The Mullvad Browser • Hacker News Board

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#421

Post by fulafel » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 5:20 AM UTC

handedness wrote: post #324

mcsniff wrote: post #29

Here's to hoping they maintain this for a while. There are a lot of "hardened Firefox" forks around, none of them that I would trust to follow upstream for a long enough time to switch. I already trust Mullvad enough to use as VPN, and am likely willing to extend that trust to a fork of Firefox they manage, but truthfully, I always concerned when achieving goals means new ventures and projects as it may mean resource…

> Edit: I hope they bring this to Android also! "Avoid Gecko-based browsers like Firefox as they're currently much more vulnerable to exploitation and inherently add a huge amount of attack surface. Gecko doesn't have a WebView implementation (GeckoView is not a WebView implementation), so it has to be used alongside the Chromium-based WebView rather than instead of Chromium, which means having the remote attack surf…

Your quoted part seems to refer to people using the OS browser component in some contexts (eg app embedded web content) and the actual browser app in others. It's good to be aware of but claiming the resulting attack surface is the union is only technically correct. The resulting risk is not increased correspondingly as you are not accessing most content through 2 browsers.

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#422

Post by cultureswitch » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 8:16 AM UTC

dimitrios1 wrote: post #289

yencabulator wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> NordVPN has spent an incredible amount of money getting their name out there. I think you misspelled "spamming ads everywhere".

Whatever you want to call it, and whatever it means to you, it must be done in some way, like it or not. Or you can sit here and complain everyone's using the big name that sucks and nobody uses your superior 100% artisinally, crafted from free-range conflict-free code, ethically "superior" app.

This is dumb. Advertisement is a zero sum war. We'd all be better off if it didn't exist.

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#423

Post by genjii931 » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 9:06 AM UTC

No Android version is a real bummer.

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#424

Post by lurtbancaster » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 2:47 PM UTC

CoolCold wrote: post #388

lurtbancaster wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that if it's just Tor Browser without Tor, then there's functionally no reason to have that build be incompatible with Windows 7. Unless they deliberately coded it in like if OS=Win7/Win8 ; then Crash ; else Run Which would be a dick move, especially because Firefox, on which Tor Browser and Mullvad Browser are based, still supports Windows 7. --------- Now to your point. It is absolutely possible to run…

> I've modified my `UXTheme.dll` to significantly change my "Desktop Environment" to suit my workflow I wonder what kind of work flow it is, mind sharing couple of samples?

I was about to type a long comment in response to yours, but then I realized I could just link you a video[1] that goes into detail explaining all the ways in which Windows 7's UI is customizable, in ways that Win 8 onwards are simply, not.

The video is 1 hours 17 minutes long, so feel free to speed it up a little.

Hope that helps.

Cheers!

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AItTqnTsVjA

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#425

Post by archon810 » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 8:34 PM UTC

Installed it on Windows and just get this error on start: "Profile Missing Your Mullvad Browser profile cannot bе loaded. It mау bе missing оr inaccessible."

https://i.imgur.com/HV3YRw5.png

There is also no trace of Mullvad in the installed programs list, so I can't uninstall it properly. Not a good experience to say the least.

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#426

Post by brigandish » Fri, Apr 07, 2023, 4:31 AM UTC

pnt12 wrote: post #396

brigandish wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> post-fact invented laws Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776. I suppose you could say that was "post-fact" as it drew on what was happening at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and the English and Scottish agricultural revolutions among other things, but "invented" would seem a bit of a stretch. > The law that "in a free market, the best product wins" has been beaten by profit-driven co…

I must admit I don't know much about economics. I do get tired of people dismissing arguments with free market 101s - the world seems much more complex than that, and the big capitalists have become specialists at exploiting the market for their gains. But then I'll day: maybe these guidelines are outdated, 250 years later. For example, does the best product win? Not if the product is complex enough and people cannot…

What's the best product? A good product will be generally be one that is:

- available

- at a price that the producer makes a profit

- at a price that the buyer can afford

- and does the job

Many such products may exist in a market, some "better" than others but that would be a subjective opinion. The problem with a non-free market e.g. one with monopolies or interference from governments in the form of subsidies, is that it interferes with the above list and you end up with inferior products (in terms of the above list) to those you would've had in a free market. Even the "producer makes a profit" part would be worse because there are less producers making profits, and thus fewer products, higher prices for those products remaining et cetera.

