Paul Boocock of Snowplow Analytics joins me for this episode.

Paul is a brilliant engineer, helping build Snowplow into the analytics pipeline powerhouse that it is. For the uninitiated, Snowplow is a modular, open-sourced, end-to-end analytics pipeline that anyone (with the skills and resources) can setup to run their own analytics collection, processing, and reporting system.

This episode isn’t (just) about Snowplow, however. Instead, we discuss the world of online analytics with Paul.

As seems to be the trend in this podcast, our talk touches upon the difficult compromise between privacy and feature engineering.

How do you build an analytics platform so that it is as flexible and multi-purpose as possible without introducing features that make it easier to mess with user privacy?

How do you build features while observing the ever-changing world of browser standards, the increasingly more intimidating spread of privacy regulations, and the entire complexity of user intent, especially when set against the backdrop of the organization’s data collection needs.

Listen to the episode to hear Paul’s (and mine) thoughts on these very difficult topics!

Listen to the episode using the player or find it in your favorite podcast service.

The post TMH #3: Online Analytics with Paul Boocock appeared first on Simmer.

In this episode, I got to chat with Pete Snyder (Brave) about ad and content blockers, and their impact not just on user experience on the web but also the engineering decisions a privacy researcher working on a web browser might have to make daily.

Ad blockers are used to prevent the web browser from communicating with domains and URLs that have been flagged as harmful or malicious in various filter lists. This blocking makes the web browsing experience faster, more private, and more secure.

However, there are lost of questions around how ad blockers work. Some of the things we discuss in the interview include:

– Who decides what gets filtered out?
– Who is responsible if things break on the web?
– What is the future like for blocking technology?

From Pete’s words I got the impression that there’s still a lot of work to be done in this space. Not just technology-wise, but also in terms of the research that’s required to figure out the appropriate mix of compromise that browser engineering, specifically in the privacy space, seems to be.

We also talk about the Brave browser, as it has truly been a pioneer in privacy protections, with one of the most aggressive stances when it comes to protecting the browser user and being true to the browser’s mission as the user agent.

Listen to the episode using the player or find it in your favorite podcast service.

The post TMH #2: Ad Blockers with Pete Snyder appeared first on Simmer.

We are joined by Philip Walton (Google) to discuss the Web Vitals initiative.

Web Vitals is a set of measurement guidelines for creating and optimizing for a great user experience on the web. Core Web Vitals is a subset of these, focusing (as of the time of recording this episode) on the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).

Philip is one of the main contributors to the web-vitals JavaScript library as well as the author of the web.dev documentation for Web Vitals.

In this episode, we discuss Core Web Vitals and their relation to user experience, search engine optimization, and other means of performance measurement. Join us as we try to imagine a world where performance is more than just a means to an end.

Listen to the episode using the player or find it in your favorite podcast service.

The post TMH #1: Core Web Vitals with Philip Walton appeared first on Simmer.