Favorite song of the week: Nuclear by Mike Oldfield
Song to be featured in the game Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain
Apple’s newest MacBook: Simply Unsatisfying
It’s not a MacBook Air. It’s not a MacBook Pro. It’s simply being called the MacBook. Clever name for a computer, eh? It’s not like we haven’t seen this brand before. What’s the real trouble with this system? A single USB-C connector. Let’s explore.
Simplifying Things
There’s an art to simplification, but it seems Apple has lost its ability to rationally understand this fundamental concept. Jobs got it. Oh man, did Jobs get the concept of simplification in spades. Granted, not all of Jobs’s meddling in simplification worked. Like, a computer with only a mouse and no keyboard. Great concept, but you really don’t want to enter text through an on-screen keyboard. This is the reason the iPad is so problematic for anything other than one-liners. At least, not unless there’s some kind of audio dictation system. At the time, the Macintosh didn’t have such a system. With Siri, however, we do. Though, I’m not necessarily endorsing that Apple bring back the concept of a keyboard-less computer. Though, in fact, with a slight modification to Siri’s dictation capabilities, it would be possible.
Instead, the new MacBook has taken things away from the case design. More specifically, it has replaced all of those, you know, clunky, annoying and confusing USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt port connectors that mar the case experience. Apple’s engineers have now taken this old and clunky experience and ‘simplified’ it down to exactly one USB-C port (excluding the headphone jack.. and why do we even need this jack again).
The big question, “Is this really simplification?”
New Case Design
Instead of the full complement of ports we previously had, such as the clever magsafe power port, one or two Thunderbolt ports, two USB 3.0 ports and an SD card slot, now we have exactly one USB-C port. And, it’s not even a well known or widely used port style yet.
Smart. Adopt a port that literally no one is using and then center your entire computer’s universe around this untried technology. It’s a bold if not risky maneuver for Apple. No one has ever said Apple isn’t up for risky business ideas. It’s just odd that they centered it on an open standard rather than something custom designed by Apple. Let’s hope that Apple has massively tested plugging and unplugging this connector. If it breaks, you better hope your AppleCare service is active. And since the unplugging and plugging activity falls under wear-and-tear, it might not even be covered. Expect to spend more time at the Genius bar arguing over whether your computer is covered when this port breaks. On the other hand, we know the magsafe connector is almost impossible to break. How about this unknown USB-C connector? Does it also have the same functional lifespan? My guess is no.
I also understand that the USB-C technology automatically inherits the 10 Gbps bandwidth standard and has a no-confusion-plug-in-either-way connector style. But, it’s not as if Thunderbolt didn’t already offer the same transfer speed, though not the plug-in-either-way cable. So, I’m guessing that this means Thunderbolt is officially dead?
What about the Lightning cable? Apple recently designed and introduced the Lightning connector for charging and data transfer. Why not use the Lightning connector by adding on a faster data transfer standard? Apple spent all this time and effort on this cool new cable for charging and data transfer, but what the hell? Let’s just abandon that too and go with USB-C? Is it all about throwing out the baby with the bathwater over at Apple?
I guess the fundamental question is… Really, how important is this plug-in-either-way connector? Is Apple insinuating that general public is so dumb that it can’t figure out how to plug in a cable? Yes, trying to get the microUSB connectors inserted in the dark (because they only go in one direction) can be a hassle. The real problem isn’t that it’s a hassle, the real problem is that the connector itself was engineered all wrong. So, trying to fit in a microUSB cable into a port is only a problem because it’s metal on metal. Even when you do manage to get it lined up in the right direction, it sometimes still won’t go in. That’s just a fundamental flaw in the port connector design. It has nothing to do with directionality of it. I digress.
Fundamentally, the importance of a plug-in-either-way cable should be the lowest idea on the agenda. What should be the highest idea is simplifying to give a better user experience overall and not to hobble the computer to the point of being unnecessarily problematic.
Simply Unsatisfying
Let’s get into the meat of this whole USB-C deal. While the case now looks sleek and minimal, it doesn’t really simplify the user experience. It merely changes it. It’s basically a shell game. It moves the ball from one cup to another, but fundamentally doesn’t change the ball itself. So, instead of carrying only a power adapter and the computer, you are now being forced to carry a computer, power adapter and a dock. I fail to see exactly how this simplifies the user experience at all? I left docks behind when I walked away from using Dell Notebooks. Now, we’re being asked to use a dock again by, of all companies, Apple?
The point to making changes in any hardware (or software) design is to help improve the usability and user experience. Changing the case to offer a single USB-C port doesn’t enhance the usability or user experience. This is merely a cost cutting measure by Apple. Apple no longer needs to add pay for all of these arguably ‘extra’ (and costly) ports to the case. Removing all of those ‘extraneous’ ports now means less cost for the motherboard and die-cuts on the case, but at the expense that the user must carry around more things to support that computer. That doesn’t simplify anything for the user. It also burdens the user by forcing the user to pay more money for things that were previously included in the system itself. Not to mention, requiring the user to carry around yet more dongles. I’ve never ever known Apple to foist less of an experience on the user as a simultaneous cost cutting and accessory money making measure. This is most definitely a first for Apple, but not a first for which they want to become known. Is Apple now taking pages from Dell’s playbook?
Instead of walking out of the store with a computer ready in hand, now you have to immediately run to the accessory isle and spend another $100-200 (or more) on these ‘extras’. Extras, I might add, that were previously included in the cost of the previous gen computers. But now, they cost extra. So, that formerly $999 computer you bought that already had everything you needed will now cost you $1100-1200 or more (once you consider you now need a bag to carry all of these extras).
Apple’s Backward Thinking?
I’m sure Apple is thinking that eventually that’s all we’ll need. No more SD cards, no more Thunderbolt devices, no more USB 3 connectors. We just do everything wirelessly. After all, you have the (ahem) Apple TV for a wireless remote display (which would be great if only that technology didn’t suck so bad for latency and suffer from horrible mpeg artifacting because the bit rate is too low).
Apple likes to think they are thinking about the future. But, by the time the future arrives, what they have chosen is already outdated because they realized no one is actually using that technology other than them. So, then they have to resort to a new connector design or a new industry standard because no other computers have adopted what Apple is pushing.
For example, Thunderbolt is a tremendous idea. By today, this port should have been widely used and widely supported, yet it isn’t. There are few hard drives that use it. There are few extras that support it. Other than Apple’s use of this port to drive extra displays, that’s about the extent of how this port is used. It’s effectively a dead port on the computer. Worse, just about the time where Thunderbolt might actually be picking up steam, Apple dumps it in lieu of USB-C which offers the same transfer speeds. At best, a lateral move technologically speaking. If this port had offered 100 Gbps, I might not have even written this article.
Early Adopter Pain
What this all means is that those users who buy into this new USB-C only computer (I intentionally forget the headphone jack because it’s still pointless), will suffer early adopter pains with this computer. Not only will you be almost immediately tied to buying Apple gear, Apple has likely set up the USB-C connector to require licensed and ID’d cables and peripherals. This means that if you buy a third party unlicensed cable or device, Apple is likely to prevent it from working, just as they did with unlicensed Lightning cables on iOS.
This also means that, for at least 1-2 years, you’re at the mercy of Apple to provide you with that dongle. If you need VGA and there’s no dongle, you’re outta luck. If you need a 10/100 network adapter, outta luck. This means that until or unless a specific situational adapter becomes available, you’re stuck. Expect some level of pain when you buy into this computer.
Single Port
In addition to all of the above, let’s just fundamentally understand what a single port means. If you have your power brick plugged in, that’s it. You can’t plug anything else in. Oh, you need to run 2 monitors, read from an SD card, plug in an external hard drive and charge your computer? Good luck with that. That is, unless you buy a dock that offers all of these ports.
It’s a single port being used for everything. That means it has a single 10 Gbps path into the computer. So, if you plug in a hard drive that consumes 5 Gbps and a 4k monitor that consumes 2 Gbps, you’re already topping out that connector’s entire bandwidth into the computer. Or, what if you need a 10 Gbps Ethernet cable? Well, that pretty much consumes the entire bandwidth on this single USB-C connector. Good luck with trying to run a hard drive and monitor with that setup.