Advertising is not a bad thing in a free market. Fake reviews and the rest are, but they lead to less trust, as we see occur with Amazon, and you would go to a more trusted competitor but Amazon is a monopoly so…

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#427

Post by BrendanEich » Fri, Apr 07, 2023, 6:57 PM UTC

jraph wrote: post #109

yucky wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I don't care about Brendan Eich quite as much as I care about the Google / Chrome monopoly, and Brave just makes this monopoly stronger by depending on Chrome. By being Chrome, actually. I want the web to be built around something else than ad-/tracking-supported software and Brave is being very self-contradictory with this. Don't use Brave if you care about the global picture / tracking around the globe.

We started on Gecko. By many measures, big spreadsheet, Chromium won. We would be dead on that short hill you want us to charge up and take with spears against Maxim guns. I share your dislike of monoculture or evolutionary kernels that win by market power more than merit, but having us die for no benefit isn't the way to overcome Google.

Brave rewards is opt-in, off by default. If you dislike ads, don't enable it.

I suggest you consider that your big-picture thinking is short sighted. Instead of spears vs. Maxim guns, the better trope and line of attack is judo: use Google's weight against it, by differentiating a level up in a way that puts users first and if they opt in, pays them 70% of the gross.

(I'm assuming you are educated on how our private ad system works. If not read my comments in the past year or so, easy to find from my profile.)

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#428

Post by BrendanEich » Fri, Apr 07, 2023, 7:00 PM UTC

jraph wrote: post #380

yucky wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unreliant on Chrome? Correct, completely forked from Chromium (not Chrome) and in separate development. Brave continues to roll out superior features while the rest of the Chromium world lags.

It does not matter that Brave lives in its own, separate source repository. This code is regularly rebased on Chromium. Your cookies rely on the flour you use to make them even if they have chunks of chocolate that the flour doesn't have. No flour, no cookies. (Except in this case it's even worse, the cookies is already done, you just add some colors...). I too can take chromium and put it in my own git repository an…

We rebase and look at all the changes, neutralizing not only on-by-default tracking Google puts in Chromium for its own benefit, but many other experiments and flagged features. We carry forked files too.

Of course, we can't maintain all of the upstream ourselves, although we wish Google had fewer typists adding bad or marginal things; but neither can Samsung, Opera, or even Microsoft. But if Google stopped maintaining, the remaining Chromium browsers would carry on.

Your comments suggest a lack of familiarity with our GitHub.

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#429

Post by BrendanEich » Fri, Apr 07, 2023, 7:12 PM UTC

overthrow wrote: post #138

yucky wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Brave is an advertising company just like Google. https://www.computerworld.com/article/3292619/the-brave-brow... > Brave scrubs sites of ads and ad tracking, then replaces those ads with its own advertisements, which are not individually targeted but instead aimed at an anonymous aggregate of the browser's user base. Sounds an awful lot like Google's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federated_Learning_of_Cohorts , no?…

That's completely false. We've been unable to get Gregg to correct his story, but we never replaced ads in pages.

We don't aggregate anything into Federated Learning, all opt in (off by default) machine learning is local to the browser. Chaum blind signature protocol (Privacy Pass standardized this) to confirm.

I know it's fun to repeat misinformation on hacker news out of ill will, but many people have verified our claims from open source audits, network audits, and more. Comments like yours just look sloppy or even malicious, even on HN.

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#430

Post by BrendanEich » Fri, Apr 07, 2023, 7:17 PM UTC

overthrow wrote: post #138

yucky wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Brave is an advertising company just like Google. https://www.computerworld.com/article/3292619/the-brave-brow... > Brave scrubs sites of ads and ad tracking, then replaces those ads with its own advertisements, which are not individually targeted but instead aimed at an anonymous aggregate of the browser's user base. Sounds an awful lot like Google's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federated_Learning_of_Cohorts , no?…

Separate point: calling Google an "advertising company" is way off the mark. Google runs the biggest online ad exchange in the world, requiring lots of advertisers to buy keywords and other ways of addressing customers, and publishers to partner with Google for a (small) cut of the gross revenue Google makes matching bids to asks.

Brave doesn't do any of this cloud surveillance based ad-tech. We leave ads off by default, but when a user opts in, all the ad matching is local to the browser against a catalog that's the same for a large cohort by region and human language. Ad impressions are confirmed by a Privacy Pass variant protocol. Users get 70% of the gross.

There isn't a great category for what Google is, it already won its own "google it" verb. But among many other things, it is a huge ad-tech player. Brave is small, user-first, privacy-by-default, and ads are opt in. See the difference?