ATM question for their manufacturers

At the ATMs I’ve seen in the United States, when you ask to withdraw money, they ask you how much and tell you it must be in multiples of the smallest value bills it stocks. For example, if the machine has only 20 USD notes, it will say “enter your withdrawal amount in a multiple of 20.”

For some reason, the interfaces allow you to enter amounts that are completely impossible. In a machine that requires multiples of, say 10 USD, you can put in 5 dollars and 57 cents and the machine then rejects it and you have to restart the entire transaction, including entering your PIN.

The method of entering the value is like a digital microwave: 200 USD is entered as “2 0 0 0 0 <enter>”. More useful interfaces would be to:

• Enter the dollar amount, so “2 0 0 <enter>” for 200 USD
• Key in the number of bills, so entering “1 0 <enter>” would display “10 bills × 20 USD each = 200 USD total”.
• Press <plus> and <minus> buttons to choose the number of bills, so push <plus> ten times for 200 USD.

I request Diebold and NCR and the rest consider this as an improvement to their software.

Going through backups – Windows is happy again

I recently decommissioned an old Western Digital “MyBook” from before 2010 that had been my parents NAS when I lived with them, in the house they had where I grew up. Because I was not sure if there was something worth saving on the various backups and WD used I think an ext* filesystem, I had to restore it (1.51 TB) to a local drive to go through it.

I have a 1.81 TB drive as D: but it was half full of dashcam videos and also the most recent backups from before my parents and I went different directions. To get around this, I copied the oldest backup of my father (Windows 7 backup, using those opaque *.wbcat files) off the drive, deleting them from the NAS, and then removing obvious and large duplicates v. the most recent backup I had. I did this through 5 backup sets before getting to my mother’s backups, which used File History.

Somewhere in there I took a look at my dashcam footage and found that I had kept recordings of my back seat when the rear camera just sat on the cushions waiting for me to fix the mounting. I forget how many GB that was, but each video segment was maybe 300 MB for a few minutes.

Anyway, I have pared the duplicates (via SearchMyFiles, unpaid recommendation) across the 5 NAS + 1 prior (most recent) backups so that I have more than 10% free drive space on D:. This means Windows no longer colors the bar graph red instead of blue. YaY!

I just did the silliest thing (on Windows!)

I merged two directories and there was one file conflict. It was the same file, so I told Windows to not bother moving it. Then, to delete it, I absentmindedly Ctrl-x (cut) the file and then… opened the Recycle Bin and pasted it there. It worked, but how bizzare.

Not a bad way to waste time

I have far too many things on my Desktop and also open in windows to post about. Instead, I slept poorly for half the day, and then spent the rest of the time cleaning up my seriously dangerous method of storing passwords in, essentially, plain text. At least it was not in “the cloud”. I have worked to overwrite the old file so it should be unrecoverable.

Also, I went around closing/deleting accounts for sites I have no use for anymore. Amazon makes it incredibly annoying and deceptive to delete them, and then people like that wonder why laws and regulations appear to micromanage them. Fine job there, Jeffrey [sic].

I have also backt up my Email accounts and even fixed the contact information on some old dude’s accounts that I watch over for trouble. That and started on my tax filings. YaY for proactivity!

Warning to that Iraq user of KENPAVE

Someone, I think from Iraq, recently visited my now somewhat famous (but not as famous as the “pranque”) page on KENPAVE. WordPress reports their referrer is through the so-called handy-tab malware site.

---

I strongly suggest that you, if you are that user, visit this site: https://malwaretips.com/blogs/remove-handy-tab/ and follow the instructions to remove the offensive software on your browser. I have not used it myself, since I don’t have that malware, but at the same time, find the instructions given to be reasonable.

Games that can (now) Live Forever: 3 in Three

3 (!) years ago, I mentioned a computer game from the days of System Software (6 and 7) called “3 in Three”. Now, because of technological advances, we have a ready-made way of playing it: by emulation!

With some effort and alot of time, you can see things like this (spoiler for persons with photographic memory):

Microsoft’s unique chemical

While perpetually scorned by people for no real reason, Microsoft’s search engine “Bing” has a few tricks up its sleeve.

Another ephemeron: CJ Slayer and the Super Peas

Have you ever, when young or otherwise new to a field or endeavor, turned up something interesting that you later discard and then even later realize was truly unique and should have been saved?

Antivirus idea

I had an idea when recently removing a (fortunately inactive) virus from my PC.

Night Light and Windows defaults

Microsoft Windows 10 now (version 1703) has a feature where you can have the screen shift from “normal” (whatever that is) to warmer colors at night. Supposedly this keeps you from staying awake.

I just notice, however, that the default Windows background is a VERY BLUE image, which kind of defeats the purpose. Unless they (Microsoft) think that you never look at the background because you’re never on the desktop?