from Hacker News

Cash registers in Poland fail due to new year bug (PL)

by Donmario on 1/4/20, 5:18 PM with 23 comments

• by nippoo on 1/4/20, 6:27 PM

  I wouldn't be surprised if something alone the lines of `split("20")` or `replace("20", ““)` was the culprit somewhere (to turn it into a 2-digit year). I've seen the most absurd date handling code...

• by foobarian on 1/4/20, 6:24 PM

  On the topic of dates broken around New Year's, there is this perennial favorite:

  http://dangoldin.com/2019/01/06/javas-simpledateformat-yyyy-...

• by astura on 1/4/20, 7:01 PM

  So far I've heard of the following fail due to some sort of 2020 bug:

  Parking meters: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/nyregion/nyc-parking-mete...

  Video games: https://www.dsogaming.com/news/star-wars-jedi-fallen-order-w...

  Now cash registers.

  Anything else?

• by jaredwiener on 1/4/20, 6:28 PM

  Similar issue in NYC with parking meters: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/nyregion/nyc-parking-mete...

• by acqq on 1/4/20, 6:38 PM

  Apparently it's a "bug in the software of popular Delio cash printers from Novitus". The product page of the printer mentioned is:

  https://www.novitus.pl/en/produkty/systemy-fiskalne/delio-pr...

  It can be seen that the printer already existed in 2009 and then got something ("Polish Promotional Emblem" according to Google Translate) https://www.novitus.pl/sites/default/files/certyfikaty_tp_55...

  Even if it's only one model, if the companies have only that one model of printers they won't be able to sell anything until the printers are serviced.

  Effectively, having such a bug in software, even in multiple units of the same model translates to a single point of failure for the company using it.

• by ethbro on 1/4/20, 6:18 PM

  I would love to hear what bizarre encoding they used that resulted in 2020 being an issue.

  (I'm assuming these machines aren't all < year old and just break on any new year)