blauwbilgorgel

Seems to change too often for a number station. I wonder if foreign intelligence agencies would even consider using an American company for their covert communications.

I think it is less spooky: My bet is on it being an iPhone app from years ago, maybe long pulled from the store. Its dev was using the Twitter account as a logging system. Maybe for something silly as highscores from around the world. "_dev" and "_prod" seem far too innocent names for an account that is trying to fly under the radar.

EDIT: Perhaps it is used for indexation benchmarks? Deploy a tweet with a unique string and location, and check how long it takes before it shows up in the index or notification inbox?

I agree. Frameworks like:

  <div class="table">
    <div class="tr">
      <div class="td">...</div>
      <div class="td">...</div>
    </div>
  </div>

remind me of tables too. They tend to add a few unneeded or non-semantic div's. And they don't really separate content and design. It is a lesser-of-two-evils thing for me, because sometimes grids/frameworks can save me a lot of time. Ideally you'd use semantic-sounding classnames and don't include unnecessary div's.

It isn't about which is easiest to implement. No one said CSS(3) was super-easy. This discussion is also very old by now. I am surprised to bump into this view again.

A CSS layout is better than a table-based layout, due to:

- Maintenance: Maintaining or redesigning a table-based layout is very cumbersome, especially with nested tables, because:

- Seperation of content and design: The content has to be changed, to change the design, and that is not a nice workflow.

- Accessibility: CSS designs allow much better for a user-specified stylesheet. Resize the browserwindow and tables keep sticking out, where with CSS you can change the order (put columns under each other). Screenreaders behave in a specific way for tables, they try to read the "summary", or they assume the table holds tabular data, reading it row by row. A table lay-out can therefor confuse.

- SEO: CSS designs make content stacking possible, tables only allow to put the content in the order of the table cells. Webmaster guidelines ask you to check for correct use of HTML, which tables for lay-out isn't:

- Semantics/standards: Use tables for tabular data. Provide a summary and table header if relevant and possible. Using tables for lay-out semantically turns your entire page into tabular data.

- Pagespeed: CSS allows for faster, progressive rendering. HTML tables take their width from the resulting table-cell: Content will jump around while rendering or some browsers even show a blank table before all content is loaded.

A CSS framework like this is far from hacky. Using tables for layout, because CSS is deemed too complex, now that is hacky.

Also, don't forget support for "display: table" is in near all modern browsers. If you really want to design lay-out like you are using tables, it is possible with CSS too.

For responsive designs, much more is possible with CSS than a 100% width table. You can't just slap a few lines of table and expect it to work well on an ipad.

You disagree with the suggestion to clean up the code? Because teaching how to code and writing code are two different things, I agree.

It is great you saved time by using a theme and hacking it a bit for your purpose. Perhaps now there is some time to make your site accessible, credible and adherent to standards, like you teach your students?

You know best where to invest your time. This shouldn't take too long though.

  <meta name='robots' content='noindex,nofollow' />

Is that supposed to be there? You are already indexed, but lack a snippet, due to this. Google substituted your page title in the results with your first <h1> ("Learn to code. Get a job.")

Perhaps check the source and remove/correct some things like:

  !-- janky continuation of loop -->
  <div style="background-color:transparent" id="mc_embed_signup">
  <h3>&nbsp;</h3>
  <h1 class="smallerh1" style="color:#444">
  <form method="post" action="/" onsubmit="console.log('asdf')">
  Interested? &nbsp;
  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
  <img src="http://catalystclass.com/wp-content/themes/ViewPoint/images/star.png
  style="padding-top:20px">

Basic stuff like adding image alt attributes and image dimensions, semantic mark-up, descriptive page title etc.

I like the idea, but consider creating a cool front-end to present it, not this Wordpress theme. I think it would add to your credibility.

Could you tell us here what this product does?

The Adsense account was positively banned for linking to the Pirate Bay and Demonoid (sites that host infringing content and cracks) on every page of the site.

Then the Adsense account holder contested and received a positive explanation of: You offered links to pages on content-infringing domains.

No one, not even Google, wants to ban, or did ever ban, Adsense accounts, simply because the account holder used the Pirate Bay to distribute free stuff it owns the rights to.

I totally agree that there is a problem with the support channels. To me the REAL problem is: user breaking the rules, contesting, getting feedback about which rule he broke (the linking part), finally deleting the links, contesting shortly after again, account didn't get reinstated immediately, so user goes to the media and they twist it into an unavoidable, bad PR story of Google mistaking this guy for a distributor of copyright infringing material and offering no explanation or recourse.

As an aside: The Pirate Bay is inaccessible to many Dutch ISP users, when the courts deemed that the site mainly exists to facilitate copyright infringement.

