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Companies must stop using Google Analytics

imy.se

401–410 of 672 posts

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#401
post #58
post #45

Who needs analytics? I'm confused. When I worked at companies using google analytics, 99.9% of the time they could have gotten this data from server logs with something like awstats or goaccess. To this day, I still don't get what's the point of embedding some javascript to do extra-requests or a tracking pixel, when the data was already given once.

It's a problem introduced at least in part by SPAs. When the application runs entirely in the client browser, save for a few API calls (that may be shared between multiple pages) it's difficult to tell which pages are actually being viewed, unless you have the client application report back to you (or to Google)

Easily addressable by including a header like x-from-page where you declare which "SPA route" the backend requests were made from.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#402
post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and IT "assholes" think the run of the mill business drones are "assholes" as well. Their inability to be effective at their jobs tend to make IT lives worse because they can't understand what IT workers do but IT workers can understand what the basic run of the mill business drones do...and their work tends to be a bunch of pointless meetings. Yeah, I work at a corporate office and have made it a mission to see what…

> but IT workers can understand what the basic run of the mill business drones do...and their work tends to be a bunch of pointless meetings. What an ironic comment. Sorry, any early-career worker looking down their nose at anyone else (or pretending to have any idea what their job entails, especially because they “looked at a calendar”) might as well go back to middle school. They definitely need to grow up.

While true, it’s very fair to say that many (possibly most) meetings in a corporate environment contain a lot of absolutely pointless time wasting.

I say this with the perspective of someone who has slowly had to have many more of these meetings added to his calendar over the years.

Some are very important, some are reasonable but often bloated, but so many are a waste of time.

At the very least: they’re 5-10 mins of work spread over an hour. It’s occasionally maddening.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you're using a broad/generic example to try and make the point but I'll say this: If a seasoned mechanic is unable to figure out how to reset the Maintenance Reminder or look up how to sync Tire Pressure sensors, run away. In the same way that one can use knowledge of one programming language as a means to leapfrog into other languages, other skilled trades are similar. Perhaps there's something that could be…

I think you are missing at least one important point. The reason the mechanic can’t work on the other brand of car is not knowledge or skill, but equipment. It costs money to buy the full suite of equipment required to correctly service a particular manufacturer’s vehicles. It often makes much more sense to specialize and make more use of fewer expensive tools than to have tools for everything and have only marginall…

Well, that's a very American way of doing things that most places simply don't do. The norm is for tools to be compatible with all brands and at best it is an added option to unlock or a pay per use. You can do 99% of the diagnostics with a Wish Bluetooth dongle and a free android app if you wish, since by law it is an open standard.

Most specialty equipment costs less than a mechanic can earn in a day. You even order the parts from the same company no matter if the bumper is for a Mazda, VW, or an Alfa. Or a Kawasaki motorcycle for that matter. This lock-in behavior is, luckily, mostly illegal.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This level of dependence on certain tools is neither rare nor unprecedented. Your run-of-the-mill business drone will be trained on Word/Excel/Outlook and be hard to impossible to retrain on anything else (either because of actual stupidity or resistance to change). This already starts at school where "Informatik" is often just learning where to click in Microsoft products. Similarly, tradespeople often specialize in…

There’s actually a far better reason they don’t retrain. There aren’t better tools. Or the tools are basically carbon copies (Google Docs and Sheets). Show me a product that provides so much more value for my team than Excel that it would be worth a retrain.

My first office software was WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 on DOS. Then Lotus Smartsuite, Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, now LibreOffice, with occasional bits of Google Docs. I never had to be retrained.

Here's the thing, for 90% of use cases, those are all effectively equivalent. You really shouldn't need any retraining whatsoever. A spreadsheet's a spreadsheet, and a word processor is a word processor. You type the text in the box and then hit print or whatever. Nothing new to learn.

Now admittedly, there are some power user features which are different, which is why I said they're only 90% equivalent. But most people don't use those anyway. Yet they will intensely oppose using a different but 90% equivalent thing because they haven't spent years being trained to use it - even though it's almost exactly the same thing they're using.

It's just a weird and bizarre mental hangup that seems to be natural to many humans.

If you're in tech, you will see the same thing with programming languages, frameworks, applications, etc. And it's on both sides, not just the users, but also the people hiring them too. "Oh, you've only worked with WordPress, you haven't been trained in Drupal?" "Oh, that's PHP, I only work in Python." "Well we're looking for a Ruby developer, not a C# developer." "That's React, I only know Vue.js"

It's mostly all general-purpose programming languages, libraries, and frameworks. Sure some details are different. There's a bit of a learning curve. But if you are actually capable with one, then picking up another nearly equivalent alternative should not be viewed as some impossibly complex thing that will take years of retraining.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#405
post #290
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try to get a French car in Poland, most shops are used to deal with VW, Audi. It is not impossible but if you try to go to a random shop you found on Google and fix your Citroen or Renault you might be surprised.

