[HN Gopher] Guys what is wrong with ACATS
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Guys what is wrong with ACATS
        
       Author : martinky24
       Score  : 120 points
       Date   : 2024-05-24 20:18 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.bitsaboutmoney.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.bitsaboutmoney.com)
        
       | e63f67dd-065b wrote:
       | I never knew about the 3-day limit before, it makes sense that
       | this is the reason behind unverified ACATS transfers (a problem
       | that I've spent no small amount of time arguing about on various
       | online forums long ago).
       | 
       | Interestingly, Fidelity lets you put your account into "lockdown"
       | mode there they'll reject all ACATS (and ACH too I believe)
       | transfers automatically without your intervention. I've always
       | wondered what kind of legal magic they're pulling to make this
       | compliant with FINRA rules.
       | 
       | What eventually convinced me over that it's not a problem is, as
       | Patrick says, that these institutions will with high likelihood
       | make you whole for fraudulent transfers, the same way they will
       | for fraudulent ACH. The financial system generally works.
        
         | vineyardmike wrote:
         | > these institutions will with high likelihood make you whole
         | for fraudulent transfers, the same way they will for fraudulent
         | ACH. The financial system generally works.
         | 
         | This applies to _so much_ of the financial system, that it
         | baffles me people worry about the things they do. I have family
         | members that are so scared of card skimming they only pay in
         | cash, and friends who are still too scared of the internet to
         | buy things online.
        
           | cesarb wrote:
           | > This applies to so much of the financial system, that it
           | baffles me people worry about the things they do.
           | 
           | That's easy to understand. For the "financial system", $1000
           | is nothing. For many people, $1000 means the difference
           | between having something to eat or not. Even if you get your
           | money back in the end, not having any money for several days
           | can be a disaster; and the 1% chance that you might not get
           | that back can be too much risk to bear.
           | 
           | > I have family members that are so scared of card skimming
           | they only pay in cash
           | 
           | That's understandable. With cash, all you can lose is the
           | cash you have in hand at that moment; if your card is skimmed
           | and used without your permission, you can lose up to the
           | card's limit (and perhaps even more, if the limit isn't
           | strictly enforced). You might say that fraudulent
           | transactions will be reversed, but there's always that 1%
           | chance that the other side will somehow manage to convince
           | your bank that the transactions were in fact legitimate.
           | 
           | > and friends who are still too scared of the internet to buy
           | things online.
           | 
           | When you buy at a store, the goods you bought are in your
           | physical possession at the moment of the payment. When you
           | buy things online, the goods you bought show up days or even
           | weeks later, if they do, and until they arrive, you have no
           | idea whether they're actually what you bought (and that's on
           | top of the "card skimming" risk).
           | 
           | Sure, if you have enough resources, you can tolerate losing
           | $1000 of the limit of one of your credit cards for a few days
           | until the charge is reversed (and even, in the worst case,
           | absorb the loss in case that charge isn't reversed), but not
           | everyone can do that. And the perceived risk can be higher
           | than the unknowable real risk; someone who has heard about
           | (or experienced) enough incidents in which money was lost
           | (temporarily or not) will understandably be more reluctant to
           | expose themselves to these risks.
        
           | acheong08 wrote:
           | I once had to starve for 2 days because my bank froze my card
           | over the weekend and being in a new country, had no cash with
           | me (the nearest exchange was too far away by foot)
           | 
           | Nowadays I pretty much have the bare minimum in the bank and
           | just spend cash.
        
             | skybrian wrote:
             | Having multiple, independent payment methods, of any sort,
             | seems like the way to go.
        
           | miki123211 wrote:
           | For a lot of people, not having access to anything they
           | currently have in their bank account, which is most of their
           | savings, is actually a quite big deal, even if they can get
           | that money back eventually.
        
