4 ms·

They're literally disrupting banking right now. Is accepting unreliability from financial institutions the disruption banking needs?

zaidf 14y ago
Is being unforgiving to new entrants in a typically scary industry the type of behavior that will encourage new competition?
- jacquesm 14y ago
  You should be unforgiving. I have no idea what the root cause behind this is but testing roll-over is obviously part & parcel of the level of reliability required in the financial world. Allowed: scheduled downtime announced ahead of time for reporting, unscheduled downtime with localized effect due to 'acts of god'. Not allowed: customers can't access their funds when they should be able to. When you disrupt the banking industry you especially should be doing at least as good as the established parties do in the reliability department. Let's hope they have it fixed very quickly or it may well kill Simple. Imagine being in a bar somewhere right now and having just bought a round finding out that you can't pay for it. You'll hear about that one for years.
  - zaidf 14y ago
    you especially should be doing at least as good as the established parties do in the reliability department. Easy to say but I think it is unreasonable to expect a company that is couple years old to have as much reliability as ones who have had decades to figure it out. I think the Simple customers have every right be absolutely pissed. For some, they may even realize that the downside of going with Simple isn't justified by the upside. Hopefully, for the majority of Simple users the upside will make the rare downtime bearable. My view would change if this becomes a regular occurrence with Simple. But that does not seem to be the case.
    - jacquesm 14y ago
      Try explaining how less reliability is acceptable to the guy that is out of gas trying to get home. Payment systems have an impact that is unlike any other system. It's very well possible that lives depend on your system working. You may never know about it but you should definitely build as though they do. You can't build financial software the same way that you build some CRUD site or the latest social fad.
      - zaidf 14y ago
        You can't build financial software the same way that you build some CRUD site or the latest social fad. No one is arguing that you should be able to do that. And it is kind of insulting to imply that that is how the folks at Simple look at development without some source. Systems break for many reasons, and you can't simply assume the cause to be a social fad attitude of the dev team.
  - gojomo 14y ago
    I highly doubt Simple's invite-only early-adopters are dependent on their Simple card as their only way to buy beer and/or (your downthread example) gas for the drive home. (And I hope they're not using their card for both on the same night.) #firstWorldProblems
    - bonzoesc 14y ago
      Guess what? https://twitter.com/Skroob/status/285932353765908480 https://twitter.com/Skroob/status/285932353765908480 https://twitter.com/mrlanphear/status/285916924599205889 https://twitter.com/mrlanphear/status/285916924599205889
      - gojomo 14y ago
        This just in: people tweeting also sometimes embellish their situations for dramatic effect! For example, in surrounding tweets @Skroob jokes about paying with Bitcoin, mentions his dining party has other options, and then despite some disappointment concludes with sympathy for @Simplify. He further says that Simple's "company policy of ignoring the s* out of HN, especially during outages" is something that "just makes me love you guys more". So: while non-customer HNers with crazy-high standards whinge, real customers can laugh about the situation (and even laugh about HN's negativity-bias).
        zaidf 14y ago
        Exactly. No one is denying this isn't a terrible thing. I don't think we have to convince Simple that this can't be happening. And I don't think one major downtime is reason enough to call for their heads as several of the comments imply. At the least let's wait for them to do the detail write up about the outage.
    - jacquesm 14y ago
      You really should have a look at how Simple bills itself. They bill themselves expressly as a replacement for your bank. The whole idea is that you absolutely rely on simple to do their thing or you might as well not use them. http://simple.com/ http://simple.com/ If Simple is used the way they intend you to use them those scenarios are playing out right now. You really can't shift the blame for that onto those that believed the Simple proposition and acted as though simple was going to deliver. Ordinary everyday people do not do single-point-of-failure analysis on their wallet, they simply expect it to work.

zaidf 14y ago

Is being unforgiving to new entrants in a typically scary industry the type of behavior that will encourage new competition?

jacquesm 14y ago
You should be unforgiving. I have no idea what the root cause behind this is but testing roll-over is obviously part & parcel of the level of reliability required in the financial world. Allowed: scheduled downtime announced ahead of time for reporting, unscheduled downtime with localized effect due to 'acts of god'. Not allowed: customers can't access their funds when they should be able to. When you disrupt the banking industry you especially should be doing at least as good as the established parties do in the reliability department. Let's hope they have it fixed very quickly or it may well kill Simple. Imagine being in a bar somewhere right now and having just bought a round finding out that you can't pay for it. You'll hear about that one for years.
- zaidf 14y ago
  you especially should be doing at least as good as the established parties do in the reliability department. Easy to say but I think it is unreasonable to expect a company that is couple years old to have as much reliability as ones who have had decades to figure it out. I think the Simple customers have every right be absolutely pissed. For some, they may even realize that the downside of going with Simple isn't justified by the upside. Hopefully, for the majority of Simple users the upside will make the rare downtime bearable. My view would change if this becomes a regular occurrence with Simple. But that does not seem to be the case.
  - jacquesm 14y ago
    Try explaining how less reliability is acceptable to the guy that is out of gas trying to get home. Payment systems have an impact that is unlike any other system. It's very well possible that lives depend on your system working. You may never know about it but you should definitely build as though they do. You can't build financial software the same way that you build some CRUD site or the latest social fad.
    - zaidf 14y ago
      You can't build financial software the same way that you build some CRUD site or the latest social fad. No one is arguing that you should be able to do that. And it is kind of insulting to imply that that is how the folks at Simple look at development without some source. Systems break for many reasons, and you can't simply assume the cause to be a social fad attitude of the dev team.
- gojomo 14y ago
  I highly doubt Simple's invite-only early-adopters are dependent on their Simple card as their only way to buy beer and/or (your downthread example) gas for the drive home. (And I hope they're not using their card for both on the same night.) #firstWorldProblems
  - bonzoesc 14y ago
    Guess what? https://twitter.com/Skroob/status/285932353765908480 https://twitter.com/Skroob/status/285932353765908480 https://twitter.com/mrlanphear/status/285916924599205889 https://twitter.com/mrlanphear/status/285916924599205889
    - gojomo 14y ago
      This just in: people tweeting also sometimes embellish their situations for dramatic effect! For example, in surrounding tweets @Skroob jokes about paying with Bitcoin, mentions his dining party has other options, and then despite some disappointment concludes with sympathy for @Simplify. He further says that Simple's "company policy of ignoring the s* out of HN, especially during outages" is something that "just makes me love you guys more". So: while non-customer HNers with crazy-high standards whinge, real customers can laugh about the situation (and even laugh about HN's negativity-bias).
      - zaidf 14y ago
        Exactly. No one is denying this isn't a terrible thing. I don't think we have to convince Simple that this can't be happening. And I don't think one major downtime is reason enough to call for their heads as several of the comments imply. At the least let's wait for them to do the detail write up about the outage.
  - jacquesm 14y ago
    You really should have a look at how Simple bills itself. They bill themselves expressly as a replacement for your bank. The whole idea is that you absolutely rely on simple to do their thing or you might as well not use them. http://simple.com/ http://simple.com/ If Simple is used the way they intend you to use them those scenarios are playing out right now. You really can't shift the blame for that onto those that believed the Simple proposition and acted as though simple was going to deliver. Ordinary everyday people do not do single-point-of-failure analysis on their wallet, they simply expect it to work.