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Out of prison after 30 years and people telling him to find forms on the web

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Re: Out of prison after 30 years and people telling him to find forms on the web

#81

Post by lolsal »

flohofwoe wrote: post #25
Farbklex wrote: post #7

In contrast, I am sure we all know some older people who were not in prisson for the past 30 years and still don't know how to write an email, what a zoom call is or when it's appropriate to double-click vs single click items on a computer. I know people in their 50s who pretend that "they don't need this technology" or "I can just go to the bank if I need something". Sure, if you're in your 80s you might want to dod…

I'm a software engineer yet I don't do online banking (I literally "just go to the bank if I need something"). I don't consider myself a "luddite", I just don't see the advantage over traditional "offline banking". Same with shopping and all the other little nuisances of daily life.

I have this same predilection and I have thought a lot about it and I am pretty confident I know where this comes from for me:

When I was young, after opening my first checking account, I fat-fingered a transfer from checking to savings online and the bank software interpreted this as me trying to transfer more than I had, so it happily proceeded to give me a large cash advance and then charge me $75 for the trouble, and another $35 for the NSF fee.

Now, maybe because I work in software, and maybe even moreso because I have literally written checking account software - I do not use online or mobile apps for non-trivial banking things. I call a person. Or I walk up to a person. I verify everything they are doing before they do it, and by acting as my agent during more complicated tasks they assume liability if they fat-finger something or mess something up (so far).

For the curious: the online form had separate inputs for dollars and cents, and some JS regex removed punctuation marks. So when I typed "1,0,period, 0, 0", instead of trying to transfer $10, it transferred $1000. I absolutely breezed through the "verify the amount step".

Re: Out of prison after 30 years and people telling him to find forms on the web

#82

Post by lolsal »

maxerickson wrote: post #58
deepstack wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad another software guy saying this. Digital infrastructure as how it now has no integrity. I prefer going to bank if I have time. Even the largest bank like Feds can have 3 trillion dollars operation error. https://thespeakernewsjournal.com/us/bank-wires-worth-trilli... Knowing what I know and the kind of security that is in online banking does not bring any confidence in me.

Why do you think the in person operations are less likely to make errors? I mean, go ahead and do what you want, but if checking recent transactions makes sense for online banking, it probably makes sense for offline banking too.

If I make an error, I eat it. If the banker makes an error, they eat it, or at least you have some ground to stand on.

Re: Out of prison after 30 years and people telling him to find forms on the web

#83

Post by Farbklex »

refactor_master wrote: post #19
Farbklex wrote: post #7

In contrast, I am sure we all know some older people who were not in prisson for the past 30 years and still don't know how to write an email, what a zoom call is or when it's appropriate to double-click vs single click items on a computer. I know people in their 50s who pretend that "they don't need this technology" or "I can just go to the bank if I need something". Sure, if you're in your 80s you might want to dod…

That rant, wow. It really resonates deeply with me. People would rather cumulatively spend some 10000 hours yelling at Office for the rest of their lives, instead of spending 10 over the course of some evenings/weekends to brush up on the basics. Even from an immediate-more-important-priorities-perspective it almost doesn’t make sense to me.

Anecdote: As a young intern at a German bank I was sent to talk to an older colleague (probably in his 50s, no idea for how long he already works for the bank). I needed him to look up some account number or ID in a data export he had.

1. He opened the data export in Excel.

2. I told him the number for which I needed some additional information.

3. He started scrooling in this 1k + entries Excel file.

4. …

5. I ask: Can you press CTRL + F and type in the number?

6. …

Re: Out of prison after 30 years and people telling him to find forms on the web

#84

Post by Khaine »

paranoidrobot wrote: post #43
flohofwoe wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a software engineer yet I don't do online banking (I literally "just go to the bank if I need something"). I don't consider myself a "luddite", I just don't see the advantage over traditional "offline banking". Same with shopping and all the other little nuisances of daily life.

Increasingly banks are reducing the ability to do that. Here in Australia most banks have closed down branches in many smaller communities over the last 20 years. Many of the 'standard' accounts that people have either only one in-branch visit per month, or none at all - and charge a fee for it. Credit Unions and Building Societies are not much better, if at all. There's also a growing number of online-only banks whi…

What? None of the big 4 banks in Australia charge you for going into a branch?

