Hacker News Reader

robflahertyon Latest Safari Blocks ID Resolution Services

Browsing a few sites with heavy programmatic advertising I observed requests to these domains blocked. This happens in regular browsing mode without any extra privacy options checked. Includes LiveRamp and Unified ID 2.0.

As the article mentions Trade Desk ad delivery is currently blocked because they use the same apex domain for delivery and ID matching.

- api.id5-sync.com

- api.rlcdn.com

- b1-nydc1.zemanta.com

- check.analytics.rlcdn.com

- di.rlcdn.com

- direct.adsrvr.org

- htlb.casalemedia.com

- ib.3lift.com

- id.hadron.ad.gt - id.rlcdn.com

- id5-sync.com

- idsync.reson8.com

- idsync.rlcdn.com

- img.3lift.com

- lb.eu-1-id5-sync.com

- match.adsrvr.org

- pippio.com

- pix.cdnwidget.com

- pixel.tapad.com

- ups.analytics.yahoo.com

- v2.pixel.newscgp.com

robflahertyon Decoding the NYC School Admission Lottery Numbers

I linked this post because it explains how the lottery works which I thought was more interesting and relevant for HN.

robflahertyon Code Is Not Technical Debt

Always liked Reinertsen’s post on reframing tech debt to deferred work.

“When we refer to postponed work as technical debt this automatically biases us to assume that both ongoing and future costs are more certain than they really are. This, in turn, causes us to overestimate these costs, leading us to be overly cautious about deferring work. If it is your intention to bias the decision against postponement, this is clearly the best term to use. However, if you are trying to carefully weigh of pros and cons of postponing work, I’d recommend using a more neutral term like deferred work.”

http://reinertsenassociates.com/technical-debt-adding-math-m...

robflahertyon Launch HN: Loops (YC W22) – Email for SaaS Companies

I see this with Framer sites all the time. Happens in Chrome too.

robflahertyon Universal Design Guide Playbook

I know the intent is good (it is!) but this common notion that good design is a toolbox of fun little games really prevents the design function from getting taken more seriously. In the business world at least it ensures our seat at the kid’s table.

robflahertyon Study Compares Gas Stove Pollution to Secondhand Cigarette Smoke

https://archive.ph/vb6IB

robflahertyon Show HN: GPT-JSON – Structured and typehinted GPT responses in Python

Is there a reason we won’t have LLMs that only speak in JSON? These JSON hacks are clever and cool but feel like they’ll be obsolete in 6 weeks.

robflahertyon ChatPDF – Chat with Any PDF

The OpenAI Cookbook has had an easy to use chat with a PDF app example for a few months.

https://github.com/openai/openai-cookbook/tree/main/apps/fil...

robflahertyon How to prioritize tasks?

Worth remembering that priority and sequence are not quite the same thing.

There's a useful framework called RICE where you evaluate/score ideas by Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort. Sometimes assigning numeric values feels forced so I often use it as "dimensions to be thinking about" rather than a literal scoring system. [1]

There's some great stuff in Reinertsen's Flow book about different sequencing strategies and when to use each. Eg, When delay costs are homogeneous, do the shortest task first. When task durations are homogeneous, do the highest cost-of-delay task first.

[1] https://www.intercom.com/blog/rice-simple-prioritization-for...

robflahertyon The more metrics you track, the less you know

The author's framework-"you just start small and only add one at a time as needed"-and given example illustrate exactly the process that leads to too many metrics. Pick a few metrics, add another, add another, add another. If you have 5 teams working on a product you quickly end up in the 50 metrics scenario.

Too many metrics can be a problem but it's not the real problem. The real problem is choosing metrics without any regard for the decisions they're supposed to inform.

When you understand that the purpose of all measurement in business is to reduce uncertainty for a decision to be made, everything comes into focus, and you'll have a natural constraint on your scope of measurement.

robflahertyon Zoom still don't understand GDPR

> According to the ePrivacy Directive, they should not last longer than 12 months

The quote you keep referencing is false. The ePD says nothing about this.

robflahertyon Zoom still don't understand GDPR

The ePD text says nothing about a 12 month cookie expiration and also ePD != GDPR

robflahertyon Zoom still don't understand GDPR

It doesn’t. Or if it does, no one here has yet to explain why.

robflahertyon Zoom still don't understand GDPR

Can you explain what is invalid about it? The list of functional cookie permissions on the consent opt-in specifically mentions cookies to remember log in details.

robflahertyon Zoom still don't understand GDPR

“Zoom cookies are firstly written when the user connects to the website zoom.us and accepts the cookies options.”

