I've tried helium as a chrome-based ad-blocking browser alternative and found it nice to not have to hide the crypto/AI-nonsense since it doesn't exist. Everything beyond the Crypto/AI stuff is indeed pretty damn good in Brave.
At the end of the day it's basically just a uBlock-Origin preset for chromium, but that's really all I'd want from Brave regardless.
It may be better in the shorter term, but using yet another Chromium based browser doesn't really improve the current situation with Google's browser monopoly. I'm personally using Firefox Nightly, and so far it has served me well.
but using yet another Chromium based browser doesn't really improve the current situation with Google's browser monopoly.
Not everyone wants to be a martyr/activist to change their habits and experience in order to support a political cause they don't really understand.
Most people just want the best, frictionless and most familiar experience to the product they already know and love, which often means a slick and shiny product from a monopolistic anti-consumer company.
Also been using Brave for a while. All the crypto stuff needs to be turned off but besides that for me, it's just better Chrome. Firefox always felt slower to me, Safari is just a weird kid from the neighborhood I could never get to like. I LOVED Arc. I think its a near perfect browser, but lack of proper mobile browser and Browser Company dropping Arc in favor of the new rebranded Arc with AI just left me with distrust. Brave just works, I can use it on all my devices, OSes, I can have uBlock Origin on it and vertical tabs. I don't really need anything else at this point.
It still amazes me that in California if someone donates to anti-gay marriage initiative they can be openly called "absolute scumbag" and people just roll with it. It's called having political views.
Annoyingly, Cursor dumped a ton of tokens into creating FastRender, but won't answer my request for a license on their code, so we can't go anywhere with it.
I was eager to jump to Brave ~5 years ago, but was so turned off by the scammy crypto stuff that when I rebuilt my laptop I didn't bother. And then when all of the details came out of one of the founders -- support for banning same sex marriage, resignations from his previous boards when he was appointed, being a COVID denier / anti-vaxxer -- the reasons it came bundled with all of this weird crypto stuff made a lot more sense.
This is a little off-topic, but the article calls it out specifically, accusing Brendan Eich of being an "absolute scumbag" Aren't we past performative displays of outrage over this?
He, like 52% of voting Californians, in 2008, opposed gay marriage. This was a different time: there were various arguments about "civil unions", concern from religious groups, worries about slippery slopes, etc., but we are passed that now -- he no longer holds this belief, and time has proven those concerns to be ill founded. Nobody should be held in indefinite contempt for political positions they once held. If we can forgive Barack Obama for opposing gay marriage, then we can forgive Brendan Eich. You can say that you like his work without having to have endless caveats about how you don't agree with a political position he took twenty years ago that even he no longer believes.
I also relate to this post: tried to make Firefox my default browser for years, but slowly Brave became my default browser over time due to its adblocking abilities and general speed.
That said, Brave is a bit of a UI mess out of the box, with too many of their unnecessary "features" like their wallet and crypto BAT stuff being shoved at the user.
I think they're slowly realizing that their user base just wants a straightforward adblocking privacy browser though. They released "Brave Origin" recently, which is a paid app on some platforms, but at least cuts out of all the unnecessary baggage.
The author mentions that he tried Vivaldi.
Vivaldi is the spiritual successor to the original Opera browser (not the Opera browser you get today, which is crap). Opera was for power users, and the same goes for Vivaldi today.
I can see that there's a learning curve, and it takes some time to get used to. But overall, it's a no-nonsense, fully featured workhorse that I use as my main browser. It has built-in ad blocking, mouse gestures, sync between devices, pane tiling, and a myriad of other nice little features I miss when using any other browser.
Bonus points: Vivaldi on Android recently added support for Chrome extensions.
It's not for everyone, but I suggest giving it a try.
I've tried helium as a chrome-based ad-blocking browser alternative and found it nice to not have to hide the crypto/AI-nonsense since it doesn't exist. Everything beyond the Crypto/AI stuff is indeed pretty damn good in Brave.
At the end of the day it's basically just a uBlock-Origin preset for chromium, but that's really all I'd want from Brave regardless.
