Stripe can make automatic LLCs but a wire transfer from Citi nearly ended me - awinter-py https://abe-winter.github.io/2020/01/14/self-serve.html <comment><USER2> The author here seems to have a pretty shallow understanding of how banking infrastructure actually works (ex. ACH vs. wire vs. direct deposit), which is the root of a lot of these complaints. The other misconception is why banks continue to operate this way, which I personally believe comes down to prioritizing risk aversion and fraud resistance over other attributes. If you've never had to deal with large amounts of fraud as a business operator, a lot of things banks do (like require in-person verifications/transactions) probably won't make much sense or will seem really antiquated.

Edit: also worth noting is that a significant portion of a large bank's customers are over middle age and still _want_ high-touch in-person and phone interactions in a financial institution.

<comment><USER3> Yes this looks like a classic case of payment schemes not working anything like how people think they work (or even working in a sane way).

With regards to the credit card payment, my guess would be that it went over a dual message system. Which means one message reserves the money, and a second one moves it.

This is important because the first message will generally cause the payment to appear on your statement, and reduce your "available balance". But doesn't impact your actual balance. The money's still yours so you earn interest on it, but you can't touch it.

When the second message turns up the money moves and the transaction completes (sometimes called "posting" or "clearing" or "presenting").

However if the second message never turns up (or a reversal is sent instead) then the money doesn't move, it's just un-reserved.

How banks represent this un-reversal is usually very confusing. Either the transaction simply disappears or a back dated transaction appears. This is because from the banks perspective the transaction never happened (it didn't present, so no money moved and thus no transaction).

ACH is also a very strange payment scheme. I believe that debit ACH messages simply pull money from a bank account. The bank can't stop this money movement (they always to have pay the bill or get disconnected from the ACH network). However in the case of fraud, your bank can send a message and claw the money back within a certain time span.

All of this sounds ridiculous and is a result of history. But replacing it would require hundreds or thousands of banks to agree a new standard, and there's a good XKCD about new standards.

<comment><USER4> This is really a user interface problem. Payment systems have distributed state machines, but the state isn't exposed to the customer and the parties may not be in sync. Banking is a "consistent eventually" system, with delays in days.

The customer should be able to query "what happened with this transaction" from their account and get back a graphic of what's going on. That information is useful to fraudsters, though; some states are more vulnerable than others.

<comment><USER5> _Banking is a "consistent eventually" system, with delays in days._

But why does it work within the same day (or partially virtually instantenous) with SEPA payments 1) between banks in different European countries?

Why isn't there such a thing as IBAN 2) outside of Europe, which really helps to make bank transfers seamless and unambiguous?

It sometimes seems that regulation and standardization is not such a bad thing.

      1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area
      2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Bank_Account_Number

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This post seems to have all the qualities of a highly popular HN post

* Anti-incumbents in large industry

* Poor customer experience / hit piece

* The new tech company does it much better

* Doesn't try to understand the intracacies of the industry being criticized (wire vs. ACH???)

I know very little about banking and even I know (roughly) the difference between ACH and wire. My point is not that the author lacks intelligence, just that they should, as other commenters point out, try to learn about banking before you're so quick to criticize. I think us programmers suffer from thinking "this is all too complicated, it could easily be done simpler and better." That's not always the case and it can help us to understand how the current system came to be before making these judgements.

<comment><USER7> Trying to understand the basic primitives of banking is hard.

When I lived in the US I asked my bank for documentation on how their stuff works.. I've done the same in Denmark.

I've never been able to get authoritative documentation that explains IBAN, routing/account numbers, transfer types, checks, signatures, credit/debit cards, etc.

I'm effectively left guessing, my bank can't even tell me if a given kind of number is secret or security sensitive.

How do you find out? Where is the authoritative documentation? The man page? The RFC?

<comment><USER8> They are all in various international standards. The specification for IBAN, for instance, can be found here [https://www.iso.org/standard/41031.html](https://www.iso.org/standard/41031.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Banking does have some strong regulations around it (with good reason, IMHO) but I can corroborate the author's intuition about established company's disdain for self-service customer interactions.

I worked on a product a few years ago that would have turned our sales-led product into a turn-key hosted solution - just supply your credit-card and go. It was nearing deployment with 7 figures spent on development when the sales team got wind of it and immediately killed it.

Although I believe that the product would have been successful and brought in more money to the company as a whole, it would have gutted the performance bonuses for the sales team by bypassing a whole department. This could not be allowed to go live.

That is why real innovation tends to come from newer, smaller companies.

<comment> swagasaurus-rex This sort of behavior is why people hate the man.

<comment><USER10> By "the man", do you mean any human with an established life and career that they are willing to defend in spite of what's best for their employer?

<comment><USER11> Which is why collective bargaining and unions make life better for everyone in the long run.

<comment> barry-cotter Those are two different things, with different effects. Unions don't make things better for everyone except their members in the long run, or the short run. They make things better for their members. Unions are economically labour cartels. Like any other cartel they don't make the economic pie bigger they make sure their members get more pie. Pie either goes to consumers in the form of lower prices, owners in higher profits or workers on higher wages. There's no free lunch.

Collective bargaining can actually make things better by reducing labor unrest and allowing for industry wide coordination such as greater investment in training or German style Kurzarbeit during periods of low demand, where more people keep their jobs but their hours are cut.

<comment><USER11> > Like any other cartel they don't make the economic pie bigger they make sure > their members get more pie. Pie either goes to consumers in the form of > lower prices, owners in higher profits or workers on higher wages.

I agree with you completely, except owners currently take a disproportionate slice of the pie. That is the cause of wealth inequality -- the power of unions to demand a bigger slice of the pie ultimately impacts the entire economy. Somewhat paradoxically, unions have much more of an interest in the long-term survival of the company than shareholders, who often take a short- term view of profitability. This ultimately leads to better decision-making.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> That Twitter thread touched a nerve. My Credit Union does the same thing. The Fraud Dept calls me, and if I don't send them to voicemail they'll try to ask for PII. Like Citi, the number is also not posted on the website, and getting to them through the phone bank is harder than it should be.

Belonging to the Fraud Department does not mean you're in charge of creating fraud. If they left "Prevention" out of the title that's because it's implied. Don't train your customers to fall for phishing attacks, geniuses.

<comment><USER13> In fact, that's likely not your credit union's fraud department. It's probably the fraud department of the provider of your debit card, which is a different company.

<comment><USER12> I'd be very surprised if you're wrong about that.

I think maybe the smartest thing I've ever heard Michael Dell say was related to pulling the plug on a plan to outsource a tech support unit.

They realized the perverse incentive: if you get paid by the call or incident, and some calls are cheaper than others, you "benefit" if there are more easy calls. Even though it's better for the company if you recommend fixing the root cause of those calls (eg, changing the packaging, documentation, or design of the product so that people don't have to pick up the phone).

Outsourced Fraud seems like it would have some of the same moral hazards.

<comment><USER14> Having worked in loss prevention for more than one company, I've only seen cuts to that budget occur in one of two ways: departments working themselves out of a job by solving the root cause, or vendors absorbing enough counter- party risk to make in-house anti-fraud programs a net negative. I can't imagine any decision-maker outsourcing LP without simultaneously outsourcing risk, because it would not only be a bad idea - but would be nearly pointless in even the best potential outcome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I completely disagree with this prediction. People have been betting against large banks for awhile with record investment in challenger banks, but both Citi and JP Morgan recorded their most profitable quarter in their entire history this morning. And most of the big banks have actually invested very heavily in their IT over the past decade.

If you are complaining about their customer service, don't hold your breath when it comes to startup bank customer service. Chime, the largest funded neo bank in the US, had a _3 day_ outage in the fall when nothing worked (app, transactions, ATM) and could not handle the volume of calls or chat requests at all. People were literally stuck at the grocery store or gas station. That can't be the future of finance, either.

<comment><USER16> >but both Citi and JP Morgan recorded their most profitable quarter in their entire history this morning.

Does this say anything about their ability to provide a decent user experience, or good customer support though?

A few years ago, I had no choice but to use a bank like RBS for my business account. It was rife with unreasonable fees, a terrible website and a ridiculous sign-up process. They got my custom because there was no alternative.

Monzo, Starling and e.g. Tide are doing pretty well here as a result of the poor show that other banks have been putting on for years.

>If you are complaining about their customer service, don't hold your breath when it comes to startup bank customer service. Chime, the largest funded neo bank in the US, had a 3 day outage in the fall when nothing worked (app, transactions, ATM) and could not handle the volume of calls or chat requests at all. People were literally stuck at the grocery store or gas station. That can't be the future of finance, either.

Not all challenger banks are like this, though. I've found Monzo to be much, much more reliable that the various incumbents in the UK (who don't operate a status page, don't inform customers properly when things are broken and _still_ schedule multiple-hour maintenance windows every year when BST begins/ends).

Customer support can be variable, unfortunately, but I think this is a problem which has arisen mostly as the bank has grown. It's _still_ better, for me at least, than a legacy bank.

<comment><USER15> I assume you're not US-based. I'm a long time Chase customer and am completely happy with the user experience and customer service. I've found the Citi, Amex, and Capital One digital experiences to also be good to very good.

