of that data centralized, but to not have a graceful pathway for when the network fails is just burning cash. Store data locally so it can be pushed to the cloud when network returns, but don't just stop working.

Re: McDonald's Technology Outage Forces Restaurant Closures

#5

Post by organsnyder »

dylan604 wrote: post #4
joezydeco wrote: post #3

Cloud goes up, cloud goes down. Same story, different day. At least it's not aws-east-1 today.

All of these things that refuse to work without network connection is just mind boggling. I understand the need/want for the companies to have all of that data centralized, but to not have a graceful pathway for when the network fails is just burning cash. Store data locally so it can be pushed to the cloud when network returns, but don't just stop working.

The article summary indicates that payment processing was affected. I'm not sure what possibilities there are for offline payment processing, but that's different than just not being able to report sales numbers or something. And opening cash-only is probably not worth the hassle for many locations.

Re: McDonald's Technology Outage Forces Restaurant Closures

#7

Post by dylan604 »

organsnyder wrote: post #5
dylan604 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these things that refuse to work without network connection is just mind boggling. I understand the need/want for the companies to have all of that data centralized, but to not have a graceful pathway for when the network fails is just burning cash. Store data locally so it can be pushed to the cloud when network returns, but don't just stop working.

The article summary indicates that payment processing was affected. I'm not sure what possibilities there are for offline payment processing, but that's different than just not being able to report sales numbers or something. And opening cash-only is probably not worth the hassle for many locations.

"Back in my day..." we had registers that held the money that customers exchanged for the goods. Servers could write down orders on small pad and hand it to the cooks. There were lots of ways to not close your business because the phone company wasn't working. The move to cashless society has many pros/cons, and this is just showing a glaring item from the cons list. You live by the sword, you die by the sword. Some of us prefer some shields and armor though

Edit: it's so ancient that even I nearly forgot about them, but credit cards used to work by having the company take an impression of the card, then send in the receipts. sure, it might take a few days for transactions to complete, but it worked for several decades. there are fallbacks available to us, if we would just decide to allow for it rather than just failing

Re: McDonald's Technology Outage Forces Restaurant Closures

#10

Post by jonhohle »

dylan604 wrote: post #4
joezydeco wrote: post #3

Cloud goes up, cloud goes down. Same story, different day. At least it's not aws-east-1 today.

All of these things that refuse to work without network connection is just mind boggling. I understand the need/want for the companies to have all of that data centralized, but to not have a graceful pathway for when the network fails is just burning cash. Store data locally so it can be pushed to the cloud when network returns, but don't just stop working.

Maybe it’s their lineage, but I appreciate most native, first party iPhone apps having local first data storage. 4G is increasingly spotty in my area and it’s a crapshoot whether I can reliably load a time sensitive app that requires remote data in some areas. Throwing something in Notes, Photos, or Wallet always works, though. I’m not sure why I still can’t have my full mailbox on my phone, but at least there are several local options.
Post reply on HN