Obligatory "Bitcoin would solve this!" post. :)
The Fed Is Down
31–40 of 79 posts
Re: The Fed Is Down
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's probably VPNed and/or FTP over TLS (aka FTPS).
No, these things use SFTP which is mainly ssh over 22
anecdotal counter-evidence:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7647166
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7638063
This is probably because people often conflate SFTP (ssh-based protocol) with FTPS (FTP over TLS) eg. royal bank which says "secure ftp" (which suggests SFTP), but also mentions SSL (which suggests FTPS).
Re: The Fed Is Down
#33The irony of name "Federal Reserve" is that there is nothing Federal about it. The Fed is a completely autonomous private organization which controls the United States money supply.
Re: The Fed Is Down
#34https://engineering.gusto.com/how-ach-works-a-developer-pers... A good time to remind people that the USA's money-transfer system (aka: ACH) is a giant Rube-Goldberg machine involving FTP transfers of specially formatted files. So it sounds like the Fed's FTP server is down?? Or something like that?
Some of the first software I ever wrote for pay was a daily shell script that pgp encrypted an ACH batch and sent it from one financial institution to another over a dedicated frame-link, via FTP. This was over 20 years ago! Can't believe it's still the same.
Re: The Fed Is Down
#35https://engineering.gusto.com/how-ach-works-a-developer-pers... A good time to remind people that the USA's money-transfer system (aka: ACH) is a giant Rube-Goldberg machine involving FTP transfers of specially formatted files. So it sounds like the Fed's FTP server is down?? Or something like that?
> involving FTP transfers of specially formatted files.
during my internship, a big healthcare representative came at the company to ask for help about their IT system. Turns out it was mass FTP transfer. I was silent for a few minutes thinking hospital networks relied on this.
Re: The Fed Is Down
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't touch if it isn't broken? From what I've seen in other countries, you don't update protocols for this. You introduce better ones and kill the old ones once nobody used them for a while. Which might take longer than expected, because "free instant transfers" might be seen as cannibalizing the "slightly less slow expensive transfers" any given bank might have on offer.
I deal with the ACH network on a daily basis and let me tell you it IS broken. The fact that you only receive negative ack when a transaction fails, otherwise you have to pray your transaction went through is so bad it sounds like a joke. For comparison, the third world underdeveloped country where I live has an electronic cash transfer system allowing me to send ANY amount of money in 10 minutes at most for $0.5 usd…
I worked in fintech in NYC for a bit. The technology driving most critical financial infrastructure in the US is astoundingly antiquated. It is only sustained through the sheer amount of bodies and ingenuity thrown at it.
Re: The Fed Is Down
#37The irony of name "Federal Reserve" is that there is nothing Federal about it. The Fed is a completely autonomous private organization which controls the United States money supply.
That's an adorable meme that crypto-bros like to tweet, but really they are actually an agency of the federal government and answerable to Congress.
From https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_14986.htm
Who owns the Federal Reserve?
The Federal Reserve System is not "owned" by anyone. The Federal Reserve was created in 1913 by the Federal Reserve Act to serve as the nation's central bank. The Board of Governors in Washington, D.C., is an agency of the federal government and reports to and is directly accountable to the Congress.
Re: The Fed Is Down
#38The irony of name "Federal Reserve" is that there is nothing Federal about it. The Fed is a completely autonomous private organization which controls the United States money supply.
A completely autonomous organization that...
1) was created by Congress
2) is accountable to Congress
3) has governors that are paid by Congress
4) has governors appointed by the President
Re: The Fed Is Down
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Am I the only one surprised that some of their targets don't even have 3 nines as availability? That's some pretty crazy stuff when it comes to how serious the context is and considering the availability of cryptocurrency transactions.
Yes. That'd be quibbling over a few hours per year [1] in availability. No system can be expected to deliver 100% uptime. I have associates involved in mortgage lending. Anyone who was waiting to close based on a wire was told to just reschedule for tomorrow. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_availability#Percentage_c...
> That'd be quibbling over a few hours per year
From your own source:
99% ("two nines") - Per Day - 14.40 minutes
99.9% ("three nines") - Per Day - 1.44 minutes
If you do multiple transfers per day, the difference is non negligible. Especially if you rely on it for critical transfers.
> No system can be expected to deliver 100% uptime.
Of course not, hence we're talking about the amount of nines, not if the uptime is perfect.
> Anyone who was waiting to close based on a wire was told to just reschedule for tomorrow.
Indeed, doesn't that suck? Why can't it finish in at least hours if not minutes?
Re: The Fed Is Down
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Fed is a private entity actually. The Treasury is US Government. But the Fed is owned by the member banks. The US kinda coopted a seat at their table and Congress + President appoints the Fed head. But otherwise, the rest of the board is made up by private companies.
Calling the Fed a private entity is really misleading. It was created by an act of Congress and its highest ranking officials, the Board of Governors, are all appointed by the President. Yes, it shares some power with the banks it regulates (who can elect representatives), but the US government didn't "coopt a seat at the table." It built the table and had most of the seats from the start. And it's true that member b…
Correct me if I'm wrong, but people constructed a cleavage between the Fed and the US Govt because they thought we shouldn't trust democracy with money creation.