this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2024
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Self-pay gas station pumps break across NZ as software can’t handle Leap Day::"We'll add it to our Outlook reminders..."

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[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It was millennia ago when I first read "don't ship your own date/time library". Guess these fellas somehow missed it.

(I did this thing a while ago, but hopefully it doesn't count since it's a joke library)

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)

A decade ago Tom Scott was recorded for Computerphile with this hilarious an enlightening cautionary tale. Never, ever, write your own calendar code.

https://youtu.be/-5wpm-gesOY

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

That was excellent, thank you.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://piped.video/-5wpm-gesOY

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Does your September library break on leap Septembers?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I honestly have no idea, it's been a while since I wrote it.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago

And THAT'S why you don't roll your own datetime class/column format. It's a solved problem, people!

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago

Hahah, this reminds me of that time (long ago) when a very old version of our software would also simply crash when attempting to use it on a leap day. When customers called in, all we could do was tell them to wait until tomorrow, and that the problem wouldn't return for at least another four years.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Someone forgot a case in their test suite.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I can't imagine what logic would've hinged on February having 28 days. It's not like 29 exceeds some maximum value for days in a month. Probably someone thought it was a good idea to write their own date-time library.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Next = (year+1, month, day)

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Did they not have automatic pumps 4 years ago?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

That's one ticket they won't need to mark as urgent

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


The outage affected suppliers, including Allied Petroleum, BP, Gull, Waitomo, and Z Energy, and has reportedly been fixed.

The gas pump breakdown sent stakeholders into a frenzy as they tried to resolve the problem caused by software being unequipped to process the bonus day.

John Scott, the CEO of Invenco Group, the provider of the self-payment terminals that malfunctioned, confirmed to Reuters that a "leap year glitch" caused the problem.

Worldline claimed that all non-Invenco terminals using its technology continued to work during the outage, per Otago Daily Times.

While some gas stations were still able to accept other forms of payments, those that relied on the broken terminals found themselves missing out on business.

As the companies involved work to issue apologies—and, in some cases, discounts—to make up for the inconvenience, there's hope that the scale and embarrassment associated with the outage will help prevent similar events.


The original article contains 410 words, the summary contains 148 words. Saved 64%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

The same happened at a grocery chain in my country. Not all of their stores stopped working but a lot of them.

The pay new terminals apparently didn't like leap days.

You could apparently still pay by app at the stores that supported it though.