This page was last updated April 6, 2023.
There used to be a long Terms of Use here, in perfect legalese. That seems a bit excessive to me.
The short version is that you use this website, and everything hosted here, at your own risk. Anything that you download to your computer is also done so at your own risk. But I’m not going to knowingly host or make available anything that would compromise your computer; I am not an asshole.
The websites that I link to are subject to a high level of scrutiny. Nevertheless, if you visit an external site (anything not at pxlnv.com), the liability changes to accord with the privacy policy and terms of that website. In short, the content and crap on external sites is out of my control, obviously. And, trust me on this, there is a lot of crap on external websites. I recommend running a content blocker of some kind.
Privacy
Privacy? I take that very seriously. I have installed a local analytics package called Matomo which interprets the kind of information your browser sends anyway, such as screen resolution, browser, operating system, and referral information. This information is regularly flushed, is kept pseudonymous, and is password-protected. I take reasonable precautions to ensure that nobody else can see this information, and I do not share it with any third parties.
You can opt out of Matomo analytics for Pixel Envy on this page. I wish it was inline, but a WordPress quirk prevented me from plopping the iframe right here.
Your connection to the site also includes your IP address. I have configured Matomo to anonymize IP addresses in the last digit. For example, 192.168.99.123 will become 192.168.99.0. I don’t believe there’s a way of recovering the last digit historically, but I also do not want to, have no incentive to do so, and have no way of associating any IP address with a person.
I am using this information to understand what kinds of technology my audience uses and the general size of that audience — for example, if I want to change the site’s styling, I would like to make sure I know which browsers to test in to make sure it works for a majority of my audience. I also want to know approximately how many people read this website.
I have also installed the Wordfence security plugin which has the option to show visitors to the site as a live feed. I have disabled this option, as well as disabled the ability for Wordfence to set visitor cookies.
New: I now use a few web fonts. I serve all font files from this domain; no third party is involved. You can use system typefaces if you would prefer by opting out of web fonts. Please note changing this will set a cookie but it is not in any way identifiable. The cookie key is webfont, and the value is either on or off. If you have web fonts turned off, it does not load that stylesheet or the corresponding files. In my testing, this saves about 80 kilobytes of bandwidth.
Emails are kept private, especially when sent encrypted, but I may want to quote something you’ve written me about from time to time. When that happens, I’ll ask you. If you’ve emailed me about something you think I got wrong, I will ask if it’s okay to use your name to credit the correction or clarification.
I accept tips via email, Twitter DM, iMessage, and assorted encrypted messaging apps. Please give me a shout if you have information you think I’d like to know. I’m always interested in tips about Apple, egregious privacy violations, malfeasance by those responsible for high technology, antitrust matters, and so forth. I take seriously the privacy and confidentiality of sources.
Please email me if you have any questions.
Please also see Carbon Ads’ privacy policy for information about the sidebar ads.
If you become a site patron through Patreon — thank you! — you will have to grapple with its privacy policy too. For what it is worth, I keep patron information as private as I can. When you sign up, I get an email notification that contains your name, contribution amount, and email address. I will only send you a “thank you” email; you will not be subscribed to any lists and your email addresses will not be shared with, given to, accessed by, or sold to anyone else.