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Brave 0.55 released

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Re: Brave 0.55 released

#21

Post by simias »

user812 wrote: post #17
onyva wrote: 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 participat…

>Ideally the browser is the product

I disagree. I don't have anything against paid software but it's not the only possibility, a lot of the software I use are open source projects maintained by volunteers, not products. I ideologically refuse to consider that every piece of software is a product.

Now regarding Firefox things are not really clear cut, Mozilla is effectively non-profit but clearly their well being (and the salaries of the people working for it) clearly revolves around their browser having a decent market share. The whole "selling you to Google" stems from that.

Re: Brave 0.55 released

#22

Post by maxencecornet »

hackathonguy wrote: post #7

Anyone using Brave? Would love to hear your impressions.

It's my default browser, apart from a few quircks, I love the speed of it, especially on my older android phone

I still switch to chrome when I'm working, because the developer tools are better in chrome (debugger, integration of lighthouse ect..)

Re: Brave 0.55 released

#23

Post by netgusto »

Yes! And now the dev tools can be docked to the edge of the webpage (they were floating in their own window before this update).

For anyone (like me) wishing to have a default browser per use case (surf, work, dev, hangout, etc.), have a look at this project (dynamic default browser switch, based on URL): https://github.com/netgusto/bowser

Disclaimer: It's a pet project of mine.

Re: Brave 0.55 released

#24

Post by adwhit »

eksemplar wrote: post #13
onyva wrote: 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 thei…

> 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?

This is a good point and it is interesting to think about the economic logic of advertising. It seems to me the burden it places on it's viewers is far greater than the (often questionable) value it brings to the advertiser. A huge unaccounted-for externality.

In fact, when you consider the huge psychological weight that a consumerist society places on it's citizens, and the attendant healthcare costs, you could easily make the case that even strictly in economic terms, advertising is a huge net negative, before even considering the social costs.

How much does my city make from all the billboards everywhere? It can't be more than a few dollars per person. I'd happily pay that much more in tax to have them all removed.

Re: Brave 0.55 released

#25

Post by onyva »

akerro wrote: post #5
onyva wrote: 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…

Because Mozilla is totally not a corporation. Brave makes usage of BAT and their ads optional and disabled by default.

We've discussed this Mozilla is a "corporation" many times before, here and elsewhere.

https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2005/08/mozilla-foundation-fo...

Re: Brave 0.55 released

#26

Post by bad_user »

user812 wrote: post #17
onyva wrote: 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 participat…

> Firefox makes you the product, because Mozilla monetizes you with selling you to Google

That's hyperbole.

Firefox was the first browser that made switching search engines or dealing with multiple search engines easy. Firefox was also the first to have usable add-ons for blocking invasive ads and trackers, always promoted as the best add-ons in their addons.mozilla.org. The pro-privacy culture has basically grown on top of Firefox.

I'm using DuckDuckGo on Firefox and I installed it on iOS too, because it makes it easier than Safari to deal with multiple search engines.

As for Google Search, people forget that Google Search is first and foremost the best search engine and most people expect nothing less. And when they tried switching that default to others, people bitched and moaned about it. Google is so far ahead of everybody that for the general population it has no competition. The same reason for why Apple cannot replace Google's Search and cannot build their own search engine, so might as well make some money off of Google.

This is not selling the users to Google, this is simply providing a good user experience by default. If anybody wants to help and fight this, then the first step would be to provide a better search engine. Don't get me wrong, I like DuckDuckGo and will keep using it due to privacy concerns, but for many searches, especially local ones, the difference is night and day. Not to mention that DDG is also dependent on Microsoft's Bing and it will be a sad day when Microsoft closes access to its APIs. Because apparently it's pretty expensive to have your own web crawler ;-)

Re: Brave 0.55 released

#27

Post by debaserab2 »

newscracker wrote: post #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…

> Technical readers will know that we call the runtime for this user interface Muon, which is a more secure fork of Electron

Ew...

Re: Brave 0.55 released

#28

Post by oblio »

simias wrote: post #21
user812 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 participat…

>Ideally the browser is the product I disagree. I don't have anything against paid software but it's not the only possibility, a lot of the software I use are open source projects maintained by volunteers, not products. I ideologically refuse to consider that every piece of software is a product. Now regarding Firefox things are not really clear cut, Mozilla is effectively non-profit but clearly their well being (and…

> I ideologically refuse to consider that every piece of software is a product.

1. Who pays for the hosting? How do they pay for it?

2. Who pays for the site development? How do they pay for it?

3. Who pays for the site content? How do they pay for it?

The vast majority of sites out there are commercial products, in some forms or another. Even Wikipedia is, they're periodically begging for money.

Since we have this problem that running websites costs money, how are they going to pay for it? The ad model is quite reviled by techies. What's the alternative? How do websites make money to keep running?

Re: Brave 0.55 released

#29

Post by user812 »

simias wrote: post #21
user812 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 participat…

>Ideally the browser is the product I disagree. I don't have anything against paid software but it's not the only possibility, a lot of the software I use are open source projects maintained by volunteers, not products. I ideologically refuse to consider that every piece of software is a product. Now regarding Firefox things are not really clear cut, Mozilla is effectively non-profit but clearly their well being (and…

Everything is a product when you define product as "that which is produced", which is the coherent and 'materialized' output of human activity.

Re: Brave 0.55 released

#30

Post by therealmarv »

buro9 wrote: post #18
hackathonguy wrote: post #7

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).

can you use it also as webview browser?
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