Bonum Certa Men Certa

Quantcast: Not a Decent Way to Treat Site Visitors, Paying Members (Subscribers) Included

Phoronix "VALUES YOUR PRIVACY" (but not upstream)

Phoronix VALUES YOUR PRIVACY



Summary: Phoronix has a privacy problem and it prevents the site from broadening its reach or increasing its appeal to geeks

TECHRIGHTS supports Phoronix and this is why it cares. It doesn't ignore the above issue, which is longstanding. Michael Larabel explained to me that a 'parent' company had imposed that (more or less). So I've researched this a little, having seen negative comments in the forums (in response to the fund-raiser, which ends right about now). I didn't want to 'interfere' with this fund-raiser, so I withheld criticism for a while.



"...I've researched this a little, having seen negative comments in the forums (in response to the fund-raiser, which ends right about now)."Larabel is a hard-working man. Very hard-working. I can relate to his dedication. He now also needs to support 3 people (a baby was recently born). I totally get that. But having 'only' like a thousand trackers in every single page (notice that the above list is alphabetical), each tracker with its own unique surveillance policy (linked to from that list), is a little too much. Pages that should take just a second or so to load can take an order or magnitude longer to fully load. Most of what's happening isn't visible; it happens in the background, at many server sides and also at the user's end, owing to proprietary JavaScript code. I studied this to the extent possible. The 'gory' JavaScript dissection is beyond the scope of this post. There's locational tracking as well.

"As of several weeks ago, charts stopped showing up in benchmarks/articles unless JavaScript is enabled and that makes matters worse."Never mind the paywall; never mind the many ads that accompany each page, forums included. I can understand why some Phoronix supporters would stop blocking ads in that site. To me, personally, the spying is the main issue. It makes each page like somewhat of a 'malware'. Bloated also, but that's a technical matter... as bloat/clumsiness does not necessarily imply malice.

May we politely and kindly suggest that Larabel speaks to the patron about removing that malicious surveillance from all pages? Based on the forums, this is rather off-putting. Readers are generally very technical, so they know what's going on and some publicly complain. It reduces traffic, no doubt, and keeps some people off the site. Remove the spying and traffic will increase; Tux Machines would certainly link to it a lot more. It used to be a fast, lean site. That's just no longer the case with JavaScript enabled. As of several weeks ago, charts stopped showing up in benchmarks/articles unless JavaScript is enabled and that makes matters worse. It makes some links dreadful to click on and some pages impossible to read (without running proprietary programs).

Recent Techrights' Posts

Links 24/12/2025: US TACOs on "China Chip Tariffs Until 2027", Russian Snickers in U.K. Convenience Shops
Links for the day
 