If the user had linked to a torrent hosted on its own domain, and the Adsense user got banned for it, then I'd call it an absurd outcome. Now I see a user who probably didn't read/understand/or forgot the Adsense policy. This was no false positive, if you follow the letter:

  AdSense program policies

  Publishers may not place AdSense code on pages with content
  that violates any of our content guidelines.

  Sites with Google ads may not include or link to:

  - Hacking/cracking content
  - Any other content that is illegal, promotes illegal 
  activity or infringes on the legal rights of others

Linking to The Pirate Bay or Demonoid could be in violation of above, regardless of whether you wrote the book or not.

I wonder if the same holds for organic search and that it could hurt your rankings. If Google deemed The Pirate Bay a "bad neighborhood", their Webmaster Guidelines seem to say so:

  Linking schemes can be:
  - Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web

I don't expect Google to follow my links to a shady domain, check if the torrent is a lone non-infringing Linux distro, or one of the many other infringing torrents on The Pirate Bay. That might be possible though.

EDIT: http://python-ebook.blogspot.nl/ if the links appeared in the sidebar, like the new link to a self-hosted torrent, it meant that two links to a bad neighborhood were on every page of that website, not just a lone link.

  "Why? Because they claimed he was distributing copyrighted
  content illegally." - Techdirt

But quoted just below is the Google email with the claim:

  "Violation explanation
  ... as well as providing links for ... sites that contain
  copyrighted material."

Perhaps the wording could use some fine-tuning (sites that contain copyright-infringing material) and match the specific violation more closely. But is this Google failing to communicate? Or an Adsense user failing to follow the rules and failing to understand the, still pretty clear, feedback. At least I find the title "Google disables AdSense account of user for sharing free book via torrent" not factually true and rather sensationalist.

"An enemy is dealt with under the laws of war, which could include killing, capturing, detaining without trial, etc," - Marc Ratner, Assange's attorney

"Any person who ... aids, or attempts to aid, the enemy with ... money. Any person who ... without proper authority, knowingly harbors or protects or gives intelligence to or communicates or corresponds with or holds any intercourse with the enemy, either directly or indirectly; shall suffer death or such other punishment as a court-martial or military commission may direct." Punitive Articles of the UCMJ: Article 104—Aiding the enemy

"Scope of Article 104. This article denounces offenses by all persons whether or not otherwise subject to military law. Offenders may be tried by court-martial or by military commission."

I won't: Accessibility is very important to me.

Though I see a difference between access to design and access to content.

I think it is fine to just serve up a reset-CSS for 2008 blackberry devices in a few years, like some now do for IE6 browsers. I don't think it is reasonable or necessary to expect designers to create responsive designs that translate to 2008 blackberry devices (or IE6 browsers) and also work on the future devices of our choice.

Preface by saying responsive design _can_ be worth it.

That said: If your mobile phone has so much trouble displaying a 960px width static centered website (the norm on the current web), so much so, that your mobile browser demands a different design, then I posit your design isn't broken, some mobile browsers are broken.

I expect that in the near future, when resolutions get upped and mobile browsing experiences advance, responsive design becomes more and more unnecessary. To me responsive design for mobile devices seems more of a band-aid for less capable devices. Less capable devices with post-stamp sized browsers, we will soon drop in the same pile as IE6 -- Because soon we can expect any browser on any device to be able to display a 960px width static centered design just fine, without responsive design. If responsive designs stays necessary, to me it would mean the failure of mobile hardware and software manufacturers.

  About how he'd become engrossed in conspiracy sites.

Anti-semitism is rife on conspiracy sites. I just assumed 'the game' thing was started on one such conspiracy site. Paranoia, hatred and naivety can be breeding grounds for these attacks.

I view it less as a street gang game, and more of a game of 'hunt the Illuminati'. Doesn't make it any less despicable. If anything these conspiracy sites (and its posters) carry part of the blame for incitement.

I agree with the poor support channels.

But remember the people generating publicity on blogs, because their Google+ account was deleted? Then it turned out they used a company name as their profile name, posted underage nudity, or otherwise violated the rules.

The blog assumes the developers are innocent and abiding by the developer rules. But can we take this assumption for a fact?

For all we know the developers might have been offering incentives to write reviews. The developers might have send account activation emails from a spammy host.

The email they received from Google isn't published, only described as vague. A tweet mentions "repetitive content".

  Spam and placement in store
  Do not post repetitive content

If you currently search for "RPG" ( https://play.google.com/store/search?q=rpg&c=apps ) 4 games from the top 9 are by 'Cory Trese'. All have near duplicate descriptions. They have 4 versions of a single game "Star Traders RPG".

I wouldn't look at update frequency or an algo fluke as the culprit, but look how I could remedy this apparent repetition, both in game versions and game descriptions.

I was listing stuff that made me a bit scared, as I browsed the source, not stuff to criticize the website with. As for criticism: I think the design and social integration is fresh and well executed. I make websites that contain more errors and look worse than that. It is more of a web application, than a web site.

