6 ms·

Neither the title of this post nor the article explains what ACH is. And it somehow got 15 points in 6 minutes or so. Am I missing something? edit: yes, downvo

by s9w 7y ago

Neither the title of this post nor the article explains what ACH is. And it somehow got 15 points in 6 minutes or so. Am I missing something? edit: yes, downvote me to -3. I love you all

mpoteat 7y ago
ACH is a bank to bank transfer.
- refurb 7y ago
  Or bank to customer, thus potentially customer to customer.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- one2zero 7y ago
  I don't believe that its technically a bank to bank transfer because the ACH is involved. With wire transfers you're communicating directly with the bank via SWIFT or Fedwire.
  - edubs25 7y ago
    I think it depends on context - I'm guessing you're thinking about flow of funds where as others are thinking about the actual process of running ACH files through the network. As an end consumer or other entity(like a TPA or bank ISO), you can submit a request or set of requests that will end up in that banks ACH file. At the end of the day, the bank that submits that file is responsible for ensuring those requests are valid, and ensuring all the returns are processed. These requests consist of to/from account routing information and dollar amounts with a lot of other rules in the file specifications. Not every banks can submit these directly. A lot of banks submit to larger banks and so on. I vaguely recall there also being fines/fees applied to the file submitter on if you send bad data or exceed return thresholds.
bonyt 7y ago
ACH is Automated Clearing House - a US Bank Transfer / Direct Deposit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACH_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACH_Network
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
paulddraper 7y ago
https://lmgtfy.com/?q=ACH https://lmgtfy.com/?q=ACH Automated Clearinghouse Chances are that's how your employer is paying you.
tjpaudio 7y ago
The article is written for people interested in the very specific topic of the technical workings ACH transfers. It seems absurd to me that you would try to write this article to an audience that hasn't even heard of ACH. I think the only thing you are missing is that you are not the target reader.
- munk-a 7y ago
  Elitism is no reason to avoid having a definition of jargon. HN has discussions on a wide variety of technical topics most of which aren't directly useful in our day job - or at least on the topic of information we'd seek out independently... But we have this list in part because intellectual curiosity is a good thing and maybe, within the way that whatever an ACH is deals with a dead person, there might be some interesting logic that you could apply to your own field. If someone submitted "How I managed to emulate Super Mario in C without using more than 30 Kb of memory" I'd be super interested and look to see what sorts of crazy pointer tricks or unioned structs were in use - even though I don't currently work with games or C in my daily.
  - tjpaudio 7y ago
    It's not elitism. ACH is a term that should be familiar to anyone even remotely informed on the topic. It's ok to read articles on things you are unfamiliar with but it is also on you as the reader to educate yourself when you read on topics that you are unfamiliar with. If every detail was explained in layman's terms, reading would be terribly boring and nuanced technical writing would be dead.
    - munk-a 7y ago
      But... I've worked with technical writers and PhDs, technical writers (the good ones) can really easily pull analogies out of thin air to help elevate a reader's understanding, I think (maybe due to star trek) that a lot of technical PhDs are quite good at forming comprehensible analogies as well. Usually CS papers are ~40% comprehensible to the vast majority of non-CS people, this differs from more liberal artsy fields where other field pieces are taken as a given and the assumptions compound to the point where education ends up being about familiarizing yourself with all that jargon. There are some terribly complex CS concepts (try and explain how a hash function produces essentially random output - or how private and public keys are actually computed in a manner to make private keys non-trivially derivable from public keys) and some terribly ingrained jargon (Oh, how's that SSL cert was it SHA signed?) but the effect on your topic of how these jargony terms work is usually easy to express, you don't need to know the history of POSIX to comprehend that CS people have a tool that checks if a string sorta looks like an expect format that we use everywhere, and you don't need to explain positive lookahead zero width assertions to convey that point. Having a single clause stating "ACH (the preferred US method for bank-to-bank transfers)" would instantly clear all this up... it's also insanely relevant because the topic of the article is about what happens when bank-to-bank transfers have a recipient who is dead.
teraflop 7y ago
Also currently on the front page: * An article about a null-pointer bug in GCC that doesn't explain what pointers are * An article about Stripe that doesn't explain what Stripe is or does * An article about the programming language Julia that doesn't explain what Julia is. I think it's your expectations that are out of whack. Not every article needs to explain everything as if the reader is completely unfamiliar with the topic being discussed.
- munk-a 7y ago
  The article on the null-pointer bug goes into technical details about what the exposed error case is - the fact that it's a bug is made super clear - the fact that it's a logic bug is pretty readily apparent. The Stripe article starts with "I worked at Stripe for 3+ years" so Stripe is clearly a company, the article itself is focused on the operations & team cohesion side of stripe not on their line of business. The article about Julia is hosted on `julialang` and within the first paragraph there is a sentence containing: "So I thought it might be helpful to the broader Julia community—and maybe even for other programming language communities—to actually write down Julia’s release process" None of these articles give you a full and complete comprehension of their topics - walking away from Strip I don't know if they're a listed company or what their market cap is - but I was given enough information to make it through. ACH is not a common jargon term, and even with common jargon there usually is some explanation, if someone writes a well-written article about some MySQL quirk, it'll probably have the term "SQL" somewhere in the first paragraph and it'll certainly have the term "database" and "query" - those hints are enough to grasp the general subject matter. The word "bank" doesn't show up in the article until paragraph three and the jokey description of doing it to "a dead person" immediately derails the users ability to grasp that it's a monetary transaction - it's perfectly logical that monetary transactions need to have error handling around dead, missing and not-yet-existing people, but leading with that point harms readability. I think this article is a great example of a poorly written piece that with some very minor edits to clearly define the scope of the article would be a lot more legible.
  - kody 7y ago
    Agreed. Even after Googling "ACH" I had to reconcile the article's usage of "ACH" as a verb, when it appears to be a electronic payment system.
C14L 7y ago
Probably the US version of European SEPA.
- mynameisvlad 7y ago
  That's not quite right. An automated clearing house for transactions isn't a US-specific concept, it's used all over the world (sometimes called an ACH, sometimes under a different name). SEPA uses STEP2 as the pan-European clearing house. Each European country also has their own equivalent to the ACH. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_clearing_house https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_clearing_house, Germany's seems to be a service offered by the Bundesbank.
  - falsedan 7y ago
    In the context of the title though, ACH =~ SEPA

