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

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

#171
post #149
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's proof of work based crypto, so it doesn't scale. Facts.

Ethereum will move to proof of stake phase 0 this year

Believe it when I see it. Crypto is a wasteland of broken promises and scams.

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

#172
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a casual uBlock user, what does uMatrix give you that uBlock Origin doesn’t?

UMatrix will block everything by default(more or less). Ublock will use pre defined lists that block known advertisement networks and similar. This means umatrix will break most websites by default and require you to check what elements are required and allow them manual but offers higher security because you essentially audit every website you visit.

> Ublock will use pre defined lists that block known advertisement networks and similar

uBlock Origin can also be used in default-deny mode, see [1]

* * *

[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-medium...

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

#173

The reason why “the internet is broken” is because of ads. Ads incentivize tracking and clickbait. In the end, ad companies, such as Google and Faceboook, act in the interests of advertisers, not users. Brave is an ad company. On the other hand, companies which are supported by user donations act in the best interests of users. This includes websites such as Wikipedia and the Internet Archive. Brave does offer the op…

I'd like to remind everyone that we enjoy this conversation on a FREE forum, which is basically one big AD for a startup incubator company.

Which I personally have no gripes with.

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

#174
post #127

I'm grateful to the author for the detailed analysis of the cryptocurrency part of the grift. Before I'd never got past the "Brave is taking ad revenue from publishers and keeping it for themseleves" part in any detail.

All ad networks keep revenue for themselves, so in this regard they aren't any different than Google or Facebook providing the ads. But, they also give a cut to users, so unless Brave's cut + the user cut is less than the existing ad networks' take, that's less money for publishers.

What a facile turn you took there. Google and Facebook have agreements with the websites they place the ads on. They asked for those ads to be there. Brave did not.

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

#175
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.

You are aware being based on Chromium means you cannot fake many vectors? Even Tor browser isn't able to spoof e everything Chromium hardly can spoof 1% of what Tor/Firefox can.

You will maybe have a randomized fingerprint but it doesn't matter if 99% of other fingerprinting vectors are Stoll left open.

Just look at their github. They have fingerprinting bugs that are beyond uniquely identifying (fonts best example) which are open since years. It isn't solvable through Chromium which all of Brave knows yet they market this.

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

#176

The reason why “the internet is broken” is because of ads. Ads incentivize tracking and clickbait. In the end, ad companies, such as Google and Faceboook, act in the interests of advertisers, not users. Brave is an ad company. On the other hand, companies which are supported by user donations act in the best interests of users. This includes websites such as Wikipedia and the Internet Archive. Brave does offer the op…

I'd like to remind everyone that we enjoy this conversation on a FREE forum, which is basically one big AD for a startup incubator company. Which I personally have no gripes with.

I do. This is one of the few places where a tech outsider can be exposed to some of the topics that are on the minds of insiders. The caveat is that criticism of any of the conceptual bodies orbiting the starry notion of "tech startup" (social ramifications, diversity and discrimination, wealth and income, etc.) are heavily frowned upon. Now, are mods going through and sweeping away every comment that proclaims, "Tech bad."? (Mostly) no. But no one wants to bite the hand that feeds it, particularly when so many have usernames easily tied to their public personas. So it's disappointing but not surprising to see people hostile to or tip-toeing around said criticism.

In any case, the basic dynamic is interesting: the less you pay for things directly, the more power you give up to those who do. The abstraction is largely symbolic for ads (consumers pay advertisers in higher product costs), but apparently where and when money exchanges hands matters to who ultimately has influence.

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

#177

Am I the only one who uses brave with all bat stuff off? It's a fork of chromium that's up to date, completely open source, ad blocking and fingerprinting defeating built-in, reader mode, etc. Chrome but just better.

I use Vivaldi as a secondary/tertiary browser. It's a Chromium fork without the weird ad/crypto-stuff that Brave has or the shady Chinese ownership that Opera now has. (And the Android version seems to be the only browser app that's putting effort into good ChromeOS functionality.) I've never really been clear on why Brave is more popular than Vivaldi.

Unlike brave, it wasn't open source last time I checked. Had that changed?

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

#178
> The idea that a single user browsing the web could have earned Brave anywhere near $25 in ad revenue is (coming from someone who worked in the ad industry for a couple years) completely absurd.

Wait, is that what my attention is worth to the online ad industry? I would gladly pay <$25/month to not be tracked for ads. (Or, even better, enjoy that as a consumer right protected by law.)

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

#179
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to remind everyone that we enjoy this conversation on a FREE forum, which is basically one big AD for a startup incubator company. Which I personally have no gripes with.

I do. This is one of the few places where a tech outsider can be exposed to some of the topics that are on the minds of insiders. The caveat is that criticism of any of the conceptual bodies orbiting the starry notion of "tech startup" (social ramifications, diversity and discrimination, wealth and income, etc.) are heavily frowned upon. Now, are mods going through and sweeping away every comment that proclaims, "Tec…

I think HN attracts a certain political/socio-economic bias (for better or worse) but as far as public internet forums go, it is definitely one of the better ones for high quality discussion, whether you agree with what's being said or not.

I'm not sure HN would benefit from requiring a paid subscription. I think that aversion to the aforementioned criticism would be avoided even more, or otherwise replaced with sheer entitlement.

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

#180
post #102

It’s been almost 30 years and I still don’t understand why browsers exist. Isolated client-server apps were always better. Except that app design now emulates the browser. Soon we’ll have wasm apps that look and feel like windows 1.0 and call it revolutionary.

The browser exists to interact with the world wide web, that is revolutionary.
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