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Brave Improves Its Ad-Blocker Performance with New Engine in Rust

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Re: Brave Improves Its Ad-Blocker Performance with New Engine in Rust

#351

Post by Dylan16807 »

potlato wrote: post #346
Analemma_ wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no agenda, just proper reasoning. Think about it in terms of Bayesian probability: it's a cryptocurrency product, and pretty much everything in the crypto space is a scam, so right off the bat when you hear about Brave, before you even know anything your prior probability that it's a scam is 95%. Then they got busted 'keeping the money' and not telling the creators, and the posterior jumps to 99.5%. I know th…

If your proper reasoning involves the premise: "it's a cryptocurrency product, and pretty much everything in the crypto space is a scam," you might want to adjust want you call "proper reasoning."

Sure! But one product doesn't adjust it very far. So next time I hear something is a "cryptocurrency product", instead of 95% scam alert I'll be at 93-94% scam alert.

Re: Brave Improves Its Ad-Blocker Performance with New Engine in Rust

#352

Post by Dylan16807 »

adev_ wrote: post #232
rjf72 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This same argument is true of nearly all companies, including "not for profit." For instance the chair at Mozilla/FireFox pays himself $1.1 million a year, the treasurer $1 million. [1] And those numbers are probably higher now. That's from 2016, the most recent published data on their site. Since 2013 [2] their CEO has increased his yearly compensation by more than $300k, and the treasurer increased his pay by more…

And ? The Linux foundation heads have a similar salary range, like many other foundations and it is not an issue. "Not for profit" means with a public stated goal, means that your share holder will not suddenly overcome your company strategy and make you sell all your client data, or make you sell bananas, because "it's more profitable on short term". That is not an hypothetical scenario, many IT companies already fe…

> The Linux foundation heads have a similar salary range, like many other foundations and it is not an issue.

Being common doesn't mean it's not an issue.

A day job without hazard pay should never be making more than 5x median income.

Re: Brave Improves Its Ad-Blocker Performance with New Engine in Rust

#353

Post by bscphil »

codehalo wrote: post #103
catacombs wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, Brave can block ads, but isn't the browser exploring injecting its own advertisements?

Brave does not inject ads. This is misinformation.

Ars Technica seems to disagree with you:

> Brave will replace blocked ads with its own ads, taking a 15% cut of revenues.

> In practice, Brave just sounds like a cash-grab. Brave isn't just a glorified adblocker: after removing ads from a webpage, Brave then inserts its own programmatic ads. It sounds like these ads will be filled by ad networks that work with Brave directly, and Brave will somehow police these ads to make sure they're less invasive/malevolent than the original ads that were stripped out. In exchange, Brave will take a 15 percent cut of the ad revenue. Instead of using tracking cookies that follow you around the Internet, Brave will use your local browsing history to target ads.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/01/mozil...

From my point of view it's essentially a scam on multiple levels:

1. It doesn't significantly change the Web - users will still look at ads.

2. Without providing anything of value (see 1), Brave gets a cut of publisher's ad revenue.

3. As incentive not to sue them into oblivion, Brave offers publishers a cut of the stolen revenue.

4. The whole thing is built on top of a sketchy cryptocoin system where a significant stake is owned by the developers.

Re: Brave Improves Its Ad-Blocker Performance with New Engine in Rust

#354

Post by bscphil »

mmmrk wrote: post #279
olah_1 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, the guide is more like: Does it render text in an ugly manner? Chrome: No Safari: No Firefox: Yes The unfortunate thing is that many Firefox users prefer the Firefox text rendering. There’s no solution to fix this (I’ve researched a lot). It’s just a divide in the users based upon preferences.

What do you mean by ugly? That GDI text rendering is used on Windows instead of DirectWrite for some font families? This can be disabled in about:config by assigning `gfx.font_rendering.cleartype_params.force_gdi_classic_for_families` an empty value. Or do you mean that there's no subpixel positioning on non-Windows/macOS? That one has no fix, except when the text rendering part of WebRender goes into production.

I'm confused. Doesn't Firefox use Freetype on Linux? Freetype has subpixel rendering.

Re: Brave Improves Its Ad-Blocker Performance with New Engine in Rust

#355

Post by tapoxi »

michaelmrose wrote: post #334
tapoxi wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then block tracking, but don't remove the advertising content. Or propose a solution that doesn't involve paying them with a worthless cryptocurrency, unless you'd like your salary to be paid in BAT.

Advertising is literally an attempt to manipulate people in a way that subverts their interests. It's like you are making money by giving a "free" concert wherein you are paid to kick the audience in the nuts and now you are shocked that people are starting to wear a cup.

Then if you object to advertising, don't view content backed by advertising.