The app is fast with an intuitive UI and does the job. If you don't believe me check out the app store rating.

My understanding is banks outside the US have not invested as heavily in their IT, and totally understand why challenger banks in other countries might have more success there. I've used in the HSBC app once, for example, and it's slow and terrible.

<comment><USER17> I agree with you completely -- I switched from a local CU to Chase because the experience was, almost uniformly, better:

\- The iOS app, website and other digital tools are significantly better. My local CU's app is some whitelabeled third party app that barely works

\- With nationwide set of branches, I'm able to get individualized support for whatever I need in most cities in the USA

\- Chase offers significantly more functionality in general - wiring money via their website, longer transaction history retention, etc etc

OTOH, my local CU's customer support is horrendous, most of their branches don't even deal with cash, and if you're outside of the metro they're based in, you're SOL.

I've experienced the same with Amex, Capital One, etc. They were slow to ramp up, but their digital properties and tools are excellent in 2020.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _On my way over, I noticed that there were a cluster of banks at the corner: TD, citi, chase, and like one or two others, all within a one block radius in a relatively high-rent district._

Servicing customers is just an ancillary function of most American bank branches these days. If you go into one with a problem, in 90% of the branches, the person helping you can only pick up the phone and dial the same customer service number you would call on your own, and wait the same amount of time you would on hold. It's been a very long time since bank branches were allowed to handle anything but ordinary everyday functions.

The larger reason those branches exist is advertising and branding. You see the brand everywhere you go in an average day and subconsciously put together, "$bank is everywhere I go in an average day."

It's similar to how banks used to always be constructed to look like ancient Greek and Roman temples: To make you think of banks as solid, trustworthy, safe, and like they'll be around forever.

Now that we all know that banks merge, split, are born, and die like herpes germs on an infected lip, they scatter branches all over the place to play the same architectural influence game.

<comment><USER19> This is completely the case with Chase. I had several accounts with them over the years and increasingly had issues (i.e. false positive fraud alerts, unexplained account locks, etc...). At one point the closest branch was an over an hour away from my home (I had moved since opening the account). When I would call the phone support they would tell me I needed to go to the branch. I would then make the drive to the branch only to have the branch manager call the same phone support I had. It's so bad that I once was locked out of online banking for over 6 months on one account and no one, both at the branch level and corporate level, seemed to know how to fix the issue. When I would go to the branch they would call support, support would tell them it is a branch level issue with needing to verify my identity, and the circle continued. I finally just gave up and closed all my accounts with them.

On the other hand, I have an account at BB&T, and their in branch help is phenomenal. Most issues are resolved direct in bank without having to call outside support. Only time they have contacted outside support is when they don't know the answer to a question. On the other hand, if I call support they are quick to answer questions and provide detailed explanations.

I have other accounts at another local bank and the same holds true. In branch support is where it is at.

There is no question that as a bank grows in size and territory the level of support at the branch level and via phone support seems to degrade rapidly.

<comment><USER20> That's interesting, about 5-6 years ago I had a great experience with Chase in person. I lived in Seattle but was on a 2 week work trip in Cupertino, and I forgot most of the contents of my wallet in Seattle. All I had on me was my ID and a Chase credit card.

The Chase card got shut down due to someone stealing the number, so I was suddenly in a tight spot.

I went into the local Cupertino branch, and the manager was able to put in a rush order for a replacement card to be delivered directly to that branch for me in 48 hours, and then he called my cell to let me know when it arrived. All in all it worked out great.

On the flip side, I'd had TERRIBLE experiences with Chase when I was in college years earlier. Just the classic situation of having an account with $3 in it, getting a "minimum balance fee" that pushes me negative, and then a bunch of chained-together overdraft fees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It seems that without regulation and legislation, if left to its own devices, the banking industry settles in a terrible equilibrium where you end up using cheques and signing for card transactions in 2020. This extends deeper into the technology that underpins the banks.

The USA has a _ridiculous_ amount of banking fraud compared to Europe, more than an order of magnitude higher for some types.

So, say what you want about government overreach but Europe has legislated lower fraud rates, better technology and even a banking API for interoperability. Not to mention fostering a lot of new fintech startups and challenger banks.

<comment><USER22> Do you have a source for this "_ridiculous_ amount of banking fraud"? I have seen stats around credit cards that show higher fraud now compared to Europe, but that's because we were late to the chipped credit card game. To be fair, until France switched to chipped credit cards, they had higher levels of fraud. Source: [https://youtu.be/2IksSNiEo2g](https://youtu.be/2IksSNiEo2g)

<comment><USER21> The one that comes to mind is the federal reserve report.

[https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/changes- in...](https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/changes-in-us- payments-fraud-from-2012-to-2016-20181016.pdf)

Tl;dr

For reference, according to the last ECB report in the EU the total value of fraudulent transactions from cards issued by SEPA countries was 0.041% of the total value of transactions (€1.8 billion - That's over 5x less fraud). Only 19% of that was point of sale fraud

$3.6 billion card fraud in the US is point of sale - 10x more than the €342 million point of sale EU fraud.

Overall there is $2.62 billion of counterfeit card fraud, $3.46 billion of "Fraudulent use of account number" (whatever that is), $810 million "lost or stolen card" fraud (not an issue with chip and pin), and $360 million "fraudulent application" fraud.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Ok this is bad but maybe shitty customer service and slow processes are the price of a functioning financial system. Say what you will about the dated technology and opaque processes - legacy big banks work, your money is safe there, and there has not been a significant, system-wide technology error.

Not that things should never change - pieces of this puzzle should be replaced, but very carefully. A major technology exploit or bug at a major bank would be apocalyptically bad. The stakes are too high to rapidly entrust financial infrastructure to whichever fintech startup comes knocking. Consider the recent case of Robinhood, a big-leaguer as far as fintechs go, accidentally offering infinite leverage. This was enough to convince me not to want fintechs near the bones of the banking system for quite some time.

<comment><USER24> For those who are unfamiliar with the Robinhood "infinite money cheat code": [https://pennystocks.com/featured/2019/11/12/robinhood- left-u...](https://pennystocks.com/featured/2019/11/12/robinhood-left- unlimited-margin-glitch-unfixed-for-nearly-a-year/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't follow Abe Winter's logic: he had a good experience with an online service and a bad experience with a bank, and the bad experience required significant time to correct. Therefore: banks are bad. To make an accurate comparison, he would need to document a fraud alert on his Stripe side. Otherwise this comparison is meaningless.

Anecdote: I had a massive issue with PayPal payments being held up due to a changing my business to a different state. It took literally 2 months of losing 80% of my online purchasing revenue (paypal vs. CC). I had a very difficult time getting in touch with a human, let alone a human with authority. I felt like I was never making progress.

So from my perspective, talking to a chatbot or sending emails to anonymous mailboxes is equally fraught as OP's experience and I could enumerate a similar list of gripes.

Bottom line: complex systems fail spectacularly when you encounter a new bug, regardless if it is some <10year old online startup or >100 year old banking system.

<comment><USER26> I swore off PayPal for ~5 years for something similar. I was part of a group buy of something, and PayPal got overzealous in recognizing fraud. They locked the target account for months, preventing the buy from completing. But they also decided that they couldn't refund the money either. In the end it took a heroic effort by the guy doing the buy. TBH, I think he had fronted the money for the buy, and so had to do the work to recover it.

<comment><USER27> FWIW he probably did eventually get the money, paypal has a policy that they'll release your money in a maximum of 180 days from when they freeze it. But it's very likely he had to wait the full 180 days to withdraw it.

Source: Happened to me a few years ago as well

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The author is comparing two different things, forming an LLC vs initiating/executing transfers. Banks are highly regulated with tight fraud/AML restrictions. The risks are severe enough to demand caution over client experience. I'm sure creating a banking infrastructure from scratch can be done in a more effective way, but regardless of the firm tasked with executing the transfer, they currently need to comply with the existing structure. If, as the author mentions, fintechs will purchase banks for pennies, then they'll be banks and you'll still have your transfer problem. There's a reason why tech firms are making very limited strides towards financial services.

</comment><comment><USER29> I relate to the OP's frustration but it's clear why these Banks get away this - there doesn't seem to be any money in retail banking at all and as a result most banks do the absolute bare minimum unless you are very high net worth individual.

With Stripe, you are the customer and treating you right is it their best interest. Retail Banks try their hardest to charge you $50/mo for the privilege of maintaining a database row.

I would imagine for CitiGroup retail banking makes up a small percentage of their revenues. The engineers CitiGroup hires that would rival stripes aren't working on Retail Banking products - those products are probably fully outsourced.

<comment><USER30> Reasons to use a credit union. People should be moving away from all these banks that essentially only abuse people on every level and move toward cooperative financial institutions.

Alternatively, better banks like Aspiration, which is a B Corp, but I wouldn't put all my money on that.

<comment><USER18> _Reasons to use a credit union_

Reasons to use _some_ credit unions. Just as there are good banks and bad banks there are good credit unions and bad credit unions.

