Could Someone Explain the "Link Tax" to Me?
- 2018-09-13
Article 11, which critics have dubbed a “link tax”, would force news aggregation and search sites such as Google and Facebook to pay publishers for showing news snippets or linking to news stories on other sites.
What? Isn't Facebook and Twitter where publishers get majority of their traffic from?
You've probably heard of this new piece of EU legislation and the controversial articles 11 and 13. I don't know enough of the article 13 to really have an opinion about it, but the article 11 seems really scary. Lets hope that it doesn't go through like this.
Article 11 is really bad news for news aggregators or RSS readers like Social Layer. No one seems to be absolutely sure what the concrete implications of this will be. Maybe this will be like GDPR (if this will ever pass the final vote) that nothing really changes that much after all.
So, how does it work. Do I have to pay because I just linked to an article in The Guardian? How much money will I get if The Guardian ever links (I wish) to my blog?
I Don't Know What to Think of GDPR
- 2018-05-25
This whole GDPR thing is getting out of hand. Here's a list of websites that are now blocked in Europe, thanks to GDPR. I guess they are just being overly cautious before the dust settles and things get back to normal.
And already, on day one of GDPR, Facebook and Google are hit with a lawsuit. That was expected, I guess. I'm really interested in seeing what the outcome of all the lawsuits will be and I hope the lawsuits will clarify some of the interpretations of GDPR.
I wish the EU would have provided some concrete, real-world example cases how to handle personal information in different situations. For instance, IP address is considered personal information and you're not allowed to store personal information without user's consent. So what happens to web server log files? All web servers collect and save IP addresses. It seems it's not quite as black and white as that. Here's a great article concerning web server logs and saving IP addresses without the user's consent.
What about the addressbook in my email client? It automatically saves all the names and addresses that I have corresponded with. Is my addressbook a register? Do I need to email everyone and ask for their consent to still exist in my addressbook? I don't know.
Yeah, GDPR is funny.
It's GDPR time!
- 2018-05-25
How many GDPR notices have you received in the last couple of days? 10? 100? More?
I want to get on that bandwagon too :) So, I've updated the privacy policy of this website. There's nothing special. It's just saying we use cookies, Google Analytics and the web server collects logs with your IP address in them. Pretty standard stuff for a website.
I didn't even remember I use Google Analytics. I guess this was one of the key poins of GDPR, to get companies to look at what data they collect and why. I look at Google Analytics data a couple of times a year and (on this site, at least) it feels like a waste of time and an invasion of privacy. I guess I'll just remove it in the future.
How Fast is AMP?
- 2018-03-20
And for more often than not, these non-AMP versions are heavy and slow. If you’re reading news on these sites and you didn’t click through specifically to the AMP library, then AMP hasn’t done a single thing to improve your experience. AMP hasn’t solved the core problem, it has merely hidden it a little bit.
Here's a great and in-depth analysis of the performance of Accelerated Mobile Pages by Tim Kadlec. AMP doesn't offer anything you can't do with a proper build process and any CDN you choose. But if you want your pages to appear in the Google search carousel, AMP is your only option.
I don't really know what to think of AMP anymore. I like the idea of making the web faster, but I'm starting to think that AMP is not the way to go. AMP is only useful, if you want your content to be displayed in the Google search carousel. Period. That's it. If you want your website to load fast, just make it fast. You don't need AMP for that.
Web Manifest Problems and Content Security Policy
- 2018-02-01
Ah, stupid me. I've been banging my head on the wall for almost an hour trying to figure out why Chrome is not picking up my web manifest. I recently modified the server to return the strictest possible CSP headers for my use case. I used default-src 'none' but I didn't explicitly set the manifest-src property.
Service worker does not successfully serve the manifest start_url.
So there you go. If you get these kinds of errors in Lighthouse audit be sure to check your CSP headers.