What is Brave going to do when the code for WEI becomes load bearing in the chromium code base?
Still excuse after excuse after excuse to just not use Firefox. I literally don't care if you have to hold up your nose, there's only one actual alternative browser engine, and it's a matter of survival for anyone who doesn't want the whole internet controlled by google.
It could be half as fast (it isn't) and use twice as much RAM (it doesn't) and ask for a damn nude photo of me and I'd still be using it right now.
Using a google owned browser engine is like growing cavendish bananas while you know the neighbor's farm has the blight already. Change over and try to get good at the new strain while you have a choice, because soon you won't and it will be out of your hands what happens after that.
IMO the best hedges against Googles web monopoly at the moment are Apple and Microsoft, not Mozilla.
Apple because of Safari (duh) and Microsoft because they are possibly the only company that could reasonably maintain a hard Chromium fork in the case of Google going crazy.
Unfortunately all three of them are more or less aligned on this issue of remote attestation so I don't really see a path forward.
Firefox just doesn't have the market share to matter. If everyone had switched to it 10 years ago there might have been a chance but the goose is cooked.
> Still excuse after excuse after excuse to just not use Firefox.
What happens when Firefox refuses to implement WEI - then <insert large social media companies> start to require it?
If WEI becomes a common requirement then Firefox will effectively be forced to implement it or it won't be usable as a web browser at that point for the average consumer
Exactly. To have a fighting chance to not loose your control over your hardware and software choices, you need to do compromises. (Which we are already loosing on many fronts.)
I see people complaining Firefox having subpar font rendering, in sufficient tab management, Mozilla not acting up to their standards, but lack on some fronts.
So what? You won't make compromises on some of your convenience and still use a user hostile company's software, or forks of it which strongholds you to their whims? And expect everything to play in your favor?
Silicon Valley is trying to profit against your best interests.
I don't really say you should be using Firefox, but saying you should use some other browser which is not depending on Chromium, or forks.
I also can say Safari would not be the best choice here. As Apple is the Pioneer on restricting you, the users.
It won't matter, if WEI catches on Firefox will be in the same boat. Any non-WEI browser is equal in terms of protesting it. The threat is sites will lose their users if they start requiring it. If anything Chrome derivatives that patch it out but still pretend to be Chrome are even worse for website operators that want to use it.
There's lots of reasons to use FF, this isn't one of them.
Or Brave could just do what they should have done in the first place and develop their own browser engine from the ground up - by now they ought to have the resources to do so, and the world could really do with more than the handful we have now.
The faster we can build usable decentralized apps and get users onto them, the better.
It should only lend urgency to leave the “old web” for those of us who are builders, makers and evangelizers.
They’re after encryption, they’re attacking anonymity, they want all of finance for themselves, and they want to kill privacy too -- I for one say NO thank you.
There is a level — almost a treble —- in these comments on how “it’s inevitable” or “already cooked” but only if you see these fights in isolation. It most assuredly it is not inevitable.
Let’s get positively focused and make hay while the sun shines and it’s not too late. There’s so much intelligence, compassion and love for humanity in this community. Let’s use it.
> in these comments on how “it’s inevitable” or “already cooked” but only if you see these fights in isolation.
It is, in fact, over.
Commodity hardware has no "escape hatch" anymore. If you want to, say, implement custom encryption or ensure anonymity/financial independence for yourself, you cannot stop the Powers That Be. You are helpless to resist Apple or Google or Microsoft if they tell you "no".
The fight was lost when we decided that we didn't need computing rights. The rest, as they say, is history.
Browsing these days is like going into jungle. I use Adblock, ghostery, noscript, pihole. To have a good experience you cannot go in unprepared. Some pages require some scripts to be running. Then I will not go in. I think it will be the same with WEI. If a page asks me for it, I will not go in. Sorry, but no. It may be harder over time, but if I cant't change the world, I van browse on my own terms. There needs to be extension that will be blocking WEI.
We need a list od pages that supports it and we need to same the for their support of WEI
It's nice that they are changing their marketing on this a bit now that there is a wave to ride and the evils of DRM are coming for them; but, let's not forgot that, at the end of the day, Brave is just another company that makes money on ads :(, and (thereby) has most of the same anti-user incentives.
So, sure... they clearly don't want to be prevented from blocking other peoples' ads (a big part of their pitch); but, blocking their ads while still getting paid--which is, of course, extremely easy to pull off on an unrestricted computer--is an existential threat to their only actual revenue stream which they want to protect against.
The ramification: Brave's product managers--and even Brendan Eich himself (whom all of the later quotes I have in this comment were taken from, directly or indirectly)--have often talked about using the very same remote attestation technology to protect their SDK and even their browser for the same reasons as Google.
> 1/ native C++/Rust code, no JS tags on page that have zero integrity. That means ability to use SGX/TrustZone to check integrity and develop private user score from all sensor inputs in the enclave; ...
> We already have to deal w/ fraud. That is inherent in any system with users and revenue shares or grants. We do it better via C++ and (under way) SGX or TrustZone integrity checking + OS sensor APIs, vs today’s antifraud scripts that are routinely fooled.
