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I think that: - Client side analytics are not helpful (and may make invalid assumptions). - Client side analytics waste energy, bandwidth, RAM, etc. - You sh

I think that: - Client side analytics are not helpful (and may make invalid assumptions). - Client side analytics waste energy, bandwidth, RAM, etc. - You should avoid other wastes too, such as including too many pictures, CSS, scripts, animations, etc. - Client side analytics wrongly violate privacy. - In the case of client-side JavaScript errors, yes in that case it may be helpful (sometimes), but it should ideally ask first. Errors should also be displayed in the console window, so that the user can diagnose the errors by themself. - A web page should be designed to work without JavaScripts and without CSS as much as possible, although sometimes they are helpful (although a better "user oriented" design should be needed rather than the "author oriented" design; I have some ideas about how to do this). - Don't always use web pages! There is such thing also as Telnet, SSH, Gopher, NNTP, plain text files (over whatever protocol), etc. (I use many plain text files myself, actually.) - Let the user to write a comment (by email, perhaps). Otherwise, you will just have to guess, and might not be able to. Even if you use client side analytics, it cannot guess something that isn't there. So, I use server side analytics instead, is much better. (In the case of traffic jams: You can see how many cars they are; you do not need to add a device on each car to count them, nor to read license numbers, etc. A simple light sensors to see if the light is blocked by cars, would be good to have.) (In the case of stores, well they already need to count how many products have been purchased, as they very well should. They need not track who purchased each item, just to keep track of how many of each item has been sold. That will allow them to restock and to bring in enough for everyone, and whatever else they need to do. They can keep track of returns too.)

XCSme 6y ago
> You can see how many cars they are; you do not need to add a device on each car to count them, nor to read license numbers, etc. A simple light sensors to see if the light is blocked by cars, would be good to have. But you can also see license plates, car make and model, color. This is the same for server-side analytics, where you can still see IP address, user agent (browser), time of visit, etc. So you don't have to add anything to each device either. As soon as you access a public website, I think they do have the right to check and use the publicly available information. If this information is so sensitive that it's considered private, shouldn't we instead change the infrastructure so that this information is not actually publicly visible? HTTPS is a good step in this direction, bute the IP/UA is still sent to the remote server, which is sometimes useful for fraud prevention, anti-spam, etc.
- zzo38computer 6y ago
  Yes, the IP address and user agent string are sent, and the time will be known of course, and I am not complaining about that; it is there, you can log it if wanted (and use it for debugging/statistics/whatever), etc. The User-Agent header should not be misused. A legitimate user may well access it in a lot of different ways, some of which affect the User-Agent header, and some of which affect other stuff. (If you need to determine what file format to use, the Accept header should be used instead when possible. The User-Agent header can still be used as a fall back, I suppose.) In the case of cars, yes you can see the license plates, colours, etc, if you are physically there and recording them on a paper or camera, or using surveillance cameras, although for a somewhat different reason I am against putting surveillance cameras everywhere. Of course I am not stopping you from recording this data, although for analyzing traffic congestion, I do not think the colours of the cars is important (although their size and speed and classificiation (e.g. car, truck, public bus, etc) (and perhaps how much noise it makes, if you want to consider noise pollution) might be; I don't really know much about it, as I do not drive a car; maybe you know better).

XCSme 6y ago

> You can see how many cars they are; you do not need to add a device on each car to count them, nor to read license numbers, etc. A simple light sensors to see if the light is blocked by cars, would be good to have. But you can also see license plates, car make and model, color. This is the same for server-side analytics, where you can still see IP address, user agent (browser), time of visit, etc. So you don't have to add anything to each device either. As soon as you access a public website, I think they do have the right to check and use the publicly available information. If this information is so sensitive that it's considered private, shouldn't we instead change the infrastructure so that this information is not actually publicly visible? HTTPS is a good step in this direction, bute the IP/UA is still sent to the remote server, which is sometimes useful for fraud prevention, anti-spam, etc.

zzo38computer 6y ago
Yes, the IP address and user agent string are sent, and the time will be known of course, and I am not complaining about that; it is there, you can log it if wanted (and use it for debugging/statistics/whatever), etc. The User-Agent header should not be misused. A legitimate user may well access it in a lot of different ways, some of which affect the User-Agent header, and some of which affect other stuff. (If you need to determine what file format to use, the Accept header should be used instead when possible. The User-Agent header can still be used as a fall back, I suppose.) In the case of cars, yes you can see the license plates, colours, etc, if you are physically there and recording them on a paper or camera, or using surveillance cameras, although for a somewhat different reason I am against putting surveillance cameras everywhere. Of course I am not stopping you from recording this data, although for analyzing traffic congestion, I do not think the colours of the cars is important (although their size and speed and classificiation (e.g. car, truck, public bus, etc) (and perhaps how much noise it makes, if you want to consider noise pollution) might be; I don't really know much about it, as I do not drive a car; maybe you know better).