Where an older MacBook Air or Pro had two 5 Gbps USB3 ports and one or two 10 Gbps Thunderbolt ports (offering greater than 10 Gbps paths into the computer), the new MacBook only supports a max of 10 Gbps input rate over that single port. Not exactly the best trade off for performance. Of course, the reality is that the current Apple motherboards may not actually be capable of handling 30 Gbps input rate, but it was at least there to try. Though, I would expect that motherboard to handle an input rate greater than 10.
With the new MacBook, you are firmly stuck to a maximum input speed of 10 Gbps because it is a single port. Again, an inconvenience to the user. Apple once again makes the assumption that 10 Gbps is perfectly fine for all use cases. I’m guessing that Apple hopes the users simply won’t notice. Technologically, this is a step backward, not forward.
Overall
In among the early adopter problems and the relevancy problems that USB-C has to overcome, this computer now offers a more convoluted user experience. Additionally, instead of offering something that would be truly more useful and enhance the usability, such as a touch screen to use with an exclusive Spotlight mode, they opted to take this computer in a questionable direction.
Sure, the case colors are cool and the idea of a single port is intriguing, it’s only when you delve deep into the usefulness of this single port does the design quickly unravel.
Apple needs a whole lot of help in this department. I’m quite sure had Jobs been alive that while he might have introduced the simplified case design, it would have been overshadowed by the computer’s feature set (i.e., touch screen, better input device, better dictation, etc). Instead of trying to wow people with a single USB-C port (which offers more befuddlement than wow), Apple should have fundamentally improved the actual usability of this computer by enhancing the integration between the OS and the computer.
The case design doesn’t ultimately much matter, the usability of the computer itself matters. Until Apple understands that we don’t really much care what the case looks like as long as it provides what we need to compute without added hassles, weight and costs, Apple’s designers will continue running off on these tangents spending useless cycles attempting to redesign minimalist cases that really don’t benefit from it. At least, Apple needs to understand that there is a point of diminishing returns when trying to rethink minimalist designs…. and with this MacBook design, the Apple designers have gone well beyond the point of diminishing returns.
Make LuxRender render faster
In addition to writing blogs here at Randosity, I also like creating 3D art. You can see some of it off to the right side of the screen in the Flickr images. I point this out because I typically like to use Daz Studio to do my 3D work. I also prefer working with the human form over still life, but occasionally I’ll also do a still life, landscape or some other type of scene. Today, I’m going to talk about a rendering engine that I like to use: LuxRender. More specifically, how to get it to render faster. You can read more about it at www.luxrender.net. Let’s explore.
3Delight and Daz Studio
Daz Studio is what I use to compose my scenes. What comes built into Daz Studio is the rendering engine named 3Delight. It’s a very capable biased renderer. That is, it prefers to use lighting and internal short cuts to do its rendering work. While 3Delight does support global illumination (aka. GI or bounced lighting), it doesn’t do it as well or as fast as I would like. When GI is turned on, it takes forever for 3Delight to calculate the bounced light on surfaces. Unfortunately, I don’t have that long to wait for a render to complete. So, I turn to a more capable renderer: LuxRender. Though, keep in mind that I do render in 3Delight and I am able to get some very realistic scenes out of it, also. But, these scenes have a completely different look than Lux and they typically take a whole lot longer to set up (and a ton more lights).
LuxRender
What’s different about Lux? The developers consider it to be an unbiased renderer, that is, it is considered physics based. In fact, all renderers attempt to use physics, but Lux attempts to use physics on all light sources. What is the end result? Better, more accurate, more realistic lighting…. and lighting is the key to making a scene look its best. Without great lighting, the objects within it will look dull, flat and without volume. It would be like turning the lights off in a room and attempting to take a photograph without a flash. What you get is a grainy, low light, washed out and flat image. That’s not what you want. For the same reason you use a flash in photography, you want to use LuxRender to produce images.
Now, I’m not here to say that LuxRender is a perfect renderer. No no no. It is, by far, not perfect. It has its share of flaws. But, for lighting, it can produce some of the most realistically lit scenes from a 3D renderer that I’ve found. Unfortunately too, this renderer is also slow. Not as slow as 3Delight with GI enabled, but definitely not by any stretch fast. Though, the more light you add to a scene, the faster Lux renders.
However, even with sufficient lighting, there are still drawbacks to how fast it can render. Let’s understand why.
LuxRender UI
The developers who designed LuxRender also decided that it needed a UI. A tool that allows you to control and tweak your renders (even while they’re rendering). I applaud what the LuxRender team has done with the UI in terms of the image tweaking functionality, but for all of the great things in the UI, there are not-so-smart things done on the rendering side. As cool and tweakable as a render-in-progress is, it should never take away from the speed at how fast a renderer can render. Unfortunately, it does.
Let’s step back a minute. When you use Daz Studio, you need a bridge to operate Lux. It needs to be able to export the scene into a format that Lux can parse and render. There are two bridges out there. The first is Reality. The second is Luxus. I’ll leave it to you to find the bridge that works best for you. However, Reality has versions for both Daz Studio and Poser. So, if you have both of these, you can get each of these versions and have a similar experience between these two different apps. If you’re solely in the Daz world, you can get Luxus and be fine. Once you have this bridge and you export a scene to the LuxRender, that’s when you’ll notice a big glaring sore thumb problem while rendering.
Render Speed and LuxRender UI
When I first began using LuxRender, one thing became very apparent. LuxRender has this annoying habit of stopping and starting. Because my computer has fans that speed up when the CPU is put under load and slow down when not, I can hear this behavior. What I hear is the fans spinning up and spinning down at regular intervals. I decided to investigate why. Note, renderers should be capable of running all of the CPU cores at full speed until the render has completed. 3Delight does this. Nearly every other rendering engine does this, but not LuxRender.
Here’s part of the answer. There are two automatic activities inside of the LuxRender UI while rendering:
- Tonemapping
- Saving the image to disk from memory
- Write FLM resume file
Both of these activities outright halt the rendering process for sometimes several minutes. This is insane. Now, let’s understand why this is insane. Most systems today offer 4 or more cores (8 or more hyperthreaded cores). Since you have more than one core, it makes no sense to stop all of the cores just to do one of the above tasks. No. Instead, the developers should have absconded with one of the cores for either of these processes leaving the rest of the cores to continue to do rendering work all of the time. The developers didn’t do this. Instead, they stop all cores, use one core (or less) to write the file to disk or update the GUI display and then wait and wait and wait. Finally, the cores start up again. This non-rendering time adds up to at least 5 minutes. That’s 5 minutes where zero rendering is taking place. That’s way too long.
How do I get around this issue? Well, I don’t entirely. If you want to use LuxRender, you should run over to luxrender.net and make a complaint to solve this problem. The second thing to do is set the tonemapping interval to 3600 seconds, the image write to disk interval to 3600 seconds and the FLM write interval to 3600 seconds. That means it will only save to disk every 1 hour. It will only update the screen every 1 hour and save a resume file every 1 hour. That means that LuxRender will have 1 hour of solid render time without interruptions from these silly update processes. This is especially important when you’re not even using the LuxRender UI.
Note that many applications set up intervals as short as a few seconds. That’s stupid considering the above. Yeah, we all want instant gratification, but I want my image to render its absolute fastest. I don’t need to see every single update interval in the UI. No, if I want to see an update, I can ask the UI to provide me that update when I bring it to the front. Automatically updating the UI at 10 second intervals (and stop the rendering) is just insane and a waste of time, especially when I can simply refresh the UI myself manually. In fact, there is absolutely no need for an automatic refresh of the UI ever.
Network Rendering
The second way to speed up rendering is to use other systems you may have around the house. They don’t necessarily need to be the fastest thing out there. But, even adding one more machine to the rendering pool makes a big difference on how fast your image might complete. This is especially important if you’re rendering at sizes of 3000 by 3000 pixels or higher.
System Specs and Lux
Of course, buying a well capable system will make rendering faster. To render your absolute fastest in Lux, it’s a given that you need CPU, CPU caching and large amounts of RAM to render. So, get what you can afford, but make sure it has a fair number of CPUs, a reasonable L1 and L2 cache set and at least 16GB of RAM (for 3k by 3k or larger images). If you add one or more GPUs to the mix, Lux will throw this processing power on top and get even faster rendering. But, this doesn’t solve the problem described above. Even if you have 32 cores, 128GB of RAM and the fastest L1 and L2 caches, it still doesn’t solve the stopping and starting problem with rendering.
