Just plug it in and it does the thing it’s supposed to do.

fart.js is a tool to add the fart sound on earth to your pages (supports Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari, IE).

You can find fart piano on-line at https://www.burpandfartpiano.com/

Related video:
The Final Countdown on the Fart Piano

Firefox web browser turned 20 years old just few days ago.

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
An interview with Mozilla interim CEO Laura Chambers about Firefox’s 20th birthday, growth due to the EU’s DMA, privacy, the Google search deal, AI, and more
As Firefox turns 20, Mozilla ponders how to restore it to its former glory
https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/09/as-firefox-turns-20-mozilla-ponders-how-to-restore-it-to-its-former-glory/

Exactly 20 years ago, Mozilla started shipping version 1.0 of its Firefox browser. At the time, you could download it or buy a CD-ROM with a guidebook from Mozilla. Born out of the ashes of Netscape, Firefox would go on to gain well over 30% of global market share. But that was followed by a period of stagnation, and after the arrival of the faster and lighter Google Chrome, Firefox slowly but surely lost market share.

Firefox is still going strong, and it is a better browser today than it ever was. Now, Mozilla, which recently said that it wants to refocus on the browser, needs to figure out how to get it back on a growth path.

“What I love about Firefox is that it really provides users with an alternative choice of a browser that is just genuinely designed for them”

HTML, The Programming Language
https://html-lang.org/

HTML, the programming language, is a practical, turing-complete[1], stack-based programming language based on HTML, the markup language. It uses elements defined in HTML, the markup language, in order to do computations.

By one estimate, consumption could jump to as much as 13 percent of the world’s total electricity demand by 2030. Everyone seems to be slowly convinced of the existence of climate change and the necessity of reacting to it. Climate change and the prevailing energy crisis in today’s world force us to examine all energy consumption. The ICT sector must also participate in ways to save energy, because all information processing, presentation and transfer consumes energy.

Technology for massive reductions in environmental footprint already exists – many try to optimize data centers PAU with different approaces and cleaner power generation. Green Data: The Next Step to Zero-Emissions Data Centers article mentions that as cloud computing becomes more energy efficient and increasingly relies on renewable sources it can help. The data center industry needs to think about this. Some players already do that.

But can coders help in making IT industry more green? Does anyone talk about writing greener software instead of bloatware? Does anyone talk to think that the features and all the processing of data makes sense?

Earlier as the speed of devices has continuously increased, it has been possible to implement software without worrying about efficiency. And while software grows in size, so does the amount of energy they consume. Software already reduces emissions by streamlining or optimizing other operations. This is called a carbon fingerprint. The IT industry has reduced unnecessary intermediate steps in processes or minimized the use of paper and printing. However, it cannot justify the inefficiency of the software and the growing energy consumption.

Yes, there is talking on going on green code and green IT more on last few years. It is not always clear how each of us can influence the matter. Software development is an excellent example of an industry where the climate impact of work can vary greatly depending on work methods. The same end result can be achieved either climate-wise way or by using bloatware that causes a large climate burden. The same end results can can be often achieved efficiently or ineffectively, in which case it is smart from the point of view of the Earth to choose an efficient implementation.

There is a lot of reckless data usage. The computing, storage and data transfer capacity of digital devices have developed in a way that no other field of technology has been able to do. Massive data transfer in use nowadays means massive extra energy consumption. In the fiber backbone network, to which the computer is often connected, the energy consumption of the transmitted bit is still reasonable. On the other hand, the mobile network clearly consumes more energy to transfer a bit, up to a thousand times more per bit. Why should smartphones be capable of computing at the level of supercomputers, when they mainly use various social media services or play games? Of course, there is a need for graphics for a better user experience, and because of ads, the pages are free for their users. Overall, however, the number of ads and graphics is far too large and poorly optimized.

It is clear that, on average, various websites have way too much data behind them. The kind of data that consumes a lot of energy, but often does not provide exceptional added value from the user’s point of view. In last 10 years the the typical size of web pages created for computers has increased by 500 percent and for mobile devices by more than 1000 percent. As a result, the size of a typical page for both mobile devices and computers is the same, around 2 megabytes. So what does this mean in practice? Overload and massive energy consumption: The data must first be stored on servers, transferred over the data network and processed in the terminal devices. The data is also typically disposable, i.e. it is loaded again when the website is visited later. And much of this data transfer is unnecessary. Optimizing websites can be done. These savings can be up to 50 percent of the traffic caused by the service. In some cases, it is possible to achieve savings of 90 percent, so that the end user does not see any difference. Many online stores have already noticed that the optimized pages work faster for the users, and that the faster their business is, the better their turnover is. If optimization starts to be done more widely, the consequences could be downright revolutionary.

