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Brave layoffs

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Re: Brave layoffs

#131

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

coderedart wrote: post #87
izacus wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be negative, but what value would Servo exactly bring to users and the web after all the engineering effort? I'm sure it was technically impressive. Chrome, when it came, was stupidly faster than any other competitor, including Mozilla Firefox. What would Servo bring to make web a big jump forward for us users, beyond ideology and fun work for its developers? (Ideology doesn't sell software, as opensource effo…

> but what value would Servo exactly bring to users and the web after all the engineering effort? Servo was a much more modular effort. 1. we would get a lightweight (modular) electron alternative. This would have helped rust gui ecosystem a lot, just like wgpu helps rust gamedev scene. 2. Probably have more variety in browsers as everyone can now reuse servo components to make their custom version of firefox. Imagin…

Plus it'd let people use a JavaScript engine other than v8 and JSCore, and one which (in theory) would be memory safe.

Re: Brave layoffs

#132

Post by VancouverMan »

mthoms wrote: post #94
VancouverMan wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you mistakenly believe that government needs to be involved with something like that? There's nothing overly special about an interstate-style highway network. It's essentially just a large number of roads covering a long distance that are connected together, with emphasis on driving speed. The private sector is more than capable of planning, building, connecting, maintaining, and operating roads of all types,…

Private sector highways here in Canada are a disaster and an embarrassment. They have near zero public support (aside from libertarians).

The 407 is actually a pretty good example of government inefficiency when it comes to planning and building highways.

It exists because the 401 wasn't built with sufficient long-term capacity, even after it was widened significantly.

I wouldn't really consider the 407 a true "private" highway, though. It's more a case of the private sector rescuing the government from a typical government-created debacle, and last I heard, the highway is now majority-owned by the CPP Investment Board (a Crown corporation).

Have you ever actually driven on the 407, by any chance? It's a much nicer experience than the 401, although having to pay a toll while also paying significant taxes can be annoying. Under a proper system, there'd only be usage tolls, and no taxes involved.

Re: Brave layoffs

#133

Post by charcircuit »

fabrice_d wrote: post #115
charcircuit wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's browser engine is open source. You can reuse Google's browser engine meaning that you can focus on the features that differentiate your browser instead of implementing the spec like you suggest.

What if you need changes at the engine level to differentiate your browser?

Then you make the changes to the engine. You are permitted to keep those changes to yourself if you wish.

Re: Brave layoffs

#134

Post by charcircuit »

mthoms wrote: post #128
charcircuit wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They did append their affiliate id to type-ins for a single crypto exchange once They didn't do this either. There was an omnibox site suggestion that included an affiliate id. Nothing got appended and people were able to see the affiliate id before hitting enter to visit the site. These site suggestions could also be disabled in the settings.

Thats nearly exactly what I said? - If you typed the domain into the address bar, and pressed enter (obviously) the affiliate id got appended. I'm not clear what distinction you're making here.

It's like saying that if I type news into the omnibar and hit enter the browser appends .ycombinator.com

That isn't really what is happening. It shows a preview for news.ycombinator.com and hitting enter confirms that option. The distinction is one is clear to the user and the other is a modification that happens behind the scenes.

Re: Brave layoffs

#135

Post by minerva23 »

twism wrote: post #95

Enough is enough. Y'all need to pack it up and go home. The big boy browsers are making features that make websites seem like native applications while y'all are still struggling making css look right. Maybe this is not a brave thing specifically since last I looked brave was based on chromium so should have feature parity with chrome browsers, but then what's the point? Are we just pointing things to different serve…

Brave has some user-first features you'll never see from Chrome. E.g. ad/tracking blocking by default, cookie consent popup blocking offered, YouTube downloads on iOS.

That's in addition to some anti-Google and better privacy features.

I want a browser which actively fights the enshitification of the web. Brave is the best I've found so far. I'm hoping to find better.

Re: Brave layoffs

#136

Post by aragilar »

zee2345 wrote: post #88
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but it does not address the question I have placed for you. Can you name the extension you consider shady? A lot of projects on github are one man operations.