Re: Out of prison after 30 years and people telling him to find forms on the web

#85

Post by robthebrew »

CodeGlitch wrote: post #70
flohofwoe wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a software engineer yet I don't do online banking (I literally "just go to the bank if I need something"). I don't consider myself a "luddite", I just don't see the advantage over traditional "offline banking". Same with shopping and all the other little nuisances of daily life.

What country do you live in? Here in the UK, the only time I've needed to step into a bank in the last 10 years is to have a meeting about my mortgage. Our online banking services are so good there's literally no reason to have brick-and-mortor banks for day-to-day tasks. For me, not having to travel to a bank and wait in a queue to do basic tasks such as transferring money is such an advantage.

Why then the huge queues on certain days? It could be luddites asking to withdraw their pension payments, or of course it could be business owners needing to deposit cash takings, or getting till floats for the day's trading. While I personally am in the same position as you, I feel that banks are listening to this kind of comment and shutting up physical stores.

Re: Out of prison after 30 years and people telling him to find forms on the web

#86

Post by tester34 »

Farbklex wrote: post #7

In contrast, I am sure we all know some older people who were not in prisson for the past 30 years and still don't know how to write an email, what a zoom call is or when it's appropriate to double-click vs single click items on a computer. I know people in their 50s who pretend that "they don't need this technology" or "I can just go to the bank if I need something". Sure, if you're in your 80s you might want to dod…

>I know people in their 50s who pretend that "they don't need this technology" or "I can just go to the bank if I need something". Sure, if you're in your 80s you might want to dodge most of the digital stuff. But in your 50s? You're gonna have to live with an increasing digitalization for multiple decades.

I'm in early 20s and I almost never used smartphone nor I'm not about to get one

I'm SE.

Re: Out of prison after 30 years and people telling him to find forms on the web

#87

Post by maxerickson »

lolsal wrote: post #82
maxerickson wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think the in person operations are less likely to make errors? I mean, go ahead and do what you want, but if checking recent transactions makes sense for online banking, it probably makes sense for offline banking too.

If I make an error, I eat it. If the banker makes an error, they eat it, or at least you have some ground to stand on.

The app for my bank account lets me view balances (and some other info), transfer funds between my subaccounts (for free), and deposit checks.

There's not functionality in there to shoot myself in the foot.

Re: Out of prison after 30 years and people telling him to find forms on the web

#88

Post by b_t_s »

Toutouxc wrote: post #21

While I agree that this is a huge failure of the prison system, I'm also convinced that it shouldn't take more than a month for an ex-convict to catch up with the average computer user. Most people I know are borderline computer illiterate. Even the educated ones.

Borderline computer illiterate is a low bar(and probably an accurate assessment of average ability), but how are they supposed to clear that bar when they're fully computer illiterate and maybe, if they're lucky, can get occasional informal tutoring from someone who is only borderline computer illiterate? Maybe a month of proper lessons would do it at least for some. However, as a degreed professional, I've spent about 25 years fruitlessly trying to explain to my dad in every conceivable way "where it goes when you save it" and what a file is, so I suspect this is a massive hurdle for a decent percent of the population. There's a reason so many people are borderline computer illiterate.

Re: Out of prison after 30 years and people telling him to find forms on the web

#89

Post by ddtaylor »

psychlops wrote: post #79
ddtaylor wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth mentioning that this doesn't mean it's currently designed to be punitive. It's really just evolved into a system that extracts a very large amount of money via taxes and uses that money to pay various correctional staff and industries to deliver absurdly poor quality services and products. For them, it's a really sweet gig and they're pretty happy that the overall public is apathetic to the situation.

I disagree. In the US, the public also is pretty happy to lock people away for extended periods of time.

For the most part that's a product of lobbying to increase minimum sentences and overall increase the prison population, since that increases the number of correctional jobs and the sales of the various contracted companies that provide their products.

I was in federal prison until just 3 months ago I can safely say this is exactly what I saw while there.

Re: Out of prison after 30 years and people telling him to find forms on the web

#90

Post by WJW »

tim333 wrote: post #66
ballenf wrote: post #48

Unpopular opinion: I think government services and offices should remain offline-first forever. They should offer online equivalents, but they should never assume or require digital adoption. I think this has two big benefits: - Minor point: Greater resilience to downtime, interruptions to service - Major point: a check on becoming a faceless entity with no exposure to the public. Think Google or FB if you get flagge…

I guess both is the way to go though I'm not sure paper form filling produced much accountability. Being able to contact humans is good though especially for edge cases and screwups.

Indeed. There's a reason "Kafkaesque" was a word long before the internet existed.
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