In software development, highly automated processes are available in cloud services, data transfer and SaaS products. Unfortunately, this mode of operation – at least in its current form – limits our visibility to both our energy consumption and climate emissions. We need to gain knowledge how much much your systems consumes and why. In addition to knowledge, we must also have a view of the meaning of knowledge. A climate-wise coder needs a feel for key quantities. If our server consumes a kilowatt-hour of energy, is it a lot or a little?

Fortunately, research and discussion about the climate impacts of the ICT sector has already started and gained good momentum a few years ago. In Finland, it has been investigated e.g. in TIEKE ry’s Green ICT project (2021-2023), in which they promoted lower-carbon digital service production and climate-wise procurement expertise of companies and the public sector in the Uusimaa region in Finland.

Their web pages give information how to move forward on green IT. The project estimated that in many cases the footprint of an individual ICT service can be reduced by up to 90 percent with the right measures.

It is possible to minimize the inefficiency of the software using the so-called with green coding. Green code is an attitude or thought model towards coding, which results in optimized and resource-efficient code. At the same time, it should maximize value and minimize energy consumption. The opposite of green code is waste – energy-consuming activities that do not produce value. Green coding especially affects energy consumption. It aims to minimize both the time spent on data processing and the amount of data transferred, because both of them consume energy and cause climate emissions. Sustainable software engineering is better for the environment and can help a business’s bottom line. Those working in software development should think more about the carbon footprint of the lines of code they write.

Janne Kalliola has written an excellent book, Vihreä Koodi / Green Code that covers the topic what is green code. Green IT and code have already been talked about quite a lot in Finland over the past year. More software companies have started to talk about green coding, and to promote it. However, it has not yet been defined what the green code or eco-efficient systems are. The purpose of the book is not to unequivocally define green code and create a canon. Instead, the idea is to focus on describing patterns to stimulate thinking and presenting various solutions. By using these, anyone working on the matter can analyse their situation and identify the changes they need to make to become more environmentally friendly.

The Green Code book offers insights on the following topics:

• Why should code be green?
• The energy consumption of software
• Raiders of the lost efficiency
• Solutions on tackling lost efficiency
• Concrete recommendations for the main stakeholders involved in green software development, all the way from software developers to end-users

The second extended edition of the book also offers insights into the energy dynamics of AI, data usage, cryptocurrencies and the internet of things (IoT), while highlighting actionable strategies for sustainable growth.

The book is available in English with name Green Code at
https://www.exove.com/green-code/

You can download the original Vihreä Koodi in Finnish language at
https://www.exove.com/fi/vihrea-koodi/

Links to sources:
TIEKE ry’s Green ICT project
https://www.codeo.fi/blogi/vihrea-ict/
https://www.epanorama.net/newepa/2012/04/18/how-clean-is-your-cloud-and-telecom/
https://www.exove.com/fi/vihrea-koodi/
https://www.exove.com/green-code/
https://punamusta.com/asiantuntija/vihrea-koodi-on-tulevaisuuden-itta/
Sustainable Software Engineering – What Is It And What You Need To Know
https://www.mustread.fi/artikkelit/ratkaisu-on-vihrea-koodi-monet-digitaaliset-palvelut-on-suunniteltu-huonosti-ja-ne-vievat-valtavasti-energiaa/
https://www.sytyke.org/kestava-kehitys/vihrea-koodi/
https://www.greencode.world/
https://www.cgi.com/fi/fi/blogi/mita-green-coding-on
https://blog.digia.com/green-code-energiaviisaampia-ratkaisuja-asiakkaitamme-ja-tulevaisuuttamme-varten

Cellular network
https://www.cellmapper.net/
CellMapper is a crowd-sourced cellular tower and coverage mapping service. CellMapper is a useful app for locating 2G/3G/4G/5G base stations. The application measures the signal strength and other network data collected by end users and uses the data collected to locate network base stations and their coverage. The application is currently supported on Android and Windows 10 Mobile devices. CellMapper servers calculate the data that users have sent and creates graphical representation of it in the map delivered by Google Maps, which can be browsed directly from the Android App or CellMapper webpage. T

Lightning
https://www.blitzortung.org/fi/live_lightning_maps.php
Blitzortung.org provides lightning and thunderstorm information in real-time on maps for very many countries around the world. Blitzortung is an informal, non-commercial group of citizen scientists supported by professional scientists. Blitzortung.org is a world-wide non-commercial low-cost community-based Time-of-Arrival lightning detection and lightning location network.

Cyber Attacks
https://www.epanorama.net/newepa/2022/03/10/cyber-attack-maps/
Cyber attacks happen all the time. There are many real-time cyber attack maps on-line. This page has links to many of them.