> What Brave offers that's far better than today's joke of an antifraud system for ads is as follows: 1/ integrity-checked open source native code, which cannot be fooled by other JS on page; ... (1) requires SGX or ARM equivalent, widespread on mobile.
> Part of the roadmap (details in update) is a BAT SDK. Obviously it would be open source, but more: we would require Secure Remote Attestation (Intel SGX broken but ARM TrustZone as used by Trustonic may be ok) to prove integrity of the SDK code in app.
Blocking Brave's ads is literally three clicks. I don't care if I don't get paid if I block ads. What I don't want is to lose the ability to block ads or to allow websites to block me for using an unapproved system. Google seems to be working for both of those things while I don't see any chance Brave ever allows either.
Turning the browser into a foreign entity on your own PC. From the company that went from “Making the worlds knowledge accessible’ to ‘rentseeking on the collected knowledge and the trying to lock everyone else out from it’
FWIW brave genuinely has multiple privacy patches that are useful and can't be done properly with extensions in chrome.
Several of these either can't be done via a js extension to chrome, or can be detected/bypassed. Brave does them in-engine which is the better way to do it.
Hard to listen to anything from a company that constantly:
1) Doesn’t innovate on anything, social media accounts are plagued with pointing fingers at others while using a Chromium fork themselves, ignorance at its finest.
2) Has been accused of selling copyrighted data for AI training and has not made a public statement.
3) Has a history of making stupid decisions and only apologizing when a big news outlet calls them out.
I personally think the upsides of WebBundles are huge. There's nothing that would stop the browser from being able to filter & ignore content coming from in a WebBundle, so I'm not sure what Brave's greivance is here. The adserving topic is complicated as heck, but everyone seems to acknowledge big change is necessary & Google and Firefox both have proposals to radically overhaul the system while enhancing user privacy; Brave's own primary distinguisher at this point is their BAT tokens, their own answer here. There's complicated topics here, but I see Brave following the standard pattern of trying to be a lightning rod of discontent.
It's also surprising to me how almost no one has commented on Private Access Tokens shipping for Apple. Which do the same thing. Here's them bragging about being able to avoid catchpa's since the devices are all vouched for by Apple as unmodified & controlled by Apple: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2022/10077/
I think this is absolutely the worst shit, almost as bad as MV3 being a utterly neutered shitty hell hole version of what web extensions were. But it's notable to me that both Google didn't start this particular trend, Apple did, and more broadly - I have such a hard time picking words here - it feels like the stark polemics have been on overdrive to create a reality distortion field, where Chrome is purely bad/evil/awful/no-good everywhere. We should be upset & mad! But I feel like we're pretty far into losing our minds territory, and slipping into strokes of broadsweeping public madness.
I don’t mean to be an apologist here, but Google’s vs Apple’s intention seem crystal clear.
Google is trying to make it impossible not to see the ads it’s selling. Apple’s intent seems to be lock down the Apple platform…? I know Apple is blatantly abusive in lots of spaces, but Chrome is a super-majority of the browsers in use. It’s an odd take to spin this into “they started it” finger pointing.
The reason Chrome is getting all the hate is that Google finally realized its power, position, and needs and became self-serving. Apple is just a lesser demigod is this fight.
mrguyorama|2 years ago
Still excuse after excuse after excuse to just not use Firefox. I literally don't care if you have to hold up your nose, there's only one actual alternative browser engine, and it's a matter of survival for anyone who doesn't want the whole internet controlled by google.
It could be half as fast (it isn't) and use twice as much RAM (it doesn't) and ask for a damn nude photo of me and I'd still be using it right now.
Using a google owned browser engine is like growing cavendish bananas while you know the neighbor's farm has the blight already. Change over and try to get good at the new strain while you have a choice, because soon you won't and it will be out of your hands what happens after that.
Melatonic|2 years ago
wilsonnb3|2 years ago
Apple because of Safari (duh) and Microsoft because they are possibly the only company that could reasonably maintain a hard Chromium fork in the case of Google going crazy.
Unfortunately all three of them are more or less aligned on this issue of remote attestation so I don't really see a path forward.
Firefox just doesn't have the market share to matter. If everyone had switched to it 10 years ago there might have been a chance but the goose is cooked.
thewataccount|2 years ago
What happens when Firefox refuses to implement WEI - then <insert large social media companies> start to require it?
If WEI becomes a common requirement then Firefox will effectively be forced to implement it or it won't be usable as a web browser at that point for the average consumer
TacticalCoder|2 years ago
Same. I mostly use Firefox (I still use Chrome for testing) and it's a good browser in itself: not just because it's not Chrome/Edge.
fsniper|2 years ago
I see people complaining Firefox having subpar font rendering, in sufficient tab management, Mozilla not acting up to their standards, but lack on some fronts.
So what? You won't make compromises on some of your convenience and still use a user hostile company's software, or forks of it which strongholds you to their whims? And expect everything to play in your favor? Silicon Valley is trying to profit against your best interests.
I don't really say you should be using Firefox, but saying you should use some other browser which is not depending on Chromium, or forks.
