They used gsuite for email, o365 for other aspects. Required iPhones if you wanted a device - wouldnt allow android at the time... but that may have changed since
Credit card networks can vary regionally even under the same brand names (like MC/Visa). They are not ubiquitous. Depending on the network the merchant is using, they may or may not be able to connect to your specific card's issuer.
I'm from the US and I've had my chip based Visa pin debit card declined in France due to network incompatibility that neither side could figure out (at a McDonalds of all places) - the authorization just wasn't making it to the issuer.
Basically the further you get from you issuing bank's region/network, the more likely you are to run into problems, regardless of what country you're in. In the US because payment processing industry is so big, merchants are more likely to accept more networks than in other countries because they're paying more to support it or have negotiated better rates with middle men like FDC or directly with Visa/MC.
I think in Germany most MC is actually run using the Maestro network and merchants get hit with either per transaction fees or high interchange rates for using non-maestro cards (if they even opt-in for that with their acquirer).
Probably because the party doing the ACH is a third party agent/ISO but the checks are probably cashed directly by the management company. The thing that your management company probably wont tell you is they get some kick back on the profits from those fees you're being charged. So not only do they get your rent money but they also make money on you using electronic payments.
Snarky answer - there's no real motivation to change it and from an institutional perspective it's not broken.
- it costs a lot to fix or redesign a money system moving billions of dollars in volume per day
- change is risky
- any impacts on reliability would be unacceptable and have significant economic impact [both direct and indirect]
- stakeholders that fully understand the existing system and have the knowledge to redesign it are part of that system and benefit from it
- as an insider, it's hard not to make money within the system
- it's a closed ecosystem - access to the system is controlled by the established players (like Wells Fargo, BoA, Visa, Mastercard, etc.) and they will revoke access if you threaten their position.
- Insiders are making so much money at this game that end consumers have little leverage at this scale.
Paypal, stripe, venmo, zelle, square, name-your-favorite-fintech-start-up are all working within the existing system by exposing easy to use integrations and interfaces. They aren't really fixing anything, just wrapping it up, putting a bow on it and making a handful of basis points on your transactions.
The RTP system is a chance to fix it but I suspect it will take years for that to replace the existing systems. I've heard it discussed as an additional feature not a replacement.
[I know HN likes proof but any real numbers I can't disclosed due to NDAs. I'm basing my opinion on the margins I saw and heard referenced while working at a smaller financial institution]
Yeah, the only good use cases I heard for wanting real time payments had to do with businesses not wanting to keep cash reserves on site at all times. The two I recall were
(1) in businesses that have variable payment demand (think scrap yards that buy scrap material from anyone that walks up) and they currently handle this by keeping large amounts of cash on site in a safe
(2) some states where when a hourly employee is terminated, due to regulations it's easiest to pay them out for hours worked on the spot and this is currently usually handled in cash that's kept in a safe on site
I might be forgetting some details on the whys but it seemed like they wanted a way to avoid having to secure cash funds.
I think it depends on context - I'm guessing you're thinking about flow of funds where as others are thinking about the actual process of running ACH files through the network.
As an end consumer or other entity(like a TPA or bank ISO), you can submit a request or set of requests that will end up in that banks ACH file. At the end of the day, the bank that submits that file is responsible for ensuring those requests are valid, and ensuring all the returns are processed. These requests consist of to/from account routing information and dollar amounts with a lot of other rules in the file specifications. Not every banks can submit these directly. A lot of banks submit to larger banks and so on. I vaguely recall there also being fines/fees applied to the file submitter on if you send bad data or exceed return thresholds.
If you schedule the transfer via the bank that is receiving the funds, they will usually eat the cost and not pass it onto you as the consumer. Smaller banks [which are most] will submit ACH files up to larger banks [like Wells Fargo or Bank of America] that will actually run the ACH requests through the network. The smaller bank itself is usually being charged either per file fee or some data transmission rate by the bigger bank. I think there are less than 20 banks in the US that can actually run ACH directly but it's been a while since I had to know any of this and it evolves over time.
