Absolutely true.
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Not really connected. The perpetrators of the near-collapse of the US banking system were not the small to mid-sized regional banks.
@jawarajabbi Apologies; I was responding to the hope that “people who run banks would never do something risky” like using LLMs in their systems because someone might go to jail if they screw it up. Most of my experience working with banks & investment companies is with large ones. I think they absolutely would & no one would face any real consequences if that lead to a big screw up.
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@cstross Yep. They have enough trouble accepting conversions of code that involve formal proofs that the result is identical let alone a pattern recognition engine mostly built on junk github code and stackexchange nonsense.
@etchedpixels @cstross This fits my previous experiences in such regulated and "conservative" IT projects.
However, I *am* concerned that regulators will look the other way or lower restrictions to sustain this bubble. (The US has already dropped a few safeguards across the entire spectrum, after all.)
And if they do, the finance sector *will* jump on this, because if anyone wants to pinch pennies at scale, it's them.
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RE: https://mstdn.ca/@charette/116127384919473905
Absolutely true.
(For those who haven't dealt with banking IT: banks are in the business of managing financial risk, and it doesn't get any riskier than allowing an enthusiastic intern who occasionally lies to you and hallucinates on the job to refactor a 60 year old code base that nobody really understands, without oversight, that handles all your customers' money. The phrase "sued into a smoking crater of banking wreckage the instant anything goes wrong" springs to mind!)
@cstross Central-European-centric tangent: average USian hasn't got the slightest clue how far behind US banking is relative to what we have in central-european countries, formerly behind the Iron Courtain. We did not have any ancient ballast dragging us down, hence, all computerized banking systems are fairly modern (think technologies available after 1989). Websites, applications, functionalities, speed, low or nonexistent fees, ...
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RE: https://mstdn.ca/@charette/116127384919473905
Absolutely true.
(For those who haven't dealt with banking IT: banks are in the business of managing financial risk, and it doesn't get any riskier than allowing an enthusiastic intern who occasionally lies to you and hallucinates on the job to refactor a 60 year old code base that nobody really understands, without oversight, that handles all your customers' money. The phrase "sued into a smoking crater of banking wreckage the instant anything goes wrong" springs to mind!)
@cstross Just one more good reason to only use banks as minimally as possible, and NEVER keep your savings with them. And that includes safety deposit boxes. If you don't hold it--you don't own it.
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@cstross I saw a comment on the Reg story on this that made again the point that often gets missed with the talk of replacing COBOL, that it's not just the COBOL, and in many ways that's the easiest part, it's the surrounding transaction layers and databases and z/OS filesystem components, most of which don't really map onto the usual Linux based platforms very easily at all.
Don't dismiss i-Series (nee AS/400) either, as well as its near-native RPG!
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@cstross I've had a project sponsor in a financial institution tell me, within the same week, "If we get this wrong I could go to prison" and "We can go faster if Copilot reviews the pull requests that Claude generates" so I do not have much trust in banking being averse to risk.
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@bobthomson70 @cstross can confirm. Plus the programmers who could explain how the mainframe code works are all busy last I heard addressing genuine fiduciary issues to explain the code. Plus the code interactions are insane - cross cutting concerns all over.
@MortonRobD @bobthomson70 @cstross
I... Did work with people who were very busy porting z/os cobol code to Linux + Oracle + NetCobol...
So I know it can be done. Sorta.
It was... painful. Old cobol programmers tend to be crusty fellows, who don't really like these new 'PC' things.
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@cstross Central-European-centric tangent: average USian hasn't got the slightest clue how far behind US banking is relative to what we have in central-european countries, formerly behind the Iron Courtain. We did not have any ancient ballast dragging us down, hence, all computerized banking systems are fairly modern (think technologies available after 1989). Websites, applications, functionalities, speed, low or nonexistent fees, ...
