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Brave 0.55 released

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Re: Brave 0.55 released

#12
I didn’t understand what this meant until I dug up more information, especially since I thought Brave was already based on Chromium. Turns out that so far only the browser engine was Chromium based. Now its user interface is also transitioning from an in-house open source framework called Muon [1] to Chromium.

This is what an announcement more than six months ago (from March 2018) [2] says:

> Brave for Windows, macOS, and Linux currently use the Chromium rendering engine, but (unlike Brave for Android) it uses a custom HTML and JavaScript user interface. Technical readers will know that we call the runtime for this user interface Muon, which is a more secure fork of Electron, and which therefore combines Chromium and Node.js to enable applications built using JavaScript and HTML user interfaces and Node modules for the application logic.

After getting rid of Chrome recently (not that I was using it much before), I’ve been using Firefox (my favorite browser), Safari and sometimes Brave.

[1]: https://github.com/brave/muon

[2]: https://brave.com/development-plans-for-upcoming-release/

Re: Brave 0.55 released

#13
post #4

I love the irony in “You are not a product“ from a commercial product (open source, I know) designed to monetize surfing (aka pay-to-surf), as if this is what the internet is about. I think we should resist such an effort and stick with projects (not companies) that want to keep the internet as it was meant to be, ie Mozilla Firefox. No problem with monetization but I want a browser that puts me first, not a middlema…

I think it’s worse than that, I mean, it’s anecdotal but I think their premise is flawed. Because I don’t think enough people are going to enable adds for it to ever be viable option for advertisers.

I mean, their business case evolves around advertisers paying users to watch adds instead of paying Facebook or google. But Facebook only earns a few dollars per user per year, who in their right mind would turn off their adblocker for a few dollars? Probably not people that have an income which is attractive to advertisers...

Then there is the part where they want users to pay for content, but that already exists with superior tech, lower middleman fees and better consumer safety. I know, I know, crypto will get there or whatever, but when is the last time an inferior option ever disrupted anything?

One the other hand, if they didn’t put their premise/vision of a revolutionised web ahead of their users, then they might as well be working on Firefox.

Re: Brave 0.55 released

#15

Can someone outline the justification for the switch to Chromium and the difference between Chromium and Muon, which seems to be based on Chromium anyway?

I can't find the Github-issue atm, but I'm guessing it was motivated by security (there's been a bunch of RCE-exploits in Electron), technical debt, and performance (Muon was an Electron-fork, and Electron is more than just Chromium).

Re: Brave 0.55 released

#16

Anyone using Brave? Would love to hear your impressions.

I’ve used it somewhat occasionally, and to me it seemed like Chrome as far as memory usage and sluggishness with multiple tabs and windows are concerned. But I like the fact that it comes with a built-in ad blocker, and avoids contacting Google (unlike Chrome). This announcement says it should perform better, and that’s something I’d like to try out and see.

If you were frustrated by the recent “signing in” changes and the backtracking of that in Chrome, you should try Firefox and Brave.

Re: Brave 0.55 released

#17
post #4

I love the irony in “You are not a product“ from a commercial product (open source, I know) designed to monetize surfing (aka pay-to-surf), as if this is what the internet is about. I think we should resist such an effort and stick with projects (not companies) that want to keep the internet as it was meant to be, ie Mozilla Firefox. No problem with monetization but I want a browser that puts me first, not a middlema…

The fundamental question is who decides. Ideally the browser is the product, but not the user. For that, the browser needs to solve the question of the flow of money.

Using Firefox makes you the product, because Mozilla monetizes you with selling you to Google. That is not a browser that "puts you first" or promotes the "open culture of the internet".

Giving people the ability to chose whether they want to participate in the monetization makes Brave more of a browser that puts "you first".

Besides that, Mozilla is basically a company, and their non-profit organization is basically a fig leaf. Even if you don't agree with this assumption, the browser is as commercialiced as any other project, as proven by Pocket, Google search partnership and Amazon affiliate links.

The Brave browser also doesn't claim this is "what the internet is about". On the contrary, the default settings in Brave make the Web essentially non-commercial and ad-free.

Finally and philosophically, there is no collective "we" you talk about, only users who are free to chose from a variety of browsers and products.

Other than that, there is definitely some form of irony in the fact that the people on brave.com wear a cap with a corporate logo, but are implied as being free from corporate influence. The message would be more consistent if there were no logo on the cap, and one could argue this implies that Brave is at best a transition towards a better state.

Re: Brave 0.55 released

#18

Anyone using Brave? Would love to hear your impressions.

It's my default Android browser because you can set it to block scripts and adverts by default and yet the option to trivially allow scripts in a site is a single click away.

It's so good at this I've uninstalled multiple apps (especially news and weather ones) and have started saving links to web pages instead and the whole experience is better (because blocking adverts and tracking in apps is a real pain).

Re: Brave 0.55 released

#20
I will probably start using or at least trying it again when they publish version 1. For now, it's just not remotely comparable to Firefox et al. when it comes to customization, control and stability.

It's basically a chrome copy plus future abilities (for now). So Chrome is a better choice until now for me.

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