When I wanted to buy my first house, I called the biggest local credit union to find out what the process would be like. Nobody would speak to me on the phone until I went to their web site and filled out a "pre-qualification" form that would then decide if I would be given a different phone number to call and speak to someone to set up an appointment to meet someone in person.

No thanks. I took my real money to a real bank.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> There's a tremendous amount of "analysis" below on just how the convoluted payment systems work. Keep in mind that their first design principle is to maximize profit by limiting customer liquidity. At a certain point, as a consumer, I do not care about the problems within a system designed to reduce my utility to increase your profits.

<comment><USER32> I've heard this claim before and I think it's plainly false. They're mostly worried about fraud, which is far more rampant that anyone who believes in crypto currency likely realizes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> > why didn't ATMs reduce the number of bank branches

At least in the UK, the number of branches has halved in 30 years:

"Over the past three decades, the number of bank branches has fallen steadily. In 1986 there were 21,643 bank or building society branches in the UK. In 2014 there were 10,565. Over this period, the total number of bank and building society branches fell by 11,078 or 51%."

Did this not happen in the USA?

[http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8...](http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8570/CBP-8570.pdf)

<comment> kube-system It hasn't.

It looks like the US peaked in 2009 and has had a tiny (~5%) decline since then.

[https://www.fdic.gov/bank/analytical/quarterly/2015-vol9-1/f...](https://www.fdic.gov/bank/analytical/quarterly/2015-vol9-1/fdic-4q2014-v9n1-brickandmortar.pdf)

<comment><USER34> Still using paper checks here! Not far from where the internet was invented. Branches aren't going anywhere until that is fixed.

<comment><USER35> What do you use checks for? My rent comes out of my bank account, I bought my car with zero down so I didn't need a check then, and everything else goes on my credit card. Thus, I've never written an actual check in my life.

<comment><USER36> Property taxes, car registration, school lunch. Those are the most common for me. The first two can be paid with a card, but they tack on a fee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> In Europe we have really innovative Fintechs which build awesome apps like e.g. Revolut (which are also in beta in USA) or N26. But guess what: Also fintechs have to comply with regulation and need to comply with AML (Anti Money Laundering) with their software and you also can get in trouble there. When you have problems there then sh*t hits the fan too: You don't have a branch were you could go, not even a telephone number, only chat in the app and maybe twitter. It's like Google for finances.

Ideal would be a combination of both worlds I guess.

<comment><USER38> Exactly, this is a recurring theme regarding Revolut which hits the media headlines frequently, how Revolut also sucks when the shit hits the fan. I guess there are also similar stories in case of Stripe too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> > The chase operators told me a few times that 'something is weird about these > payments' but couldn't be more specific

Wonder if it got flagged as suspicious? Some banks aren't even legally allowed to tell you some things about your own account.

But it does seem banks are still brick and mortar. There's a bank that won't let you reset your pin online or over the phone, so have to psychically show up and show your ID to someone who presses something in their computer and tells you to type a pin into the USB key pad facing you on the other side of the desk. I guess it's just a small annoyance if you live near by, but the same bank doesn't have branches all over the place so if you end up moving across the country probably should get a new bank anyways. I guess tech wise could be done online as they could let you scan your ID and do a quick picture or video chat or something to make sure it's really you maybe. Plus some of the online only banks seem to pay higher interest too but not sure if people really care about interest as not sure if it really makes a big difference to some people. The local bank doesn't even pay 1% and hides the interest rate in the fine print somewhere while some of the online banks pay 1% and openly advertise such.

</comment><comment><USER40> Banks, especially big ones, are a special breed. I've recently had the misfortune of working with people who work for a large US bank ... boy was it eye-opening! I've worked in fintech for nearly a decade, most of our clients are in the EMEA region. And while banks generally don't seem to attract the biggest talent, and usually don't seem to be organized in a way that makes any sense to an outsider, at least they're somewhat functional.

The US bank, on the other hand, is the single most dysfunctional organization I've ever dealt with. Every single person I've worked with borders on incompetent. There are so many useless layers of organizational abstraction that everyone is always on the phone trying to make sense of their own organization. And when things go wrong, Someone Has To Hang™, so when they're not trying to figure out whose job something is, they're trying to cover their own asses. Doesn't leave much time to get actual work done.

As near as I can tell, the only reason many of these big old banks are still around, is because reality hasn't caught up with them yet. And, of course, because they're sitting on a pile of money.

<comment><USER41> Wasn't the 2009 crisis caused by big banks' biggest fintech talent believing their ~~astrology~~ math a bit too much ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> When I was 18 I had saved about $10k. I noticed on my statement it said I was being taxed. What? I went into the branch to ask about it and they couldn't tell me why tax was being taken out or when it would stop. I asked for a cashier's check for the full balance so I could close my account. The teller's jaw hit the desk. What did they expect?

A bank that can't explain their own statement to me is no bank of mine.

</comment><comment><USER42> > I've never understood how branches can be profitable. My theory after this > week is that some unknown force is sabotaging successful self-serve systems.

If the Wells Fargo clusterfuck of several years ago is any indication, that "unknown" is very well known: upsell opportunities (or, in the case of WF, just surreptitiously adding services and hoping the customer doesn't read anything when they sign)

</comment><comment><USER43> It's really not clear what happened here.

Some misconceptions though I'm seeing.

1) Banks always pay ACH debit requests (that draw money from your account).

No - you can sign up for ACH positive pay if you want.

This generally gives you till 11AM PST to accept or reject an ACH request. You can set rules by originator -ie, always pay up to $X from originator ID $Y.

You can also set a default to either pay unless rejected or reject unless approved.

You can also put an ACH block on accounts that shouldn't have ACH activity.

All this costs money.

2) Wire transfers

Hard to rewind these, so lots of extra hoop jumping. New accounts may limit your ability to wire large amounts of money.

3) Fraud is real.

Consider your parents and their retirement account. How would you feel if someone wired out or transferred out their entire brokerage balance? Think of how they authenticate with bank - could someone fake this? YES! Your parents re-use their passwords, write them on sticky notes, and their PII is everywhere.

Many more (sad) examples here.

</comment><comment><USER44> From a UX perspective there's one great service that the banks provide and that is identity managament.

In my opinion this is the main reason why things like cryptocurrencies have not taken off, and that is because their identity & fraud management truly sucks.

There's no person to talk to when you loose your access keys or forget a pin/password.

It's extremely hard to automate all that purely in software, and the very few that have succeeded in managing it(i.e. apple & google) have leveraged their hardware infrastructure plus partnerships with telecom providers and all their physical braches.

Yes old-school banks are inconvenient, can be hell to deal with, however it's very hard to scale fraud when you need to physically show up in person at a branch and I feel like this factor is very underappreciated.

<comment><USER45> For me it's that they're CDIC insured and government regulated. The Government of Canada would have to collapse in some apocalyptic event for me to lose the money in my accounts.

They're also very stable (the regulated Canadian ones at least).

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I guess it's different in the US versus outside. Banks in the EU work relatively well.

Recent progress includes much improved and cheaper SEPA payments thanks to EU legislation, and transparent "the customer owns his data" EU legislation pushing financial innovation.

<comment><USER47> Banks in the US also work relatively well. The problems happen when somebody - anybody can find your name, date of birth and ssn from the internet. With these 3 pieces of information, they can call any bank and pretend to be you. That is why banks jump through hoops to verify your identity. That is where questions pop up like

1\. What is your mother's maiden name that you gave us when you opened the account

2\. What is the phone number listed on your account - so that we can verify that it is really you.

And when all else fails.

3\. Banks ask you to go to a local branch with your id before they will unlock your account.

That is what happened with the author in this case. However he thinks that just because he is calling - the banks know that it is him when the bank can never be sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I feel like European banking is so much better than the U.S. You can do so much on line, and everything is way more secure.

<comment><USER49> It really is, because the regulation is strong, faster and cheaper transfers, common account numbering system, nobody bats an eye if your money crosses the border (it was a nightmare in the US, BoA would reject my client's wires all the time without explanation), etc.

<comment><USER41> "Crosses the border", how exactly? (Countries = States, Schengen = Federal)

<comment><USER49> I have no issues sending money from the continent to the UK or the US if that's your intellectual model. But I don't think you're on the correct track.

edit: this sentence is weird, on the US, the money is blocked on the American side according to the EU bank.

<comment><USER41> mental model : USA as one gathering of states, EU (Schengen) as another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> This is a fun article, and I'm still reading it, but my immediate thoughts are that

1) self-serve is a relatively new thing enabled by tech.

2) even in 2020 there are still clusters of people who aren't great at using computers, smart-phones, and apps and prefer doing things in person or on the phone; yeah, you have some older people in there, but there are young people who still do things the old way, because they never had an interest in technology or just don't know about other options.

3) Health-care and banking aren't the only industries that don't have slick self-service portals like Stripe. I'd argue the opposite; only companies built after the advent of recent web tech usually offer that, many of them, in fact, are tech companies.

Think about United Health, this company employs some 300,000 persons. CEOs at both United and Aetna are paid around $20M annual comp. Why does an insurance company need 300k employees? Google itself apparently has around 100k - <AUTHOR> they do much more than just pushing paper. Why are these guys paid _so_ much? To resist change perhaps, embrace too big to fail culture, and keep their 300,000 employees employed?