It could just be a parts issue. A lot of mechanics will work on pretty much any car, if they have the parts, but if it's not a popular model then they don't want it sitting in their shop for a week while they order parts. I guess some mechanics will prefer to work with a smaller number of models, because they're much faster if they're familiar with the model, but new models come out every year, and they need to learn…

I'm not from Poland but I hope this is hyperbolic. Parts delivery is once or twice a day delivery in most cities in Europe, no matter if it is Renault, VW or a Kawasaki motorcycle. Of course a part can have longer delivery time but not because it is a Renault instead of a Audi. At least not at any reputable delivery business in modern parts of Europe (which I would think Poland is a part of even though I haven't been there since the 90's).

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#406
post #34

My sister-in-law (girlfriends brothers girlfriend, not that it matters) recently studied for a data analytics certification. Actually several. The entire course (located on here: https://medieinstitutet.se ) is based on Google Analytics. Now her entire value is tied to the use of Google Analytics, she will almost certainly fight very hard to ensure that these skills remain relevant, nobody would want to retrain for 6…

This is why I suspect most cloud certifications are garbage. Most often they are just teaching you their product offerings. Even the implementation details aren't that useful because they change so often.

Compared to something like a Cisco networking certification: The CCNA will cover practical use of their products, sure, but they're also going to teach you subnetting, both standard and Cisco proprietary routing protocols and how they work, in theory, as well as how to employ them in practice. I've mostly moved on from using Cisco products day to day, but all of the understanding was directly translatable to any other platform I've worked with.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s actually a far better reason they don’t retrain. There aren’t better tools. Or the tools are basically carbon copies (Google Docs and Sheets). Show me a product that provides so much more value for my team than Excel that it would be worth a retrain.

> There aren’t better tools. Or the tools are basically carbon copies LibreOffice, free open source software. Just as good as Excel and... free.

LibreOffice is a perfectly functional spreadsheet for basic spreadsheet tasks. It is, however, not in the same league as Excel for more advanced spreadsheet tasks. Sometimes as a user you just want to be able to use the software that works better, you know?

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#408
post #34

My sister-in-law (girlfriends brothers girlfriend, not that it matters) recently studied for a data analytics certification. Actually several. The entire course (located on here: https://medieinstitutet.se ) is based on Google Analytics. Now her entire value is tied to the use of Google Analytics, she will almost certainly fight very hard to ensure that these skills remain relevant, nobody would want to retrain for 6…

> That said; we also have "Cloud Engineer" as a job title, so I'm not sure we will learn this lesson. Comparing something as vast and broadly reaching as "Cloud" is a disengenous comparison to something as specific as a tool like Google Analytics, kind of a wierd comparison IMO. The entire pattern of tech is towards the "cloud" - even if you refuse to use the big ones like Amazon, Microsoft, or Google, it's still tec…

> it's still technically "cloud" if it's managed servers (wherever they may be).

Thank you for this. No more second thoughts about pointing cloud.example.com at our local HPE rack.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#409
post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you be more precise with what envision by "correctly"? If you use a shared salt for all or a significant portion of rows, then it's a realistic matter of bruteforcing to cover your entire table, given that the attacker has been able to recover the salt. Even without any cracking at all, shared salt would mean that rows can be correlated if the attacker can identify a single row and correlate that to the target.…

If it's shared, it's not a salt. The term of art in that case is 'pepper'.

Isn't it the other way around? Most salted hash implementations share the salt by embedding it in the hash. It's pepper that isn't shared.

After rereading, I suspect by 'shared' you meant 'non unique' rather than 'public'?

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#410
post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reproduction steps: 1. Install Chrome for Windows from the Google website. As of today, that version is 114.0.5735.199 (Official Build) (64-bit). I am testing on Windows 11 and I used a fresh install of Chrome on a machine that has never had Chrome before. This machine has a standard 60Hz display which may matter for my theory at the end. 2. Go to qbix.com. 3. Hover the mouse over "Communities". Now hover over its su…

Tried it with Chrome and Edge on Windows. Still can't reproduce those bugs. Strange. The worst thing is when some users see a heisenbug that you can't seem to reproduce on a similar environment.

I've tried it again on both Windows 10 and Windows Server 2022 and it reproduces every time. I have yet to see the site working properly on Windows Chromium.

Please try creating a fresh cloud Windows instance rather than using your usual computer so you can be sure you are seeing what a fresh user on a new computer would see. I have done so--this reproduces in the preinstalled Edge on a brand new c6a.large Windows Server 2022 instance in AWS. I can provide a click-by-click screen capture starting at the AWS Management Console if desired--I've found this is a good way to prove bug reports to companies and demonstrate that it has nothing to do with my computer.

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