If you want to dabble in LuxRender, you should run over to the luxrender.net and file a complaint to fix this cycling problem. In this day and age with multiple cores and multithreading, stopping the render process to save a file or update a UI is absolutely insane. To get your fastest renders, set the update intervals to 3600 seconds. Note, though, that if LuxRender crashes during one of the one hour intervals, you will lose all of that work. Though, I haven’t had this happen while rendering.
So, that’s how you get your fastest render out of LuxRender.
Done with Duracell
Rant Time Again.. I’ve tried. I really have. But, Duracell batteries are not what they used to be. Gone are the days when Duracell used to outlast the competition. Now, they don’t even outlast the cheapie batteries you get from the dollar store. Let’s explore.
Duracell Quantum Copper Tops
Sometime early last year, I bought the red bottom ‘Quantum’ copper top batteries that were supposed to hold more power and last longer. Well, that’s a total fallacy. These batteries lasted no longer than the no-name brand batteries. In fact, these batteries died far sooner than these generic batteries. I put these Quantum batteries into an Apple Magic Mouse. Typically, this mouse will get at least 6 months on and off use with Energizer batteries. These Quantum batteries died within 2 weeks. Literally, they died to the day at the end of two weeks. I chalked this up to a new battery technology (they’re red colored after all). I vowed never to buy these again.
Duracell Black Bottom Copper Tops
Target was recently having a sale on the standard alkaline copper tops. I hadn’t bought them in a while and thought they would be okay as they aren’t the same as the Quantum batteries. Was I ever wrong. These are not the copper tops of the days of yore. Far from it. I placed 3 of the copper tops into a clock. Yes, a clock. This specific clock, I might add, typically requires a battery change once a year or sometimes longer when using normal alkaline Energizer batteries. So, into this clock these 3 Duracells went. I can tell when the batteries are about to expire in this clock because the temperature gauge on the clock stops working. I had these ‘copper top’ batteries installed for approximately 1 month. Yes, 1 month! Seriously, 1 single month and the batteries began dying… the temperature gauge had stopped functioning.
I went and found my last 3 new Energizer batteries and replaced these Duracell batteries immediately. The temperature gauge begin working promptly. I should point out that the copper tops had recent dates and had a long expiration period. They were not old by any stretch.
Battery Technology Improvements?
Whatever Duracell is doing, it isn’t great. In fact, it’s horrible. Whatever design change they have made within their batteries has cut their lifetimes by over 90%. At first, I thought this problem was limited to the Quantum batteries. Nope, it extends to all of their batteries. Whatever they’ve done to try to ‘improve’ their batteries has seriously degraded their longevity.
One has to wonder, is this a ploy to sell more batteries? Is Duracell intentionally hobbling the lifespan of the batteries to force consumers to buy more batteries? Are they silently slipping in this change as a money making ploy? Is it intended to get people used to changing their batteries more frequently and then people won’t know any different? Clearly, they think this change will make more money for Duracell, at least that’s what they hope. Instead, all this is likely to do is chase consumers over to Energizer. This is exactly where I’ll be going. Duracell no more!
It’s been nice knowin’ ya, don’t let the door hit ya on the way out
As the subject of this article says, I’m officially done with Duracell. I will no longer invest money in or entrust my devices to any batteries produced by this company. I don’t know what happened over there and I don’t want to know. All I want to know is that when I put 3 AA batteries into my clock that I don’t have to change it for at least 9 months, just as I always have. I have absolutely no intention of changing batteries in this clock every month or in my magic mouse every week. That’s entirely ridiculous ask on the part of battery manufacturers.
I’ll turn to using Sanyo Eneloop rechargeables before I’ll stoop to that. There is absolutely no reason why a commercially produced alkaline battery should ever have a reduced life of over 90%. So, there you have it. No more Duracell batteries in my house, ever. Unless Energizer makes the same big change to their batteries also, I’ll officially stick with Energizer for all of my battery needs. I might consider generics or Rayovacs if that happens. But, I’ve had bad experiences with leaking batteries when using generics. This is especially true in clocks and other low power rarely changed devices (i.e., remotes). I’ve rarely ever had this issue with Energizer or Duracell. I simply can no longer trust Duracell to provide the longevity that they formerly have.
Anyway, I’m off to Target to get more Energizers. These Duracell batteries are officially in the circular file.
How to make iTunes 12 look and act like iTunes 10
iTunes 12 has been out since just about the release of Yosemite. In the fall, out of the box iTunes 12 looks like iTunes 11, with that horrible all new interface that Apple foisted onto us. Well, all is not lost. You can now make iTunes 12 look and act a whole lot more like iTunes 10. Though, keep in mind that it’s not a perfect reincarnation of iTunes 10, for most purposes it is still very functional. Let’s explore.
The New Interface
When you first kick off iTunes 12 (or 11 for that matter), you’ll see that it shows your albums as large icons. If you click an icon, it expands and shows track listings below it in a split screen setup.
Here’s a tutorial video that shows what can be done. This video is HD, so you should expand it full screen to see the detail.
Obviously there are still differences between iTunes 12 and iTunes 10, such as the row of buttons moved to the top rather than in the left playlist sidebar. But, these are more cosmetic than a problem. As long as I can get to list mode that I am most familiar with using, this was my biggest gripe with the the new iTunes views. I’m glad they’re back.
Searching, Movies and Playlists
Searching has changed somewhat. When you search, you will get search results by song and by album. This is relatively handy when creating a new playlist. You simply drag the album over and drop it on playlists and it will create a new playlist. Though, the playlist info is shown on the right including renaming it. Once you click ‘Done’, it will be saved into the playlist sidebar and you can edit it there the normal way.
You can also create playlists that now contain movies. So, you can drag your favorite trilogies over and create a playlist of these films. It will them play the playlist in order. These will also show in the left sidebar under Playlists when on Movies. The Playlists view is in the center section.
Changing Art
If you highlight all of the tracks in list view then right click and ‘Get Info’, you can paste the art in the upper right corner with the keyboard (as long as it’s on the clipboard already) and then save. It will then apply the art to every selected track. This is not much different from iTunes 10 if you used the get info panel. However, if you used the drag and drop method in the lower left of the window, that method is no longer here.
Cover Flow
Unfortunately, Cover Flow is still not back in iTunes 12. It’s funny too, because Cover Flow is still available as an option in MacOS X Yosemite in Finder. I don’t fully understand why it was removed from iTunes 11, but for whatever reason was left in MacOS X. This is inconsistent and odd. Apple is usually very consistent in UI design, mirroring whatever is in the OS in the applications. For whatever reason, the iTunes engineers have inexplicably removed Cover Flow from iTunes. I know that there was a lawsuit against Apple for the use of Cover Flow. So, it’s possible it was removed from iTunes 11 to satisfy that patent lawsuit. Apple, just pay the friggin’ patent trolls off and put Cover Flow back in.
iTunes 10
While I still like iTunes 10 for many reasons (full screen artwork), the small art panel in the lower left, etc. These are small concessions when considering an upgrade to iTunes 12 when you need to manage your library and you need to sync your latest iOS devices. Most all of the functionality I used is now back in iTunes 12 and I’m glad that it’s there. The ugly horrid album view is, mostly, a memory for me. I use that view only for films because it makes sense. I want to see the movie poster to know that’s the movie I want to watch. For albums, I want the track lists in the original way that made it easier to manage.
So, there you go. It’s now easy to get your iTunes 12 install very close to the way iTunes 10 use to work. Of course, there are still some things that haven’t been added back in. Though, the list view that looks like iTunes 10 is the thing that allowed me to finally upgrade to this this latest version.
Update for iTunes 12.4+
As of iTunes 12.4, Apple has once again rearranged the UI interface in Apple’s never ending revisionist tendencies. So now they’ve have added more buttons and buried some functions. They also removed the drop down available on playlists to make for easy configuration. The option is still there, but it’s now buried in a menu.
To change the playlist look-and-feel, you must now use the View=>Show View Options menu selection or use the ⌘J keystroke to bring up the options window.
