outbreak

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now and we’re getting closer but not there just yet. Since a few people have asked me and I always forget something I’ll list all the features here.

Must haves beside wheels, frame, forks, saddle, pedals, handlebars and a reasonable price:

1. breaks front & back (disks a plus)
2. fenders front & back
3. internal gear hub
4. chain cover
5. reasonable weight

Optionals:

1. lights front & back
2. hidden break and shifter cables
3. rear rack

You can get the lights, but it’s way nicer if they look the part, cables inside the frame make the bike look nicer and a rear rack is useful for schlepping stuff around.

I’ve recently done another search and found that Schwinn Brighton comes close – it has all the must-haves, but unfortunately it’s not available in Slovenia.

Update: I found this bike in Cube Town Pro black 2017.

When we stared a hardware startup, I hoped that at least the logistics and shipping would not be a problem – from all the global shipping companies to all the fulfillment companies surely it’d be a breeze. Oh how wrong I was.

Since then I found out that delivery guy ignorance and package mishandling doesn’t only happen here, it happens elsewhere too. I’ve even been told that the “this side up” sign is ignored, they only care where the label is so it can be scanned fast and automatically.

The prices on their price lists are also out right ridiculous. Most companies I’ve seen only offer fast shipping (1-2 business days in Europe), if you want anything cheaper/slower you go the way of the local post, which is unreliable and can’t guarantee anything (and will usually take 5-10 business days in Europe).

Returning packages is another thing that is far from solved – from the delivery companies to customs officers, so it’s really hard to create a good experience for the customer to return an item free of charge.

As usually with these huge systems you need to get to the people level to get things working – when you’re calling a person not a number, when you call the delivery guy by name everything works. For everything else you try to hack the system to get what you want…

I was just asked two security questions by Apple after trying to buy an app. Apple says it’s the first app on this device, but what they really mean is “the first app on this device with iOS7”. I didn’t know the answer to any of them so I now have to reset them and who knows what else.

I have no idea who decided that security questions were a good idea in the first place. The answer to the question can usually either be easily researched (maiden names, first teachers, first cars,…) or hard to remember. The first one is a problem because then they don’t really provide any security, only add friction to the process.

Remembering the answers is a bigger problem because of a few reasons. Some of the questions are hard to answer in the first place – I for one have no idea what my first concert was and even if I think about it I have no idea if when setting the answer I thought the one at school counts or was it the first one I bought tickets for myself, which band did I write or did I wrote all of them in what order and in what form. Geographic questions are also much fun because you never know how local your answer was – was it the street, town, county, state,… And because of the first issue, the easily researched questions get tricky answers that you never again remember unless they are really obvious, which again makes them easily breakable.

I can see some value in these kinds of questions when there is a person on the other side, but only if that person is trained to recognize people that make up stories and lie. But this doesn’t happen very often.

So if you want something to be secure, make users select stronger passwords. Don’t add shit that doesn’t add security but problems.