If private industry can seem this wasteful and inefficient, I don't even want to know about the dark corners of government where people are paid to sit at desks and make photocopies on 30 year old Xerox machines everyday.

<comment><USER41> Not to mention that self-serve can suck, and in-person interaction can be great. In both cases it's about effort (money) put into it. And into maintaining it once it's not "shiny-new" any more...

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Walked into a Chase branch with a $43,000 Wells Fargo insurance claim check. Informed there'd be a 10-day hold. I exploded. (I didn't need the $ immediately. It was the principal of the thing.) Went back to the car and drove 1000 feet over to the WF branch. Same crap. 10 days. Even if I opened a WF account with a WF CHECK! Went back to Chase, giving up. Silver lining. I manage all my cash better today. It's hand to hand combat, so you get good at it.

<comment><USER51> This is most likely relates to the Bank Secrecy Act and IRS regulations for deposits over 10k.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_Secrecy_Act](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_Secrecy_Act)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> > the yubikey is the possession that gives me the most delight. I savor the > click when I plug it in. I take it out and look at it sometimes, tipping the > gold USB contacts towards the light, muttering about how it was a birthday > present. One day someone will win it from me in a riddle contest.

Yeah, just don't try to follow the winner having gamer remorse. Rumors are Mordor Security Agency gets serious searching for used keys...

</comment><comment><USER53> I am the cofounder of Mercury.co. We built a modern bank to support US businesses.

I am somewhat surprised by the negativity on HN to this post. I think the author is on target with issues he identifies at incumbent banks.

The future is going to be customer centric, technology driven banks and the incumbents are going to have a very hard time adapting to that change.

</comment><comment><USER54> Speaking of going to branches, in the beginning my branch manager was awesome. He set up everything for my small business, many of which I had no clue existed which is no surprise since I was a new immigrant to Canada. He left and handed my matters over to someone else who was also quite competent.

And then the next contact answered my email with the subject "Issues / meeting tomorrow around 4pm?" with "Yes, I will assist you with all the issue, when is good time to meet tomorrow afternoon?"... things didn't improve from there (she prepared no paperwork for all the issues I detailed in my email and wasted an hour of my time) and only got slightly better when I escalated to the branch manager and got a different contact.

You can't explain this sort of attitude with being conservative etc. Nope, banks these days just suck.

</comment><comment><USER55> Citi is notorious for having some of the worst tech in banking. It's bad by even banking standards.

Anecdotally, I opened up a consumer Citi checking account. The account has two distinct web UIs for transferring money via ACH. One looked modern but outright didn't work (as I recall, I couldn't get any of the dropdowns to populate with my account info so I couldn't use any of the web forms). The other was clearly ripped straight out of the late 90s/early 00s, but it did indeed work. The new version was the easily findable version, the older version could be hunted down with enough effort.

Additionally, it was actually impossible for me to find my routing number initially. I had to actually start a live chat with a customer service representative to get it.

<comment><USER56> I just got one of their retail credit cards and it is the only card I own at this point that doesn't work with Apple Pay. Even my local credit union has figured this out. I can believe Citi has some bad tech debt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Russia is far from being the most developed country out there, but our banks are infinite times for progressive than in other parts of the world. I can do every single thing from their app or their site, never need to visit my bank (aside from getting from an ATM).

<comment><USER58> American banks are targeted by fraud more than most banks based in other countries, so they have to have more protections against fraud.

<comment><USER59> [citation needed]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Out of all the large banks, citi has the most obtuse, sensitive and brain dead 'anti-fraud' systems out there. I opened a credit card with them and had such a bad experience with the anti fraud (which involved waiting for a letter for 2 weeks to be able to use the card again) that I won't open an account with them again.

Chase, schwab, capital one, discover and amex I've never any issues with like I did with citi. Even BoA was better.

I think my experience is a reflection of systemic issues at Citi, which is reflected in how they are doing fairly bad compared to the other big banks.

</comment><comment><USER61> Incidentally, TIL that Citi Commercial Cards' password policy is ">=1 letter, >=1 number, 6-9 characters".

Banks have zero incentive to modernize. They have a lot of customers that are never going to move their money, and they don't need to constantly release new products or compete for customers. All they have to do is not piss off their existing customers so much that they move elsewhere. And because that's usually a non-trivial (and potentially costly) process, they don't have much to worry about.

</comment><comment><USER62> A lot of misunderstanding on the author's part. Not only would the author not have felt they were being gaslighted, they also wouldn't have had a nervous breakdown dealing with it.

Yeah, the user experience sucks, its an art to deal with though. So was Citi or Chase the brokerage firm, or was there a third brokerage firm like TD? Some people like the author's writing but some of the "who and what" is not clear, let alone the piss poor understanding of how the US banking system works.

</comment><comment><USER63> I just read _The Phoenix Project_ so I feel like they just need more DevOps lol. But seriously, banking is a sales-and-marketing-driven industry and those are the least likely to understand and embrace the process improvement revolution that transformed manufacturing and is currently transforming IT. I think the author's comment about the lack of technical expertise in management explains it most succinctly.

</comment><comment><USER64> automation of an LLC seems like a pretty dangerous thing considering you are trying to automate dealing with 1) secretary of state and 2) irs and 3) creation of a business bank account.... does this really need to be automated? it seems like a solution looking for a problem. It also seems like a minefield from an automation perspective because there are too many errors that can happen through automation at each step in this process. Its mostly an information gathering process for step one and step two, step three is information gathering and verification of what you submitted... it takes a few hours to this by yourself online and in person at the bank, and when it fails, you will need various humans in each step to figure out what went wrong. For example, IRS.gov will block on SS4 filings for various reasons, i.e. only one filing per day.. Seems too error prone to try and automate, and I bet they are using screen scrape tools to do it and so its probably going to break when the endpoint changes any form variables too..

</comment><comment><USER65> US banks are simply not suitable for remote problem solving. I once have run US company remotely, which was completely blocked for three weeks after one typo in outgoing transfer. Never remotely again. I thought Stripe Atlas have solved this problem.. Turns out not..

</comment><comment><USER66> Hmm yes we know. US banks suck.

However, I'd tone down the Stripe praise a bit. I bet that if you had a need that isn't covered by their script you'll be in even more trouble than with a traditional bank.

</comment><comment><USER67> I like the approach of Chinese banks here - almost everything can be done from the mobile application, way more than in US or EU banks apps (apart a few exceptions). There is another problem though - they are riddled with advertisement on every screen. I wish more innovation in that sphere. It applies to both personal and corporate experience.

</comment><comment><USER41> Why is this guy still not using an online-only bank in 2020 ?!?

<comment><USER35> What's better about an online-only bank? From what I have seen, I could get some interest on my checking account but that wouldn't be much as I only keep enough in there to autopay my rent and credit cards. Other than that, my checking account is free, they have ATMs everywhere, and there are tons of banks I can go to if I need to.

<comment><USER41> Well, _I_ don't know, I'm still using a traditional credit union (?) bank, but _this_ guy certainly seems like it should have been an early customer of those ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> I just feel compelled to share that this was a delight to read. This Abe dude can write. Especially enjoyed the bit about Chase gaslighting him.

<comment><USER69> I call B.S. on Chase gaslighting him. For a bank to do what he is describing is a one sure way for the OCC to get involved and there's not a single bank regulated by the OCC that wants folks from OCC poking their nose in it.

Simply put - bank has zero upside backdating transactions and an enormous downside.

<comment><USER70> I don't think it's gaslighting so much as it is him not understanding how transactions work.

There's the posting date, which is when the transaction appears on the statement. However, the details of the transaction, such as the amount or even whether the transaction should be cleared, have not been finalized, so they are still subject to change by the merchant. Paypal used to use this to authenticate bank accounts, and other merchants also use this to pre-authorize payment accounts (i.e., credit cards) or payments.

Then there's the _clearing_ date, which occurs after the merchant finalizes the transaction. Legally, this is when the money actually leaves your account. Generally, the amount at clearing is the same as the amount at posting, however for restaurants, the amounts are usually different because the final amount includes the tip, if any.

<comment><USER71> There's unfortunately no standard on which date is shown in the UI. I've used banks showing either one of those and also some that show both. You can sometimes also see both when downloading the transaction in some more structured file format.

It's useful to understand which one is being presented by default.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> I'd like to use this version of Stripe's product. The one I used makes you wait a month or so until you give up and use LegalZoom.

</comment><comment><USER73> To note, Taxi Medalions server a good purpose, but are also corrupt.

There should be NO ABILITY TO TRANSFER a medallion AND requiring proof that it is actively being used. You shouldn't be able to sell it.

Taxi medallions actually keep city streets clear of massive cabs, which is exactly the problem that happened in nyc once uber/lyft moved in.

</comment><comment><USER74> The gaslighting comment really resonates with me. It's one of the reasons why I find the push to paperless everything a little disquieting - sometimes I want to keep records in case my dispute is with the record holder!