Sounds Like Microsoft 'Open' 'AI' (Slop) Ran Out of Money to Borrow
Maybe in 2026 slop will be scarce enough that eventually, maybe by year's end, we'll manage to just ignore it.
In India, Staff Works on Christmas Eve, Becomes Unemployed (Last Day)
The company fires based on how "expensive" workers are more often than based on their productivity
Links 24/12/2025: Cheeto President "Accused of Rape in Jeffrey Epstein Files", Windows to be Replaced by Slop?
Links for the day
Gemini Links 24/12/2025: Tea, Love During Pain, and Gaming This Year
Links for the day
GAFAM is a Bubble, Nothing is Free in This World
Nothing is free in the world
My New CD Player/Stereo Didn't Even Last a Year, My CD Player/Stereo From the Early 1990s Still Works
That helped reaffirm what I said in recent years about production/manufacturing standards of "modern" things
GitHub Isn't Free, Microsoft Subsidises It (Losses) to Entrap You Inside Proprietary Software, Now Come the Fees
GitHub was never free
XBox Console is Dead, "Microsoft is Rethinking What XBox is"
So XBox is now "cloud"
IBM SkillsBuild: Teaching Slop to People
What skills does that give? Making more slopfarms?
Maybe 2026 Will be the Last Year of António Campinos
Europe's patent system is run by thugs and it serves thugs
2025: The Year LLM Slop Rose to Prominence and Then Fell
the slop hype is bound to end
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, December 23, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, December 23, 2025
Links 24/12/2025: Spotify Surveillance and Shadow Over Rule of Law in Hong Kong
Links for the day
A Good End for a Fine Year
Today we saw some pleasant news online about the growth of GNU/Linux and more perils impacting Windows and XBox
Serial Sloppers Lost Momentum, Sites With "Linux" in Their Name Barely Bother Anymore
Will 2026 be the year slopfarms jump the shark?
Gemini Links 23/12/2025: Hydraulic Pressure Balance and mercury://
Links for the day
Gemini Links 23/12/2025: "The sun is shinning" and "problem in the Butlerian Jihad setup"
Links for the day
Links 23/12/2025: "Over 8,700 News Articles Censored in Turkey in 2024" and "Photos Are Being Deleted From the Epstein Files"
Links for the day
Techrights as 'Regulator' Against Runaway Trains
"Runaway trains" never scared us because we know that they, unlike us, don't think rationally
Links 23/12/2025: That ‘Satisfying Click’ and Security Lapses, Car Bomb Kills Russian Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov
Links for the day
Links 23/12/2025: GNU Taler 1.3, US Regime Censors Television Again
Links for the day
Valve Can Bring More Users to GNU/Linux, But It Won't Bring Freedom
Steam is DRM
Social Control Media is Bots (Fake Traffic, Fake 'Engagement')
As per FORTUNE, 76% of Twitter is alleged to be bots now
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, December 22, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, December 22, 2025
How the Slop (So-called 'AI') Bubble Will Burst Next Year
There are already talks about mass layoffs in January
"Generative AI Bubble Has Begun to Pop", Nvidia Rides “Circular Financing... a Strategy That Hearkens Back to the Dot-com Crisis”
For companies like Microsoft this may mean another 30,000+ layoffs next year
Microsoft-Connected Media Talking About XBox Division "Profit Margins" is Distraction From XBox Sales Collapsing 70% in One Year
The simple fact is, Microsoft's console is dead in the water
The Reality is "Vibe Code" (Slop) is That It's Worthless
“Confidently Wrong”
British Web Developers Can Probably Ignore Firefox Users (Based on US Standards)
Mozilla has managed to piss off enough people
On the 'Digital Gulag' of 'Secure Boot' and Microsoft Disguising Its Attacks on Users as "Security"
Dr. Andy Farnell has this new article
Slopfarms Can Only Survive in Google News, Which is Still Promoting Them
Google News promoted only 3 slopfarms today
Gemini Links 22/12/2025: Films, Creativity vs. Consumption, Slop in YouTube
Links for the day
Microsoft XBox Losing Money, Layoffs and Studio Shutdowns (As Well as Price Hikes) Not the Solution
Microsoft does not quite talk about profits
"Major [IBM] Reductions Will Take Place Soon in Rochester MN"
Maybe that's just the latest office gossip
Links 22/12/2025: Data Breaches, deterioration in Politics, and Geminispace
Links for the day
Links 22/12/2025: North Korean Applicants Target GAFAM (Amazon), ‘Orwellian Climate of Fear’ of CPC (Even Outside China)
Links for the day
More IBM Layoffs in India
It's not as simple as "laid off to be replaced by an Indian"
GAFAM Deeply Connected to Jeffrey Epstein, Richard Stallman (RMS) in No Way Connected to Jeffrey Epstein
people who hoarded all the capital get to decide what people think and say
Linus Torvalds Has a Birthday This Coming Weekend, Thankfully He Still Controls His Main Project
GNU and Linux should remain under their control as long as they live
Mozilla is Getting Attention for All the Wrong Reasons, Take a Look at LibreWolf
Just last week Mozilla added a new top-level manager who (as usual) came from a "tech giant"
When Conformism Means Capitulation and Defeat
In an age of injustices like these, we all have some kind of moral obligation not to be conformist.
Text is Still King
But the so-called 'industry' insists that we should download 10 MB of objects from multiple domains... even just to read 5-10 paragraphs of text
Links 22/12/2025: Facebook "Testing $14.99 Monthly Subscription Fee to Post Links" and "Middle East Petrostates as American Media Owners"
Links for the day
Beyond the World Wide Web (WWW)
We continue to treat Gemini Protocol as a first-class citizen
Serbia: GNU/Linux Rises, Windows Down to All-Time Lows
According to statCounter
"Wrestling With Pigs"
"Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it."
Productive Year and Better Access to Techrights' Archives Going Back to 2006
we've long needed and wanted native, local, independent search facilities
Linux Abandoned by Linux Foundation
It speaks for Microsoft and for so-called 'AI' companies
Microsoft Has Practically Given Up on XBox Already
Expect many XBox related layoffs when 2026 starts (Q1)
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, December 21, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, December 21, 2025
"Today's [Red Hat] is run by a cabal of vultures."
it seems safe to assume Red Hat too will languish away
Microsoft Layoffs in 2026 Can be Bigger Than 2025 Microsoft Layoffs (30,000+ Workers Laid Off)
"Is there going to be any reorg or Microsoft layoffs?"
Gemini Links 21/12/2025: Solstice, Chaos of CSS, and Program Interpreter Fun
Links for the day
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Represents People, Not Corporations
FSF isn't in the "business" of appeasing oligarchs