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2 days agoScary and sad note from an article linked from this one: gas stations in southern California are trying to figure out how to update their gas pumps since they now need to charge more than $9.9999 for diesel and there aren’t more numbers on the pumps.
Gas pumps are highly regulated so even if the individual station owners have the ability to change this directly (which, given the user unfriendly state of software, is not guaranteed), they may still need to wait until the relevant governing body sorts it out. It’s clearly not an insurmountable problem, but it isn’t just a 5 minute fix.
The fractions of a cent seem silly but people typically purchase more than one gallon at a time so the fractions add up to whole cents pretty regularly. And while I never notice if my 10 gallons of gas cost a few cents more than the $x.xx cost would indicate, the station owner is getting those pennies from thousands of gallons a month. Still not crazy huge money, but retail fuel is a pretty low margin business.