I had an issue with a credit card company a few years ago, in which I had to request a new card. Apparently, as part of the new card issuance, they also "helpfully" moved my payment due date -- which I found out about when I received a past-due notification via the mail. Had I not had a paper statement with the correct due date on it, I probably could have been convinced that I had just missed making a payment, especially as the initial customer service representative insisted there was no way a new card could change my payment due date. Only after escalating a couple of times were they able to figure out that I in fact hadn't requested my monthly cycle only be 18 days long.

Now my wife makes fun of me because I still receive and file away paper statements, just in case.

Edit: removing names since it's not relevant to the story.

<comment><USER75> I'm still a fan of email for this reason. Once someone sends me an email, the copy in my inbox is _mine_ , and the sender can't later hide it/take it back/etc.

<comment><USER76> If I could get banks to send me financial statements as PDFs in an email I would sign up in a second.

<comment><USER71> If it's really important to you, you can use one of the companies which receive and scan your post into emails. Then change your bank correspondence address to them.

<comment><USER76> That's a good idea. Thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Architecture of Complexity (1962) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~cs146a/handouts/papers/simon-complexity.pdf

<comment><USER2> This looks like an interesting read, does anyone know any contemporary papers on the same thread?

<comment><USER3> Maybe this will help: [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2011&q=%22THE+ARCH...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2011&q=%22THE+ARCHITECTURE+OF+COMPLEXITY%22+%22herbert%22&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Needs "(1962)" in title.

<comment><AUTHOR> done!</comment></comment>


I'm a Junior Developer – You probably are too - <AUTHOR> http://www.diaryofaninja.com/blog/2012/03/27/irsquom-a-junior-developer-ndash-you-probably-are-too#disqus_thread <comment><USER2> I think this is more symptomatic of IT in Australia. There are pockets of good developers here and there but far and away, the majority of developers in Australia are being paid well above their grade.

This popped up in my twitter feed not too long ago: <http://readify.net/our- experience/seek>

Apparently a team of 35 developers couldn't get Git working.. or mercurial.. or even SVN! And had to outsource source control to another company (I'm probably being unfair, the Devs may or may not have had a say in the matter).

<comment><USER3> Disclaimer: I'm a Principal Consultant with Readify.

I'm not familiar with this particular project, however I'd like to clarify a bit based on our engagement focus. Organisations like SEEK engage us to help improve development team process, with tooling on the side to support it.

While the case study talks about them engaging us to help with source control, it doesn't talk about an inability to get something like Git, Hg or SVN working. Instead, it talks to them getting some external advise about effecting an organisational change in their development teams. We also likely brought experience/scripts to help migrate their history from whichever ageing system they were in.

TL;DR: The SEEK devs wouldn't need us to come and help them just install an SCM and leave.</comment></comment>


Will Google Kill my Blog on December 6th? - <AUTHOR> http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2013/12/will-google-kill-my-blog-on-december-6th.html <comment><USER2> Heavily relying on Google product? ✓

Hitting a dead-end with Google's customer service? ✓

Have an existing audience you can leverage to get some random Google employee's attention? ✓

Reach front page of Hacker News? ✓

Good news! You should have your problem fixed in 2-5 business days. The rest of us suckers relying on google services get to stare at our inboxes helplessly, waiting for a response to our support ticket (which will never come). I feel like it's almost a right of passage these days to rely heavily on a Google service, only to have something go wrong and be left out in the cold.

<comment><USER3> I've been backing up my Gmail with getmail [0], as I'm afraid that a day will come when I'll be locked out of my gmail account and will have no way to restore it. My long term solution is to migrate completely off of gmail, but for now this does the trick pretty nicely.

[0] [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Backup_Gmail_with_getma...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Backup_Gmail_with_getmail)

<comment><USER4> As a long time Gmail user heavily invested in it (with over 60GB of email), I'm waiting patiently for mailpile.is to get rolled out.

<comment><USER5> Take my advice - throw away every email older than 2 years. Not only will you never need them, but they're what the black hats will hang you by should they get the urge. You will feel a huge sense of relief - a weight lifted from your soul as you relinquish the crushing burden of carting about all those dead emails.

(Unless, of course, you work in an industry where longer retention times are mandated.)

<comment><USER6> Im not a lawyer so there may be subtle details I don't understand, but broadly in England and Wales, you can be sued within either 6 years or 12 years from the date of a breach of contract depending on type of contract, in Scotland 15 years. I don't know about the US or rest of EU, but think carefully about deleting all your old emails. You might have something in there which would be very useful to defend yourself if this ever happened. You would regret this if you had built the next Facebook and some old acquaintance decided to stake a claim based on some gmail conversation from 10 years ago. Better to archive to a redundant backup system I would say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "I'll keep trying - maybe someone at Google could help?"

Doubtful. Getting support from Google is pretty much impossible (you do have slightly increased chances since you've put it on HN however).

If I were you, I'd initiate a domain transfer to a different registrar that will actually provide support when you need it before your domain expires.

Even if you're lucky enough to have Google resolve the issue this time, you may not be so lucky in the future and there are numerous domain registrars that would handle your domain better than Google will.

<comment><USER8> What are you talking about, I saw "The Internship." Google has enough phone support to tell grandmothers how to fix GMail problems. Likely a manager will be cut over this, just like the snooty guy who led the other team in the movie. /s

<comment><USER9> > I saw "The Internship."

Me too, as such, you have my sympathies.

<comment><USER8> Snark all you like, but I think it's perfectly reasonable (if not _required_ ) to hold Google to the standards they paid Vince Vaughan to portray them having.

<comment><USER9> I don't disagree with your point, I just hope working for Google isn't as humourless as portrayed in the film.

<comment><USER8> Ooh, I suspect it's even more so. Careerism is a harsh mistress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> From my friend at Google: "It looks like he used the wrong account to update his credit card. He has a Google Apps account connected to his Blogger/url purchase, this is the account he needs to update in Google Wallet."

<comment><USER11> A perfect example of what a complete screw up the whole multiple Google Account thing is.

I can't suggest a better solution, but wow - it sucks at the moment.

Edit: Would it be possible to find out from the friend at Google if they are doing anything to report this anomaly to users? The author can't be the only person this happened to, and given that Google knows this, perhaps it would be useful if the error message reflected what was going on?

Perhaps fixing that error message would be a better use of resources than trying to improve support?

<comment><USER12> It's a bag of hurt.

<comment><USER4> That's an excellent tag line to describe Google Support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Given that I haven't been pummelled with email about how Blogger is going to become "Google + compliant" I'm guessing that the answer is "No, they won't kill your blog." And they won't charge your credit card. And next spring they will announce that Blogger is being shut down and you can move your Blog over to your own Google+ page! And _then_ you will get to decide what you want to do next.

But that is just a theory, my experience of late is that when Google stops talking about a service, and responses stop coming back, the reason is that the service is on the list to be killed off and anyone inside Google that was working on it, already knows that, and have already transferred to some other project.

</comment><comment><USER14> When you updated your info did you update it in Google Wallet? Google Checkout was only very recently completely deprecated so make sure it is updated at [http://wallet.google.com](http://wallet.google.com).

Also, do you have any communication from when you configured the account? That would be useful.

What may have happened is you set up a Google Apps For Your Domain account (which would have been free at the time of your registration). If that is the case you would need to login into Google Wallet with your Google Apps account - firstname.lastname@example.com and update the payment information for _that_ account (as opposed to your normal Gmail).

</comment><comment><USER15> Even if you use the recommended support channels such as Groups, your request goes nowhere.

I've run into this reporting issues for Google Now and Picasa Web. Moderators continually move or delete reports of issues. When you explain the situation and why X is more appropriate than Y you get radio silence.

Has anyone actually gotten real support from Google for paid applications? Is it limited to the Groups?

<comment><USER16> Picasa Web was put out to pasture a long time ago, in favor of G+ Photos.

<comment><USER17> Picasa is now overrun with Chinese spammers using the "send to a friend"-type feature. I mark every incoming Picasa share message as spam and Gmail still lets them all through...

<comment><USER18> Create a filter to send Picasa mail to a folder you then proceed to ignore.

<comment><USER19> I think you can even just send it straight to the bin with filters, although my memory may be faulty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Another example of how Google does not do customer support.

I would get the domain and move it somewhere else.

<comment><USER21> Google _does_ do customer support. You are not their customers. Advertisers are.

<comment><USER22> Feel free to ask an AdWords advertiser about their experiences before parroting this bit about Internet wisdom.

I'm told by contacts inside the Borg that things have gotten better in the last few years -- for example, now you can find a phone number to reach a call center that will /dev/null your ticket for you rather than having to /dev/null it yourself -- but the last few times I needed it having a $X0,000 a year account didn't rate a reply. I'm reliably told that $Y00,000 a month accounts didn't have a transformatively better experience, although, quote, "At least they'll lie to me. It's better than silence. If you collect enough lies you can triangulate off of them."

<comment><USER23> As a small aside, I think this is the first time I have seen Google referred to as the Borg. That was always Microsoft's title in the slashdot days.

Times have changed.

<comment><USER24> After having been in this industry for a bit more than 15 years, and having read a lot of history, I'm beginning to suspect that due to the economics of it, there is always going to be a Borg. IBM, Microsoft, Google, and so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I had the same problem with Google Cloud account (for API and App engine).

