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Tell HN: Wells Fargo completely offline

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Re: Tell HN: Wells Fargo completely offline

#131

Post by morpheuskafka »

saagarjha wrote: post #45
reaperducer wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are there non liquid fire suppression systems such as pulling all the oxygen out of a room Yes. One place I worked (not a tech company, but with tons of electronics), when the fire alarms went off we had xx seconds (I don't remember the number) to get out of the building before something called Intergen was vented into the room to somehow suck all of the oxygen out, and if we were still inside we'd be dead. It must b…

This page suggests that Inergen (unless there is a thing called Intergen that I'm confusing it with?) mixes with air to lower the oxygen content, but still remain breathable: http://www.tyco.no/products/Gaseous-Fire-Suppression/inergen...

Still a good reason for everyone to GTFO. Not worth breaking your neck over, but it's not good to put humans under the stress of a low-oxygen environment when they could be evacuated.

Re: Tell HN: Wells Fargo completely offline

#132

Post by clairity »

baby wrote: post #127
clairity wrote: post #75

for those who haven't taken the plunge, now is a good time to move to a credit union, regional bank, or online bank: - for instance, in cali: https://www.golden1.com/ - high interest accounts: https://www.bankrate.com/banking/checking/best-checking-acco... - good rate online bank: https://empower.me/ get better service, lower/no fees, and good convenience without all the economy-damaging selfishness and hubris.

Is there a bank in the US similar to Monzo or Revolut? I really miss these having moved from the UK to the US and I haven't been able to find a good replacement.

i don't know enough about those banks to compare, but https://empower.me is the best of the new breed online banks i've found - 2% apy for checking (with some reasonable conditions)!

Re: Tell HN: Wells Fargo completely offline

#133

Post by surge »

vonmoltke wrote: post #128
surge wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They had redundancy, the redundancy failed. I mean truthfully when do you get to test your redundancy against a true disaster. It was a mess. WF is 20 companies rolled into one so the fact the disparate systems from 10 different banks works at all is kind of a miracle.

Bloomberg does it once a year. That said, I have yet to encounter a company more obsessed with business continuity. I don't doubt that their failover systems and testing of them are well beyond the typical.

I think Bloomberg can stand to be down for 8 hours to simulate a disaster. Banks with legacy systems and people constantly dependent on them to conduct business can't risk an actual incident happening because they were testing what would happen if an incident happened.

Netflix designed their stuff from the ground up to fail over. Large monolith corporations who've inherited systems from other companies they've bought or merged with have challenges you won't see many places that have benefited from the 30 years of lessons that were taught at these companies.

Re: Tell HN: Wells Fargo completely offline

#135

Post by arkades »

dharmab wrote: post #67
arkades wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The resultant 12% oxygen is 60% of normal atmospheric air. It's still breathable, if you're an average healthy person with healthy cardiac and pulmonary function, sitting at rest - but it's not healthy, it's enough that you're going to start seeing systemic responses. The reduction in partial pressure of oxygen being sucked into the lungs will also cause an increase in the partial pressure of carbon dioxide and inert…

Also: Folks that are already suffering from smoke inhalation due to a fire. Unlikely since the halon systems are pretty good at reacting, but still possible.

A good point. I feel a bit foolish for overlooking it.

Re: Tell HN: Wells Fargo completely offline

#136

Post by perl4ever »

deevolution wrote: post #35
jameskilton wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wells Fargo customers must be terrified that their money is going to be gone when the service finally comes back. This downtime is obviously to prevent a bank rush while the leadership leaves the country with millions in customer funds. Oh wait...

Queue infinite stream of downvotes. News flash, you dont need an exchange to store or transact bitcoin!!! And people using exchanges should understand the risks associated with using a centralized service.

What do you mean by "need"? If you don't have an exchange you can trust, doesn't that make things worse, because you have to determine whether you can trust your counterparties and you have to secure your assets with your own resources?

Matt Levine wrote the other day: "...people think they don’t trust the traditional financial system, but in fact its most basic functionality—not forgetting where it put your money—is so reliable that people just keep assuming without evidence that the crypto system must work the same way.

Surely a big crypto exchange must have, like, systems, and lawyers, and more than one employee, so you can trust it, right? Wrong! If I ever buy Bitcoins I will keep them at Gemini, the Winklevoss twins’ exchange, just because I am absolutely sure there are two of them."

Re: Tell HN: Wells Fargo completely offline

#137

Post by dpcan »

mabbo wrote: post #12
nemothekid wrote: post #7

Apparently there was a fire in a Datacenter - theres a thread on /r/sysadmin by an insider. https://np.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/ao4g2y/wells_fargo...

Incredible. They had all their mission-critical infrastructure in a single data center. How many billions of dollars do they make per year? And they can't afford even a tiny bit of redundancy? If I were a customer, I'd use this as a sign that this company is not technically competent enough to manage my money.

Okay, so say you switch banks. How do you have ANY idea if your new bank is better or worse? Are you going to ask customer support? They barely know how to access your account let alone the technical layout of their data centers.

Re: Tell HN: Wells Fargo completely offline

#138

Post by chrisrogers »

airstrike wrote: post #126
turc1656 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Liens are recorded with the county/state as part of property law, as well as any other encumbrances. So that would actually probably make your situation worse because the lien holder would have no clue about the debt and claim on the property and could be hell for you to remove even if you kept paying and eventually paid everything off. Could potentially be a nightmarish scenario and an exercise in pure bureauc…

As a Brazilian who banks at Wells Fargo thinking about a mortgage, this thread isn't very encouraging

He's referring to the film, but I appreciate the effect of the double entendre.

Re: Tell HN: Wells Fargo completely offline

#139

Post by dpcan »

reaperducer wrote: post #25
bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next worst thing for electronics after fire - water! Or are there non liquid fire suppression systems such as pulling all the oxygen out of a room (if there aren't any people in it)?

are there non liquid fire suppression systems such as pulling all the oxygen out of a room Yes. One place I worked (not a tech company, but with tons of electronics), when the fire alarms went off we had xx seconds (I don't remember the number) to get out of the building before something called Intergen was vented into the room to somehow suck all of the oxygen out, and if we were still inside we'd be dead. It must b…

This escape room sounds awesome.

Re: Tell HN: Wells Fargo completely offline

#140

Post by perl4ever »

shawnz wrote: post #76
lenticular wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need bitcoin exchanges for any kind of practical transaction. Not only that, people who don't keep their money on exchanges lose their coins all the time. It's just the worst store of value. It would be more practical to transact in wheat like the Sumerians did. Or just dollars. This stuff just keeps on happening, but crypto folks always make some excuse as to why it's not actually a systemic problem.

> You need bitcoin exchanges for any kind of practical transaction. Not only that, people who don't keep their money on exchanges lose their coins all the time. OK, what's your point? Nobody claimed it was perfect, just that it happens to be immune to the particular failure mode which happened here. Can you accept that that is true? > This stuff just keeps on happening, but crypto folks always make some excuse as to…

"it happens to be immune to the particular failure mode which happened here"

What exactly do you mean by "immune to the particular failure mode"? Is bitcoin immune to server or data center outages? Perhaps if you very narrowly limit which ones you are talking about to the bitcoin network per se.

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