This web service is designed to be as transparent as possible; in other words, you are in control of the data you share with the service. At the same time, this web site is designed to provide a state of the art experience when it comes to managing your preferences.

About the personal data stored on your device

In order to identify your particular choices and preferences on subsequent use, the application may store data to help it do so on your device. This section concerns only data the application may store on your device. By law, we are required to ask your consent about whether you are okay with the application accessing any of the data we have previously stored that relates to you and that can be used to personally identify you (personal data). We decided to ask about your consent before we save such data on your device. Giving consent for the application to access the personal data means that you allow the application to save that data on your device, and to access it the next time you use it.

In the context of this application being a web site, usage (using the application) means navigating to any of the pages of the web site, and from there to subsequent pages on the web site and so on.

Should you decide to withdraw your consent, you can do so individually, for each of the personal data that may get stored on your device and read from it by the application.

Most of the times, consent translates to applications providing the user with an annoying experience, where a banner usually informs the user about how the web site ‘may track them’, ‘stores cookies’ etc., and offers the user the option to accept or decline the request. Even though the law stipulates that access to the service should be provided even if the user did not consent, most of the times the provided functionality is drastically reduced, up to the point that the service is indeed accessible, but practically unusable.

We definitely do not like such an approach. For once, we believe that the application should provide a default experience that’s great, fits well for most users and the user’s personal data is not required to do so. Thus, we do not pop up any banner when you load our service for the first time, because, by default, the application does not store or process any of your local personal data that could be used to identify you. We do not need to track you online in order to give you the valuable information this web site was designed to offer. Thus, we will promptly inform you when there is actual need to do so, not annoy you with a generic ‘all-in’ type of request.

Then, during your visit, should the application need your permission to store/access data on your device that could be used to personally identify you, it will ask for your consent. Even if you decline the request, the application will still work great. All functionality that requires data to be stored on your local device is non-essential and provides enhanced features, like the comments system. Reading the articles on the web site is free as in free speech and will always be, without the need of any agent to identify you or access your personal data.

Also, many people are familiar with how the law requires individuals to consent for the so-called cookie usage. That’s not true. Consent is required for using (accessing) the user’s personal data, no matter the technology it resides in. Cookies are a form of storing user data on the local device, but not the only one. A lot of web sites claim to be cookie-free and to comply with the law, while they still cheat and access data they store on the local device via the use of functionality such as the “local storage” of the web browser. That’s why we avoid talking here about cookies specifically. This section is about data we may store on your device that we or the third party services we employ would like to access in the future and that can be used to identify you, for example, during your subsequent visits on the web site, no matter the actual technology we or the third party services we employ use to store it on your device (for what is worth, we use plain old cookies when you allow us to do so).

Data stored on your device by the application can be stored by us, the developer (first party), or by third party services used by the application.

Each time your consent is required, a banner similar to the one below will be displayed:

Please authorize this web site to access the following service: Example Service. This may share your personal data with the service provider. Learn more
Authorize Dismiss

By clicking Authorize, you consent to the application connecting automatically (now, and in the future) to the service provider and agree with its terms of service. You can subsequently revoke the permission by changing the preference in settings to “Default” or “Deny”.

By clicking Dismiss, the functionality will be disabled. Additional information might be shown, depending on the nature of the function that was disabled. You can subsequently permit the request by changing the preference in settings to “Allow”.

About the personal data stored remotely

When it comes to first party data stored on your device, it never leaves your device, we never store/access personal information and we never do any remote processing on it. On the other hand, third party services treat your data per their terms of service and/or their privacy policy. Because of this, in order to protect your privacy, we are required to inform you when the application will enable a third party module that may do so and ask you whether you’re okay with it or not. If you consent, we will store that choice as a cookie so that we remember it for later. As mentioned, consent for each particular choice can be withdrawn at any time in the application settings.

List of settings

Below, we describe every setting (cookie) the application may request to set and to subsequently access from your device.

First party

  • Light/dark theme preference. By default, this preference is inferred from settings in your browser. You can also override this preference, in which case we will set a cookie that will remember this preference. Both of these settings cannot be used to personally identify you, so the application does not prompt you before setting/accessing the information.

Third party

  • Display of YouTube embedded videos. We need your consent to display videos that may be embedded in articles because YouTube subsequently stores data on your device that can be used to identify you. They do this for various purposes, for example, so that they know whether you are logged in to their service and in such case, show you relevant video recommendations instead of generic ones. To learn more about how YouTube processes your personal data, locally and/or remotely, check out their Terms of Service or Google’s Privacy Policy.
  • Display of Disqus comments functionality. We need your consent to display the comments section which is powered by Disqus because Disqus subsequently stores data on your device that can be used to identify you. For more information about how Disqus processes your personal data, locally and/or remotely, check out their Privacy Policy.

Third party services used by this application

Below is the list of third party services this application may use services from:

  • YouTube - we use YouTube to display inline videos in articles
  • Disqus - we use Disqus to provide the comments section for each article
  • GitHub - GitHub is used as hosting for the application; also, we use their service to provide information about Git repositories we store with their service.

Others

The following functionality requires that you enable JavaScript in your browser:

  • Cookie management
  • Comments (Disqus)