Sad part that I've seen... worked on an implementation of Visa push payments at a TPA/ISO (I think it was formally called something else by Visa [Visa Direct?]) - it was designed as a real time payment system to make small payments to vendors or contractors. In order to settle everything at the end of the day, we were using ACH and wires behind the scenes to re-balance the source accounts. It was really comical IMO . I know progress has to start somewhere but it just felt like we were adding layers of complexity.
>One thing the article got wrong is that the Hacker News community is not limited to Silicon Valley.
I thought the article was pretty clear that Hacker News user base is predominantly North America and Europe, not just the valley?
I don't have any data to back this up, but based on the sources that are posted and gain traction in the community, I suspect majority NA & Europe is accurate. But that's just an observation based on my personal experiences that different regions of the world view information sources differently in terms of reputation and trust.
Has HN or anyone else ever tried to aggregate stats on content sources or user location data?
For one thing, all content on HN is English, which is well-known to people in NA and Europe.
Japan is famous for its indigenous forums; Japanese people seem to sneak some English words into every anime theme song, but they do awful on the TOEFL.
When you look at South America and Africa I think that educated people are often good at English but even though there are a lot of people in those zones, the size of the "startup sector" or even the "modern sector" is small compared to NA/Europe. (e.g. look at GDP as a proxy)
Is this only applied to 'real time' modelling or is 'near real time' also included?
Curious because I used to write software for IIOT predictive analysis (3 years ago?) and I never heard the term 'digital twin.' Curious if it applies to NRT or if this is a different beast.
I work in a field adjacent to all this. My org used to use the term "real time" to mean anything up to and including near-real time. We've recently switched to calling our work "in time" prediction to clarify that we're not referring to real-time in the RTOS sense. Digital twins are a hot topic in aerospace maintenance right now.
I think I've figured out the IBM-style buzzwords like "mobile productivity cloud", and I'm making good progress on all the ones in SJC airport ads, but the one that's still got me is "digital transformation". Shows up all the time in my promoted tweets.
Didn't everyone digitally transform in like the 90s?
>Ebola should actually be easier to contain in any civilized country such as the US. Quarantine measures and disposing of infected bodies properly would limit the pandemic.
I would be careful of the use of the word 'civilized' in this context. You're implying DRC and/or other African countries are uncivilized. Which is just not true.
> I would be careful of the use of the word 'civilized' in this context. You're implying DRC and/or other African countries are uncivilized. Which is just not true.
No, I stand by what I said and by the following definitions of the word "civilized", and never talked about "other African countries":
> easy to manage or control; well organized or ordered:
> having an advanced or humane culture, society, etc.
Given the tragedy that has been going on for more than half a century in that part of the world, I couldn't care less about euphemisms and political correctness, they have not solved anything.
The culture absolutely needs to evolve if locals want to survive Ebola, there is absolutely no way around it, I'm not a cultural relativist. It's a matter of life and death.
> easy to manage or control; well organized or ordered:
> having an advanced or humane culture, society, etc.
So the US meets these characteristics by your logic but DRC does not? Have you traveled much in rural/poor US? Have you been to puerto rico? Are those areas equally uncivilized? Would you characterize south chicago as uncivilized as well?
In anthropology (maybe specifically american anthropology), the descriptor 'civilized' was pretty much thrown out during their reformation (I think it was 1970s?). At best, today it's pretty much considered a coded term for 'not conforming to my view of what a society should look like'(aka it's ethnocentrically viewed as inferior). At worst, you can tie the usages of the descriptors 'barbaric' and 'civilized' back to the biological determinism and eugenics movements.
>Given the tragedy that has been going on for more than half a century in that part of the world, I couldn't care less about euphemisms and political correctness, they have not solved anything.
What tragedy? and which part of the world? DRC is not near Liberia or Guinea where the other more recent highly publicized Ebola outbreaks have been. Are you referring to the civil war in DRC? It's really complicated and at the end of the day has root causes that tie back to neocolonialism and colonialism constructs created by so-called civilized societies.
I'm not trying to be politically correct. I wasn't even being all that critical of your original statement. I was trying to point out that word choice matters. While most of what you wrote originally is valid, my family (which is Cameroonian) would not listen to anything you had to say because you used the term 'civilized.' It would immediately shut down discourse.
