Comment by ajays | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ajays | Hacker News Reader

Sometimes I think technology just leaves people behind, with no hope of catching up.

About 10 years ago, one weekend I drove up to an ATM in Upstate NY, and found an elderly couple standing there, looking confused. After a minute, I stopped the car and got out. Both were well-dressed (probably coming home from church); the gentleman was about 90; his wife was a similar age.

"Is everything OK?" I asked.

"Could you help us?", she said (he was too proud to ask for help, I guess).

"Sure! What can I do for you?" I replied.

"You see, the bank sent us this card and said we should be using it, instead of going to the teller inside. But we don't know what to do with it."

Wow. I was shocked. The bank (HSBC) had not even told them how to use the card. And I was surprised that there existed people who didn't know how to use an ATM in this country!

So I showed them where to insert the card; told him to enter his PIN (while I looked away so I wouldn't see it). I advised them about the security implications; and how to always collect the card after you're done (those ATMs kept the card for the duration, unlike newer ones where you just swipe).

I was left with a sad feeling after that, which I can still remember. If I'm ever designing software for general use, I always think about that couple and try to see it from their eyes.

My brother and I were talking about technology gaps today, specifically about how some older people get stuck day after day in front of their TVs watching trash because they never picked up anything past the VCR, or even the VCR at all (in the case of my grandparents).

We talked about a simplified Netflix-type account/device that would make suggestions, be dead simple to use, and allow an 80-90 year old to re-watch old classics, view documentaries and the like without commercials, repeats, confusion, etc. If something reasonable existed, who wouldn't shout their elderly parents or grandparents something like this for $xx/mo. Ideally, older generations would have a diverse range of friends and social activities to while away their hours, but often this just isn't the case and they are stubborn, have language barriers if immigrants, etc.

I think this would be a good idea -- though keeping a lid on the feature creep would be a challenge.

OTOH it wouldn't help everyone: my grandmother treats anything electronic as 'too complicated' without even trying at this point, though the TV remote is the conspicuous exception to the rule.

This. Also, equally important is the usability of the hardware. E.g. compared to the dot-matrix printers of 90s, it is far easier to feed paper to Laser printers.

Children normally find it easier to adapt to new things. E.g. "Hole in the Wall" experiments: http://www.greenstar.org/butterflies/Hole-in-the-Wall.htm

Not sure, if this is slightly off-topic, but sometimes users ask pretty interesting questions. Circa, 1997 I visited a computer training institute to meet one of my friends who was a Lab Technician. There was a batch of interesting people: only one of them would sit in front of a desktop and all 38 would line up around him, despite terminals being available for all of them. Now, this guy is trying to type "dir /s" and while hitting the Spacebar a question pops in his mind: "Why do you need to hit the Spacebar with thumb?" I started thinking about how it is more efficient to hit the Spacebar with thumb, the notion of finger travel in miles per annum etc., while my friend replied curtly to that 55 year old student: "Sir, do you start your Scooter by hitting the `kick' by foot or by palm?" He gulped the tobacco he was chewing up.

During that year, I rolled out a desktop application in a smallish organization and was astonished to meet users who were typists-turned-computer-operators. I couldn't grasp as to why they found my code to be so user-friendly. Turned out that a key decision in the beginning of the project helped me: all labels in the application were in Marathi.

Re: parent's post, in the case of ATM machine, if they keep a microphone disguised in the form of telephone handset connected to the machine itself, driven by an AI program (without the press 1 for foo, press 2 for bar type of idiocy) might be of great help.

Thanks for the link to that Indian experiment.

There are 50 or 60 million cable-TV connections in India at this point in time. The guys who set up the meters, splice the coaxial cables, make the connection to the house, etc., are very similar to these kids. They don't know what they're doing. They only know that if you do these things, you'll get the cable channel. And they've managed to [install] 60 million cable connections so far.

Not so different from many of us (like myself) who learned programming functionally. Very inspiring article, thanks.

Thank you for this link! I read it years ago but could never remember what the kids called the mouse pointer (“ sui, Hindi for needle”). I always wanted to say kudzu for some reason.

Children normally find it easier to adapt to new things. E.g. "Hole in the Wall" experiments: http://www.greenstar.org/butterflies/Hole-in-the-Wall.htm

Related TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_educa...

Our ATMs (Portugal) are very explicit: http://casinoonline.co.pt/images/thumbs/casinomultibanco.gif

The real version is animated (you seen the card entering the slot) EDIT: Someone made a video... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zzEXfX_Otk

I've always wondered why newer ATMs like to retain the card until after the transaction. I've left my card in an ATM two or three times while in a rush on account of that.

