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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

When I was unemployed a while back i went to sign up for unemployment.

You could only do things on the site during government business hours.

On the surface it was frustrating, but it also made the site feel 'alive' in a way that I hadn't felt since the days when even professional company sites had an about page that the 'webmaster' created with maybe a pic of the server, or his cat.

I have an idea in my head for a sort of "banking" (not a real bank and I wouldn't use that word) app and that it would be amusing to have it recognize bank holidays and typical bank hours.

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This reminds me of a couple local bulletin board systems back in the day. They would only be online overnight, when the sysop's parents didn't need the phone line.

I had the opposite problem. My BBS had a dedicated line but was only open during the day because my dad didn't want me to keep the computers on overnight.

That's how I ran mine. It was mostly for my friends and I to play LORD and Falcons Eye. I could only run it on the nights I remembered to turn off my parents bedroom phone :D

You just reminded me of a couple of BBS we had locally when I was a kid that where only on for a couple of hours a day but never exactly on the hour, everyone would start dialling our early to try and connect.

We had a thriving BBS scene despite been a poor northern town because of a historical oddity that meant local calls cost a fixed price whether they lasted 30s or two hours.

I love my modern computers but there was something cool about computers then (or simply the optimism of youth).

It felt like they where going to change everything..and then they only sorta did and not always in ways I’d have wanted.

I guess that’s what people thought of the telephone, wireless and steam engine though.

FWIW, in the USA that was the norm during BBS' heyday--local calls costed the same no matter the length of the call. And you might be paying a different company for your local service vs. your long distance service.

You’re joking, but I used to have a bank account at Poste Italiane (the Italian national post service... don’t ask). You couldn’t access anything on the website, not even your balance, between 22 and 6. We’re talking about 2010. Not sure if things have evolved since then (I closed my account soon after that, and it was an odyssey... but that’s another story).

Do tell us about the odyssey!

Sorry, I just read the reply :)

If you're still interested, basically I opened my Poste account in the city where I lived as a student at the time. I then graduated and moved elsewhere, but when my debit card expired, I got a letter that told me to pick up my new one... in the old city's office, hours away from my home. There was no way I was going to lose a day just to go there, pick up the card and go back, so I decided to just open a bank account somewhere else. But then I couldn't move my money there because the Poste debit card acts as an authentication device (you swipe it into the OTP device that Poste provides), both on the website and in person, so I couldn't transfer or withdraw my money, or even close my account at an office. I had to spend money to send a _raccomandata_ and wait 30 days for my money to finally be transferred to my new account. Fun times.

Poste Italiane (the Italian national post service... don’t ask)

Still to this day the single bank that never incurred any fees for using their ATMs as a foreigner - at least that's my experience.

The Canada Revenue Agency wouldn't accept my tax filing until after 6am. This year.

Maybe 2 or 3 years ago I had the IRS tell me to come back during business hours as well to download a form.

bhphotovideo.com observes the sabbath

Oh man when I was into photography I remember that.

It also gave some character to the site, making it clear that people were behind it. Of course they are, but the site too then felt a bit more personal.

This is the most amusing comment I've seen on HN all year.

So does Adorama.com.

Not really. You can still submit orders and use the site just fine, they just make it clear that they won't process or ship orders on the sabbath.

>Open 24/6 >Online checkout will be closed while we observe Shabbat from 8:15pm ET Fri until 9:45pm ET Sat. Although online ordering is unavailable, you may still add items to your cart or wish list.

Ah, my mistake! I misremembered from the orders I've placed.

https://www.holyclock.com/ """ HolyClock is a free service for closing websites on Shabbat and Holidays. The closing occurs before Shabbat enters, for each visitor individually, based on their physical location in the world at the given time.

With HolyClock you can prevent desecration of Shabbat by visitors of your website. A visitor who is located where Shabbat has begun, is redirected to a temporary closing page until Shabbat ends. """

I'm really interested to know how many have bought the $9/month Premium plan. Doesn't seem that expensive considering you can enroll as many as 3 whole websites! ;-)

Looks like you need the premium plan if they aren’t your host.

My local ICBC bank app/website (Argentina) disables several operations outside of (10 to 3) banking hours.

- Forex buys and sells are disabled

- "Large" transfers are disabled (over some silly amount on the order of $2K)

- And my personal favorite, you can't see or pay your credit card bill (for Mastercard ONLY), and you get a "this function is not available right now, call the bank at $BANK_WORKING_HOURS_ONLY_NUMBER" message.

And I thought that Nación bank was awful because I couldn't buy USD or units in the investment fund!

At lot of online newspapers here only allow comments from 9 to 5, for moderation reasons.

On my bank you can only do online Foreign Currency exchange during banking hours. It always give me the sense of urgency and to plan ahead if I need to replenish my other accounts.

Makes you think they do some human review, or don’t want to expose themselves to a currency crash or rate error when they could take a while to pull the plug.

What was your home currency? Was it subject to any currency controls?

There are some websites here that close down on sunday due to religion. Bank transfers used to be delayed in the weekend until monday, but i think they fixed that

I think the ACH money wiring system already only works during business hours. Which is frustrating to no end. Servers need not sleep.

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