           | chiph wrote:
           | I regard this as dealing with differing amounts of annoyance.
           | Fraudulent credit card charge? Pffft - it will get taken care
           | of with maybe two phone calls. Fraudulent debit card charge
           | that leaves me with $8.31 in the bank? Getting up there on
           | the annoyance scale. I have cash to live on for a few days,
           | but it will likely require several phone calls and some
           | outstanding bill-pays may bounce[0]. Someone buying a car
           | with my stolen identity? Hugely annoying.
           | 
           | [0] I have a couple of monthly bills that cause a physical
           | check to be printed and mailed. And one of the recipients
           | only checks their mail twice a week so the float time is
           | significant. I deal with them because I must.
        
       | preinheimer wrote:
       | So many parts of the financial system only work because there's
       | take-backsies.
       | 
       | Taking back a wire transfer seems to basically involve someone at
       | your bank phoning a friend, and it all works in the end.
        
         | psychlops wrote:
         | The more one learns about how traditional finance works, the
         | more horrifying it becomes.
        
           | supertrope wrote:
           | On a technical basis yes. Finance rests upon a foundation of
           | people emailing around spreadsheets and trust. Much better
           | than new innovative cryptocurrencies that are just a trojan,
           | wallet address typo, or exit scam away from losing your
           | savings.
        
             | psychlops wrote:
             | As trusting as the traditional finance system is, it seems
             | they still experience exit scams, wire typos, and countless
             | other scams that lose savings.
             | 
             | Crypto has a long way to go, but tradfi hasn't solved its
             | own problems. Until then, I guess we'd all better hope our
             | bank representatives have a lot of friends in the industry.
        
               | astrange wrote:
               | Crypto can't solve its main problem though; it's
               | fundamentally based around not being able to reverse
               | transactions, which means you can't reverse a mistaken or
               | fraudulent transaction, which is the whole reason tradfi
               | works. And I don't think the other stuff makes up for
               | this, even if programmability and flash loans are
               | interesting.
               | 
               | (I mean interesting mostly in a bad way.)
        
               | miki123211 wrote:
               | There's nothing in crypto that _inherently_ prevents
               | transaction reversals.
               | 
               | This can be implemented as a smart contract on any
               | sufficiently advanced blockchain (definitely Ethereum,
               | not sure about Bitcoin).
               | 
               | The way this works is that you put the money in an escrow
               | contract first, designating a trusted third party as an
               | arbiter. If you don't dispute the transaction for a few
               | weeks, the money goes through irreversibly. If you do,
               | the contract "locks up", and the third party can now
               | either decide to send the money on to its destination or
               | return it back to you. The contract is designed in such a
               | way that those are _the only things that third party can
               | do with your money_ , they have no way of taking it for
               | themselves. Either way, they get a small cut for the
               | trouble of adjudicating the transaction.
               | 
               | If what you're worried about is wallet hacks, not
               | disingenuous merchants, that's doable too. Instead of
               | storing your money directly in your wallet, you'd have to
               | store it in a smart contract, designed in such a way that
               | your key is the only one that can move money out of it.
               | However, limitations would be placed on the contract with
               | regards to how much money can be moved daily. Such limits
               | would likely be different for transfers to trusted escrow
               | contracts and for irreversible transactions. If you
               | needed to move more money, you could designate a trusted
               | third party (let's say a traditional bank doing
               | traditional bank things for identity verification) as
               | being able to override these limits for you. Again, that
               | would be their only responsibility, they would not have
               | the right to move any of your money without your
               | permission. This essentially relegates a bank to the role
               | of an identity verifier who cannot take control of your
               | money in any possible way except by colluding with a
               | hacker who already has access to your wallet.
               | 
               | THe reason none of this exists is ecosystems and network
               | effects, not technical limitations.
        
               | psychlops wrote:
               | Or, just like tradfi, point out the mistake to the
               | counterparty. Request your crypto back and the
               | transaction is reversed.
        
               | miki123211 wrote:
               | In tradfi, the counterparty is typically a sophisticated
               | financial institution that either is in your jurisdiction
               | or at least cares somewhat about not annoying your
               | government. If it isn't, it's probably a customer of said
               | financial institution, and thus subject to their rules.
               | In crypto, your counterparty might be literally anybody.
        