Newer/better ones will force you to take your card back before dispensing cash, which I think it's an elegant solution. Keeping your card in the first place is, I suspect, a security thing.

I have taken back my card and walked away forgetting to take my cash on two occasions when using such systems. The stupiditity of users knows no bounds.

There's a definite trade-off here: on the one hand, people are less likely to forget to take their cash; on the other hand, people who find a forgotten card in an ATM are unlikely to abuse it, but if they find cash, they'll probably just pocket it.

I believe this is a US-only problem. I haven't seen that sort of ATM in the last ten years where I'm from (India), and I was pretty shocked to see them in the US.

First, I don't believe it's a problem but merely a different procedure. Second, in France (and most of Western Europe I think), all ATM's keep your card for the simple reason that the magnetic stripe (the part of the card that's in contact with the ATM when you swipe) is never used, to my knowledge. It's the chip that is used to verify the identity, locally record the transaction and more.

Is that the reason? The chip on the card is positioned so that readers can be designed to only need the card inserted about halfway.

I think it has more to do with giving the machine the ability to not give the card back. :-)

What possible use case exists for that ability? The card's generally blocked after a set number of incorrect attempts anyway, so it's not as if it could be used anywhere else.

ATMs that keep your card for the duration of the transaction only serve to decrease trust in the mechanism.

The card's generally blocked after a set number of incorrect attempts anyway, so it's not as if it could be used anywhere else.

Remember, credit cards originated before there was universal ubiquitous connectivity. It's still no guarantee (think of a small merchant at some outdoor festival). EMV (Chip and PIN) cards have an offline mode which an bad guy can use. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mkb23/interceptor/

ATMs that keep your card for the duration of the transaction only serve to decrease trust in the mechanism.

In the past, there were modes that allowed you to overdraw your account with an ATM. I imagine this was done in consideration for unreliable communications links or banks that needed downtime in their account balances for batch transaction processing.

"Trust" is a deep and strange concept, but at the end of the day US ATM cards are only a mag stripe and a 4-digit PIN. We'd best not expect too much from them. :-)

Dip ATMs (where you insert your card then pull it out) wouldn't have any trouble with chips either. I can see why it'd be an issue with swipe ATMs though.

I still think ATMs that eat your card up are terrible.

Having had a machine in Romania keep (and supposedly destroy) my card in the first week of a 10-week visit in 2004, I can attest that this is not a US-only thing.

If you don't have a chip on your card, an ATM must ask the issuing bank to validate your PIN each time you type it in. Almost all communicate using the ISO-8583 protocol.

ISO-8583 defines two response codes that cause an ATM to retain your card:

41 - Pickup card (lost card) 43 - Pickup card (stolen card)

It is up to the issuing bank to decide whether to return those codes, or not.

I'm not sure if it's simply coincidence, but I've noticed that while most new ATMs (in the US) are swipe only, it seems that on ATMs that allow deposits the machine retains the card. I'm not sure if there's a reason the card is retained for deposits. I also could just be tricking myself with anecdotal evidence, but I've definitely seen new ATMs side by side with a swipe withdrawal-only and a retaining withdrawal-and-deposit.

All the bank ATM's I've encountered here in the UK won't dispense cash until you've taken your card back out of the slot.

The first ATM I used in Thailand a few years ago, dispensed the cash and then gave the card back. Needless to say I walked off with my money and no card. That turned into a fun holiday....

Most US ATMs can detain cards. This can be done in response to a request from the issuing bank, or if the card is left in the slot after the transaction as a safeguard.

I'd suspect that they want to keep the opportunity to seize the card until the last possible moment.

I've heard that with some of these ATMs, if you enter an invalid PIN too many times, it'll kick you out and eat the card. I've never tried this, personally.

It's happened to me.

Definitely happened to me too. Also, I've noticed the ATMs at convenience stores, bars, on street corners etc are usually the swipe ones and the ones at banks are usually the keep your cards ones for some reason. To me the ones that give me card back right away are much much nicer as it's much harder for me to forget my cash than my card, and it means I only have 1 thing (which is my goal anyway) to get from the machine. It's nice that basically the ones around the places I wind up when I'm tipsy in the middle of the night are the ones that're set up so they're hardest for me to mess up.

It works well for me. I always remember I need to get my card back, but more than once I have almost walked away from the kind that return your card first without taking my cash out of the slot because I was in a hurry.

I really wish all software engineers could have an experience like that because it almost always makes them more empathetic which allows them to make better software.

My experience first came when I was helping my dad get a webcam working and I've gone looking for them since, and I'm sure that has gone a long way toward making me a better engineer and a better product manager.

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