As you can see in the image to the left, the top most portion is what is most important for playlist setup. Click ‘View As’ to change the way the playlist looks. This drop down was formerly at the top of the playlist bar, but has now been removed. The only place where this option is now is in the View Options panel.
I guess Apple is now taking pages from Microsoft’s book of UI design. Meaning, they are now choosing to bury things under tons of mouse clicks which is extremely inefficient from a movement and time perspective. This does not in any way make moving around in this UI interface any faster. It is now firmly more cumbersome and pointless.
I just don’t even get what Apple is trying to accomplish here with these stupid and unnecessary design changes. If Jobs were alive, he’d be not only bringing some of these people to tears, but some of them might even see the door. It’s quite clear, there is no clear direction at Apple. If this is the work of Jony Ive, then please, let’s walk him to the Apple Campus door as fast as physics allows.
There seems to be no bad design depths to which Apple will now reach. I shake my head at just how far this malus domestica has fallen.
Skylanders Trap Team: Review + Kaos Trap?
[Update 3: 4/6/2015]: Gamestop.com has several Kaos Trap bundles now available online for purchase. Not only do they now have the same 3 trap bundle as on Amazon for $15.99 (only available in stores), Gamestop.com also carries 3 additional Kaos Trap bundles (online only) that Gamestop has created (Kaos-Water-Magic, Kaos-Water-Earth & Kaos-Water-Life) containing 3 trap singles as a bundle for $17.97. If you’re looking for the individual trap (not as part of a 3 pack), this is the best and least costly way to get it. Now I know why Gamestop has been hoarding Kaos Traps from their case packs at their warehouse instead of sending them to the stores. They have been stockpiling these Kaos Traps to create these 3 trap single bundles for online sales. Retailers should not be allowed to break case packs open and hold out stock for months for the purpose of creating bundles. All I can say is, if you want this trap, hurry.
[Update 2: 4/1/2015]: It seems Amazon’s stock of the 3 trap bundle has been temporarily depleted at $14.99. Try back in a day or two as Amazon refreshes their stock every day. However, don’t limit yourself to Amazon. All retailers are likely to get this 3 pack. Try looking at (or calling) Best Buy, Walmart, Gamestop, Target, Kmart, Toys R Us or any other retailer near you that carries Skylander’s toys.
[Update 1: 4/1/2015]: If you’re looking for the Kaos Trap, it is now included in a 3 trap bundle (Air, Kaos, Earth) for 
$14.99 available now at Amazon. Be sure to choose the Amazon version marked at $14.99. Amazon has a tendency to put items in stock as the first item in the listing (even if it’s a higher price). Choose the Amazon item at $14.99 even if it says it ships later. If you don’t see a $14.99 listing, it means Amazon’s stock has been depleted and their listing has been temporarily removed. Try back again another day.
Skylanders Trap Team
While I have to give kudos yet again to Activision for producing a top notch installment to the Skylanders franchise, there is one huge peeve I have with this series. What is Skylanders you ask? Let’s explore.
Skylanders Video Game and RFID
This game is relatively simple video game with a brilliant gimmick that parents all over the country are cursing their wallet. This is exactly how it was designed by Activision. So, what is it?
It’s simple, it’s basically a cartoon turned into an action fighting game with characters that you must purchase separately. Each figure you purchase has its own strengths and weaknesses in battle. These are determined by the character’s abilities. Once you buy a character toy, you place it on the Traptanium Portal (included with the Starter Pack) and an RFID reader pulls character information stored on the toy into the game. So, the more you play with that character, the higher it levels up and the stronger it becomes.
In fact, it’s a brilliant use of RFID technology and video games. I’d love to see more RPG games use this idea. For example, a series like the Elder Scrolls or Mass Effect or even Star Wars RPGs could benefit from this. Instead of relying on finding items in the world, you would buy them at the store and level them up on your character. The item could then be added to any character you own. There are so many uses for this idea in gaming, it’s sad that it’s not being used more. I think it’s absolutely brilliant for gaming.
Toys and Scarcity
My peeve.. Activision has taken the approach of releasing toys in waves and at random times throughout the year. This does a couple of things. First, withholding some toys means that you can’t play parts of the game until the toy is released. Second, some of the toys are intentionally hard to find so that parts of the game cannot even be completed until you manage to find it or you are willing to pay the highly inflated price on eBay or Amazon.
For Skylanders, this approach is extremely frustrating and introduces kids into the fray of toy collecting early. But, unfortunately, kids don’t have the money to locate or pay for these toys. The parents are firmly on the hook for locating and placating their child’s video game play.
To this I say, “Shame on you Activision”. This series appeals to children at an age that have little concept of collectible toys or scarcity of toys on the shelves. What am I talking about here?
Skylanders Traps
The latest Skylanders game is titled Trap Team. The concept behind this game is that not only can you buy and use toy characters, you can now trap the villains you defeat and they become good characters you can use to defeat new villains and trap them. But, this is not just about any old trap. I’m specifically talking about the Kaos trap. Note that there are 40 or so villains in the game. This also means you need to invest in about 40 traps to to entrap the villains. What is a trap? It’s a small toy that looks like a crystal. It is initially empty, but once you trap a villain, it becomes associated with that specific toy trap. So, everytime you place that trap into the portal, it recalls that same villain. If you take that crystal and put it in someone else’s game, it will also pull in that villain into their game.
In addition to buying small traps, there are different elements (earth, air, water, fire, life, tech, magic, undead, light and dark). Each of these element types requires a special trap that is color coded. So, unless you have one of these specific types of traps, you cannot trap a villain of that type. More specifically, the main villain in the game is Kaos. He has his own personal trap type called, creatively enough, the Kaos trap. This trap can only ever hold Kaos. Once you trap Kaos, you can use him as a character in battle.
Unfortunately, Activision has dropped the ball heavily with this game in this area. While it’s easy to find Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Tech, Life, Magic and Undead traps pretty much everywhere, the Kaos trap is extremely hard to find. In fact, in a case of 20-30 traps, there may be only 3 Kaos traps. This means the store gets a boatload of these easy-to-find elements and Kaos trap immediately sells out. Because Kaos can only be trapped in a Kaos trap, you have to find that trap or your child cannot play as Kaos. Kaos is the absolutely strongest villain in the game, so having him to use in battle is extremely useful.
Note, a lot of people believe this trap has never been released. It has. It was released when all of the traps first released. However, there are so few in the retailer case packs that you’re unlikely to ever see it in the store. What I recommend at this point is to buy the Dark Edition Starter Pack which contains an Ultimate Kaos trap. This will at least let your child play as Kaos. The Dark Edition is a whole lot more expensive than buying the Kaos trap at retail price, but this trap is almost impossible to find in any retailer. At this point, to buy the Kaos trap alone aftermarket might cost you $50. Though, that’s cheaper than buying the Dark Edition Starter pack. But, if you’re buying the game brand new, I highly recommend buying the Dark Edition set. If you’ve got an existing a game you’ve already purchased, then buying an aftermarket trap may be the only answer. I’d also suggest filing a complaint with Activision on the scarcity of this trap.
Light and Dark Traps
The reason I excluded the Light and Dark traps from the above is that both of these sets were released immediately prior to Christmas. These traps are a bit hard to find because they are brand new. But, they can be obtained in the light and dark adventure packs that also contain the new level, the trap and a trap master. The light (Sunscraper Spire) and dark (Midnight Museum) adventure sets can be found periodically on Amazon. Note, make sure that it says you’re buying these from Amazon and not a third party seller to get the lowest price. When Amazon (or any store) has these in stock, they should cost around $29.
Activision’s Game Clock
There is absolutely no reason the Kaos trap is so hard to find. Activision could ship retailers cases entirely of the Kaos trap and completely eliminate the scarcity of this trap. In fact, there is no reason this trap is so scarce. This is an artificial scarcity that Activision has introduced into the series, but this type of scarcity doesn’t belong with this game. This is a completely mistaken and asinine strategy. If this were a series aimed at adults (and specifically adult collectors), such as The Elder Scrolls series, this situation is perfectly acceptable. Unfortunately, this game is targeted completely at children. This scarcity of the Kaos trap is likely backfiring on Activision hard and ruining their PR, but they seem oblivious to this issue.