               | jasonhansel wrote:
               | That just shifts the problem around: if there's a bug or
               | mistake in the smart contract _itself,_ then you face the
               | problem that you can 't reverse that smart contract.
        
               | astrange wrote:
               | Also, you can't patch bugs in the smart contract because
               | people can spot the patch transactions and outbid you to
               | exploit it instead.
        
               | waveBidder wrote:
               | Congratulations, you've just invented a bank.
        
               | miki123211 wrote:
               | I have emphasized the main difference between this and a
               | bank multiple times, but if it's not sufficiently clear:
               | A bank holds your money. It can do whatever it wants or
               | is forced to with that money, including seizing it if
               | you're Canadian and attend a protest[1]. In the system I
               | outlined, a bank can only decide whether a transaction
               | _you_ dispute should be reversed. As long as you don 't
               | dispute any transactions, the bank has no ability to take
               | your money.
               | 
               | [1] https://www.newsweek.com/banks-have-begun-freezing-
               | accounts-...
        
               | karpierz wrote:
               | But then I can't spend my money for several weeks - the
               | feature that crypto can't implement is having the
               | reversal window be wider than the lockout window.
        
               | davidgerard wrote:
               | > There's nothing in crypto that inherently prevents
               | transaction reversals.
               | 
               | Irreversibility was a key design parameter of bitcoin.
               | 
               | You can kludge a reversal system on top, much as you can
               | build an SQL-a-like atop Mongo. Or you could not use a
               | system whose literal point is the opposite.
        
               | psychlops wrote:
               | Of the many crypto problems I can think of, reversible
               | transactions seems low on the list. Tradfi "works"
               | because there is no other choice given so people make it
               | functional and it is comfortable through familiarity.
               | 
               | People conveniently forget the rampant scams, identity
               | theft, and numerous types of fraud that are clearly
               | irreversible in tradfi. Then they present it as a new
               | problem that crypto must solve as well as being the same
               | as the old system.
        
               | astrange wrote:
               | Nothing is irreversible in tradfi, regulations and the
               | court system will find someone to give it back to you.
               | 
               | That's what insurance is for, for instance.
        
             | quesera wrote:
             | FWIW, "wallet address typo" should never be a thing.
             | 
             | There's a serious checksum in each of the BTC wallet
             | formats that makes the chances of any random set of typos
             | _extremely_ unlikely to be valid.
             | 
             | A mis-pasted (but valid) wallet address could happen.
             | 
             | Not to minimize the myriad other ways to easily lose, or
             | lose control of, cryptocurrency!
        
               | lxgr wrote:
               | Bitcoin does, but Ethereum doesn't, at least not
               | originally.
               | 
               | There is some way to encode a checksum in the
               | capitalization of the letters/digits A-F, but I'm not
               | sure how ubiquitously supported that is. It seems like a
               | pretty bad hack in any case.
        
               | quesera wrote:
               | Fascinating, I am unaware of the inner workings of
               | Ethereum.
               | 
               | It boggles that they could make such a massive design
               | error, especially with the Bitcoin examples staring them
               | in the face.
        
               | lxgr wrote:
               | I believe the idea was that "nobody will use raw low
               | level addresses, so we don't need to make them usable".
               | 
               | But ENS is now prohibitively expensive in terms of fees
               | and also not universally supported, so here we are.
        
             | gopher_space wrote:
             | One of my early lessons was realizing the spreadsheet folks
             | have their own backup systems and they're fairly ingenious
             | and orthogonal to my own concerns.
        
