A Lack of Security

As fellow Kickstarter users know, an email was sent out this morning notifying us of a security breach. They may well be "incredibly sorry that this happened", but it did, and they recommend "that you change the password of your Kickstarter account, and other accounts where you use this password" - how very convenient. For those of us not blessed with eidetic memories, keeping track of passwords is a pain, and even the most computer-savvy among us use the same password across multiple sites for the sake of ease as a password manager is no good if you don't have the relevant device with you.

But, my main point is, "upon learning this, we immediately closed the security breach and began strengthening security measures throughout the Kickstarter system" does not seem logical to me. It's not just Kickstarter though, it's Adobe, Ubisoft, Sony, Target,... the list is endless. It's the same spiel every time - "we were attacked, your password and/or payment details were copied, change your stuff. We're sorry. We've fixed it now". Here's a thought - patch the system before it gets exploited? You know, hire somebody to try and infiltrate it and then fix it, rather than idly sit on your ass with an insecure system and count down the days until you're a large enough target to be attacked and profusely apologize to your userbase.

Yes, ultimate unbreachable security is merely blue-sky thinking, but if these exploits have happened, they were patchable. For the sake of not looking like amateurs, please big companies, I implore you, fix it before the inevitable happens. Think of all the class action suits you could be avoiding (see here for example).

My issue with Netflix Originals

As the internet is well aware, Season 2 of House of Cards was released today. As with the past season, it was released all at once. While this is a modern, unconventional rock-the-boat strategy, I dislike it, and don't think it's wise.

With conventional broadcast TV, episodes are released one by one, week after week, in a scheduled timeslot, unless they're preempted by happenings. Either way, the day after airing, people discuss the episode, and most importantly, memory and current activity of a show can last up to half a year. With something like House of Cards, you could watch all thirteen episodes one by one at a self-chosen time and pace yourself, but with all the content already available, why wait? Especially when others will have just "binge watched" (a term I dislike because it's the sort of term old media would come up with to try and sound relevant) it all in a day. Now their minds are loaded with spoilers that, if they are a decent human, they won't share. Once you've caught up and are ready to discuss it, it's no longer fresh in their mind. What's more, House of Cards isn't likely to cross their mind until a few weeks before Season 3 is released, when the hype and 'news' starts surging.

When a broadcast TV show is off the air for a while, even just a  mid-season break, it doesn't exactly aid the popularity of the show - more casual viewers will forget about it when it returns. When a show is 'on' for one day a year and then the wait commences again, memories will forget.

Other than the broken social 'watercooler' aspect of House of Cards, where a typical conversation is merely:

"Do you watch House of Cards?"

"Yes. It's awesome, right?"

"Totally"

"Good talk"

missing any intricacies or plot details for fear of spoiling it, as far as I can see, this strategy does work for Netflix, as it's a subscription based service that people tend to visit on a whim when they've got nothing else to do, and dipping in and out at your own pace  works a lot better when you aren't then waiting for the next episode to become available. However, I hope that traditional media companies don't try this model, as it will not work.

Amazon, please stop showing reviews for different products

Twice now I have bought items on Amazon after reading seemingly positive reviews that actually turned out to be for different versions of the products. I'll detail the two separately:

I owned a pair of JVC HAFX1X since April 2012, but after a year and a half one of the earbuds died (as tends to be the case with earphones). Nonetheless, I'd liked their quality so hopped on Amazon to buy a new pair, and noticed a new version, the JVC HA-FX3X, which on Amazon UK has 5 reviews as of writing this, as opposed to the 2,193 reviews on the original model. Call me skeptical, but I like to read a lot of positive reviews before buying an item as frankly I don't want to deal with the hassle of returning inferior or faulty products. So, I went over to Amazon US (rather than UK), and noticed 1,863 reviews for the newer JVC HA-FX3X. After reading many reviews, I purchased the HA-FX3X over on Amazon UK. Then, I decided to read some more reviews on Amazon US, and noticed on page 2 a one star review that said it was for the HA-FX3X. I thought this odd, as I'd assumed they all were. Then I looked closer at the other reviews, and they turned out to be for the HAFX1X. To conclude, the few reviews that actually were for the HA-FX3X said they're worse than the original model.

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Looks an awful lot like there's 941 reviews for the 4TB model, right?

Next up is the 4TB Seagate external HDD, which appears to have 941 reviews and holds 4 1/2 stars, as you can see here:

I bought it, because I am in desperate need of backup storage because my 3TB internal drive sounds like it's going to die soon. Hopefully it won't, because after reading reviews that were actually about the 4TB model it seems it'll be a gamble between DOA or dead in two months. But wait, weren't there 941 reviews for the 4TB one? Surely I read the reviews before buying. Yes, I did read the reviews. Sorted by 'most helpful', the majority of the review were positive. This time, I did notice that most weren't actually for the 4TB model, but I hoped there couldn't be much of a difference so went ahead and made the purchase as I needed the emergency backup space ASAP. Turns out there is a difference though. Out of the first hundred, yes, hundred, most helpful reviews, only six were for the 4TB model. Pardon me, but that just doesn't seem right. To make it worse, of the six reviews, two were one star, three were two stars, and two were five stars, with the failings of the HDDs sounding pretty dire and even the most positive reviews complain about an incredibly cheap, noisy, and potentially dangerous power supply.

What I'd like to know, how is this acceptable? On Google, I expect to see adverts and misplaced promotion as I'm not paying them. On Amazon, I'm not only paying them directly for Prime membership (which on a side-note I highly recommend), they're also taking a cut from sales. I accept this, because that's the way they make money. What I don't accept is them misleadingly placing reviews under different products. Yes, there's a tiny search box to the side, which on typing "4TB" came up with 20 reviews. if that's the total number of reviews for the 4TB model, a 2.1% chance of review relevance if fairly abysmal. Sure, Amazon probably want to make it look like products are more popular and reliable than they are, and maybe the manufacturers are asking them to, but you simply can't do that with most, if not all, goods. Two models of earphones are going to have different performance, four different HDD capacities are going to have varying reliability, two types of pen may write completely differently, and two types of boxset for the same TV show have different contents, yet all the reviews are combined so you have no idea which is for which variation.