I listed MicroFormats, because: As a foundation for a modern website, it is a great idea. Digg has the traffic and authority to make rich mark-up work. And I think adding stuff like rel="me" to your social profile-links is kind of standard.

It was certainly not a prioritized list of what to work on next. That would likely be more like: Deploy descriptive 404 page, Get old content redirected to new location, Comment functionality, non-Facebook log-in option, categories, option for a non-masonry list view, work on page speed.

In short: The all-caps serve a visual function, not a semantic one. It is akin to using linebreaks ("<br>") to create a visual margin.

If you write: "... arrested by the FBI" as "... ARRESTED BY THE FBI." you lose information (which screen readers could use to better pronunciation). If you style it with CSS, this information (capitalization, acronym, stress-words) is retained.

I didn't know about the issues with some foreign languages.

You are free to believe that. But let us say I want to cater both to you and to another user that browses the web with NoScript (assume it is my goal to cater to as many users as possible). I have two options: A) make the layout accessible without JavaScript B) break the layout without JavaScript. Only with option A do I cater to both of you -- Regardless of deliberate breaking or bandied opinions ("Thou shalt never mix style and script").

To get a website up and running, most of what I listed falls indeed in the 20% category (80/20).

But if you care about accessibility, usability and SEO you should probably care about HTML issues like pagespeed and validation.

  Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0
  Create documents that validate to published formal
  grammars.

  http://www.useit.com/alertbox/response-times.html
  Users still hate slow sites and don't hesitate telling us.

  Google Webmaster Guidelines (Design & Content)
  Check for broken links and correct HTML.

So perhaps it is the "shit nobody, but front-end engineers, should care about" category.

From a technical point of view this "redesign" scares me a bit:

All the old stories and user accounts 404 now. That is a major loss to their SEO. 14 million pages just thrown away and not passing any juice.

They don't employ canonical or robots.txt.

They have character encoding issues. ("'Superbird' Discovered")

They use a meta keywords tag, and it contains "celebrity news", which doesn't appear anywhere on their site.

They hardcode CSS with styles on div's. They don't use text-transform but type headers in all-caps.

They use the HTML5 doctype, but none of the new tags or practices (like ditching the obsolete 'type="text/javascript"' on script tags).

The layout breaks without javascript on, and the "upcoming stories" section doesn't get loaded. They provide no warning as to why the site's functionality stops working.

They don't combine or compress resources like CSS and Javascript.

They left debugging and TODO's statements in their javascript.

  $(".story-image-marquee-standard").empty().html("<img src='http://imoscar.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/imoscar11.gif' alt='' />");

tries to load content from a discontinued website.

A lot of empty placeholder divs to js-load content into. TPL's are also stored inside the page contents.

URL's are not properly encoded (space instead of %20).

Links to the same article are both with 'target="_blank"' and without.

They don't use microformats or schema.org.

I think your post could do with a less harsh tone.

If you want empirical evidence of groups and organizations employing these tactics it might be better to simply ask or search for it, than to paint your debaters as paranoid bullshitters.

I think you don't get it if you ask: what value is there in derailing a conversation?

Ask instead: what value was there in spamming a certain religious Usenet channel? What value is there in getting a Wikipedia article deleted or locked? What value is there for a reputation management company in pushing away negative, but legit, search results for a client? What value is there in employing trolls to counter terrorists online? What value is there in the 50 cent army? What value was there in the Wikileaks slides, where it was opted that journalists would be smeared or false information would be leaked as to discredit Wikileaks? What value is there in persona management software and upvote squads? What value is there in controlling virality?

I was under the impression that key disclosure laws are present in many countries.

Even in the US, with amendments against self-incrimination, if the authorities already know you have encrypted some incriminating data, you can be ordered to hand over the key.

  In the Colorado case, the police had intercepted a 
  telephone conversation in which the defendant, Ramona F.,
  acknowledged her ownership of the laptop and alluded to
  the existence of incriminating documents in the encrypted
  portions of the hard drive.

  ...

  I conclude that the Fifth Amendment is not implicated by 
  requiring production of the unencrypted contents of the
  Toshiba Satellite M305 laptop computer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#Legislation_...

Though you are right that the law in the UK seems very strict. As an international banker I would be weary bringing a master key or encrypted volume into the UK.

The choice for linking to a 2008 file was not the best. At least their current robots.txt is buggy too, so it isn't all that relevant for proving a track record.

I thought kogan.com was around in 2008 as the blog goes back to 2008.

The robots.txt is whitelisting bots with agents like "No" and "Due to a deficiency in Java it's not currently possible to set the User-agent." but then blocks all other known crawlers (like MSNbot and Yahoo Slurp).