More maps links:
These World Maps Will Blow Your Mind
40 maps that explain the world
Brilliant Maps
40 Maps They Didn’t Teach You In School
22 maps and charts that will surprise you
30 Interesting Maps To Broaden Your Understanding Of The World
20 Interesting Maps That Might Make You See Things From A Different Angle
Top 20 most amazing and beautiful maps you’ve ever seen
Discover 33 Unique World Maps That You Won’t Find In Any Textbook

The dark UX patterns of popups before first interaction feels like a disaster. However, the concrete design of these pop-ups is mostly not GDPR-compliant: for example, users not agreeing to being tracked must not be disadvantaged, and having to click through a cumbersome array of options is certainly a disadvantage. Then there are the technical problems; one of those consent “solutions” that you see around actually shows a spinner while your “preferences are being saved”. Sometimes it never closes. Sometimes on the mobile browsing the buttons to close those pop-ups are unreachable.

Then there are also websites that are now blocking all EU users because of GDPR. There are sites that ask (or automatically try to detects) if citizen/in the EU and if they answer yes, send them to a static “we don’t service the EU” page. “Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries,” is the message still greeting visitors too often. It seems that some websites aren’t planning on making themselves available to people in the EU at any point.

GDPR’s implementation fundamentally changed the experience of using the web in another, more annoying, way: popups. These inform visitors of how websites are tracking them, offer options to see privacy policies and in some cases give the choice of turning off cookies that monitor user behaviour. The increase in transparency has been greeted positively by privacy campaigners.

Maybe you should not be annoyed at GDPR. What GDPR tries to do is to restore some sane defaults into the process. There are supposed to be all sorts of other GDPR protections, that most people have no idea how to activate. You don’t have to do anything to “activate” these rights under GDPR. GDPR regs focus on what data a company is collecting, how are they using that data and did they get consent for that. GDPR is a regulatory band-aid to a technical problem.

But is GDPR really making the kind of difference people wanted? Forcing people to read and agree to individual portions of the ToS can be seen as a downside of GDPR. I think there’s a small minority of people who care about this stuff and really read those legal texts before clicking. The view of the persons who care is: GDPR has given me a ton of rights over my data that I should have, and everybody should have. It has given me access to my own data. It has given me the power to delete it. This shit is important, and now it’s law.

Maybe the nuance here is that it’s not really the regulation’s fault but rather HOW websites chose to comply to it. But the fact is that I’M SO TIRED of having to opt out of every website’s cookies. In addition to the GDPR popups many web sites are loaded with also other annoying pop-ups.

If cookie consent forms or GDPR compliance forms annoy you, don’t blame GDPR. Blame the sites that have no regard for your privacy and make no effort to comply beyond throwing up annoying prompts. That there’s cookie popups because the companies in question suck? Maybe you should be annoyed at all the companies who have spent the last decades building an entire web-infrastructure with zero respect for user privacy. We built massive amounts of technology infrastructure that just assumed that privacy and tracking wasn’t an issue. Everyone tried to grab as much data as they can and then sells it to whoever wants to buy it. Maybeyou should direct your anger towards every company showing you a GDPR popup. The more complex it is, the more they’re trying to fuck with you. Ads are a requirement for free content. However, some websites go too far and spy on the Internet user more than they would like if they knew exactly what is going on.

Website choose to comply in the most obnoxious way possible to get people to accept loss of privacy. How effective the popups are will vary between websites. Bounce rates must be through the roof, especially for clickbait. I strongly doubt that this persistently annoying popup situation will stick around forever. This again, is the fault of most websites. GDPR requires opt-in for tracking, etc. A website could just, by default, not do tracking. Then provide the tracking options in the preferences. However, most sites have gotten so data hungry that they can’t accept GDPR’s privacy-by-default and have to bother you with pop-ups to try to get your consent to track you. Add some dark patterns, like designing these pop-up forms such that they are effectively opt-out.

The reason all these pop ups and consent forms are so complicated have nothing to do with GDPR, and everything to do with the fact that companies are trying to nudge you into making a choice against your own best interests. Many sites are probably in violation of the GDPR. They’re hoping that by adding a big notice telling you about their violations they’ll be OK. Most annoying that many companies by default assume opt-in to their spying activity, despite GDPR regulation saying that all consents should be opt-out by default.
It will probably take a few ‘product iterations’ to get it perfectly right.

And the GDPR regulations also can be annoyance if you are a web developer that is building the site that comply all those regulatory demands (you need to understand what needs to be done and the try to figure out how to do it). GDPR has changed the internet for millions of people. But nobody can agree on how to stay on the right side of compliance.