Parents have no interest in playing this game (other than getting things for their children) and will ultimately take the game away from little Timmy when it becomes too costly and problematic. That means, no more money to Activision from that family. More and more families are pulling the plug on this game in their household because of this exact scarcity issue. To avoid disappointments in children, you take away the thing that’s causing it. Worse, children don’t have the longest attention span in the first place. So, when a child can’t do what they want to do in the game, they’re going to give up on it sooner rather than later and never come back to it. Meaning, if they can’t get the Kaos trap to play as Kaos when they need it, they’ll give up on the game and forget all about it by the time the Kaos traps do arrive.
Shelf Life of Games
Games typically have a 6 month or so shelf life at the longest before a newer more compelling game is released. Seeing as this game released October 4th, 2014, the clock is firmly ticking on Activision to make these toys more readily available. If Activision cannot solve this Kaos scarcity problem, assuming the parents haven’t already pulled the plug on the game, the kids will lose interest by the time the next game arrives.
What’s worse is not only the shelf life, but the replay-ability. This game is short. It doesn’t take long to get through the entire story piece. Getting through the arena levels takes only slightly longer. However, if you want to open every door and unlock every treasure, that takes substantially longer. Unfortunately, you can’t easily do this because Activision was, until recently, withholding critical toys to make this a reality. But, in gaming, not everyone is a completionist, let alone assuming this of children. While some children may want to finish the entire game and get every medal, not everyone will.
In reality, once you get through the story entirely, you’re pretty much done with the game. You don’t learn anything new or gain any new story by completing everything. So, it’s a stretch to ask kids to wait months to get the final content they need to complete the game. In fact, Activision is stretching it if they think they can stretch this game’s lifespan longer with this slow drip toy strategy. Activision will be lucky if many kids are still playing this game come March. Timing is everything with this game and Activision not delivering critical pieces of the game within a few weeks of the release of this game is really not a great strategy.
Costly
One aspect of this game that I haven’t yet touched on is cost. To really play this game properly, in addition to buying the Starter Pack Edition game kit (around $50) or the Dark Edition Kit (around $125), you need a Trap Master of every element and purchase traps of every element. Like Skylanders Swap Force required purchasing characters that you could swap their top and bottoms, you also needed every element and every power type to complete Swap Force. The same goes with Trap Team. Not only do you need a Trap Master of every element (of which Magic, Light and Dark are the hardest to find), you also need to buy a trap to contain each villain to be a completionist. That entails purchasing 40 traps in addition to 10 trap masters. Traps cost around $6 a piece and trap masters anywhere from $12.99 to $14.99, though Toys R Us puts them on sale at buy one get one 40% off regularly. So, you can reduce the cost by taking advantage of this deal. You can also save a little money if you buy the bulk trap packs that contain 3 or 8 traps bundled together.
And don’t think you can get away just with purchasing the toys. No. You’ll need to organize and store them. So, you’ll also need to purchase a chest for the traps and a case to hold the figures to keep them organized and stored.
It doesn’t stop there, there are also standard toy characters that you can buy to battle with and more powerful characters called Eon’s Elites (which are primarily collectibles and only available at Gamestop and EB Games in North America, Australia and New Zealand, and select retailers in Europe). They also appear to be limited. Be prepared to call Gamestop or EB Games looking for these Elites if you need to find them. There are adventure packs to add new levels to the game which usually retail around $30-35.
This is a fairly substantial investment for a game. Most games cost $60 with at most $10-20 worth of DLC. But, Skylanders can run you into the hundreds of dollars with all of the toys and add-ons. I’d recommend that, unless absolutely necessary, the toys should remain in their packaging. This will retain the value of the toy. So, when the game is done, you can put it on eBay and sell it off at a reasonably good value. People are willing to buy figures still in the package, so it’s always wise to do this when possible. Keep in mind that this is impossible to do for the traps. The traps have to be extracted from their packages to be used. But, the Trap Masters and most of the characters will play just fine if left in the package. The only exception to this is the Light and Dark adventure packs that include traps that must be extracted to be used. So, you have to rip open these packages for the traps.
Overall
The game is reasonably fun and plays like watching a cartoon. The voice acting is superb and the story is well written. But, it does require a costly investment in toys and extras. Unless you have the means and you are willing and able to run around or call stores constantly to find that ever-elusive toy or trap, you might not want to consider this game for your child. It could end up being a huge source of frustration. Else, you’re likely to find yourself spending a lot of time running around looking for the elusive trap, toy or character. And, these waves of new toys don’t stop. There are many variations of trap shapes (well more than there are villains). Toys will continue to show up in stores until Activision releases the next version of Skylanders. However, you will be able to use these toys in the next Skylander’s game, but Activision will require a new gimmick to force repurchase of an entirely new set of toys. Ultimately, the game itself is fun, but not overly replayable. However, for some children Trap Team may offer some level of replay.
The Million Dollar Money Drop: $800k loss analyzed
Fox aired a game show entitled The Million Dollar Money Drop in late 2010. This show’s gimmick had contestants placing money piles (starting with $1 million dollars in $20 wrapped bill piles) on answers. If you answered correctly, the money stayed on the table and you got to answer more questions with that money. If the money fell, you lost that money. After a number of rounds, you might get to keep some or all of the money depending on how many answers you got right. The show ran for 1 season for a total of 12 episodes before being cancelled.
In 2010, a couple is seen placing $800,000 on an answer only to lose it all based on an incorrect answer. Let’s explore.
The Controversial Question
Category: Inventions
The answers:
- Macintosh Computer
- Sony Walkman
- Post-It Notes
The question: Which of these sold in stores first?
While this may seem like this question has a definitive answer, it doesn’t. In fact, it is in every sense of the word a trick question and should have never appeared on this show. Let’s understand why.
Point of View
While a predecessor to Post-It Notes may have been on sale during a limited test market run in 1977 as Press ‘n Peel offered by 3M (performing dismally), the product officially branded Post-It Notes didn’t go on sale nationwide in the US until 1980. But, the trick to these answers doesn’t stop here. Sony also introduced the product brand named Sony Walkman in the US in 1980. However, the Sony Walkman was on sale in Japan in 1979. But, since the question wasn’t explicit on where those stores were, the correct answer is still that there is no correct answer because of too much ambiguity based on the person’s point of view.
If you take the answer literally by looking only at the brand names, then Post-It Notes and Sony Walkman both went on sale in the US during the same year: 1980. Why is the US piece important? Let’s understand that this show was geared towards a US audience. This means that neither the contestants nor most of the audience would be aware of sell dates of products in other countries. So, the ‘first sold in stores’ would have to be taken implicitly to mean ‘in the US’. Taking only US sales of these explicit brand names into consideration, the answer would be a draw. They were both sold in stores the same year in the US.
If the question had asked more explicitly about worldwide sales, then the correct answer to the question would be Sony Walkman (still going by the product’s literal name) because of the sales in Japan in 1979.
Category Inventions
Because this category is explicitly discussing inventions, you have to ask if this question covers all incarnations of the invention branded or not? Which means that if you aren’t literally using the brand names and are covering all incarnations and names of the product before it was finally sold as these names (i.e., covering the entire invention history), then 3M’s product is the winning answer as Post-It Notes because they were introduced and sold in test markets as early as 1977. However, that also means that early Sony cassette players may also be considered Walkmans even if not branded explicitly with that name. Again, this adds even more ambiguity to this answer.
The Million Dollar Money Drop
Let’s bring this back around to the show. Why would a show ever put such a trick question on a show? Some people blame the show’s research department for (im)properly researching the answers. Personally, I don’t think this is true. I believe the question was properly researched and was used intentionally for one reason: To thin out the contestant’s money. Because this question was a trick, the answer that had the most money would have been the wrong answer. In fact, any answer with the most money would have been the wrong answer. The show could have justified that wrong answer by taking any of the above ambiguous points of view to justify dropping the money.
The point to the questions on shows like this is not to give you a chance to keep the money, but to take it away. These shows are in business to be, first and foremost, a TV show… to be entertainment. They want to give away the least amount of money possible. They do this by asking questions without simple answers.