@cstross If it wasn't because of different design and architecture (e.g. IBAN vs. ABA), the simplest, fastest, and most cost-effective path to modernizing US banking would be for them being taken over by European ones. (granted, I have no experience with western-european ones, but I can vouch for those central-european).
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@cstross If it wasn't because of different design and architecture (e.g. IBAN vs. ABA), the simplest, fastest, and most cost-effective path to modernizing US banking would be for them being taken over by European ones. (granted, I have no experience with western-european ones, but I can vouch for those central-european).
@ThePolishDispatch Western European banks got computers around the same time as American banks. However, they're structured differently: eg. the UK has no state banks (unless you count Scotland and Northern Ireland, and their banks *issue banknotes*) but half a dozen *very large* high street banks who deal with the public, and a larger number of smaller investment banks, plus building societies (shareholder owned lenders for real estate mortgages). And Visa/MC are franchises run by the banks!
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@cstross I saw a comment on the Reg story on this that made again the point that often gets missed with the talk of replacing COBOL, that it's not just the COBOL, and in many ways that's the easiest part, it's the surrounding transaction layers and databases and z/OS filesystem components, most of which don't really map onto the usual Linux based platforms very easily at all.
I worked on adding an "E-frontend" to a COBOL pensions system in the 90s
We were like "well can't we rewrite it all' [in Java at the time :-) )]
It turned out the system had been worked for 20odd years with a whole floor full of people doing change requests. There was NO spec or description. What the mainframe did _was_ the spec . Absolutely no way to replace it
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@cstross If it wasn't because of different design and architecture (e.g. IBAN vs. ABA), the simplest, fastest, and most cost-effective path to modernizing US banking would be for them being taken over by European ones. (granted, I have no experience with western-european ones, but I can vouch for those central-european).
@ThePolishDispatch I think a chunk of what's wrong with US banking is that there are far too many tiny regional institutions and inter-bank commerce is ridiculously high friction.
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@cstross Just one more good reason to only use banks as minimally as possible, and NEVER keep your savings with them. And that includes safety deposit boxes. If you don't hold it--you don't own it.
so... where do you keep your savings & how often are you robbed or caught up in a natural disaster? i've found that sopping wet rolls of dead presidents don't spend that easy
banks were created for a reason, if the answer is "don't use banks & make it impossible for those vulnerable to robbery, floods, or fires to save for their future" -- i don't think that's a good answer
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@quinn @jzillw I spent a few years doing back end dev in a payment service provider that hooked into all the big British high street banks. About 10% of their managers were brilliant, 70% were a waste of oxygen, and 20% were clearly undercover anarchists seeking the downfall of capitalism by weaponizing Svejk-like cheerful ineptitude.
@cstross
<3 Svejk reference -
RE: https://mstdn.ca/@charette/116127384919473905
Absolutely true.
(For those who haven't dealt with banking IT: banks are in the business of managing financial risk, and it doesn't get any riskier than allowing an enthusiastic intern who occasionally lies to you and hallucinates on the job to refactor a 60 year old code base that nobody really understands, without oversight, that handles all your customers' money. The phrase "sued into a smoking crater of banking wreckage the instant anything goes wrong" springs to mind!)
Much of modern computing is layers of hardware and software each lying to the layer above and below.
Somewhere it meets a person, who probably lies to it, and about what it produced.Seems to work ;)
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@MortonRobD @bobthomson70 @cstross
I... Did work with people who were very busy porting z/os cobol code to Linux + Oracle + NetCobol...
So I know it can be done. Sorta.
It was... painful. Old cobol programmers tend to be crusty fellows, who don't really like these new 'PC' things.
@ParadeGrotesque @bobthomson70 @cstross I also wonder (left bank 10 years ago) how many of the people who really knew the code are left and how much institutional knowledge has been lost. My last few years there I wrote java tools for Ops but still got asked a lot about how to do obscure stuff in z/OS.