You might like Brave Origin then. If hidable crypto integration is what keeps Brave free, I am personally content with it.
I haven't heard of it before, and the crypto ads was the reason I lost interest for Brave. I will have a look, thanks!
It may be better in the shorter term, but using yet another Chromium based browser doesn't really improve the current situation with Google's browser monopoly. I'm personally using Firefox Nightly, and so far it has served me well.
Not everyone wants to be a martyr/activist to change their habits and experience in order to support a political cause they don't really understand.
Most people just want the best, frictionless and most familiar experience to the product they already know and love, which often means a slick and shiny product from a monopolistic anti-consumer company.
Also been using Brave for a while. All the crypto stuff needs to be turned off but besides that for me, it's just better Chrome. Firefox always felt slower to me, Safari is just a weird kid from the neighborhood I could never get to like. I LOVED Arc. I think its a near perfect browser, but lack of proper mobile browser and Browser Company dropping Arc in favor of the new rebranded Arc with AI just left me with distrust. Brave just works, I can use it on all my devices, OSes, I can have uBlock Origin on it and vertical tabs. I don't really need anything else at this point.
See also Brave Origin: https://brave.com/origin/
Switching to Brave from Firefox due to AI and ethical concerns seems like a lateral move at best if being generous.
It still amazes me that in California if someone donates to anti-gay marriage initiative they can be openly called "absolute scumbag" and people just roll with it. It's called having political views.
Maybe they meant to link to the element where it says the guy invented Javascript. That would have been more appropriate.
for many here that's worse than murder. totally not a ideological cult btw.
"having political views" is not an escape hatch for denying the humanity of other people.
Annoyingly, Cursor dumped a ton of tokens into creating FastRender, but won't answer my request for a license on their code, so we can't go anywhere with it.
I was eager to jump to Brave ~5 years ago, but was so turned off by the scammy crypto stuff that when I rebuilt my laptop I didn't bother. And then when all of the details came out of one of the founders -- support for banning same sex marriage, resignations from his previous boards when he was appointed, being a COVID denier / anti-vaxxer -- the reasons it came bundled with all of this weird crypto stuff made a lot more sense.
This is a little off-topic, but the article calls it out specifically, accusing Brendan Eich of being an "absolute scumbag" Aren't we past performative displays of outrage over this?
He, like 52% of voting Californians, in 2008, opposed gay marriage. This was a different time: there were various arguments about "civil unions", concern from religious groups, worries about slippery slopes, etc., but we are passed that now -- he no longer holds this belief, and time has proven those concerns to be ill founded. Nobody should be held in indefinite contempt for political positions they once held. If we can forgive Barack Obama for opposing gay marriage, then we can forgive Brendan Eich. You can say that you like his work without having to have endless caveats about how you don't agree with a political position he took twenty years ago that even he no longer believes.
Ah, the author is Kev Quirk! I really enjoyed his SimpleCSS project: https://github.com/kevquirk/simple.css
I also relate to this post: tried to make Firefox my default browser for years, but slowly Brave became my default browser over time due to its adblocking abilities and general speed.
That said, Brave is a bit of a UI mess out of the box, with too many of their unnecessary "features" like their wallet and crypto BAT stuff being shoved at the user.
I think they're slowly realizing that their user base just wants a straightforward adblocking privacy browser though. They released "Brave Origin" recently, which is a paid app on some platforms, but at least cuts out of all the unnecessary baggage.
The author mentions that he tried Vivaldi. Vivaldi is the spiritual successor to the original Opera browser (not the Opera browser you get today, which is crap). Opera was for power users, and the same goes for Vivaldi today. I can see that there's a learning curve, and it takes some time to get used to. But overall, it's a no-nonsense, fully featured workhorse that I use as my main browser. It has built-in ad blocking, mouse gestures, sync between devices, pane tiling, and a myriad of other nice little features I miss when using any other browser. Bonus points: Vivaldi on Android recently added support for Chrome extensions. It's not for everyone, but I suggest giving it a try.