Answer Controversy
In this particular case, the show went way overboard with this question. But, their ultimate goal was achieved by taking away $800,000 from the contestants. That was entirely intentional by the producers. The point is to take away as much money as possible from the contestants.
Unfortunately, the controversy surrounding this entire issue left the show in a tough position. Because so many people believe that the 1977 date is the ‘correct’ date for the 3M product, they also believe the couple lost the money on the ‘correct’ answer. They didn’t. This was a trick question that had no correct answer. They didn’t lose the money either because it wasn’t theirs to begin with. The show gives you the money as part of the show to ‘gamble’ with and that’s exactly what the contestants did. They gambled on that answer and lost. The contestants couldn’t have walked away with that money at that time. They had to answer the question. If they had walked away, they would forfeit the game and the show. Were that to happen, the show would likely have never aired.
If the couple had actually realized the controversy surrounding this question at the time of the show (which was evident in their own bickering), they could have hedged and placed 50% on one answer and 50% on the other. This would have at least kept 50% for further questions. The show was going to pull the drop on whichever answer had the highest amount of money. It just happened to be Post-It Notes. But, if they had placed all or most of their money on Sony Walkman, it would have dropped as the wrong answer. If they had put 50% on the two answers, the show couldn’t drop both. So, they would have at least kept $440,000 to continue playing.
If anything, what this says is that in the age of the Internet search, Game Shows would be wise not to use such ambiguous questions and answers. As soon as people walk away from a game show, they’re going to Internet search for the right answer immediately. If the contestant had had a phone on stage, I’m sure he would have looked it up right then and there.
Note that this show offered for these contestants a second chance to ‘try again’ because of this issue. Though, I’m sure that after this public humiliation, why would they want to do it again? After all, this YouTube video is likely to be around forever. I’m also certain that the controversy around this entire issue is what caused the cancelation of this game show. Fox just wanted to distance itself as far away from this as possible. The best way to do that was get rid of the show, and that’s exactly what Fox did.
Why does my iPhone/iPad sync all of my music every time?
I have a lot of music in my iTunes library that I have collected over the years. I also have several Apple devices such as an iPod, an iPad and two iPhones that I sync. Some people see my devices and think I have three phones. Even though it looks like a phone, one of them is an iPod. I carry the iPod for two reasons: 1) If the battery runs out on the iPod, I can still make calls. 2) I put only music on the device leaving my phone open for apps.
Though, that’s not really the problem. I also have multiple computers each running iTunes software and this is where the problems start. When I sync my iPod, it resyncs all 5000+ songs over and over again (takes far too long). Let’s explore.
iTunes and Media
Let’s understand the reason why iTunes resyncs a song to a device. The primary reason iTunes resyncs a song already on your iDevice is due to a change in song metadata. What is metadata? Metadata includes information such as play counts and last access times. It also includes other tag data such as artwork, title, artist, track number, duration, volume, etc. Basically, any changes to any portion of the IDtag associated with the song will force a resync to the device. Why is this important? It’s important because many households now have multiple computers.
For example, let’s say you purchased your brand spanking new Airport Extreme 3TB drive and you have now copied your entire iTunes library of music and movie files to to that network drive in hopes of sharing to your multiple computers. Nothing seems wrong with that, right? So, now all of the computers in your household will optimally share these same exact media files. Definitely a space saver, or so you thought. Yes, it may have solved your space issue, but now it has created an entirely new problem. That problem, last access times will change each time any of these computers sharing this folder play a song. Worse, when any single computer’s iTunes software instance updates to a new version, iTunes will scan the entire library of files. Let’s understand why this is a problem.
Shared Drives, iTunes and Last Access Times
When you have multiple computers accessing a single set of media on a shared network drive, this can lead to the multiple computers battling over which computer has last modified a specific song or movie. In some cases, as I said above, an iTunes instance might touch every file in the library. When other iTunes instances start, they will see the song last modify dates have changed from the last time it launched and mark the song to be downloaded to your device.
Let’s assume you have 3 computers in your household: one is yours, one is your spouse’s and one is your child’s. You have hooked each of these computers to a /Volumes/Music folder hooked to that brand spanking new Airport Extreme 3TB drive (where your media files now live), each of these computers will update the last file time access separately. Let’s say your spouse’s computer’s iTunes has gotten updated to a newer version. Each time an update happens, Apple ‘fixes’ the library to make it compatible with the newest version. This ‘fixing’ action touches every single file in the library and marks the last access updated.
So, you come along and plug in your iPhone to sync on your computer’s iTunes software (also sharing this same folder). Because every file has now been updated as a result of your spouse’s update to the latest iTunes version, your device will now download every song to your device. The same problem will happen when your child’s computer is updated.
How do I solve this problem?
The solutions aren’t as easy as one might hope. The easiest solution is to duplicate your entire library to a new folder and point your iTunes instance to that folder. Then do this again for your spouses computer and your child’s computer. Unfortunately, if your library is terabytes in size, this solution may not be practical. If your library is 100-200GB, that might be possible. This is really the best of all solutions. Once you separate your library into separately duplicated media folders, each iTunes instance will have exclusive access to its files only. This is the best of all worlds because the only iTunes computer that will update those files will be yours alone. This means that play counts and last access times will remain 100% accurate and are controlled exclusively by your iTunes computer. The same for your spouse and your child’s library set. The downside is that any new purchases made by your spouse will need to also be downloaded separately by you and by your child. Downloading from iTunes isn’t a problem today because they allow re-downloads from the cloud. But, it is somewhat of a hassle as what’s contained in each of the libraries will diverge.
In the case where you have a 1TB or larger sized library and this duplication solution is impractical, there is another alternative.
Home Sharing Server
Apple now offers the Home Sharing feature in iTunes. What this setup requires is a single system completely dedicated to the Home Sharing service. I might suggest, for practicality’s sake, to buy a new computer to dedicate iTunes to the Home Sharing server purpose. I might suggest a Mac mini or an iMac for this purpose, though you could just as easily use a Windows machine running iTunes. Let’s assume we’re using a Mac mini for this purpose as Mac mini’s are reasonably inexpensive and will serve this purpose perfectly. For performance reasons, I might also suggest a wired connection between the Mac mini and your shared library device (i.e., Airport Extreme 3TB). Your remote computers can access the Home Sharing library wirelessly.
This setup requires unwinding the shared drives mounted on each computer separately and abandoning that. Instead of sharing a network drive to each computer, you will now exclusively share that folder to the newly designated Home Sharing server. Then, share your iTunes library through Apple’s Home Sharing services within that Mac mini iTunes instance. This will then be the only machine that has direct access to your network drive media files. From here, you will then connect each of the other notebook computers and devices to this Home Sharing server to access playlists, music and movies.
How does this solve the problem? Because the single dedicated Home Sharing server has exclusive access to the files, only it will update metadata rather than having 3 or 4 or more computers competing to change file access times. It also means you only need to create your playlists once rather than on each computer separately. Now, a single set of playlists will reside on the Home Sharing server which can be managed centrally from that single computer.
Why is this not a perfect solution? Play counts. Because each computer accessing the Home Sharing server will update play counts for anything consumed, this can cause those songs with updated play counts to resync with your device each time your child or spouses listens to or watches a movie. On the other hand, the number of media that requires rsyncing will be substantially fewer than when each computer can potentially update every file in the library.
It is also not a perfect solution for syncing because you will need to sync your device with your Home Sharing server itself. Not the computer that’s consuming the Home Sharing library remotely. But, it will nearly eliminate the need to resync every file to your device each time you sync.
Can this be resolved by Apple?
Sure. But, it’s not something that will happen overnight. The reason this is a problem is because iTunes doesn’t fundamentally understand the concept of a multiuser environment. MacOS X does, but not iTunes. Apple has shoehorned in some pseudo multiuser features, but without fully supporting everything required for a multiuser environment. For example, to fully support multiple users on a Home Sharing library, each user would supply a set of unique credentials to identify themselves to get into the library which would then create a separate and unique profile for each user. Under that separate profile, iTunes could keep track of play counts separately for each user. In this way, what you play and what your spouse plays would be unique and different. So, if you synced your device against your user profile, your devices would only download those items that you had consumed with your device(s) only. Same for your spouse and for your child.