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@jsl @cstross
> the old rules still apply the moment you start fiddling around with the government's flow of money.It is almost inconceivable to me that this is the *optimistic* way to look at this issue :)
But politicians seem to be pretty cheap and easy to buy these days, so while I hope you are correct, I don't share your optimism.@fn0rd @cstross It's not optimism and it may be dependent on your country of residence, but your AI firm would have to bribe a large number of low ranking government officials. These people are not easily accessible to lobbying efforts as it's hard these days to get entertainment approved if it exceeds EUR 50. And nobody risks their job for a cheap pen and some dry sandwiches in a Novotel. /2
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@causticmsngo @jawarajabbi @jzillw @cstross
So...are you all saying I need to stash my cash under my mattress or in my freezer?@ldmay65 @causticmsngo @jawarajabbi @jzillw @cstross
a person who stashes cash under the mattress / in the freezer in the US is subject to losing the money to police forfeiture, a real fear, not a "might happen in the future"
I worked in a legal cash biz in the 90s/early 00s so i've known many people it happened to ... you do not have to be arrested for much less convicted of any crime because property (cash) does not have civil rights so it can be seized (forfeited) merely on suspicion
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@cstross "occasionally"? I'd say "often"...
Meanwhile, the centre of ignorance¹ is panic-selling IBM shares in the assumption that banks will allow the enthusiastic hallucinating lying intern to do exactly that.
¹ Wall Street
@Uilebheist @cstross it's not just interns.
When I started in banking almost all front end systems were excel sheets created by traders that had completed a weekend course in VBA.
I made a living for a decade replacing that stuff.
One guy tried to get me fired because my replacement metal trading system flipped his bottom line to a massive negative.
He called a high profile meeting to shit on my maths. Turned out he had been confusing US and Imperial Tons his whole career. 🫣
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@ParadeGrotesque @bobthomson70 @cstross I also wonder (left bank 10 years ago) how many of the people who really knew the code are left and how much institutional knowledge has been lost. My last few years there I wrote java tools for Ops but still got asked a lot about how to do obscure stuff in z/OS.
@MortonRobD @ParadeGrotesque @cstross the business logic part is a whole other issue too yeah - best train all those folk who know it into 'prompt engineering' then eh 🙄
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@MortonRobD @bobthomson70 @cstross
I... Did work with people who were very busy porting z/os cobol code to Linux + Oracle + NetCobol...
So I know it can be done. Sorta.
It was... painful. Old cobol programmers tend to be crusty fellows, who don't really like these new 'PC' things.
@ParadeGrotesque @MortonRobD @cstross probably they are busy trying to figure out how to get that off of Oracle now eh :)
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@ju a me già basterebbe sapere che dei rappresentanti vengono eletti come alla lotteria per sapere che è una legge pessima che può tornare nel nulla giuridico
Per carità, statisticamente una volta ogni tanto ti può andare bene e viene eletto uno capace e di buone intenzioni, per il resto si capisce che è una legge fatta per smontare un potere che deve essere indipendente da un potere politico, a meno che non vuoi vivere in una dittatura
Detta in poche parole e male è la mia opinione
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@ju posso condividere alcune cose che dici ma non sono d'accordo
Primo, non vai a votare per fare contento qualcuno o dare un voto a qualcuno
Vai perché puoi esprimere direttamente la tua opinione su una legge che influenzerà la tua vita, e non capita tutti i giorni
Sul farsi un'opinione, dai, mica devi studiare un esame di diritto. Ascolti o leggi opinioni di persone più sensate di me, ne trovi dappertutto, mi spiace dirlo ma molla adesso mastodon e in max 15 min ti puoi fare un'idea
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@omgubuntu
Sarà, ma non vedo l'ora di installarmi la nuova LTS!!
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@phastidio
Cioè si starebbe innescando la bolla delle AI??
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@GiorgiaMecojoni ma hanno letto la postilla che dopo di te la regina sarà tua figlia?