by s9w 7y ago

Neither the title of this post nor the article explains what ACH is. And it somehow got 15 points in 6 minutes or so. Am I missing something? edit: yes, downvote me to -3. I love you all

mpoteat 7y ago

ACH is a bank to bank transfer.

refurb 7y ago
Or bank to customer, thus potentially customer to customer.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
one2zero 7y ago
I don't believe that its technically a bank to bank transfer because the ACH is involved. With wire transfers you're communicating directly with the bank via SWIFT or Fedwire.
- edubs25 7y ago
  I think it depends on context - I'm guessing you're thinking about flow of funds where as others are thinking about the actual process of running ACH files through the network. As an end consumer or other entity(like a TPA or bank ISO), you can submit a request or set of requests that will end up in that banks ACH file. At the end of the day, the bank that submits that file is responsible for ensuring those requests are valid, and ensuring all the returns are processed. These requests consist of to/from account routing information and dollar amounts with a lot of other rules in the file specifications. Not every banks can submit these directly. A lot of banks submit to larger banks and so on. I vaguely recall there also being fines/fees applied to the file submitter on if you send bad data or exceed return thresholds.

bonyt 7y ago

ACH is Automated Clearing House - a US Bank Transfer / Direct Deposit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACH_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACH_Network

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

paulddraper 7y ago

https://lmgtfy.com/?q=ACH https://lmgtfy.com/?q=ACH Automated Clearinghouse Chances are that's how your employer is paying you.

tjpaudio 7y ago

The article is written for people interested in the very specific topic of the technical workings ACH transfers. It seems absurd to me that you would try to write this article to an audience that hasn't even heard of ACH. I think the only thing you are missing is that you are not the target reader.