Implementing a full separately profiled multiuser system in iTunes is the only way to segregate devices and syncing. This is also the only way to prevent syncing extraneous songs after they have been played by someone else. Unfortunately, today this is not a reality.
Additional benefits that could come out of a multiuser system using individual profiles is parental controls. Each profile could then have a set of permissions to allow or disallow access to parts of the library. For example, if you had a playlist of R rated movies, you could set parental controls to lock out access to that playlist from children. A multiuser system offers a lot of benefits to parents for access controls in addition to solving the problem of re-syncing every song in the library to an iPhone or iPad.
If you would like to see such a feature added to iTunes in the future, I encourage you to visit Apple’s iTunes Feedback page and leave an enhancement request for a full multiuser and parental control system be added to iTunes Home Sharing feature.
‘Tis the season to be breached
As we roll into another holiday season just having passed through Black Friday, it’s wise to understand how to best protect yourself from these accidental data breaches at retailers (see: Bebe’s Data Breach). Let’s explore.
What is a data breach anyway?
A lot of people shop with credit cards without first understanding what they are or how they really work. By this statement I mean, I think people understand that the purchase extends credit for the items in advance and then pay the actual bill later to the credit card company. But, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about what happens when you swipe your card at a terminal. Let’s understand payment processing.
When you enter a store and swipe your card, information is exchanged between the terminal and the cash register. That information is whatever is on the back of the card (the card number, expiration, name, etc). All of that information is now accessible by the register (and cashier). Additionally, stores have networks that connect all of their registers (a type of computer system) to a central controller and ultimately to a company wide network. The company wide network may be connected to the Internet, but may only have direct connections to payment authorization providers.
When you swipe your card and that information is exchanged by the register, a program takes your card info along with the payment amount, securely asks a remote payment authorization service whether the card has sufficient funds to support the transaction (at least this part is secure). If your bank says yes, the transaction is approved and given a transaction number. This is a payment authorization and it instructs your bank to hold this dollar amount aside until the closing paperwork arrives (around 24 hours). If the paperwork never arrives, the authorization falls away and the money being held is released back into your account.
Now, if you don’t have enough funds (or for other reasons), the payment service receives a decline from your bank. The retailer and payment authorization service never know the reason for the decline, only that the transaction was declined. You will need to contact your bank to find out the reason for the decline. Declines can range from not enough funds to bad expiration dates on cards to reissued cards to fraud detection holds. Again, you will need to contact your bank to determine the reason and then rectify it. Note that if you are significantly over your limit and your card hasn’t seen a payment for several cycles, the screen may request the cashier call into a number. The person on the other end might request the card be taken and cut up. This typically means the account has been closed by the card issuer and you are no longer authorized to use the card. It is always wise to pay your bills if you value using that card.
Card Info Data Transit
The problem with data transit on a network is that, depending on the network and who built it, it could be designed to transmit your data as encrypted or in clear text. Let’s understand the difference. Encrypted data means that a key is needed to unlock the data to view it. This means that only devices that have the proper key can view and use the data. However, many network operators don’t use this type of security. A lot of people who build internal networks for corporations feel they are inherently ‘safe’ and choose to use clear text transit. What is clear text? Clear text is just like this blog article. It’s humanly readable without any extra work. Thus, many companies fail to adequately protect data transit between internal network devices under the assumption that no one should have internal access except authorized internal devices. In other words, because of the external border protections such as firewalls that prevent unauthorized inbound traffic, internal networks should be a ‘safe place’, thus adding extra safeguards only serves to slows down processing and, if you happen to be a retailer, could make the customers wait at the register longer.
Internal networks designed with limited or no encryption are a hacker’s paradise. If they happen to get into a network like this, everything is easy to read, easy to find and easy to download. It’s basically a dream come true for the malicious hacker. With little to no constraints on viewing data, it’s a kid in a candy store and that’s exactly how and why data breaches begin.
How do hackers get into a network then?
Because most companies today require their computers to have internet access, especially retailers who need access to payment authorization services, bugs in network and computer devices are impossible to squash. Internally, companies typically hire IT and operations teams to manage their network systems. They also typically hire security teams to help protect their networks. The security teams do their best to mitigate attacks and watch for data breaches, but it is the operations and network teams that manage the network gear and keep them updated. Because the security team and operations and network teams are separate sets of people, getting equipment updated with the latest-greatest version isn’t always expedient. This means that companies could be running one, two or five versions behind the latest version.
It happens for a lot of reasons. It could be old equipment that simply won’t support the latest update. It could be that there are thousands of servers that could be impacted by a single update. It could be that that single update might break custom software written by the company. There are a lot of internal factors as to why any piece of equipment is not on the latest version. Yes, sometimes it’s even a matter of complacence.
How do you protect yourself?
Before strolling into your latest big box retailer, you should arm yourself with knowledge. Knowledge like the above to better understand how your data gets moved around in company networks. Then, you can better understand when to take the risk to use your card and when to use another form of payment.
Use Store Cards
First and foremost, the safest card to use at a retailer is a store card without a Visa/Mastercard logo. These cards can only be used at the retailer where they were issued. They cannot generally be used anywhere else (unless the company owns several retail shops and shares the card among them). So, if you purchase at Target or Macy’s or Sears with a local store card, if there is a data breach, your ‘store card’ card number is no longer the lowest hanging fruit. The lowest hanging fruit are the Visa, Mastercard and Amex branded cards. With store cards, it will take time for a hacker to understand what that card is and how to use it. Also, once they realize that it only works at that single retailer or at that retailer’s web site, it’s much less appealing. Especially considering that many hackers today don’t live in the US. They might be living in China or Korea or Russia where that store may not exist and where they may not ship abroad.
So, sticking with store issued cards is really your safest bet when shopping at big box chains. Using a Visa or Mastercard or Amex branded card, if stolen, can be used anywhere around the globe (unless you call your bank an explicitly ask to prevent its use outside of your country). Note, not all banks can stop international transactions on branded credit cards, but most can. Call your issuing bank and ask.
Of course, should you plan travel abroad, you will need to make sure your bank authorizes international use before you leave. If you forget to call from home before you reach to your destination, you could have problems.
Limit transaction amounts
You can also limit your per day transaction amount to a much smaller amount. This can make it difficult if you want to buy a big ticket item with your card, so you’ll need to weigh just how often you make large purchase (and how big they are). However, lowering your per day transaction amount to $500 or less limits how much a hacker could put on the card per day. Again, your card would then no longer be low hanging fruit. Hackers want cards with high dollar amount transaction limits to they can spend a lot of money per day quickly and get away from it. As soon as a hacker tries to buy something expensive and they get a decline, that card is marked as not usable and they move onto trying another card.
Use gift cards
Because there are now Visa and Mastercard branded gift cards, you can put a dollar amount on the card that you wish to use while shopping. If this card number is lost to a hacker, it’s has limited liability (because of the logo) and it limits how much damage they can do to you financially. Also, because it’s a gift card, there’s limited personal information they could obtain about you in relation to this card. So, identity theft is much reduced by using gift cards. You should read Visa, Mastercard and Amex branded logo gift cards carefully. Some require fees after 1 year. So, you will need to use up the balance on the card within 1 year or you could start losing your balance to the monthly fees.
There are also store branded gift cards without any logos such as iTunes, Sears, Amazon, etc. These gift cards can only be used at their respective issuers. Again, these cards offer limited liabilities if stolen.
Though, if a gift card number is stolen, you will also want to read the terms and conditions with the card issuer. Not all of them assume replacement liability. So, if your gift card is stolen, you may be out whatever money was on them. So, you should always read gift card terms and conditions carefully.
Use good ‘ole cash instead
While cash does have its uses, I don’t believe holiday shopping is really one of those times. Because you’re typically buying large ticket items for holiday gift-giving, carrying a wad of crisp $100 bills around to pay for them can be downright dangerous. During the holiday season, you may be trading your financial safety for personal risk. For example, the first store you visit could lead someone seeing your cash, stalking you and taking your money and gifts from you by mugging…especially if you just happened to walk out of an Apple store. Depending on the city where you live, it’s sometimes not worth trading the potential safety of your financial security by putting your personal safety at risk. If you are mugged, they’ll likely steal your cards too, which also leaves your financial safety at risk.