I also can say Safari would not be the best choice here. As Apple is the Pioneer on restricting you, the users.
Spivak|2 years ago
There's lots of reasons to use FF, this isn't one of them.
pkulak|2 years ago
franczesko|2 years ago
phero_cnstrcts|2 years ago
commandlinefan|2 years ago
geraldwhen|2 years ago
m463|2 years ago
alphanullmeric|2 years ago
cmgriffing|2 years ago
JohnFen|2 years ago
happytiger|2 years ago
It should only lend urgency to leave the “old web” for those of us who are builders, makers and evangelizers.
They’re after encryption, they’re attacking anonymity, they want all of finance for themselves, and they want to kill privacy too -- I for one say NO thank you.
There is a level — almost a treble —- in these comments on how “it’s inevitable” or “already cooked” but only if you see these fights in isolation. It most assuredly it is not inevitable.
Let’s get positively focused and make hay while the sun shines and it’s not too late. There’s so much intelligence, compassion and love for humanity in this community. Let’s use it.
smoldesu|2 years ago
It is, in fact, over.
Commodity hardware has no "escape hatch" anymore. If you want to, say, implement custom encryption or ensure anonymity/financial independence for yourself, you cannot stop the Powers That Be. You are helpless to resist Apple or Google or Microsoft if they tell you "no".
The fight was lost when we decided that we didn't need computing rights. The rest, as they say, is history.
renegat0x0|2 years ago
We need a list od pages that supports it and we need to same the for their support of WEI
smoldesu|2 years ago
mrguyorama|2 years ago
saurik|2 years ago
So, sure... they clearly don't want to be prevented from blocking other peoples' ads (a big part of their pitch); but, blocking their ads while still getting paid--which is, of course, extremely easy to pull off on an unrestricted computer--is an existential threat to their only actual revenue stream which they want to protect against.
The ramification: Brave's product managers--and even Brendan Eich himself (whom all of the later quotes I have in this comment were taken from, directly or indirectly)--have often talked about using the very same remote attestation technology to protect their SDK and even their browser for the same reasons as Google.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/bw6sek/
https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/b7rwbx/
> 1/ native C++/Rust code, no JS tags on page that have zero integrity. That means ability to use SGX/TrustZone to check integrity and develop private user score from all sensor inputs in the enclave; ...
> We already have to deal w/ fraud. That is inherent in any system with users and revenue shares or grants. We do it better via C++ and (under way) SGX or TrustZone integrity checking + OS sensor APIs, vs today’s antifraud scripts that are routinely fooled.
> What Brave offers that's far better than today's joke of an antifraud system for ads is as follows: 1/ integrity-checked open source native code, which cannot be fooled by other JS on page; ... (1) requires SGX or ARM equivalent, widespread on mobile.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/
https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/97trex/comment/...
> Part of the roadmap (details in update) is a BAT SDK. Obviously it would be open source, but more: we would require Secure Remote Attestation (Intel SGX broken but ARM TrustZone as used by Trustonic may be ok) to prove integrity of the SDK code in app.
mminer237|2 years ago
gmerc|2 years ago
benatkin|2 years ago
thewataccount|2 years ago
Several of these either can't be done via a js extension to chrome, or can be detected/bypassed. Brave does them in-engine which is the better way to do it.
https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Fingerprinting-P...
theandrewbailey|2 years ago
https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1684561924191842304
skilled|2 years ago
1) Doesn’t innovate on anything, social media accounts are plagued with pointing fingers at others while using a Chromium fork themselves, ignorance at its finest.
2) Has been accused of selling copyrighted data for AI training and has not made a public statement.
3) Has a history of making stupid decisions and only apologizing when a big news outlet calls them out.
franczesko|2 years ago
jauntywundrkind|2 years ago
It's also surprising to me how almost no one has commented on Private Access Tokens shipping for Apple. Which do the same thing. Here's them bragging about being able to avoid catchpa's since the devices are all vouched for by Apple as unmodified & controlled by Apple: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2022/10077/
There was a decent submission on this recently, but not much engagement. https://www.snellman.net/blog/archive/2023-07-25-web-integri... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36866355
I think this is absolutely the worst shit, almost as bad as MV3 being a utterly neutered shitty hell hole version of what web extensions were. But it's notable to me that both Google didn't start this particular trend, Apple did, and more broadly - I have such a hard time picking words here - it feels like the stark polemics have been on overdrive to create a reality distortion field, where Chrome is purely bad/evil/awful/no-good everywhere. We should be upset & mad! But I feel like we're pretty far into losing our minds territory, and slipping into strokes of broadsweeping public madness.
sircastor|2 years ago
Google is trying to make it impossible not to see the ads it’s selling. Apple’s intent seems to be lock down the Apple platform…? I know Apple is blatantly abusive in lots of spaces, but Chrome is a super-majority of the browsers in use. It’s an odd take to spin this into “they started it” finger pointing.
The reason Chrome is getting all the hate is that Google finally realized its power, position, and needs and became self-serving. Apple is just a lesser demigod is this fight.