The problem is that changing CC number by following link in the email will not update your CC. You need to go to [https://wallet.google.com](https://wallet.google.com) and update your CC.

<comment><USER26> The big brains at Google can't design a workflow to allow you to continue paying them? Was it even tested??

Words fail me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Apparently the answer was no: [http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2013/12/monday-ism- manufac...](http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2013/12/monday-ism- manufacturing-construction.html)

<comment><USER28> I don't think it's the 6th of December yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> If Microsoft was smart this is where they would attack google, instead we have the "Scroogled" campaign. I think they're in the same position (in this department) as apple was when they made this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UZV7PDt8Lw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UZV7PDt8Lw)

</comment><comment><USER30> hmmmmm i know "i told you so"s are annoying but i wouldnt register a domain name with a service other than a full-on registrar. then you could always change hosting or even scrap the blog entirely but still keep your address (and hopefully traffic...)

</comment><comment><USER31> I work at GoDaddy and recently our CEO read an email from a customer who had been encouraged by a son to use Google services for his small business, but when he couldn't figure out some issue with support ("they talked way over my head"), he called GoDaddy and found someone that worked to get his account setup.

Google probably, appropriately, calculates the cost of providing good customer support to hundreds of millions of people as way too high. But by doing so, they do leave open the door to smaller companies to compete, not on the product, but on the service and support.

Google could, at the very least, make sure that it provides sufficient support for all billing related issues. If a customer is paying for a product and there's a problem with their billing, they should be able to get a person on the phone or web chat to resolve it if the online tools are insufficient.

<comment><USER32> You know you're support is awful when GoDaddy makes you look bad.

<comment><USER33> I've had some good experiences with GoDaddy support recently, including one case where a client's site had a custom php-mailer whose messages seemed to be disappearing into a black hole somewhere, and the front line support tech (not even tier 2) _read the PHP code in question, determined it was fine, checked the mail queue, and verified there was a problem on their end_.

"Surprised" doesn't quite capture my response to that.

I'm still not a fan of GoDaddy the company, GoDaddy the infrastructure, or GoDaddy the horrifyingly bad control panel "interface", but GoDaddy support could teach Google a _lot_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I honestly thought this was going be an article on probability: Given the frequency of Google shutting down its services, what is the likelihood of my blog service being terminated on December 6th?

</comment><comment><USER35> been there - getting support for free accounts is almost impossible.

you might be able mitigate the problem by upgrading to a google apps business account and receive support through it. i've used their email support through a paid apps account several time, the problems were always resolved promptly.

</comment><comment><USER29> Just curious, how is Microsoft's support in this department? Has anyone dealt with customer support for hotmail/outlook, skydrive, etc ?

<comment><USER36> Some years back I determined that Microsoft had a massive problem with spam transiting their network. I found a Sr. VP's name associated with the service, phoned the main switchboard, and asked for him.

He picked up his phone on the first ring.

I briefly described the issue (and how I'd determined it was a problem), he told me he'd have the appropriate manager get in touch with me later that day. I received _that_ call 15 minutes later, and worked with the manager (submitting specific emails and identifying where on their network the problems were manifesting) for a couple of months during which time the spam volumes fell well over 90%.

Part of the trick is knowing how to navigate / manipulate the system, and finding a problem they acknowledge as theirs. But in that particular case (and a small handful of others) I found the company highly responsive.

Now, several years later when I'd bought both a shrinkwrap product and support contract to specifically resolve a data issue with a product of theirs, I got sandbagged. Demanded my money back for the contract.

And no, I'm not a fan of Microsoft. But they do (at times at least) know how to run a business.

<comment><USER37> I've emailed Scott Guthrie a couple of times with regard to a couple of ASP.NET issues I felt warranted his team's attention rather than use that "Connect" bug reporting crap. After three or four hours he forwarded my emails to "the right people" and cc'd me and I got to work with these folks resolving the issues at hand via email. Was a pretty good experience and Scott is a top bloke.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> A few weeks ago I transferred a domain I bought from Google for AppEngine to my 'usual' domain registration service. Very easy to do, but it took 5 days for the transfer to kick in. I wish you had posted this earlier because this could have been a solution for you. That said, try it right now, and maybe it will work OK when Google/GoDaddy drop your domain.

</comment><comment><USER39> First: Try repeating everything with a different browser. I couldn't update my adwords payment information recently in Safari, but I had no trouble doing it with Firefox. It sounds like you have a different issue, but that could do it. Google sites are all a little funny with anything other than Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER40> Same thing happened to me. It ended up being my bank denying the charge rather than Google. Check with your bank.

</comment><comment><USER41> Transfer your domain to another domain hosting service. You can use godaddy and bigrock to transfer your domain.

</comment><comment><USER35> your blog's name is awesome for story submissions: 'what risky thing is she/he doing which might anger google?!' _click_

EDIT: this comment was made under the original title "Calculated Risk: Will Google Kill my Blog on December 6th? (calculatedriskblog.com)"

</comment><comment><USER42> Was there a post somewhere in the midst of all the ads? On my first generation iPad it's a tiny fraction of the screen.

</comment><comment><USER43> One of the worst things, universally known, about Google is virtually no customer service even for paid users.

</comment><comment><USER44> FWIW, if they do shut it down, at least you can say it went off with a bang (I mean, traffic from HN) ;)

</comment><comment><USER45> If your site contains valueable information, so why would Google will delete your site?

</comment><comment><USER46> why not contact the admin email on the whois information for the domain, or go through ENOM which is who google seems to have run this operation through....they can probably help renew or get payment information updated......

</comment><comment><USER12> Calculated Risk is a huge blog in the financial space. It would definitely behoove Google to avoid its erasure.

</comment><comment><USER47> Why not move the domain?

<comment><USER48> They like using the service Google provides and they really want to continue paying for it. Not everyone gets their rocks off serving a popular website and tuning the dozens of arcane knobs to make it hum as well as Google can.

They probably don't want to pay $$$$ for someone else to move it and/or host it. Migrating years of posts and all the comments... that's a decent sized job. Even if the export/import to some other blogging engine was nearly perfect (Hint: it's not all roses and perfume), there's a dozen or more billable hours involved to make it run exactly the way it did before on another host. That's probably more than he spends in a year at the current location.

...and so on. There are plenty of good reasons not to move it.

<comment><USER49> I don't think he was suggesting switching hosts but domain registrars. Not only does Blogger let you bring your own domain from any registrar while hosting with them, but they stopped selling domain registration themselves at some point in the past. Transferring the domain should be completely transparent to Google; the website doesn't need to move or be changed at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Why on earth does this have 144 points? I want my 20 seconds back :)</comment>


GhostMiner: Cryptomining Malware Goes Fileless - <AUTHOR> https://blog.minerva-labs.com/ghostminer-cryptomining-malware-goes-fileless <comment><USER2> Just an antivirus advertisement.

Nothing new, a powershell script which runs an XMRig and removes the binary and itself.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wouldn't any decent AV product catch this anyway? I mean Invoke- ReflectivePEInjection commandlet is from Powersploit and it's been around for like for 4-5 years if I'm not mistaken.</comment>


Federal judge did not rule that drinking tea amounts to probable cause - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/12/30/no-a-federal-judge-did-not-rule-that-drinking-tea-and-shopping-at-a-gardening-store-amounts-to-probable-cause/ <comment><USER2> I agree with Kerr's analysis of the legal issues at hand. He knows far more about the law than I do, so I must defer to his expertise. He is technically correct. And it's good to have an accurate analysis of current law.

But Kerr misses the spirit of Balko's original article. Kerr is saying that the officers did not violate the rules of the game. Balko is saying the rules are absurd and the game needs to change. Both authors are correct.

Additionally, the original title reads: "Federal judge: Drinking tea, shopping at a gardening store is probable cause for a SWAT raid on your home". This is _mostly_ correct. If the officers had not misidentified plant material, and if they had not been monitoring innocent shoppers, this incident would not have occurred. Only in the upside-down world of the drug war is it normal to send government agents armed to the hilt to invade a private residence and hold the occupants at gunpoint, all based on flawed and flimsy evidence.

<comment><USER3> Flawed and flimsy evidence of a nonviolent offense, no less.

Of course, we also prosecute marijuana offenses under narcotics law, despite the fact that marijuana is not a narcotic. Go figure.

<comment><USER4> There is no justification for SWAT teams being used to chase down non violent suspects. It is just part of the over militarization and RAMBO mentality of too many police forces. When the cops kill more Americans than terrorist it screams "you have a problem".

This article from the Atlanta Journal and Constitution shows just how out of control policing has become, [http://www.ajc.com/news/news/georgians-shot- police-unarmed-o...](http://www.ajc.com/news/news/georgians-shot-police- unarmed-or-shot-back/nppPP/)

<comment><USER5> I think there is an often overlooked proportionate argument. Which is not only should punishments be proportional to the crime committed. But enforcement efforts should be as well. Personally I don't see why the courts should shield the cops from liability when they are obviously being sloppy. Seriously if cops going to bust down someones door and point guns at them then they need to dot their i's and cross their t's.

