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Tell HN: Wells Fargo completely offline

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Re: Tell HN: Wells Fargo completely offline

#221

Post by DanBC »

computerex wrote: post #190
hinkley wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't recall who it was, but there was a big outage due to a data center running a monthly generator test and having a major customer go dark. The data center had 7 generators for 4 server rooms: 1 per room, a backup for each pair of rooms, and a backup for the backups. The primary and then both backups failed, so out went the lights. You're pretty much damned if you do and damned if you don't. If you touch things…

Look at Netflix with chaos monkey and simian army. Netflix routinely does catastrophic destructive testing on their production systems, sometimes evacuating an AWS region entirely. To them, a server going down is a non-event, because they designed their systems with the premise that servers go down.

If a customer can't watch a film they get unhappy.

If a customer can't pay a fine - can't use their bank account - they go to jail. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/bank-acc...

These are pretty different outcomes.

Re: Tell HN: Wells Fargo completely offline

#222

Post by westpfelia »

CydeWeys wrote: post #195
edoceo wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Refi that bad-boy to your local credit union

Can't. It's a fixed 30 year mortgage at a 3.375% rate. Refinancing it will increase that by at least a point. Plus, I originally did get the loan through a local credit union, who then sold it to a consolidator who sold it to a big national bank (which happened to be Wells Fargo). Local credit unions generally don't hold onto mortgages. They don't have the economies of scale to service them efficiently.

My 'local' credit union does. They dont sell mortgages/loans to anyone and keep them 100% in house. Its why even after moving to Germany I keep that bank for US assets. They just dont seem as criminally motivated as other banks.

Re: Tell HN: Wells Fargo completely offline

#223

Post by dalbasal »

jedberg wrote: post #175

For everyone complaining about "how could they not have failover" let me ask you this: Would you take a job with Wells Fargo to fix their infrastructure? And if you did take such a job, how long do you think it would take you to get the budget and approvals from all the auditors necessary to fix everything? How much would they have to pay you to take that job, knowing how frustrating it would be to get anything done?…

You can sympathize, mock or rationalize through the corporate-political logic that inevitably leads here... the interesting points remain the same: most tech operations suck.

This is not really related to costs. It's related to culture. Costs and quality of software, including infrastructure, range by orders of magnitude per theoretical quanta of software.

We don't really know how to fix this.

Re: Tell HN: Wells Fargo completely offline

#224

Post by KSteffensen »

r00fus wrote: post #81
lenticular wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the best financial decisions you will ever make.

At what interest rate? I have mine at 3.35% 30y fixed. Is that remotely possible today?

Mine is at 1% 15 year fixed. I believe the 30 year fixed rate is currently at 1.5%. The 1 and 3 year renewed are actually at negative rates.

I'm not in the US, though.

Re: Tell HN: Wells Fargo completely offline

#225

Post by retsibsi »

morpheuskafka wrote: post #131
saagarjha wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Not worth breaking your neck over

That's an important caveat, given how the danger was apparently greatly exaggerated.

If you've been told that the system will

> somehow suck all of the oxygen out, and if we were still inside we'd be dead

then what are you going to do in a real fire situation, when you're not in imminent danger but your escape route is blocked by flames? Better to brave the fire (or jump out a window) than submit to death by suffocation...

Re: Tell HN: Wells Fargo completely offline

#226

Post by crottypeter »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #200
mabbo wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I like the Canadian system of mortgages. I have a 30 year mortgage, but every 5 years I have to "renew" it. At that time, I have to renegotiate the rate for the next 5 years. As part of this negotiation, I can just switch banks if I want. Or to a private lender. Or to anyone really. It seems weird to me that you are beholden to an entity you've never signed any contract with.

Is there something to prevent the rate from skyrocketing when you renew the mortgage? Doesn't this have all the issues people occasionally have with ARMs?

Assuming Canada is like the UK, competition in the mortgage market means a bank hiking the rates will lose your business. Of course you can be unlucky if interest rates are unusually high at the time your fixed rate deal is up for renewal.

Re: Tell HN: Wells Fargo completely offline

#227

Post by walrus01 »

mabbo wrote: post #171
CydeWeys wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately they're the holders of my mortgage (it was sold twice and they ended up with it). So I don't even have a choice of being their customer for the next ~25 years.

This is why I like the Canadian system of mortgages. I have a 30 year mortgage, but every 5 years I have to "renew" it. At that time, I have to renegotiate the rate for the next 5 years. As part of this negotiation, I can just switch banks if I want. Or to a private lender. Or to anyone really. It seems weird to me that you are beholden to an entity you've never signed any contract with.

This is not always a good thing. Inability to lock in a reasonable fixed rate for a 15, 20 or 25 year term in Canada meant that in the early 1980s, for example, when benchmark interest rates were 15%+, people whose 5 year terms came up for renewal had no choice but to renew at 17% interest rates. Ask an older person from AB who lived through the first oil economy bust in Edmonton or Calgary.

Re: Tell HN: Wells Fargo completely offline

#228

Post by close04 »

tastroder wrote: post #219
jedberg wrote: post #175

For everyone complaining about "how could they not have failover" let me ask you this: Would you take a job with Wells Fargo to fix their infrastructure? And if you did take such a job, how long do you think it would take you to get the budget and approvals from all the auditors necessary to fix everything? How much would they have to pay you to take that job, knowing how frustrating it would be to get anything done?…

It's not like people blame the staff working on wiring the network hardware here. For any company in that position I'd assume they realize their dependence on that part of the infrastructure for their core business. I don't really see the relevance of how long compliance processes take, that's part of the industry and WF didn't discover the internet last week. Salaries in finance reflect that frustration, who cares.…

It's because management doesn't want to touch the topic. No CIO wants to risk breaking something so they all pray to God nothing breaks on their watch and they can get their retirement package or move on to the next job and it's someone else's problem.

This is why sometimes absurd amounts of money are paid to keep the old system going as it is. It's "safer" than to move to a new one with the associated risks and teething issues.

Re: Tell HN: Wells Fargo completely offline

#230

Post by thecatspaw »

habosa wrote: post #141

For those who have worked in bank IT, I have some questions. So these days there's very little physical money. Most of my "wealth" is just entries in various digital ledgers. My bank says I have $XXX and my brokerage says I have $YYY and my retirement account says I have $ZZZ. Let's go with the bank account case. Is it possible that a catastrophic accident or attack could wipe my balance down to $0 with no way to rec…

I would assume that banks have some cold backups in a mountain somewhere, like this for example: https://www.mount10.ch/en/mount10/swiss-fort-knox/

Although I'm not sure if it could withstand a nuke, its in a mountain, so, maybe?

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