Re: Brave Improves Its Ad-Blocker Performance with New Engine in Rust

#356

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

bubblethink wrote: post #340
_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nix packages it: https://nixos.org/nixos/packages.html#brave , which means you could use the Nix stand-alone package manager to install it on top of any distro. (I just tried this and am typing this from Brave, installed via the Nix stand-alone package manager running in Void Linux.)

It's fetching brave's binary. That's not what I meant by packaging. src = fetchurl { url = " https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/download/v${... sha256 = "1lbajxnxqkd422rckfjm65pwwzl66v7anq4jrzxi29d5x7abl3c1"; }; Also, bad look for nixos. I was curious about nixos too, but it'll have to be debian and fedora for now.

Fair point, though I don't know what would go into properly packaging Brave.

They certainly don't package Brave in any fashion, but if you were curious about NixOS, you might look at Guix System.

Re: Brave Improves Its Ad-Blocker Performance with New Engine in Rust

#357

Post by Dylan16807 »

bscphil wrote: post #353
codehalo wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brave does not inject ads. This is misinformation.

Ars Technica seems to disagree with you: > Brave will replace blocked ads with its own ads, taking a 15% cut of revenues. > In practice, Brave just sounds like a cash-grab. Brave isn't just a glorified adblocker: after removing ads from a webpage, Brave then inserts its own programmatic ads. It sounds like these ads will be filled by ad networks that work with Brave directly, and Brave will somehow police these ads t…

It seems to disagree because it's a very old article about what Brave "will" do.

And removing tracking from ads is a massive improvement on the status quo.

Re: Brave Improves Its Ad-Blocker Performance with New Engine in Rust

#358

Post by bscphil »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #357
bscphil wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ars Technica seems to disagree with you: > Brave will replace blocked ads with its own ads, taking a 15% cut of revenues. > In practice, Brave just sounds like a cash-grab. Brave isn't just a glorified adblocker: after removing ads from a webpage, Brave then inserts its own programmatic ads. It sounds like these ads will be filled by ad networks that work with Brave directly, and Brave will somehow police these ads t…

It seems to disagree because it's a very old article about what Brave "will" do. And removing tracking from ads is a massive improvement on the status quo.

It seems still be an accurate assessment of what they are planning.

> Ads and trackers are blocked by default. You can allow ads and trackers in the preferences panel.

> Later, as mentioned above, Brave will let you opt into receiving a reduced ad load that comes without trackers, maintains your privacy and helps support the publishers you like.

https://brave.com/faq/

Do you have any evidence that Brave's ads are not intended to be a replacement for traditional ads on publisher sites? What else would they be for?

And, regardless, the rest of my comment stands. It may be "better" to shows ads without tracking, but it's still rent-seeking in the ad blocking space. Ad blocking is a solved problem - just use uBlock origin.

Edit: from only a year ago:

> Brave will scrub sites of ads and ad tracking, then replace those ads with its own. Meanwhile, BATs will be awarded based on user attention, or put plainly, time spent viewing ads and content. Brave users who agree to receive ads will be rewarded with BATs. The tokens, in turn, will be exchanged between users, advertisers and site publishers.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3284076/brave-browser-...

Re: Brave Improves Its Ad-Blocker Performance with New Engine in Rust

#359

Post by Dylan16807 »

bscphil wrote: post #358
Dylan16807 wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to disagree because it's a very old article about what Brave "will" do. And removing tracking from ads is a massive improvement on the status quo.

It seems still be an accurate assessment of what they are planning. > Ads and trackers are blocked by default. You can allow ads and trackers in the preferences panel. > Later, as mentioned above, Brave will let you opt into receiving a reduced ad load that comes without trackers, maintains your privacy and helps support the publishers you like. https://brave.com/faq/ Do you have any evidence that Brave's ads are not…

According to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20290854 Brave's ads won't go into the page unless the publisher agrees, and the current ads are shown as notifications. Note that while your link uses the word 'replace', the source blog post does not.

Re: Brave Improves Its Ad-Blocker Performance with New Engine in Rust

#360

Post by bscphil »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #359
bscphil wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems still be an accurate assessment of what they are planning. > Ads and trackers are blocked by default. You can allow ads and trackers in the preferences panel. > Later, as mentioned above, Brave will let you opt into receiving a reduced ad load that comes without trackers, maintains your privacy and helps support the publishers you like. https://brave.com/faq/ Do you have any evidence that Brave's ads are not…

According to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20290854 Brave's ads won't go into the page unless the publisher agrees, and the current ads are shown as notifications. Note that while your link uses the word 'replace', the source blog post does not.

Assuming that user is even right about this, I would call that the most extreme imaginable version of trying to buy off publishers with a cut of the lost revenue. That's #3 on my list of scammy Brave practices.
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