             | matthewdgreen wrote:
             | We certainly have the ability to implement transfer
             | authorization, from the sender side, using good
             | authentication technology. This doesn't have to be
             | cryptocurrency: it can just be the same techniques that we
             | use to authenticate people logging into their bank account,
             | eg passwords, MFA, passkeys, Face ID. We don't do that for
             | a bunch of business reasons given in the article (mostly
             | that sending institutions are disincentivized from enabling
             | this, and regulators have come up with a kludge that
             | spreads the losses out in weird ways.) The result is that
             | we use a system based on trust, reversal and insurance.
             | This seems fine, but it almost certainly raises costs
             | across the entire system in ways that we can't obviously
             | measure. Those costs presumably show up in places that
             | typical consumers can't really see, unless they're very
             | sophisticated: for example, higher management costs and
             | worse spreads and weird fees.
        
           | NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
           | I was going to make a dumb joke about how this was the plot
           | to a horror story or movie or something. I paused for a few
           | seconds (that's discouraged around here, so it better be a
           | good joke)... and it started to sink in that it could well be
           | the plot not only to a horror movie, but maybe has the
           | potential to be a compelling one. "You'll be made whole,
           | eventually" sounds great, until you think back to all those
           | times in your life where "in a few weeks" would've ruined
           | you. Even death's not out of the question if it pushes
           | someone over the edge into suicide territory. The lunatics
           | really do run the fucking asylum.
        
           | lxgr wrote:
           | What's horrifying about being able to quickly fix a honest
           | mistake in mutual agreement? It's not always possible, but
           | when it is, it's so much more efficient than the
           | alternatives.
           | 
           | Trust isn't a given and not always warranted, but when it is,
           | it is a feature, not a bug.
        
           | taneq wrote:
           | So much of the world essentially runs on trust, it's amazing
           | that it works at all, let alone as well as it does.
        
       | CaliforniaKarl wrote:
       | Heads-Up for folks trying to get to one of the linked pages:
       | 
       | https://news.bloomberglaw.com/mergers-and-acquisitions/matt-...
       | 
       | You can get to the same content here:
       | 
       | https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-02-16/the-se...
       | 
       | Which was previously posted to HN here:
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34824986
        
       | recursive wrote:
       | Is it just me, or is that cat song not that good? I listened to
       | it twice, and found it completely unremarkable. A minute later, I
       | can't remember much about it.
        
         | patio11 wrote:
         | De gustibus non est disputandum; there are some things that
         | ruin many people's lives that have no appeal to me, there are
         | some things many people enjoy responsibly that I have learned
         | to stop myself from using because I will not make good
         | decisions over a period of years, and then there was that
         | freaking cat song, which gave me the strongest "WARNING: Your
         | brain is not in control of your response to this song, in a way
         | which is qualitatively different than the usual ways music is
         | moving." when listening to it that I found it remarkable.
        
           | NobodyNada wrote:
           | > I think if you say the words "my cat" to me when I am on my
           | deathbed I will immediately hum three notes.
           | 
           | The song is currently ruining my life in a very different
           | sense: I keep listening to the song over and over to try to
           | guess which three notes you're talking about, but I can't for
           | the life of me figure it out. Mind clearing that up for me?
           | 
           | (Personally, I definitely see how the song could be perceived
           | as infectiously catchy, but it doesn't seem to do it for me.
           | I think the structure and rhythm are a little too irregular
           | for it to get stuck in my head.)
        
             | NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
             | Back in the mid-1990s, I remember a news fluff piece about
             | a woman who claimed to have epileptic seizures in response
             | to hearing Mary Hart's voice (some newstainment
             | journalist/anchor, maybe Entertainment Tonight?). Doctor
             | supposedly confirmed it via experiment (though, now I
             | wonder if the man should've kept his license, seems
             | unsafe).
             | 
             | Earworms are probably the same. Specific either to unique
             | brains, or to particular brain neuro-templates.
        
               | mtlynch wrote:
               | I thought you were confusing this with an episode of
               | _Seinfeld_ , when Kramer has seizures in response to Mary
               | Hart's voice.[1]
               | 
               | But you're right. This was a real case that _Seinfeld_
               | must have been referencing.[2]
               | 
               | The doctor, Venkat Ramani, is still active and is the
               | Vice Chair of Neurology at New York Medical College. [3]
               | 
               | [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Samaritan_(S
               | einfeld...
               | 
               | [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20240324001523/https://ww
               | w.nytim...
               | 
               | [3] https://www.nymc.edu/faculty/faculty-profiles/by-
               | name/ramani...
        