munk-a 7y ago
Elitism is no reason to avoid having a definition of jargon. HN has discussions on a wide variety of technical topics most of which aren't directly useful in our day job - or at least on the topic of information we'd seek out independently... But we have this list in part because intellectual curiosity is a good thing and maybe, within the way that whatever an ACH is deals with a dead person, there might be some interesting logic that you could apply to your own field. If someone submitted "How I managed to emulate Super Mario in C without using more than 30 Kb of memory" I'd be super interested and look to see what sorts of crazy pointer tricks or unioned structs were in use - even though I don't currently work with games or C in my daily.
- tjpaudio 7y ago
  It's not elitism. ACH is a term that should be familiar to anyone even remotely informed on the topic. It's ok to read articles on things you are unfamiliar with but it is also on you as the reader to educate yourself when you read on topics that you are unfamiliar with. If every detail was explained in layman's terms, reading would be terribly boring and nuanced technical writing would be dead.
  - munk-a 7y ago
    But... I've worked with technical writers and PhDs, technical writers (the good ones) can really easily pull analogies out of thin air to help elevate a reader's understanding, I think (maybe due to star trek) that a lot of technical PhDs are quite good at forming comprehensible analogies as well. Usually CS papers are ~40% comprehensible to the vast majority of non-CS people, this differs from more liberal artsy fields where other field pieces are taken as a given and the assumptions compound to the point where education ends up being about familiarizing yourself with all that jargon. There are some terribly complex CS concepts (try and explain how a hash function produces essentially random output - or how private and public keys are actually computed in a manner to make private keys non-trivially derivable from public keys) and some terribly ingrained jargon (Oh, how's that SSL cert was it SHA signed?) but the effect on your topic of how these jargony terms work is usually easy to express, you don't need to know the history of POSIX to comprehend that CS people have a tool that checks if a string sorta looks like an expect format that we use everywhere, and you don't need to explain positive lookahead zero width assertions to convey that point. Having a single clause stating "ACH (the preferred US method for bank-to-bank transfers)" would instantly clear all this up... it's also insanely relevant because the topic of the article is about what happens when bank-to-bank transfers have a recipient who is dead.

teraflop 7y ago

Also currently on the front page: * An article about a null-pointer bug in GCC that doesn't explain what pointers are * An article about Stripe that doesn't explain what Stripe is or does * An article about the programming language Julia that doesn't explain what Julia is. I think it's your expectations that are out of whack. Not every article needs to explain everything as if the reader is completely unfamiliar with the topic being discussed.

munk-a 7y ago
The article on the null-pointer bug goes into technical details about what the exposed error case is - the fact that it's a bug is made super clear - the fact that it's a logic bug is pretty readily apparent. The Stripe article starts with "I worked at Stripe for 3+ years" so Stripe is clearly a company, the article itself is focused on the operations & team cohesion side of stripe not on their line of business. The article about Julia is hosted on `julialang` and within the first paragraph there is a sentence containing: "So I thought it might be helpful to the broader Julia community—and maybe even for other programming language communities—to actually write down Julia’s release process" None of these articles give you a full and complete comprehension of their topics - walking away from Strip I don't know if they're a listed company or what their market cap is - but I was given enough information to make it through. ACH is not a common jargon term, and even with common jargon there usually is some explanation, if someone writes a well-written article about some MySQL quirk, it'll probably have the term "SQL" somewhere in the first paragraph and it'll certainly have the term "database" and "query" - those hints are enough to grasp the general subject matter. The word "bank" doesn't show up in the article until paragraph three and the jokey description of doing it to "a dead person" immediately derails the users ability to grasp that it's a monetary transaction - it's perfectly logical that monetary transactions need to have error handling around dead, missing and not-yet-existing people, but leading with that point harms readability. I think this article is a great example of a poorly written piece that with some very minor edits to clearly define the scope of the article would be a lot more legible.
- kody 7y ago
  Agreed. Even after Googling "ACH" I had to reconcile the article's usage of "ACH" as a verb, when it appears to be a electronic payment system.

C14L 7y ago

Probably the US version of European SEPA.

mynameisvlad 7y ago
That's not quite right. An automated clearing house for transactions isn't a US-specific concept, it's used all over the world (sometimes called an ACH, sometimes under a different name). SEPA uses STEP2 as the pan-European clearing house. Each European country also has their own equivalent to the ACH. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_clearing_house https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_clearing_house, Germany's seems to be a service offered by the Bundesbank.
- falsedan 7y ago
  In the context of the title though, ACH =~ SEPA