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Brave layoffs

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31–40 of 160 posts

Re: Brave layoffs

#31

I'm going to treat this like a product engineering discussion User Story: As a Private Citizen and Engineer, I want a graphical multi-input interface to load, view, interact with and post documents to remote and local HTTP servers ("web-browsing") on any personal computing device. I want web-browsing to have out of the box default security and privacy guardrails that are well documented can be disabled or modified by…

> Why aren't we collectively putting our time/effort etc.. into making Firefox the singular and best FOSS browser ever? Because the leadership is hellbent on copying Chrome but worse and investing in utterly pointless endeavors instead of making a good browser. It's a shame. Giving money to the Mozilla Foundation is the same as throwing it to a black hole. I hope a new truly FOSS browser shows up and catches on that…

>Because the leadership is hellbent on copying Chrome but worse and investing in utterly pointless endeavors instead of making a good browser.

Is this a hypothesis that we can specify and test? Is this how we would approach this problem?

It sounds more like a cynical write-off, not a actual strategy

>I hope a new truly FOSS browser shows up and catches on that does not use Blink and isn't owned by a group of human-shaped leeches

Cool, but that strategy clearly isn't working.

I'm suggesting, instead of writing off Firefox, we (you specifically, and me and whomever else wants to) start engaging with Mozilla to help figure this stuff out

Nothing is perfect, but at least it's got some of the hardest parts right: Organizational momentum and distribution. Technical stuff is easy to change compared to that.

The challenge now is finding competent people who can actually put the effort in, with no compensation, to make it work and that might take convincing the Mozilla folks to do something differently.

Having done this kind of thing a few times, that sounds way easier than trying to totally start over from scratch though.

Re: Brave layoffs

#32

Meanwhile, the US added 336,000 jobs in September, more than double the estimates. https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-job-growth-beats-expec...

> Government employment increased by 73,000 jobs, driven by state government education and local government, excluding education. That part should raise serious questions about the validity of this metric. Any taxpayer-funded or debt-funded government "job" is not a creator of real (in the economic sense) wealth. Rather, such government "jobs" merely siphon off and consume real wealth generated by actually-productive…

Tell me about your plan to run and maintain a national network of highways without government "jobs"

Re: Brave layoffs

#33
post #12
post #8

Interesting to see they are offering services that can either be in house or offloaded to another service provider. They are oscillating between building their own search engine versus using Bing. And offering their own internal AI named Leo versus passing information to one of the many cloud provider APIs. For Brave, difficult to claim privacy if they don't do all that in house. But it forces them out of their lane…

Brave has a long, long way to go before they even get close to becoming Google.

They're repackaging Googles software, they've always been already there.

Building a business who's feature is "We're independent from Google" on top of codebase that is dependant on Googles development effort was always a hypocritical thesis.

Re: Brave layoffs

#34

I'm going to treat this like a product engineering discussion User Story: As a Private Citizen and Engineer, I want a graphical multi-input interface to load, view, interact with and post documents to remote and local HTTP servers ("web-browsing") on any personal computing device. I want web-browsing to have out of the box default security and privacy guardrails that are well documented can be disabled or modified by…

Brave is fully open source, and actually defends its users privacy by default. While firefox still uses google, allows google ads and tracking, and just talks about doing something but does nothing Also chromium is just a superior engine, in security and speed, using firefox won't change Chromium dominance at all.

That's the same Brave that replaced links with their own profit bringing ad links? Riight.

Re: Brave layoffs

#35

I'm going to treat this like a product engineering discussion User Story: As a Private Citizen and Engineer, I want a graphical multi-input interface to load, view, interact with and post documents to remote and local HTTP servers ("web-browsing") on any personal computing device. I want web-browsing to have out of the box default security and privacy guardrails that are well documented can be disabled or modified by…

> Why aren't we collectively putting our time/effort etc.. into making Firefox the singular and best FOSS browser ever?

[disclaimer: former Servo team member]

Mozilla had a chance to advance browser tech with Servo and fumbled it.

Re: Brave layoffs

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish Brave/YouTube weren't such a dismal experience on Chromebook. You can't click on the red bar to jump ahead. You can't pause/restart by pressing the space bar. The navigation is awkward and crippled. Same for Firefox. I guess they're all using the same engine. The only decent browser is Chrome, and the ad blockers don't work anymore.

Does Chrome OS allow 3P browsers now? I thought the point was it was all just Chrome? (Unless one bypasses the default restrictions.)

ChromeOS lets you run Android apps which integrate nicely enough (eg opening links in the app), and also there's the virtual Debian (by default) part that doesn't integrate as well but is more flexible. So yes, you can run other browsers although last I checked it was a little bumpy.

Re: Brave layoffs

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish Brave/YouTube weren't such a dismal experience on Chromebook. You can't click on the red bar to jump ahead. You can't pause/restart by pressing the space bar. The navigation is awkward and crippled. Same for Firefox. I guess they're all using the same engine. The only decent browser is Chrome, and the ad blockers don't work anymore.

Does Chrome OS allow 3P browsers now? I thought the point was it was all just Chrome? (Unless one bypasses the default restrictions.)

On later chromebooks you can run Linux apps and android apps.

If you need to test in a lot of browsers it's not a terrible idea as you can run both desktop and module browsers.

Re: Brave layoffs

#38

I'm going to treat this like a product engineering discussion User Story: As a Private Citizen and Engineer, I want a graphical multi-input interface to load, view, interact with and post documents to remote and local HTTP servers ("web-browsing") on any personal computing device. I want web-browsing to have out of the box default security and privacy guardrails that are well documented can be disabled or modified by…

> Why aren't we collectively putting our time/effort etc.. into making Firefox the singular and best FOSS browser ever? [disclaimer: former Servo team member] Mozilla had a chance to advance browser tech with Servo and fumbled it.

Is that sufficient reason to abandon the entire project?

Re: Brave layoffs

#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 business model.

Web sepcifications should be simple enough that it's pheasible for small teams to actually maintain a quality open source browser with modest funding. We've ended up falling into the same trap as many other big systems, we lost sight of what the goals and limitations for the web were and instead chased convenience and shiny new features above all else.

Re: Brave layoffs

#40

I'm going to treat this like a product engineering discussion User Story: As a Private Citizen and Engineer, I want a graphical multi-input interface to load, view, interact with and post documents to remote and local HTTP servers ("web-browsing") on any personal computing device. I want web-browsing to have out of the box default security and privacy guardrails that are well documented can be disabled or modified by…

From a user story perspective you skipped the most important “so that” part that describes your needs separate from the functional spec masquerading as a user story.

Although I think I agree with you, if your “so that” is so you can visit a particular website, those features you are specifying may demonetize and eliminate the website you want to go to causing it not to exist.

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