Even if that specific example is false, there is a rich and well sourced history of African Americans (and other marginalized groups) being used in medical experimentation in the US or by US organizations.
Edit - my family (Cameroonian) almost 100% believes Ebola was either created or intentionally released by either Europe or the US as part of research or guerrilla warfare. There are no facts involved but it's a very common belief for people that grow up in the region.
What is the politically appropriate word instead of civilized to enumerate the difference between taking a public health first approach vs. killing first responders on conspiracy?
I would call them suspicious instead of uncivilized.
Europeans have tested harmful drugs on Africans without their knowledge for more than 2 centuries (including injecting live cancer cells and spreading HIV in very recent cases).
I don't think we can blame them for avoiding this treatment like the plague.
I'm empathetic to the idea that for entirely uneducated populations differentiating between legitimate treatment and experimentation is impossible, so their instinct is to avoid it.
I'd still be wary of making too many excuses for their wanton attack and murder on health-care workers as mere suspicion, as that gives off an impression of racism of lower expectations, in my humble opinion. Or, I mean, even if it doesn't, at a certain point we need to draw the line at acceptable behavior. Whether it's their upbringing, or they are justifiably suspicions, they are evil, or they are uneducated, in the end it sort of doesn't matter, right? It's still some other group trying to kill other people, where we have a belief on which one is correct and which one isn't.
I get your point - my issue was with the long history of cultures being called 'civilized' or 'advanced'. These terms are still too commonly used and mostly out of ignorance of their origins.
Just to throw it out there - I don't live there, I'm not a citizen of their community - why does my values judgement matter? Why am I judging what is acceptable for them to do in their neighborhoods and communities?
I'm a white american, married into an Cameroonian family, spend my time 90-10 split between US and Cameroon. If Cameroon was having a crisis over 'X', I'd ask my family and our friends what they think should be done in their cities about 'X.' I might ask questions or offer critiques but at the end of the day, they are the only ones that understand their communities, can solve their problems and judge a situation. Similarly, if my city was having an issue, I might be curious what they thought or how they solved similar issues, but I wouldn't expect them to dictate solutions or make a values judgement on my community.
> Why am I judging what is acceptable for them to do in their neighborhoods and communities?
There is a nihilistic rabbit hole this can take you down. Values are suspended in air, only there because we want them to be. Why is it unacceptable for people in their own neighborhoods and communities to murder others in cold blood?
Is it all relative? Is that a choice a community can take, that is equally valid as all other choices? Or should there be a preferred community, which all humans should strive towards. A civilized platonic ideal.
I'm okay with taking the more chauvinistic view that our way of living is better. Not the best. But better. I'm willing to claim that they would be better too if they became more educated, learned to understand it's best to not kill people based on witchcraft. This does involve me thinking that I am more civilized and above them on a hierarchy of values. I'm okay with that. I think you should be too.
Okay, first off, who has said these medical workers are being murdered in cold blood due to the locals beliefs in witchcraft. All that this link referenced is suspicion, they didn't say suspicion of what.
This region of the African continent is one of the most exploited regions in the world. Some of the historical tension/mistrust can be tied back to the same hutu and tutsi divide that fed into the Rwandan genocide. I agree education is a key factor but I suspect the geopolitics is a bigger factor in the violence than beliefs in voodoo. They might be suspicious of the motivation of any outsider coming in and telling them what to do. Which is a natural response. If that's coupled with historical fear or traumatic memories of a past where outsiders came into communities and murdered community members, I could logically see some of these conflicts turning violent.
I do believe my overall quality of life might be better than theirs, but I don't believe that has anything to do with my values or my way of living. I also believe that quality of life is more due to structural factors - factors that are mostly out of control of the individual and their local community. So am I lucky to have lived my life in regions where the controlling interests have created favorable conditions? Yes, I am very lucky. Do I judge others who have not? No I try not to.
My partner worked here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LafargeHolcim
They used gsuite for email, o365 for other aspects. Required iPhones if you wanted a device - wouldnt allow android at the time... but that may have changed since