         | nvy wrote:
         | I thought it was pretty catchy, actually.
        
         | plorkyeran wrote:
         | It's pretty catchy, but ultimately just a very generic pop song
         | other than the lyrics.
        
         | mynameishere wrote:
         | What is this song that he mentions but never seems to name or
         | link to?
        
           | recursive wrote:
           | But there is a link.
        
       | icedchai wrote:
       | I had to get a medallion stamp to do an ACATS transfer from
       | broker A to B. I chose to get it at bank C, where I had my
       | checking account, which also happened to own broker D.
       | 
       | Of course, the medallions were handled by a sales guy (sorry,
       | financial advisor) working for broker D who then spent an hour
       | trying to convince me I should move my account to them instead.
       | Eventually he finally gave in and sent off the paperwork.
       | 
       | It's annoying the hoops you have to go through to get control of
       | your own money.
        
         | CaliforniaKarl wrote:
         | Reminds me of when I wanted to close my Bank of America
         | account: I didn't know that you needed to make an appointment
         | for that. But indeed, it's my money, I had all the ID-
         | verification paperwork needed, and I was stubborn enough to
         | agree to wait for a clerk to become available.
         | 
         | For what it's worth, you may wish to consider a credit union,
         | as it's less likely that a credit union would also own a
         | brokerage.
        
       | CaliforniaKarl wrote:
       | Fun fact about the Medallion Signature Guarantee: It's not a seal
       | or embossment, like it often is for a notarization. Instead, it's
       | a stamp (like what you see on [0]). It's a big stamp, but it's
       | just a stamp.
       | 
       | That's OK, though, because the person making the stamp is keeping
       | a lot of records, so they'll know what they stamped.
       | 
       | When I first got my Treasury Direct[1] account, I couldn't verify
       | my identity using their online process, and so I had to mail in
       | FS Form 5444[1]. My local credit union had "Medallion Service" as
       | one of the reasons for booking an appointment (separate from
       | "Notary"), and they were able to take care of it. As mentioned in
       | the article, the person at the credit union asked me for a
       | monetary value. As it was a new Treasury Direct account, I said
       | "$10,000" (the maximum amount of Series I bonds you can get per
       | calendar year).
       | 
       | And as implied in the article, my credit union had no problems
       | issuing this, even though they were not involved in Treasury
       | Direct in any way.
       | 
       | It's interesting, all the 'little' 'home-grown' ways of identity
       | guarantee that pop up when needed.
       | 
       | [0]: https://www.bankofamerica.com/signature-
       | services/medallion-s...
       | 
       | [1]: https://www.treasurydirect.gov/forms/acctauth.pdf
        
         | bostik wrote:
         | I'm not in the US, but can fully appreciate the practice.
         | 
         | If I were to request to move funds in 6-to-7 figures range
         | across institutions, I _absolutely_ would want the receiving
         | outfit require that I visit my current outfit in person first
         | to authorise such a transfer. Making sure that such visits are
         | smooth and efficient is good service.
         | 
         | On a related note, when I got my mortgage in the UK, the
         | issuing bank/lender-arm required me and my wife each to get a
         | Proof Of Being Alive. (I'm not a UK native.) Turns out
         | embassies issue these quite routinely, for a modest fee, and a
         | visit that lasts at most 15 minutes. At the time I found that
         | requirement both confusing and irritating, but in the context
         | of the article, it makes sense. The lender was about to issue a
         | sufficiently large loan to a person with very limited[ss] UK
         | transaction history.
         | 
         | On the upside, more recently that same bank/lender prodded and
         | arranged me to get an early, admittedly pretty good fixed deal
         | on my remortgage - two months before the central banks started
         | to hike their rates. Without that early intervention my current
         | rate would be at least three percentage points higher.
         | 
         | ss: from the viewpoint of a financial institution, who likely
         | measures customer relationship ages in decades.
        
