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A comment on Post Office lied and threatened BBC over Fujitsu dev whistleblower. Parent comment

Re:Post Office lied and threatened BBC over Fujitsu dev whis... by rlpb on Friday January 12, 2024 @11:53AM (#38970487)
> I'm not sure if it was a bug or someone remotely changed the account records for her branch...

From https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/09/how-the-post...:

> One [bug]...would see the screen freeze as the user was attempting to confirm receipt of cash. Each time the user pressed “enter” on the frozen screen, it would silently update the record. In Dalmellington, that bug created a £24,000 discrepancy, which the Post Office tried to hold the post office operator responsible for.

The fact that this is even possible, apart from the sheer incompetency of a software design that permits it, means that no person can reasonably be accused of stealing cash if that accusation is based on records from this system.

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Re:Post Office lied and threatened BBC over Fujitsu dev whis... by Gibbon1 on Friday January 12, 2024 @01:32PM (#38971957)
> would see the screen freeze as the user was attempting to confirm receipt of cash. Each time the user pressed “enter” on the frozen screen, it would silently update the record

Consider the shittiest homegrown shopping portal probably doesn't do that and any commercial point of sale system absolutely won't do that either. The system has to be such a POS internally that no other vendor will take the liability for it.

Reminds me of the Therac-25 that killed people. This thing probably killed more people than that.

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Re:Post Office lied and threatened BBC over Fujitsu dev whis... by notso411 on Friday January 12, 2024 @03:02PM (#38973190)
This was custom software on custom hardware. Bit different from some web app with built in debounce.
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Re:Post Office lied and threatened BBC over Fujitsu dev whis... by rcxdude on Friday January 12, 2024 @07:41PM (#38976154)
So is basically any point of sale system. Realllllly not an excuse.
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Re:Post Office lied and threatened BBC over Fujitsu dev whis... by bloqs on Saturday January 13, 2024 @07:54AM (#38979531)
The underlying paradigms are the same and it is inexcusable
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Re:Post Office lied and threatened BBC over Fujitsu dev whis... by mcguire on Friday January 12, 2024 @03:06PM (#38973250)
Any word on consequences for the software engineers involved?
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Re:Post Office lied and threatened BBC over Fujitsu dev whis... by creer on Friday January 12, 2024 @06:40PM (#38975675)
Compounded with the fact that the issue was happening all over the country. With a crazy number of different people - and still the issue was not investigated as a possible bug. Oh right, then lied about the whole thing.
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