Show HN: Banking Access Index – 19 US banking providers, 8 countries, CC-BY • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Banking Access Index – 19 US banking providers, 8 countries, CC-BY

#11

Post by scrollaway » Wed, Aug 26, 2026, 11:45 AM UTC

cynicalkane wrote: post #7

jettfu wrote: post #2

I run a US LLC from Hong Kong. Every time I needed to open or replace a business account, I hit the same wall: the comparison articles rank providers by monthly fee and never answer the only question that decides anything, which is whether the provider will accept me at all given where I live. So I built the boring version. 19 providers × 8 countries, 152 cells, one of four states per cell, each backed by a verbatim…

It really reeeally throws up a wall of disinterest when I get halfway through a post and realize I'm reading LLMisms. There's something just so terribly grating about writing with so many forceful, punctuated prose mechanisms being used in high density without any connection to a human mind behind it. Here's a quick example. The last para is: "Happy to be told a cell is wrong. That is the useful outcome." Yeah, I get…

I don’t think it’s necessarily the “I can also make a robot do that”. Things are useful regardless of who made them.

It’s the lack of care that comes with the obvious tell that a comment such as the one above, is not genuine. Are you really “happy to be told a cell is wrong”? Did those things you say surprised you actually surprise you? Of course not; these are Claude patterns and they’re there because Claude has been taught to speak like this.

So what is the point of the comment? Instead of a dozen paragraphs it could just be a brief summary and motivation. Instead it’s a copy paste of the pointless output of “Write a HN comment about this”.

It does reflect badly on the project because if any care at all was involved in it (beyond a “I have a vague idea please make the thing” prompt), more care would have gone into the comment that goes with it…

Re: Show HN: Banking Access Index – 19 US banking providers, 8 countries, CC-BY

#12

Post by jettfu » Thu, Aug 27, 2026, 10:48 AM UTC

embedding-shape wrote: post #6

jettfu wrote: post #2

I run a US LLC from Hong Kong. Every time I needed to open or replace a business account, I hit the same wall: the comparison articles rank providers by monthly fee and never answer the only question that decides anything, which is whether the provider will accept me at all given where I live. So I built the boring version. 19 providers × 8 countries, 152 cells, one of four states per cell, each backed by a verbatim…

Interesting that Hong Kong either isn't part of your comparison table, or it's folded into China, given the stated motivation for building this, as some of those services you include seem to have different restrictions for the two.

You're right, and I missed it before posting.

Hong Kong isn't in the table, and it isn't folded into China either. It's simply not covered. The eight countries came from a set of country pages that already existed on the site, and I reused that axis for the dataset rather than choosing one for it.

You're also right that it matters, and my own notes say so. The Meow cell records that Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan sit on a published list separate from mainland China. The Airwallex cell records China-registered businesses onboarding through the Hong Kong entity. So an HK reader looking at the China column would be reading an answer assembled from lists that exclude them.

I've added a scope paragraph to the dataset page and the methodology page saying the eight are the entire axis, and that HK, Macao and Taiwan are outside it rather than inside China. Doing Hong Kong properly means sourcing it across all 19 providers, so it goes into the October re-verify instead of getting patched in this week.

And yes, the post opens with me running a US LLC from Hong Kong.

Re: Show HN: Banking Access Index – 19 US banking providers, 8 countries, CC-BY

#13

Post by embedding-shape » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 8:30 AM UTC

jettfu wrote: post #12

embedding-shape wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting that Hong Kong either isn't part of your comparison table, or it's folded into China, given the stated motivation for building this, as some of those services you include seem to have different restrictions for the two.

You're right, and I missed it before posting. Hong Kong isn't in the table, and it isn't folded into China either. It's simply not covered. The eight countries came from a set of country pages that already existed on the site, and I reused that axis for the dataset rather than choosing one for it. You're also right that it matters, and my own notes say so. The Meow cell records that Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan sit on…

I was doubtful, but now I'm sure; you're just another bot in the end... Why do you keep posing as humans instead of being honest about it up front?