Sure! Ublock Origin installed from Firefox Extension Web Store. I have no idea how this was verified and distributed. I do not trust webstore as a channel. Also user may easily click on "Unblock" or "Unlock" and get something completely different. If this extension came from my Linux distro package, or bundled into Firefox binary, I would trust it. With Brave I have no need to use extensions. Everything is bundled an…

https://packages.debian.org/sid/webext-ublock-origin-firefox

Re: Brave layoffs

#137

Post by flagrant_taco »

fidotron wrote: post #58
flagrant_taco wrote: post #39

We aren't going to see browser competition unless and until we fundamentally rethink what the internet should be. The specifications are simply too complex to foster any meaningful competition. There's too much ground to cover playing catchup and Google has such a large market share that, combined with their data and ad monopoly, allows them to create new specs and features that focus entirely on growing their busine…

The AI wave is doing this, by which I mean it is finally separating the content and presentation of information and allowing the collation and reformatting of substance across multiple entities which today each have their own interfaces. For example, the entire idea that we visit specific websites and manually compare prices when buying things is ridiculous and misses huge parts of the benefits of using computers in…

I think this is actually a modern misunderstanding of the original benefits of computers. Computers were originally designed as a tool, they allowed us to work more efficiently but weren't directly taking over doing the actual work. A spreadsheet doid the calculations for me, but I had to provide both the data and the actual formulas to run.

AI, or more accurately machine learning, attempts to take us out of the process. It isn't separating content and presentation, it's separating content and understanding. The algorithm will read in data, compress it, and save only the patterns it learned. By the time the content is presented there is little connection to the original source and what I'm seeing isn't just a separated presentation layer, it's something entirely different like playing a game of telephone.

Re: Brave layoffs

#138

Post by flagrant_taco »

charcircuit wrote: post #84
flagrant_taco wrote: post #39

We aren't going to see browser competition unless and until we fundamentally rethink what the internet should be. The specifications are simply too complex to foster any meaningful competition. There's too much ground to cover playing catchup and Google has such a large market share that, combined with their data and ad monopoly, allows them to create new specs and features that focus entirely on growing their busine…

Google's browser engine is open source. You can reuse Google's browser engine meaning that you can focus on the features that differentiate your browser instead of implementing the spec like you suggest.

Exactly, in that model the only way to build a browser is to depend on someone else to implement the specs. It's not feasible to build a new browser, at best you can start with what Google implemented, including proprietary features, and go from there. At that point you likely don't understand the codebase fully and are going to be dependant on staying in sync with chromium to get new features.

This model of starting with chromium really has nothing to do with building a web browser, it is just building a UI around Google's browser. There isn't much daylight between that and the often complained about limitation of Apple only allowing the use of WebKit on iOS.

Re: Brave layoffs

#139

Post by flagrant_taco »

dmarcos wrote: post #100
charcircuit wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's browser engine is open source. You can reuse Google's browser engine meaning that you can focus on the features that differentiate your browser instead of implementing the spec like you suggest.

Yes. I see chromium as the linux kernel. Piece of fundamental infrastructure that does the the heavy lifting and one can reconfigure, tweak, add features or eventually fork if needed. Never been easier to build an independent browser.

The open web is dead if the only option is to base every browser on a Google core. How do specs fit into this if every browser is just a UI shell around chrome? Where is the competition driving innovation of the web platform when the only competitive landscape is how pretty you can make your toolbars and bookmarks?

We need independent groups of passionate people making sure that the web platform is focused on the best end user experience. We don't always have that today, but that vision is completely dead if the web functionality is decided entirely by an advertising platform.

Re: Brave layoffs

#140

Post by charcircuit »

flagrant_taco wrote: post #139
dmarcos wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I see chromium as the linux kernel. Piece of fundamental infrastructure that does the the heavy lifting and one can reconfigure, tweak, add features or eventually fork if needed. Never been easier to build an independent browser.

The open web is dead if the only option is to base every browser on a Google core. How do specs fit into this if every browser is just a UI shell around chrome? Where is the competition driving innovation of the web platform when the only competitive landscape is how pretty you can make your toolbars and bookmarks? We need independent groups of passionate people making sure that the web platform is focused on the bes…

>How do specs fit into this if every browser is just a UI shell around chrome?

The browser engine is open source. You can make changes and proposals with your own fork. If you are making a browser for musicians you could try and advance the WebMIDI spec and add new functionality to it and then try to get it standardized. But as a browser developer you don't want to me spending your time implenting specs that other people have already implemented, but rather spending time working on things that improve your browser for your userbase.

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