           | CaliforniaKarl wrote:
           | > I absolutely would want the receiving outfit require that I
           | visit my current outfit in person first to authorise such a
           | transfer.
           | 
           | So, about that... The Medallion Signature Guarantee is often
           | obtained from an entity not involved in the transfer. From
           | [0] on my post:
           | 
           | > We do not provide medallion signature guarantees for assets
           | you're transferring out of a Bank of America or Merrill
           | account (guarantees are typically provided by a third party
           | not involved in the transfer or by the firm receiving the
           | assets).
           | 
           | In a way, that's a good thing: By the time you've initiated
           | this transfer, the receiving entity should have done their
           | KYC. And the losing entity probably would not want to take
           | the cost of the liability. Having a third party--one who has
           | had you as a customer for some time--is a good layer of
           | security.
        
             | mananaysiempre wrote:
             | It's also not unreasonable to expect that an entity you
             | want to take assets out of will, to the first order of
             | approximatiom, be incentivized to make any process involved
             | in that as protracted and difficult to navigate as
             | possible. (This is also, I expect, why the asset transfer
             | process described in TFA is initiated from the receiving
             | side, why mobile number portability is requested via your
             | new mobile network, etc.) So if the recipient doesn't want
             | to take on the verification burden because they just met
             | you, falling back to a third party rather than the sender
             | makes sense.
        
         | thaumasiotes wrote:
         | > Fun fact about the Medallion Signature Guarantee: It's not a
         | seal or embossment, like it often is for a notarization.
         | Instead, it's a stamp (like what you see on [0]). It's a big
         | stamp, but it's just a stamp.
         | 
         | As far as I'm aware, a "seal" and a "stamp" are the same thing.
         | In particular, a seal is just a device that impresses ink onto
         | paper. How is that supposed to be different from a stamp?
         | 
         | https://www.japanlivingguide.com/living-in-japan/culture/han...
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heirloom_Seal_of_the_Realm
         | 
         | (Depending on the documentary technology of the culture, a seal
         | may also be used to make a physical impression in a soft
         | substance, but obviously that is still no different from a
         | "stamp".)
        
           | jameshart wrote:
           | Seal and stamp can both mean several things, but both can be
           | applied to the process of making an ink impression on a
           | document.
           | 
           | Seals also can be impressions left in wax or embossed into a
           | document itself.
           | 
           | Stamps can also be separate paper pasted onto a document (eg
           | a postage stamp, a visa stamp)
           | 
           | The terminology is fuzzy.
        
             | thaumasiotes wrote:
             | This isn't really compatible with the claim above that
             | "it's not a seal".
        
               | jameshart wrote:
               | Right. I was agreeing and adding context to your post,
               | not trying to refute it.
        
             | oasisbob wrote:
             | Seals can also be used to bind multiple documents together,
             | or to permanently keep a single document intact.
             | 
             | I worked for a bit with a non-profit which was involved in
             | international adoptions. Seeing documents under apostille
             | with elaborate seals wasn't uncommon. eg, a multi-page
             | document attached to a government certificate of
             | authenticity, bound together by a ribbon passed through a
             | drilled hole, with the hole filled with wax.
        
         | mizzao wrote:
         | Weirdly, on [0] it says the following:
         | 
         | "We do not provide medallion signature guarantees for assets
         | you're transferring out of a Bank of America or Merrill account
         | (guarantees are typically provided by a third party not
         | involved in the transfer or by the firm receiving the assets)."
         | 
         | This seems to differ from the article and seems to be a way to
         | make it harder to withdraw assets (why would a third party
         | provide a medallion to insure someone else's assets?)
        
           | FeepingCreature wrote:
           | This is already noted and explained in the article. Search
           | for "totally uninvolved".
        