Personally I think a lot of Judges came of age during the Dirty Harry era. We won't see much change until death and senility removes them from office.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _The judge ruled that officers cannot be held personally liable for > searching a home with a warrant based on two positive field tests for > marijuana... at least when the officers did not know about the risks that > the field tests results were false positives._

So then who is responsible when police are using equipment that is not reliable? Surely some un related third party performs tests on all the testing equipment, and it must be a accurate to a certain degree before it's approved for use...?

If that doesn't happen, why not?

<comment><USER7> You're misunderstanding reality. The simple fact is that these tests are not designed to detect drugs. They're designed to give the police a pretext to search you, whenever they wish to do so, while pretending to obey the law. How do we know this? If they were designed to detect drugs, the fact that they're very poor at doing so would be seen as a problem. It isn't. Therefore, they're designed for a different purpose.

See also breathalyzer, "drug detecting" dogs, field sobriety tests, visual estimation (without radar) of traffic speed, etc.

<comment><USER8> The article itself mentions the drug tests used in the field coming up as positive for cocaine through just air exposure.

Here is another that confirms the same thing happens upon air exposure to certain methamphetamine and marijuana field tests[0].

Point is that this abysmal false positive rate is that it's too convenient and the incentives are too high when it comes to maintaining an inexpensive shield for officer error / instant probable cause compared to court costs.

[0] [https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/04/02/jolly- ranchers...](https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/04/02/jolly-ranchers- sage-and-breath-mints#.DCY0Bm7lI)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Keer's article is uncharacteristically misleading. He twice implies that the police officers were at personal risk of having to pay damages. Though this is a fiction that the courts gleefully embrace it is nonetheless a fiction. Indemnification of police officers is universal, even in cases of willful misconduct and even in cases where written law suggests otherwise.

The other thing I would note is that qualified immunity and associated doctrines, which are near insurmountable obstacles to civil justice against police officers, are judge created law that can, and should, be sharply reined in by Congress.

<comment><USER10> "The other thing I would note is that qualified immunity and associated doctrines, which are near insurmountable obstacles to civil justice against police officers, are judge created law that can, and should, be sharply reined in by Congress."

Just curious, I know nothing about qualified immunity, what is it and why is it a problem?

<comment><USER9> I took an entire class on §1983 in law school, I'm not going to be able to do justice to it in a comment. But the long and short of it is that there are a series of judge made doctrines that put a giant thumb on the scale when you sue a police officer for violating your constitutional rights.

Among many other things you must show that the right in question was "clearly established". But the courts have lately been requiring a case with a nearly identical fact pattern in order to find that a violation of a clearly established right. Worse yet, they have been taking the questions out of order and deciding that a right is not clearly established without deciding that there is a constitutional right in the first place. Which in turn means that that case can't be used as precedent for someone else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Imagine how much time and money would be saved if we didn't all have to spend our hard-earned wages funding ridiculous witch-hunts like this. Officers staking out a house and rifling through the owner's rubbish for a plant? It's OK, though, because the plant was one kind of plant, not another kind.

<comment><USER12> I agree with your sentiment as far as marijuana is concerned (and really all drugs), but the "it's just a plant" argument isn't solid in general. For example, if the police had evidence of a surreptitious castor bean grow room, and evidence of something being chemically extracted from the plant material, I think that may be enough to justify a search warrant to determine what's going on. Of course that evidence would have to come from someone capable of telling the difference between castor beans, tea leaves, their ass, and their elbow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well, that is kind of what the judge said by ruling that the police don't have to understand the limitations of their tests. So if a test has a false positive on tea, then when they want to bust a tea drinker, they only need to pull out that test and claim they weren't aware of the limitations of the test. They can keep a whole suite of tests in their suitcase, ready to pull out the one that has the most likelihood of getting a positive result for the suspect that they "know" did it.

I'm no pothead, but I think I could tell the difference between wet tea leaves and pot just from the smell.

</comment><comment><USER14> Mr. Kerr, your story is about the Law not Justice. The first story was about Justice and how the couple didn't get any. Both are good.

What happened to "Protect and Serve". When did it become "Spy and Horas".

Why has judging become about convicting and not at all about justice. Why can the judge not say "I see ignorance and ambition" (as we all do). Think of it like manslaughter not murder. (Like you drive on bald tire, one blows, you run over a pedestrian. You didn't mean to kill them but you're still responsible.)

I smell a case where the couple could sue the drug testing company for not informing more about false positives. Or, if they do, the police for not reading them.

</comment><comment><USER15> > There is no basis to conclude, then, that Deputy Burns or Deputy Blake > should have known that the field test kits they were using tended to yield > false positive results.

How does the deputies claiming they had "no knowledge", were "not aware" or have had "thousands" of other tests used with no issues absolve them? How is the burden of knowledge not squarely on their shoulders as they are the agents administering the tests and submitting them as evidence to the court?

</comment><comment><USER16> Here is "False Positives Equal False Justice" which analyzes the particular drug field tests used, showing they have an enormous false positive rate.

[http://www.cacj.org/documents/sf_crime_lab/studies__misc_mat...](http://www.cacj.org/documents/sf_crime_lab/studies__misc_materials/falsepositives.pdf)

The judge's ruling ( [https://ecf.ksd.uscourts.gov/cgi- bin/show_public_doc?2013cv2...](https://ecf.ksd.uscourts.gov/cgi- bin/show_public_doc?2013cv2586-340) ) hinges on his statement on page 13 that "a reasonably trustworthy field test that returns a positive result for the presence of drugs is a sufficient basis, in and of itself, for probable cause."

Given the established accuracy of the field test used, no sane and honest person would ever claim it is "reasonably trustworthy", making the judge's claims moot.

</comment><comment><USER17> "Federal judge did not rule that drinking tea amounts to probable cause." I read the article, and yeah, he pretty much did.

<comment><USER18> Yeah. This article seems really to just be saying that the reality was more nuanced than the headline of the original article (which I stumbled upon and posted here on Monday). But of course had you continued reading past the headline of that article, you would have drawn the same conclusion.

I do appreciate the additional information about the situation that was covered in this article, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The HN discussion of the original article being referred to by this one can be found here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10803680](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10803680)

<comment><USER20> And the top-rated comment there, by jimrandomh, is still the first and last word on the matter as far as I'm concerned, even in light of the WashPo's editorializing:

"There are only two possible reasons for a police department to be using a test like that [with a known 70% false positive rate]. The first is ignorance, but of a degree and nature that is quite scandalous. The second is to commit fraud upon the courts, by claiming to have evidence of drug possession where no drugs exist. In light of the FBI hair test scandal ([https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/fbi-overstated- fo...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/fbi-overstated-fo...)) I think the latter explanation is fairly likely."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10804016](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10804016)

<comment><USER21> The key words there are "police department." I agree 100% that a police _department_ should be held accountable for using a test that appears to be about as useful as a Cracker Jack decoder ring. But this case was about the officers' personal liability. As the article points out, the legal question here was "Could a reasonable officer believe he had probable cause?" Whoever chose this particular test should be held liable—not the people who got it off the shelf and followed the directions on the box.

<comment><USER22> But I would note that the plaintiffs are suing the "Board of Commissioners of the County of Johnson County, Kansas et al." [1], not officers Joe Blow and Bob Smith.

[1]: [https://ecf.ksd.uscourts.gov/cgi- bin/show_public_doc?2013cv2...](https://ecf.ksd.uscourts.gov/cgi- bin/show_public_doc?2013cv2586-340) (pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > the Office has conducted "thousands" of field tests and the only false > positive results of which he is aware are the results at issue in this case.

I'd imagine most cops know what marijuana smells like and use the field test to back up their correct observations. I imagine they do very little testing of other random things to see what causes a false positive. We need better statistical education for the legal profession.

</comment><comment><USER24> Some Volokh asshat excusing authoritarianism for... nuances. Yes, the effect of the ruling was to make tea-drinking probable cause. Yes, when no-neck cops sniff and poke at plant matter, they are likely to be wrong, and biased in their wrongness. Yes, all these asshats should lose their careers in law and law enforcement.

</comment><comment><USER25> Journalists should be educated on effects of false positives even at low proba (which is not even the case here) on random investigations.

Actually, police and justice should be, but when they are not at least we should hope that journalists are.

So maybe technically the original title about the SWATing because you drink tea was not 10000% accurate. Does not matter. They were swatted because they drank tea and grow hydroponic stuff -- no need to invoke "insight"; this is just a fact; and this suffice largely in itself to illustrate there is a _big_ problem in how police do their work.

</comment><comment><USER26> Point completely missed: the officers should have known that the field test they used had a high false-positive rate, and should have taken a sample back to be tested by more reliable means. Either they're lying about being ignorant of the fact that the test is unreliable, which should be grounds for throwing those claims away when testing if the warrant showed probable cause, or they actually were ignorant of the test's unreliability, in which case they (or the person in their department who approved the test for use) are recklessly incompetent.

<comment><USER27> I completely agree. The federal judge did in fact rule that "drinking tea and shopping at a gardening store amounts to probable cause" when he made this ruling. First of all, there is no reason for these police to be relying on field tests when conducting a SWAT raid which was planned and calculated weeks in advance. Secondly, as you pointed out, the judge ruled that these police are in no way responsible for ensuring that there's any reason to believe these tests work at all. A user in the other thread pointed out that problems with these tests have been known about for years. What evidence did these police have these tests actually detect drugs, as opposed to air? What is to prevent the police from using dowsing sticks to determine who should be raided?

