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The Brave browser is brilliant, but probably not for the reasons you think

rudism.com

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Re: The Brave browser is brilliant, but probably not for the reasons you think

#91

being in the camp of "nothing ever good comes from adds", I've never considered Brave. A browser is a remote code execution engine for attacker-controlled content. Looking at their bounties on H1 https://hackerone.com/brave/hacktivity they are still solving problems which Mozilla and Google have researched and extinguished long ago. I don't trust Brave to get the security right. Also Ethereum is a scam and doesn't sc…

> nothing ever good comes from adds

That's a weird and provably false belief. I have found many goods and services that have vastly improved my life via ads.

I have a beautiful very large framed print of a schematic of the ship from The Life Aquatic in my office I admire several times a day I bought from a Facebook ad.

It is something I likely never would have searched for myself but something that has vastly improved my general mood. Any time I'm frustrated, I glance up at the details of the ship. It helps me find center.

My life is improved, through advertising.

Re: The Brave browser is brilliant, but probably not for the reasons you think

#92

I've been clicking the desktop ad notifications like a madman. Earning BAT, then taking that BAT and converting it to an interest bearing stable coin token in DeFi (~8%). Some of the BAT I earn, I also convert into ETH so I can pay for gas, making my transactions 'free'. It has been a fun experiment in playing with this stuff, but it certainly isn't going to make me rich or anything.

Has anyone tried running a bunch of Brave instances in containers or VMs to farm the ads? I wonder if you could automate the entire process. How can they tell if you're a human?

Re: The Brave browser is brilliant, but probably not for the reasons you think

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that it’s convertible into USD and other “real” currencies, how do you expect this line of reasoning to hold?

Did you read the article? Inventing a currency out of thin air so they can mint as many dollars as they want and you and other geniuses can form a secondary market where all of you can trade it is the genius of brave and the point of this article. Instead of paying you, they make their own currency and pay you. You can make some money off of it in the secondary market because some other idiot thinks it's worth actual…

They didn't make their own money. It was raised in a token sale. Kinda like a stock IPO. How HARD is this to understand on this "tech" site?

Re: The Brave browser is brilliant, but probably not for the reasons you think

#94
post #65

Maybe if instead of BAT, they could use a credit card payment or PayPal.... They've proven to scale very well too....

A major idea behind the software is that you can automatically tip websites or creators that you frequently consume.

These amounts are pretty small.

If PayPal or credit card were used (without prefunding things) you'd have most of that money eaten up by transaction costs.

As others have mentioned, this does seem to be a "real" use for crypto currency to achieve microtransactions.

Re: The Brave browser is brilliant, but probably not for the reasons you think

#95

being in the camp of "nothing ever good comes from adds", I've never considered Brave. A browser is a remote code execution engine for attacker-controlled content. Looking at their bounties on H1 https://hackerone.com/brave/hacktivity they are still solving problems which Mozilla and Google have researched and extinguished long ago. I don't trust Brave to get the security right. Also Ethereum is a scam and doesn't sc…

advertising the benefits of seatbelts has saved thousands of lives.

Re: The Brave browser is brilliant, but probably not for the reasons you think

#96
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

uMatrix gives you a drop down that shows a grid showing css, scripts, media, cookies, images,frames, XHR, other. Blocked by default you allow what you want. I'm still figuring it out but it's more granular than merely off or on.

Doesn't uBlock's filter-picker-eyedrop-thing do more or less the same thing?

That's just a visual filter (DOM level). uMatrix and uBlock lists block network requests.

Re: The Brave browser is brilliant, but probably not for the reasons you think

#97
post #88

The way Brave is doing it currently though makes it look worse than snake oil. Why would they advertise a fingerprinting if it actually makes your fingerprint more unique? Why would they advertise Tor although using it inside Brave makes you instantly unique??? If this wasn't the case I'd not have a problem with it. This way it just seems like a huge scam (which considering you can just use Firefox with some add-ons…

I think you wholly misunderstand that the fingerprint is randomized on every restart of the browser.

That is so much noise that it renders fingerprinting as a strategy utterly useless.

Re: The Brave browser is brilliant, but probably not for the reasons you think

#98

I never really looked into BAT and only use Brave on mobile (mostly then as its UI for its javascript switch is far better than dealing with uMatrix on firefox mobile). I had no idea that the whole thing is yet another altcoin IPO with excellent marketing. They really must be laughing all the way to the bank...

Fx mobile has umatrix?!?! /Runs to download

Yes, you can install uMatrix, and it works normally. Writing from one.

Re: The Brave browser is brilliant, but probably not for the reasons you think

#99

Quote: "You’re going to be browsing the web anyway; you’re going to be inundated with ads anyway;" Naaaah, Firefox with uBlock Origins and Privacy Badger makes sure I don't see ads, but thank you for trying.

For casual users, out of the box experience - the default - is way more important. I can not recommend Firefox for my relatives. Brave I can and I do.
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