Some major tech firms still can't program their software to deal with leap days

Date:
Fri, 01 Mar 2024 17:47:06 +0000

Description:
Companies maintaining VMs, servers, and self-service checkouts face difficulties accounting for the extra day in their software even now.

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A whole raft of software failing on the 29th of February, from Citrix'
virtual machine software, to Sophos Server, to self-service petrol pumps in New Zealand, once again proved that programmers still have no contingency
plan to deal with Leap Day.

The New Zealand Herald (via Ars Technica ), noted that petrol pumps across the country were out of action for more than ten hours due to the bug, which affects New Zealand first due to where it is in the world - or, more thrillingly, the magic of spacetime.

Bleeping Computer reported issues with Citrix and Sophos products as they were happening, with Citrix advising users to change the date manually on their systems while disabling the automatic date change function in their operating system.Sophos Server and Endpoint users, meanwhile, ran into issues with SSL and TLS certificate warnings, which depend on system time synchronization, and were advised , simply, to turn SSL/TLS decryption off
for the day. Leap Day calendar sorcery

Leap days happen because, although the year as defined by the Gregorian calendar is 365 days long, it takes 365.24 days for the Earth to orbit the
Sun - so, every four years, an extra day is added to the calendar so that the average length of a year matches up.

But despite Leap Day being something that you can literally set your watch
to, companies somehow still end up in this mess every time. Humans have
always been procrastinators, really - 1999 was a big year for computer programmers figuring out how to stop planes from falling out of the sky on January 1st, 2000 despite having had years to figure it out.

And although John Scott, CEO of Invenco Group, the company that provides the affected self-service terminals across New Zealand, said that it was looking into what caused the New Zealand-specific glitch, one oil company representative, from greenhouse gas behemoth Allied Petroleum, seemed less moved to act when asked about it on Facebook, which is obviously the right forum for it. Were reliant on tech - so wheres the urgency?

Well add it to our Outlook reminders [quizzical emoji], said the poor, inveigledsocial media intern. So, theyre making a joke, right, but if you follow the thought, its emblematic of the fact that every four years we end
up here, and its just accepted as a fact of life. The intern may be having fun, but you can bet the executives at oil companies were actively pupating over every lost bit of business this year, four years ago, eight years ago, and so on, so its anyones guess as to why this keeps happening.

Anyway, its March now, so well see you in four years. More from TechRadar Pro Windows 11 is becoming a much more accessible and productive experience
Worlds biggest printer company wants you to stop buying printers, instead
rent them like cars Weve also listed the best small business servers right now



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/pro/some-major-tech-firms-still-cant-program-their-s oftware-to-deal-with-leap-days


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