I was pondering this as I read, as well. I would be a bit disconcerted to find that a coworker was recording EVERYTHING they say all day and that meant I was on those recordings throughout the week. The lack of any acknowledgement of that piece in this writeup is a little confusing... I don't question their intent but I do question their lack of awareness of others (based on the writing).
I feel you. We got our first computer in, I think, 1994? I was 12. It was a Gateway 2000 486 something. haha I can't remember the letters on the end. It was magic. Oh, and AOL of course.
It continued to feel that way because it was kind of newer territory to a lot of people in general. Now, it is just standard... everywhere... I think the mass adoption is the fun killer. It was much more niche back then.
Spot on. Awesome post. My first PC was a 1995 486 clone no name PC with a Cyrix (!!!) 57 MHz cpu and 4 megs of ram. Originally it came only with a floppy drive and a 420MB HD. I bought this sound blaster-like card with a CD-ROM drive attached to it and picked up Slackware Linux 3.0 distributed via a computer magazine. It wouldn’t install at first because the cd drive was attached via the sound blaster clone card so I had to install it via many floppies instead. I finally got it working. I really miss those days where things were hard and required work to make things seamless. Today even Windows runs Linux so there’s no incentive to geek out anymore.
Those were the good days, between me and my buddies we had a Pavkard Bell, a Micron, a Gateway 2000, and a home built or two. We played C&C, red alert, doom, quake, descent and some old fashioned board game Axis and Allies when we got tired on the computers.
Because blogs and forums with well archived, searchable data is gone? Because all the good info is in some shitty Reddit thread hidden under 10,000 downvotes? Or because all events are posted on Facebook only? Because nobody even bothers to have a website anymore? Because the entire internet is on AWS now? Because your computer is now a secure enclave where you can't do what you want with it, but you'll still get hacked just like 10 years ago? Because the top 100 results on every search are the same 10 websites, or a shitload of spam? Because patent trolls are running amok? Because everything now requires Chrome? Because you can't even run your own browser on your phone? Because everything is an app when it could just be a simple status page? Because everybody is harvesting all of your data? Because you no longer have any privacy? Because you can't even fix your own car? Because every computer is now behind multiple NATs? Because there's a middleman between you and everything? Because all the choice of ISPs is gone? Because municipal broadband is basically illegal everywhere?
Maybe I'm just old and cynical. I'll be out in the garage tuning my carburetor.
I can understand that. I have a habit of doing that with things I could just be enjoying more. BUT I do love seeing other people's book lists to add more books to me "Need to read" list!
bitcoin only completes one block every ten minutes. If you want to be safe you need to wait multiple blocks. Yes, 99+% of the time you're transaction will be included in the next block, but that's not guaranteed.
Waiting a minute is also completely unacceptable. Imagine if you had to wait a minute every time you wanted to sue your credit card, grocery stores would grind to a halt.
That’s glacial in the payments space. Imagine you had to stand in front of the counter at McDonald’s for 30-60 seconds to see if your payment went through.
Probably our entire system here in the US is a joke. I mean Crypto has also been doing immediate transfers for how long now? But we have to wait 3 - 5 business days (sometimes longer) for money to transfer between banks here in the US in... what year is it... 2022?????!!! lol
> we have to wait 3 - 5 business days (sometimes longer) for money to transfer between banks here in the US
The US has been historically so flush with capital and regionally isolated that there was no burning need nor desire for much centralized governance let alone bank coordination so it still hasn’t developed the muscles to do much of that. Historically, other countries have needed to tightly control and coordinate capital in order to survive against geopolitical challenges and so have everything in place in order to, for instance, make the end user banking experience efficient between banks. Understand this and suddenly America makes a whole lot more sense.
> The US has been historically so flush with capital and regionally isolated that there was no burning need nor desire for much centralized governance let alone bank coordination [...]
Until fairly recently in large parts of the US, it used to be illegal for banks to have more than one branch. (The last restrictions on branch banking in the US only came down at the end of the 20th century or so. It was a long and slow process.)
For comparison, Canada is just as wide-spread, but they had national banking chains since forever (because they were legal), and with that came national coordination.
I’m not sure you can reverse a FedNow payment as it uses a good funds model. The same way you can’t reverse a wire and the only reversible allowable for ACH is for erroneous files/payments and unauthorized debits (not all fraud is applicable there).
ACH has always been next day. It was processed at night, so the funds were available the next day. In 2016 it became same day. It is processed four times a day, so is available four times a day.
If your bank is locking up the funds for 3-5 days, that's their decision and has nothing to do with the US banking infrastructure.
My bank processes all transfers same day.
You should take advantage of the many alternatives and switch.
> But we have to wait 3 - 5 business days (sometimes longer) for money to transfer between banks here in the US
For quite a lot of transactions, you can pay extra to make them near-instant. The capability is and has been there for a long time, it’s just moated by a profit model that penalizes the people with the greatest need for quick access to use resources which rightly belong to them.
Right. (I feel like I should add this disclaimer because I don’t think you’re hostile to the problem as stated and also because I don’t want to be misconstrued as shilling “crypto”; below is expansion of the thought in case it’s not immediately obvious to other readers, and not advocating for any solution other than recognizing the current one is effectively reinforcing poverty.)
Roughly equal to common overdraft fees, which similarly burden those most in need of fast transactions. And often these burdens compound not just on themselves but on top of each other too, eg if I help a family member cover an expense plus overdraft we have to pay double the overdraft to pay the overdraft; when I was tight on money between jobs but had available credit I’d have to pay another increment of the same, plus interest. All told, it could cost around 150USD pay a 5USD bill. Which only affects people who are unable to pay such a small bill. Now that I’m not between jobs and the burden of fees is less of a concern, but I don’t have to worry about the fees at all because they’re processed out of my bank account. But the transfer still has a fee for the recipient if they need it sooner than “in 3 business days” which can often be effectively a week. That’s long enough to incur much greater costs, ranging from further monetary penalties to eviction depending on what payment is due.
We’d all be better off, as a family, opening a joint bank account but I’d be surprised if that wouldn’t flag a fraud alert if not actually violating some law I’m unaware of.
There you go. Sounds like a regressive service that promises "faster payments" but instead takes days by default and you must pay more for it to go faster and gets more expensive if you transfer tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands if you are sending the money internationally.
Cryptocurrency technologies such as Ripple, Stellar and Algorand are already faster, available worldwide and are significantly cheaper in fees per transaction and are aiming for ISO 20020 compliance, meaning that they will be compatible with the same financial payments messaging standard used by the current system.
It doesn't mean it those three will 'take over the current system' like what many crypto maximalists keep screaming about, but those three technologies have the highest likelihood to work with the current system when crypto becomes more regulated in the future.
