Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Helium Browser

helium.computer

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 561 posts

Re: Helium Browser

#441

Post by glenstein »

vovavili wrote: post #424
glenstein wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Unlike with Microsoft or even Apple, their source of revenue is web, and they they are doing everything in their capacity for this platform to win. I feel like there's a missing step in the argument here. Yes Google's revenue comes from the web, yes Chromium being open source and paying for search deals are a hedge against anti trust, but why does it follow that they wouldn't want to dominate the browser space? They…

>But the issue is that Chromium as a body decides whether commits make it into the browser and the decision making body is an invite only group of full time Google developers. Not if you fork it.

I understand that "just fork it" has been the canonical response to disagreements over direction of open source software. Sometimes that's the right call, the world is better for having a forked Syncthing, forked Nextcloud, and so on.

But I think there are cases, such as Chromium where the "just fork it" response is unrealistic about the burden of maintaining a codebase or the ongoing relationship to new updates, or not having capacity to solve new problems or comply with new standards in Google-independent ways. Part of the problem of Chromium is that it's normalized a velocity of development and of codebase size in exactly the way you would if you were going for embrace-extend-extinguish.

And the foundational point is still true, Google controls commits to Chromium, so the core project itself is not ever going to be an organic manifestion of community desires for an egalitarian internet. It's going to be whatever helps consolidate Google's monopoly.

Re: Helium Browser

#442

Post by NoGravitas »

anon1395 wrote: post #199
godelski wrote: post #124

> Helium is based on Chromium > Best privacy by default Sorry, pass... Even with un-googled Chromium I do not think these statements are self-consistent. We need browsers that do not allow Google to control the ecosystem. We need legitimate competition. So what, our choices are Firefox (Gecko), Safari (WebKit), and Ladybird? Personally I go with Firefox on most devices and Orion (WebKit) on my iPhone and iPad. > Heli…

Safari should be on Windows. I don't care what CSS standards it has, it needs to give Chrome and Firefox some competition

You used to be able to get Epiphany preview on Windows, for quite a long time after you could get Safari on Windows. Doesn't seem to be the case anymore, though.

Re: Helium Browser

#443

Post by cush »

MYEUHD wrote: post #7

It's based on ungoogled-chromium and about 3 people are working on it. https://github.com/imputnet/helium

> about 3 people are working on it

Hard pass. Arc had an entire dev team with serious investors and couldn't just focus on building a browser

Re: Helium Browser

#444

Post by lima »

reaperducer wrote: post #364
rjh29 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because at the time IE6 was a terrible browser with poor standards support, while Chrome is an excellent browser with leading standards support. It is a gilded cage.

leading standards support Except no support for: CSS Canvas Drawings CSS filter() function Video Tracks Audio Tracks FIDO U2F API SPDY protocol JPEG XL image format HTTP Live Streaming HEIF/HEIC image format SVG fonts CSS hanging-punctuation And broken support for: CSS font-smooth CSS Initial Letter Speech Recognition API CSS -webkit-user-drag property CSS3 Multiple column layout CSS text-indent Synchronous Clipboard…

Your copy&paste does not support your argument. Just looking at the top items on your list, it's basically a bunch of Safari-only features which no other browser vendor ships:

- CSS Canvas Drawings is not a web standard. It's a WebKit-specific feature, only Safari implements it. Chromium removed it in order to replace it with an actual web standard (CSS Painting API).

- Likewise, the CSS filter() function is Safari-only.

- U2F API has been deprecated for years, was replaced by WebAuthn, and only Safari still implements it.

- Same with SPDY, which was replaced by an actual web standard (HTTP2). Only Safari still ships it, but has marked it deprecated.

- SVG Fonts were removed from the SVG spec.

- HLS, JPEG-XL, HEIF/HEIC are essentially Safari-only as well.

CSS hanging-punctuation and audio/video tracks are new features that haven't been widely implemented yet.

Re: Helium Browser

#445

Post by kbelder »

jeroenhd wrote: post #334
shadytrees wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scroll through his X account -- Charlie Kirk and DHH content are some recent entries. He is one of those people who thinks tech should be apolitical without really interrogating what apolitical means or how it affects people who have been marginalized by politics

Hmm, I see what you mean. That's a little disappointing. I don't think the contents of any of his recent comments are extreme enough to consider him "controversial" yet, but the language he uses definitely remind me of supposedly "apolitical" or even "centrist" rhetoric.

>the language he uses definitely remind me of supposedly "apolitical" or even "centrist" rhetoric.

Is that a condemnation, or are you being sarcastic? Isn't that what projects and business should default to?

Re: Helium Browser

#447

Post by fastball »

yupyupyups wrote: post #260
SuperHeavy256 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A browser being based on Chromium has nothing to do with how private it is. Yes you are furthering an internet monopoly by using chromium. But there is noncorrelation between being based of Chromium and Privacy.

Yes it has, unless they plan to do significant changes to how the relevant JS APIs function, which is usually prohibitively expensive to maintain. Standard Chromium allows websites to fetch a lot of fingerprintable bits, this is even true for Brave. Tracking protection on Chromium is a joke. Firefox on the other hand is better in this respect and even has a setting explicitly for resisting fingerprinting.

Last time I checked, Brave was actually the best-in-class for resisting fingerprinting.

Re: Helium Browser

#449

Post by andai »

godelski wrote: post #124

> Helium is based on Chromium > Best privacy by default Sorry, pass... Even with un-googled Chromium I do not think these statements are self-consistent. We need browsers that do not allow Google to control the ecosystem. We need legitimate competition. So what, our choices are Firefox (Gecko), Safari (WebKit), and Ladybird? Personally I go with Firefox on most devices and Orion (WebKit) on my iPhone and iPad. > Heli…

Firefox gets most of its funding from Google. They are Google's antitrust lawsuit insurance.

Which is unfortunate, or fortunate, depending on how you look at the situation.

Re: Helium Browser

#450

Post by duz40_ »

leenify wrote: post #211
hnlmorg wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats interesting. Thanks for sharing. Why do you think that very few projects adopt Gecko then?

I'm somewhat uncertain personally about the future of Mozilla myself, as well as compatibility issues and a lack of mindshare. Also, I feel working with the Chromium codebase is easier if you only apply superficial changes, e.g., the linked browser. The patch files are all very simple, so the fact that Chrome is generally less crufty (Mozilla is working on cleaning up a lot of ancient stuff, which causes us a lot of…

How those patch files work? I was trying to read the Helium codebase but is only full of .patch files.
Post reply on HN