And, if muggers rip off your cash, there is no replacement at all. It’s gone. Using credit cards, especially Visa, MC and Amex branded cards, these cards offer limited loss liability. So, if someone steals your card number and begins using it, your total loss is quite limited. The bank will pick up the tab on your behalf and then chase down the perpetrators for their involvement attempting to get the money or merchandise back.
Basically, cash is unsafe and insecure if carried in large amounts. Whipping out your wallet and flashing that set of crisp $100s once is all it takes during a busy shopping season to get you mugged.
Use a debit card
Last, but not least, use a debit card. Though, while liability on your debit card might be higher (check your debit card terms), you have a known pin code that is required to buy anything. A pin code is a lot stronger of a protection than a signature on a credit card. Basically, stores are not required to collect signatures from purchases. They can simply state ‘signature on file’ when that may not be true. This is how you can buy with a credit card from Amazon or Newegg without ever having to sign for your purchase. Even some retailers today are not asking for signatures on cards if the transaction amount is under $50.
Debit cards always require a pin for the transaction. With web site access today, pin codes are also relatively easily changed. You can also usually get the pin code changed long before the hackers are dipping into these cards to make purchases. Again, hackers prefer low hanging fruit. This means that most hackers would opt to use Visa, MC or Amex branded cards rather than trying to use someone’s personal debit card.
Though, keep in mind most debit cards issued by banks today contain a Visa or Mastercard logo. So, that means the card can be used like a credit card with a signature alone. Instead, you should ask your bank to send you a debit card without the logo. This card can only be used where debit cards are accepted or at ATM machines. It cannot be used to buy at places that don’t accept debit cards. Again, this keeps your card from becoming the lowest hanging fruit.
Limit your shopping days
When you do shop, keep your receipts so you know the date and time that you shopped and where. Keeping receipts is always smart if you need to return something, but it’s even smarter when there’s a data breach so you know if you may have been affected.
Also, limit your shopping to a limited number of places and keep record of when and where (use receipts or write it down). Four months after the holiday shopping season when a breach is announced, you might not remember that you shopped at that random store that lost data which then subsequently led to some random hacker racking up a large bill on your Visa card. In fact, you might only discover the breach yourself after you notice the large bill on your card.
If you limit the number of times you shop and use cards as suggested above, you can help eliminate your cards as being the easiest to rob.
Shop where breaches have previously occurred
This may seem counter to safe practices, but companies have have endured breaches are less likely to be breached again. This is especially true of big box retailers such as Target, Walmart and the like. These retailers have a whole lot to lose if they are breached a second time. It’s very likely that these companies networks are a whole lot more secure after the breach than before it.
Shopping at companies who have not yet had a breach doesn’t mean that their networks are insecure any more than they are secured. Yes, it could mean that. But, it could also mean that these yet breached companies are lucky not to have been targeted. If hackers focus their sights on a victim, they will chip away at the security until they find a way in. They also have plenty of time to do it. Let’s also note that way into a network may not be through the front door. The hackers could get in just as easily through an executive’s lost or stolen cellphone or notebook or a third party vendor (like HVAC, plumbing or other contractor who’s network might be less secure). Note that hackers may also work on several company networks at the same time until they find one to breach.
What about Sony?
Sony is a bit of an unusual case. Instead of strengthening their network security across the board, it seems their management team may have decided to only tightened security on the division that was compromised. Sony is a very large corporation containing many different entities all over the world. SCEA (the games division) was where the last breach occurred prior to this latest breach on the Motion Picture Group. So, anyone who has read through the MPG spreadsheet of salaries knows that there are at least 6 people in the US alone that are taking home well more than $1 million dollars a year in salary. You would think that these highly paid staff would understand the risks of computer networks and make it their top priority to secure their personnel and other records through best security practices. Nope. For example, an easy best practice is to use a password to open a spreadsheet. Sure, these can be easy to crack, but that’s extra effort required on the part of the hacker.
Unfortunately, these people are not doing their jobs. Some could argue, it isn’t their job. Their job is to be Senior or Executive VP of blah. Part of being a Vice President is to make sure your company is secure. If you can’t ensure that your division is secure, then you shouldn’t be taking home a million dollars in salary. It’s quite simple. These people are way overpaid for the job they perform for Sony. I digress.
Sony is clearly a situation where the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, and frankly they don’t care as long as they walk away with their pay. So, what about Sony? Here’s the takeaway.
For any company that has been double or triple breached (like Sony), you should stay as far away from that company (like Sony) as you possibly can. Sure, you can buy Sony products at a retailer because the retailer is responsible for the transaction. But, you should not use Sony products that require storage of credit cards for payment. You should also not purchase software from any site that Sony owns. It’s crystal clear, Sony cannot be trusted and they seriously don’t care about data security. If you must purchase something from Sony, use a Sony branded gift card, Paypal, Google or Amazon checkout. These payment systems are not owned or operated by Sony, but can send payment to Sony for whatever it is you need to buy. But, don’t buy directly from Sony (or any other company) that has repeatedly been breached.
Best Practices for Personal Finances
While these are but a few best practices to protect your home finances, there are plenty more common sense approaches to keeping your finances secure. Here are a few top examples of how to secure your own finances:
- Keep your credit cards in a safe place.
- Regularly check your bank statements for unauthorized transactions. Some banks now offer email notification of suspicious activity, use it.
- During the holiday season, make sure you know what stores you shopped by keeping receipts in a handy place.
- Open a second bank account to move small amounts of money in when you need to purchase items online or in stores. Secure your primary account using limited access to services like debit cards, ACH and other third party access. Use the second account much smaller account for these services. It’s easy to move money between accounts in the same bank using your phone app or on the web, so take advantage of this extra security.
- Call the bank immediately if you’ve lost or stolen your card. You should write down the number on the back of the cards into your smart phone so you have it in case the card is stolen or lost. Don’t write the account numbers down next to the phone number.
- Make use of the free credit report you can get once a year and check your credit every year.
- Don’t purchase from any retailer where they are not following proper credit card practices. For example, they should not have to double swipe your card, write the numbers down or ask for any further information aside from looking at the back of the card.
- Don’t allow any retail cashier to walk away with your card. They should only need to hold the card long enough to look at it or swipe it once at the register.
- While it is a regular practice for waitstaff to walk way with cards and bring them back to the table as a convenience, you should be wary of this practice. In fact, it might be best to take the check to the cashier at the place where they ring up your meal and watch them ring up your bill. Allowing waitstaff to walk away with your card out of sight means it could be duplicated, swiped through a cell phone or written down.
- Throughout the holidays, you should search through a major news site for data breaches at least once a week. As soon as you hear of any store that has breached where you may have shopped, you should ask for a replacement card if logo branded or change your pin immediately if debit. For Visa, Mastercard or Amex logo branded gift cards that may have been used at that retailer, you should call the number on the back to have a replacement sent immediately. Unused gift cards are not a problem.
- Request your bank place a fraud watch on your account if you suspect anything amiss with your cards. You should also request a replacement card if you have any reason to believe your card number has been lost. Yes, I know that can be a hassle during the holiday season while you wait for a new card, but it can potentially save you thousands of dollars lost to a hacker.
Overall
It is up to you to secure your own home finances. Using the above best practices should help aid you in achieving that goal. But, you should immediately become suspicious of anyone who attempts to do anything out of the ordinary with your card. If a cashier asks to do something with your card that doesn’t make sense, you should immediately ask for the card back and call over the store manager to clarify what’s going on. If they are the only person in the store, you should leave without making the purchase, step out of the store and immediately call your bank and put a fraud watch on your card.
As the Holiday shopping season gets fully underway, you need to be ever vigilant over your finances because the stores won’t do this for you. Worse, because there are many people who need money to meet their own bills and cover holiday shopping expenses, fraud and theft can be anywhere from anyone. That’s not to say that most people working at retail establishments aren’t screened and trustworthy, but for some people, the temptation of all of that money gets the better of them and they resort to taking other people’s money. By far and away, though, data breaches are the biggest problems of all because you don’t know who or where the attacker is. So, this is where you need to watch your finances closely and use your card very limited amounts over the holidays. Use cash where you can, but don’t jeopardize your personal safety by carrying too much cash.
Wishing a Happy and safe holiday season to everyone from Randosity!
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