If they implemented GDPR correctly and in a sensible manner, you would get one popup per site, once. You would give your consent to data collection and usage, and they would save that preference in a cookie or your profile settings for that site. And how is that supposed to work, exactly? If you choose “deny” then they can’t track you, so they can’t set a cookie or save profile data! Of course you’ll get the same prompt the next time you show up. At that point you’re just another anonymous visitor of whom they have no prior knowledge. You have to consent before they are allowed to remember your preference.

Instead all I get, as a user, is a bunch of consent forms, like the stupid cookie warnings, that I have no idea how to respond to, and no idea what I’m committing to when I click them. Many of those forms are really stupid. There are also plenty which simply say: accept our tracking or you can’t use the service. Which is plainly in breach of Ch. 2 Art. 7.4 of the GDPR.

What we wish is to be able to opt-in once and for all, to get rid of these incessant interstitial pop-ups sprouting like mushrooms across the Internet. Abolish the popups entirely, move the consent forms to a voluntary options page. Implement a user profile system, so people can create a profile and opt-in to tracking and profiling through that. Turn off tracking and profiling completely for anonymous users who choose not to create a profile, or who haven’t opted in. I know there will be an outcry of “but the amount of data we would be able to gather is miniscule!”, and I say that’s a good thing.

Could Browser Ad Permissions are the Solution we want? The idea in that would be that each individual internet user can select which ads to give permissions to allow or block. These permissions would then be applied to all websites accessed with that browser.

They could also simply support the Do Not Track header, or a “Please Track Me” counterpart. But they won’t do that, because that would make it too easy to escape data collection and profiling, and wouldn’t let them annoy you into accepting their onerous terms.

Sources:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18120052
https://europa.eu/citizens-initiative-forum/discuss/idea/gdpr-annoying-and-ineffective-browser-ad-permissions-are-solution_en
https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/psoa5f/gdpr_regulations_are_really_annoying/
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/gdpr-cookies-eprivacy-regulation-popups

The idea of one strictly compliant universal markup language to rule them all was extremely interesting in an era when the Internet was becoming the standard means to interchange information.

The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a simple text-based format for representing structured information: documents, data, configuration, books, transactions, invoices, and much more. It was derived from an older standard format called SGML (ISO 8879), in order to be more suitable for Web use.

XML is one of the most widely-used formats for sharing structured information today. XML looks very similar similar to HTML. However, the syntax rules of XML are strict: XML tools will not process files that contain errors, but instead will give you error messages so that you fix them.

This means that almost all XML documents can be processed reliably by computer software, but it is not always easy to use. When XML is used to standardise large structured datasets it can sometimes be enough to bring the developers to tears.

It’s 25 years old, and here to stay! XML is very widely used today. It is the basis of a great many standards such as the Universal Business Language (UBL), Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), XHTML, ODF, OOXML, SVG, XMLRPC, SOAP, Web Services.

In practice the one-size-fits-all approach of XML was not best for everything. To was hard to be hammered to fit into lightweight protocols though. So standards likes of JSON and HTML4 were developed.

Sources:

XML Is A Quarter Century Old
https://hackaday.com/2023/02/11/xml-is-a-quarter-century-old/

https://www.w3.org/standards/xml/core

https://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_whatis.asp

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/XML/XML_introduction

https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/XML-Extensible-Markup-Language

https://www.w3.org/XML/

Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0
W3C Recommendation 10-February-1998
https://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-xml-19980210

You probably won’t miss IE much as a result, but it’s still hard to ignore the program’s impact and its flaws.

Microsoft ends Internet Explorer support in Windows 10 tomorrow
It’s the end of an era you probably won’t miss.
https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-internet-explorer-11-support-end-date-164346366.html

Internet Explorer is bowing out just short of its 27th birthday. As revealed last May, Microsoft will no longer support the Internet Explorer 11 desktop app for Windows 10′s usual Semi Annual Channel as of June 15th. This marks the effective end of software updates for most people. Windows 11 doesn’t include an IE desktop app.

The Edge browser’s IE Mode will still receive support through 2029 or later, so you won’t be stuck if you just need compatibility with the older web engine.

The deadline marks the end to a bittersweet chapter in Microsoft’s history. Internet Explorer launched alongside Windows 95. It played a key role in popularizing the internet, and for some became synonymous with going online.

“Nonprofit foundation Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) has released an updated draft of its ranking of the top 10 vulnerabilities, the first changes to the list since November 2017.”

The list is available on-line at
https://owasp.org/Top10/

Maybe the most significant change in newest edition is that “Broken Access Control” has been moved up from the fifth position to number one in the latest ranking.