             | mizzao wrote:
             | Says "can in principle be totally uninvolved", not
             | "customarily is totally uninvolved.
             | 
             | The article seemed to imply that the institution
             | transferring the securities would also be in the best
             | position to vouch for the identity of the owner who it had
             | been the custodian for.
        
               | matthewdgreen wrote:
               | But that sending institution may not be incentivized to
               | do so, for the reasons identified earlier in the piece.
        
           | icedchai wrote:
           | From my own experience getting a medallion stamp, the losing
           | institution doesn't want to make it easier for you to
           | transfer out. The paperwork is often annoying enough as it
           | is. Certain things "can't be done" online so you have to send
           | in forms and wait. (Always use registered mail, just in
           | case!) If you put enough blockers in place, the customer may
           | just decide to leave the account where it is.
        
       | daft_pink wrote:
       | The other side of this is that I've absolutely had a SEC advisor
       | tell me that I couldn't access my money unless I kept my account
       | with him and the bank had to verify my access to the money if I
       | wanted to transfer it, but if I stayed I could keep it. ACATS
       | ultimately protects the consumer from keeping their money with
       | unscrupulous advisors.
       | 
       | I agree with the author that it is totally terrifying, but I feel
       | the assets should be kept with a third party or third party
       | verification service so that the broker isn't incentivices to
       | "verity" details.
       | 
       | I think medallions are a good solution to this problem and like
       | the author of the piece says they are shockingly easy to get. I
       | think that the advisors themselves receiving the money generally
       | have huge relationships with the companies they work with that
       | issue medallions and even the third party companies with
       | relationships with the receiving advisor will generally provide
       | one for free even if the person doesn't have one.
        
       | niederman wrote:
       | > Infohazard warning about which I am being absolutely serious
       | 
       | Small nit: since this song isn't a fact or idea per se, it would
       | probably be more accurate to call this a cognitohazard.
        
       | TwoNineFive wrote:
       | People who start sentences with "guys" or "bro".
        
       | throwaway290 wrote:
       | That suno song is not only not an earworm, I can't recall what it
       | even sounds like after 15 minutes...
        
         | jessekv wrote:
         | Try the top-played suno track, I promise that you will remember
         | all the lyrics for more than 15 minutes.
         | 
         | https://suno.com/song/ee467d00-5813-4a74-9792-c9ae4a09d344
        
       | BiteCode_dev wrote:
       | Damn I wish I thought about that title.
        
       | piinbinary wrote:
       | It's somewhat amusing to look back on my Computer Science
       | education, where they taught us that database transactions are
       | used to ensure bank balances are moved atomically between
       | accounts
        
         | elteto wrote:
         | I'm sure this is true at some level. Just not _all_ levels.
         | 
         | At some point you just can't connect to the db on the other
         | side because it belongs to a different institution.
        
       | mattofak wrote:
       | I've had to get a medallion before to move a small retirement
       | account and there were two things I very much did not like about
       | the process:
       | 
       | (1) Most institutions require you to have been a member for 6
       | months before they will grant a medallion. I was transferring
       | money between Fidelity and Schwab. Neither of which have branch
       | offices within an hour of where I live. And I only have a virtual
       | bank. There was no one willing to give me a medallion because I
       | have no local banking relationships. I had to pull a favour with
       | work to get our controller to vouch for me at our business bank.
       | 
       | (2) I've done domestic and international wires for _much_ more
       | money without needing anything like a medallion. Why can 't I do
       | something like log in to Fidelity and wire the funds across
       | directly?
       | 
       | (Also, have fun finding the forms required to transfer your
       | retirement account. Fidelity at least made the process
       | exceptionally difficult, and their customer service agents acted
       | like they didn't know what a Simple IRA was or why one would want
       | to transfer _out_. Sure there 's a page about transferring, but
       | it likes to loop you into the "transfer funds _into_ " flow.)
        
       | captainkrtek wrote:
       | Definitely unrelated, but am I the only one bugged when an
       | article has a clearly AI generated graphic (eg: misspelled or
       | garbled text)?
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2024-05-25 23:02 UTC)