</comment></comment><comment> nv-vn I don't think these details matter as much as the fact that these police departments are wasting their time and resources conducting raids against people who they suspect of owning marijuana. Surely they could put their time and money to better use, for example training police officers not to react violently/kill unarmed (mostly black) kids.

</comment><comment><USER28> Even with the Update at the end, Kerr misses the point. The police are (a) using a tool that is generally known to be broken, (b) obviously lying.

He defends the court's ruling without challenging the fact that the court is relying on two known sources of misinformation while making its decision.

It is wrong -- and Kerr must know that -- to defend logic and conclusions when one knows the starting assumptions are wrong.

</comment><comment><USER29> Isn't there a bigger issue that the police are tracking lawful customers of a legal business and rooting through their trash with no probable cause.

</comment><comment><USER30> I look forward to Police departments hiring adults with learning disabilities so they can use qualified immunity to deliver grossly improper warrants.

<comment><USER31> [http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs- cops/](http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/)

We are already there.

<comment><USER32> That link returns 404.

<comment><USER31> [http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs- cops/sto...](http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs- cops/story?id=95836)

Bad copy/paste</comment></comment></comment></comment>


"Hey Siri, give us a hint." – Apple event on September 9 at 10 a.m. PDT - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/apple-events/september-2015/

<comment><USER2> This looks like an announcement of an announcement. Those are off-topic. Let's wait until something substantive happens.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, that page looks like crap on Chrome on Linux...

<comment><USER4> it's missing a stylesheet. [http://images.apple.com/apple- events/static/en_US/styles/eve...](http://images.apple.com/apple- events/static/en_US/styles/events.built.css)</comment></comment>


Lessons learned from MITx's prototype course - <AUTHOR> http://www.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/mitx-edx-first-course-recap-0716.html

<comment><USER2> I really like the idea of allowing the student to take a year instead of a semester, with the deadlines adjusted accordingly. This seems like a good alternative to "dumbing it down" to accommodate those of us who don't have the time or who find the material difficult.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was one of those 7157 that passed the course. Although I had to put a very large amount of effort into the course to get an A, I found it much easier to learn from a video lecture course than a live lecture course. The ability to pause, rewind, play at 1.5x speed, etc. allowed me to take a break when I lost my focus, speed through the sections I already understood, slow down and repeat sections that didn't make sense at first, etc. None of this is possible in a scheduled live lecture.

I wish I could have taken all of my college classes in this format, perhaps with the addition of 10-15 person lab sessions on campus. Best of luck, edX.

</comment><comment><USER4> I thought it was interesting that the professor who commented on the attrition rate said that another way to look at the student numbers is that the number of students who completed the online course was many more than could be taught in person at MIT over years and years.

</comment><comment><USER5> Glad to see the initiative sharing their notes.

As someone who has worked closely with MIT Faculty I did feel like one of their challenges would be in discussing and iterating on their learnings rapidly (as opposed to focusing on the learning quality them and seeing that they are of academic rigor).

</comment><comment> UK-AL What makes these courses look bad is the fact that many people will just sign up just take a peek at the content, rather than genuinely want to see it all the way through.

I guess this adds to the attrition rate.

<comment><USER6> why does that make the course look bad?

<comment><USER7> It makes it look bad to people who judge it based on the attrition rate.

<comment><USER8> All manner of wonderful things look bad to such people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What struck me most is that this course helped form lasting communities who are now studying other material together. That is just wonderful. A community you can discuss the material with will help people learn the material much better. Also, these people might go and build something together afterward.

</comment><comment><USER10> Love it that the students created their own version of the follow up course.

</comment><comment><USER11> To clarify, this has nothing to do with creating prototypes.</comment>


Can startup schools teach the next big thing? - <AUTHOR> http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/11/startup-accelerators.html

<comment><USER2> The title has nothing to do with the content of the article.

</comment><comment><USER3> nope</comment>


Unraveling the mysteries of megadrought - <AUTHOR> https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.3997 <comment><USER2> I wonder how much of a mess we've created by simply calling it "drought" in the first place. From the article is seems equally likely that the last several hundred years was just a period of abnormally large rainfall in the western US and the true average is much less than we have planned for.

<comment><USER3> On an unrelated note, imagine if we could conttol the weather to some general degree: Too much rain for some people, too little for others and then of course, neithet might follow historical petterns meaning native flora would be altered by the needs being met for agricultural species...

<comment><USER4> We can and do. California already has many active cloud seeding projects.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Open Source Search Engine to Learn Anything - <AUTHOR> https://learn-anything.xyz/ <comment><USER2> This is a brilliant idea and I love the minimal design. I was most inspired when I found that all the data is easily accessible through GitHub. I think the most important missing piece right now is authentication - if you implemented GitHub OAuth you could make it much easier for people to make contributions and record their progress without having to roll out your own authentication. You could also potentially save a user's progress and custom mind maps in a gist, eliminating the need to even have your own database.

I checked out the roadmap ([https://learn- anything.github.io/2017/06/15/roadmap.html](https://learn- anything.github.io/2017/06/15/roadmap.html)) and your comment below about a visual editor, and am now so excited to see where this project goes and hope to find ways I can contribute to it!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you a lot for the kind comment.

Our next update is focused on authentication and 'personalising' the search engine as much as possible. Some features we plan to add are :

\- Ability to bookmark maps

\- Ability to mark maps as learned

\- Ability to see a progress bar of how many maps you have learned compared to how many maps there exist

\- Ability to create and share learning paths with other people. A learning path is a collection of maps that can be followed to achieve some goal or skill like becoming a web developer.

\- We also want to create APIs that other developers can use to build their own visualisations and use our search and our public database in their own projects

\- We also want to add ability to trigger nodes as learned and ability to hide nodes you dislike or have learned

\- We also plan to add a text editor that is tied to your account so users can make notes on various topics they have learned or discovered

Our goal with this is to make it a completely personal search engine for learning any topic in this world in the most efficient way. Everything is open source too so if anyone wants to fork it and create their own search engine, they can.

If you want to help us with this, please do. We have an active Slack channel we use for all our communication.

[https://knowledge- map.slack.com/shared_invite/MTgxNTYzMjIzNj...](https://knowledge- map.slack.com/shared_invite/MTgxNTYzMjIzNjM5LTE0OTQzMzA4MDAtYzY1YWY0ZDc0NQ)

There are also lots of open issues on our search engine we can certainly wish to get help with :

[https://github.com/learn-anything/search- engine/issues](https://github.com/learn-anything/search-engine/issues)

<comment><USER3> This is great, thanks for building. Leaving for work but really deeply truly can't wait to play around with this tonight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The idea is great, the results seem a little minimal so far, "Mandarin Chinese" produced one result, "Arduino" was a bit better, "knot tying" was a null result. There's a lot of info on contributing which is great, but the process is not what I'd call easy - I'd think especially on searches that return nil it'd be good to throw up some kind of form, and ask the user if they wouldn't mind clicking through to the DDG results, looking at a few of the top hits, and then pasting in what they found to be the most helpful?

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea is that each map is open for contributions so all maps can be improved with the help of the community. Right now new things can be added by adding things directly to the JSON code that generates these maps but soon we will have a visual editor to simply this process even further.

And we provide a fallback search to DuckDuckGo in cases where no map is found for what you are searching for. We are also thinking of releasing a browser extension that will do what you proposed. You collect links from outside and then come back to our search engine and help improve it.

<comment><USER5> _The idea is that each map is open for contributions so all maps can be improved with the help of the community. Right now new things can be added by adding things directly to..._

Like DMOZ?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMOZ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMOZ)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really dig this website. When I want to learn a new topic my first step is always to discover the scope of the topic and find sources so this site is a real help.

Pro-tip: type in 'everything'

</comment><comment><USER7> I have to say that the UI confused me for a moment. The fact that what I searched didn't stay in the search box, and instead it replaced it with a new suggested search term was confusing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry you found this confusing. We show suggestions in greyed out text to encourage new searches for new things you can learn about.

The goal of this search engine is to let users both explore and search for what they need, not just search like what you can do with conventional search engines.

<comment><USER7> I think it's just a matter of the dominant elements on the page. The thing you searched is in small text beneath the very large search bar so it takes a moment to figure out what is going on. Otherwise very cool, good work!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Awesome tool, Nikita! This is a great step into organized, open knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER9> Can't see the map in MS Edge.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about this. This is an open issue still, sadly no one for our team has MS edge to test it on.

There is a pending issue on the search engine for this :

[https://github.com/learn-anything/search- engine/issues/54](https://github.com/learn-anything/search-engine/issues/54)

We certainly would love some help on this from people who own MS Edge and can help test it there.

<comment><USER9> You can use [https://www.browserstack.com/](https://www.browserstack.com/) or VM with edge to test it [https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft- edge/tools/v...](https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft- edge/tools/vms/) :)

edit: edge testing is free in browserstack</comment></comment></comment>