That was the moment Zoom received your consent to store data transmitted by cookies. Adding a few more cookies to the pile, regardless of expiration date, doesn’t change the agreement.

Rummaging round the cookie bin on uninstall is a nice find and deserves a raised eyebrow but this doesn’t really have anything to do with GDPR.

robflahertyon Barclays Bank Using Internet Archive as CDN for JavaScript Files?

Based on the replies to the tweet very few have assumed this is the case and no, “using as a CDN” and “accidentally linked to” are not the same thing.

robflahertyon Barclays Bank Using Internet Archive as CDN for JavaScript Files?

"I'd assume that for banks all code that goes into production gets audited"

The point of tag managers is to let non-developers update production without going through a code deployment so the usual code review and oversight doesn't apply.

Also worth keeping in mind that this is the bank's marketing site. It's almost surely managed by a different team than the actual online banking site and probably has looser restrictions.

robflahertyon Barclays Bank Using Internet Archive as CDN for JavaScript Files?

The Internet Archive rewrites contents of scripts to inject the archive URLs. A better explanation than OP's clickbait is that someone went to the archive to copy/paste misplaced tracking code.

robflahertyon How Simple Analytics calculates unique visits without cookies or fingerprinting

GDPR is not a cookie law. You don’t need consent to run out-of-the-box GA with IP anonymization.

robflahertyon Flash Is Responsible for the Internet's Most Creative Era

Today’s internet is far more creative than the internet of the Flash era. Creativity has moved on to more consequential things than graphic design.

robflahertyon Taboola and Outbrain are merging to create a clickbait giant

For iOS Refine blocks Taboola/Outbrain https://apps.apple.com/us/app/refine-customizable-ad-blocker...

robflahertyon Tracking Scroll Depth with jQuery and Google Analytics

I think only one person said it was cool :) What is disturbing about it? Do you feel it's a privacy violation?

robflahertyon Tracking Scroll Depth with jQuery and Google Analytics

I haven't tested it with infinite scroll but essentially it'll be a race. If the user can scroll to the bottom of the page before infinite scroll is able to load new content, the 100% event will fire. Otherwise it'll just register the previous scroll event (75% or a specified DOM element).

robflahertyon Tracking Scroll Depth with jQuery and Google Analytics

All engagement metrics are pretty loose. Scroll depth percentage doesn't tell the whole story but to the degree that scroll tracking is useful, I think percentage provides a simple, document-independent metric.

Btw, tracking scroll points for specific DOM elements is one of the plugin options, so for instance you could track the end of the .comments div as you mentioned.

robflahertyon Responsive Ads in the Real World: Ad Server Implementation

Hi Brad,

Just wrote you back! You know, I actually don't see major publishers embracing responsive design, at least in the short term. I think mobile-specific sites and dedicated apps are much more inline with how they see the world. It's also a business opportunity for them to sell separate experiences as separate products, right? Merging everything into one isn't necessarily a win.

robflahertyon Responsive Ads in the Real World: Ad Server Implementation

Hi, I'm the author of the post. The examples you mention are server side solutions requiring some form of server side detection. You're talking about serving ads to separate mobile and desktop sites.

The goal with responsive design is to serve the same site—the same mark-up, the same assets—to all devices. Which means that any conditional serving of ads has to happen client-side.

robflahertyon Responsive Ads in the Real World: Ad Server Implementation

Sorry about that! It's fixed now. That was a mobile-specific style that I'd accidentally applied globally.

robflahertyon Data URIs for CSS Images: More Tests, More Questions

I agree that a comprehensive test would include the optimized scenarios that you mentioned. In this case the intent was to show that even when comparing two extremes - a very unoptimized page and a super-optimized page - the results were not as disparate as we'd expect. Scenarios involving sprites and domain sharding we'd probably expect to fall somewhere in the middle. Thanks for your comments.

robflahertyon Data URIs for CSS Images: More Tests, More Questions

Hi Jeremy, I'm the author of the post. The tests were not conducted locally, but over a real network, albeit a low-latency one. Latency is definitely a key factor, so I'm planning to run some more tests under different network conditions. Thanks for your feedback.