I was not trying to be deceitful. IMO: Deceitful is a PR stunt arguing it is the fault or an evil plan of Microsoft, when you don't present anything to substantiate your claim, and it is a fact the webmaster is at fault in the vast majority of these cases.

Correct. It doesn't proof much, but that they previously had a buggy robots.txt.

Usually these posts are accompanied by a declining traffic graph for Bing referrers. That would give us more proof and a timeframe to work with.

The post gives two options for their absence in Bing results: a fault at Microsoft or as a punishment. With their history I think a fault on their own part is a more likely option. I can't rule that out.

They serve their robots.txt as a "application/octet-stream" not "text/plain". Might be confusing some search engines?

Also according to Internet Archive their robots.txt has changed in the last months.

This was a version that was archived:

http://web.archive.org/web/20080104044407/http://www.kogan.c...

At a glance, they are whitelisting some bots, including Googlebot, but not including Bingbot, and disallowing the rest.

  User-agent: Googlebot
  Disallow: 

  User-agent: *
  Disallow: /

Another marketing stunt?

Joke answer

  $h = "549d9635795ef37857e0b3dc02e52e53";
  $v = 0;
  while( $v == 0 ){
    $n = "";
    for( $i=0; $i<1943; $i++ ){
      $n .= chr(rand(0, 127));
    }
    if( md5($n) == $h ){
      echo $n;
      $v = 42;
    }
  }

By the time we have our answer (or a collision), we forgot what the question was.

http://genetify.com/demo/ is an interesting related js solution.

https://github.com/gregdingle/genetify/wiki/

You missed:

- Write compact efficient CSS (arguably the current CSS file is far too big)

- Combine all CSS files

- Don't use question marks in a resource URL (.css?v=234)

- Write valid compact efficient HTML (duplicate meta tags like: ICBM, unnecessary tags like Google verify, inline CSS, depricated HTML: align="left")

- Dont use spacer divs (div clear="all" style="padding-top: 5px") for a better render flow

- Delay loading javascript to the body of your site.

- Combine javascript files

- Compress javascript and CSS files.

- asynchronous loading of web fonts and analytics code.

- Load all CSS files before JS files.

For the unoptimized 1000 images you can use a Wordpress plugin or roll your own batch script.

My baseline tools and resources for front-end development:

- Page speed https://developers.google.com/pagespeed/ http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/

- Valid HTML http://validator.w3.org/ http://html5.validator.nu/

- Usability http://www.userfocus.co.uk/resources/guidelines.html http://www.useit.com/

- Accessibility http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/

- On-page SEO http://www.seomoz.org/ http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrust...

- Design for the web http://www.usabilitynet.org/tools/webdesign.htm

- Cross-browser compatibility http://browsershots.org/

- Mobile ready http://www.w3.org/TR/mobileOK-basic10-tests/ http://www.marketcircle.com/iphoney/ Modify Headers add-on

- Progressive enhancement http://www.alistapart.com/articles/understandingprogressivee...

- Metadata http://schema.org/

- Conversion Optimization http://www.conversion-rate-experts.com/ http://www.google.com/websiteoptimizer

I had no clue what the app did untill I visited the "about" page. Normally I don't have the patience.

The snippet explained me the entire app. Perhaps some of it belongs on the home page.

  How does PaperKarma work?

  The PaperKarma app enables you simply snap a picture of
  your unwanted junk mail, press Send, and get 
  unsubscribed. That's it! Just snap your junk mail away. 
  (In about 24 hours you'll receive a notification that 
  you've been unsubscribed. You can always use the app to 
  check on the status of your unsubscribe requests.)

A video/animation showing the unsubscribe process could also help clarify the purpose of the app.

Those stats are great hooks, but I doubt your potential users would need convincing. You stop spam for yourself first and foremost, that it helps the environment is a nice add-on.

I don't see that many merits in the views expressed in this article.

You are using Facebook, and Facebook is using you and your data.

"Using you" has a negative connotation, like a bad relationship. So what does Facebook do to "use you"? It shows tailored advertisements. By that standard, nearly every commercial entity on the web is "using you".

The article continues with non-Facebook-specific privacy issues, mostly focussing on law enforcement being able to access your data. If you got a problem with that you should take it up with your representation, not with those that simply comply with the law.

The problems with data aggregation are correctly identified, but not specific nor directly related to Facebook.

If an employer won't give you a job, because she found a drunk picture of you on your public profile, I really see only two people at fault: You yourself, and your employer (and maybe your local laws that allow for this to happen).

I think it is weak to point the finger at Facebook, when all they seem to do is facilitate you and others to give them data voluntarily.

To rank the complexity of a game, as it relates to the user, couldn't you:

Record 1 hour of input in a string. Run a block level compression algo on it, and order the compressed strings on size?

Wouldn't that give a measure of the amount of input required by the game, coupled with how much of that input repeats/has simple patterns?