[X] My Assistant

Yeah you'd rather use an actual google browser, but with lipstick and make-up on the pig

Two Google-funded browsers, why would I not use the better one?

it's still Chromium and still contributes to Googles stranglehold of the web and it's standards.

Yeah and like I said that means nothing to me. I avoid Chrome because it's literally spyware. Not because of "Google's stranglehold on web standards".
Brave has (supposedly, who knows) the spying parts stripped with the rest of the functionality remaining. It's a win-win in terms of what I care about.

Yeah and like I said that means nothing to me. I avoid Chrome because it's literally spyware. Not because of "Google's stranglehold on web standards".

If you don't see a problem with Google having a stranglehold on web standards yet still want avoid Chrome proper for privacy reasons you can't see beyond your nose.

With total control and no proper alternatives they'll have even less opposition to implementing things like, and/or worse than [en.wikipedia.org] FLoC and should it happen you and everyone else is fucked by it. Yeah Mozilla governance has been dog shit since they ousted Eich for wrongthink but it's literally all that's left as an alternative. If and when it dies anything they want to push won't have to even consider other browsers, and you best believe they'll act like it. All they have to do is require "Spec X" to use Google services and they can justify it with "Well no modern browser exists that doesn't support it.".

both

Two Google-funded browsers, why would I not use the better one?

So, given the theoretical choice (where you have to use one, and there are only two options) between buying hardware that is actually designed manufactured by North Korea and buying hardware designed and manufactured in Switzerland with some funding from North Korea, you'd choose the one that's directly designed and manufactured by North Korea if it performs 5% faster?
Don't ask me how something made in North Korea is commercially available here, it's an analogy. I could use Afghanistan instead of North Korea in this analogy and make it about terrorism.

How dense can you get.
See also what Scumbini said; he's 100% correct, and better at explaining why your apathy is problematic in the real world instead of with the silly analogies I tend to use.

Man, I wish negative karma was still a thing.

If you don't see a problem with Google having a stranglehold on web standards yet still want avoid Chrome proper for privacy reasons you can't see beyond your nose.

With total control and no proper alternatives they'll have even less opposition to implementing things like, and/or worse than [en.wikipedia.org] FLoC and should it happen you and everyone else is fucked by it. Yeah Mozilla governance has been dog shit since they ousted Eich for wrongthink but it's literally all that's left as an alternative. If and when it dies anything they want to push won't have to even consider other browsers, and you best believe they'll act like it. All they have to do is require "Spec X" to use Google services and they can justify it with "Well no modern browser exists that doesn't support it."

Thanks; you illustrated the point way better than I was able to.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: May 29 2022, 15:47

Yeah and like I said that means nothing to me. I avoid Chrome because it's literally spyware.

Do you have an Android phone? It feels both amazing and sad that out in the "real world", people don't seem to care much about privacy or being tracked by their smartphones. When all the products are by the same company, that makes it even easier to combine the data such as google android in a smartphone.

Most people can be correctly evaluated by where they regularly go, what they regularly do, what they don't do, who they do it with, what they buy, what they don't buy, how much and how frequently they buy, and even by how many times they visit their dentist, different locations in a hospital building, venereal disease clinic, etc. If their smartphone geolocation data showed that person A was in the company of Doctor John Doe's smartphone for approx 15 minutes, it can be inferred Person A is a patient. Since Dr Doe normally works with venereal disease patients, then it can be inferred person A has need of STD services. Person A now visits the Hilton Hotel for a few hours and this is cross-checked by the Person A's car (Toyota) which phones home its location all the time. Person A's geolocation is approximately the same as geolocation data for known Prostitute Taylor Swiftpony's phone for most of that time. Hooray for ponies. Everyone likes to ride a pony.

You said NO to chrome. On your anti-chrome PC, you also cannot use gmail or send email to someone who uses gmail or you can be identified. Gmail also feeds identity data from your purchases, confirmation emails from setting up bank accouns, and the tie-ins between your uses of credit card, mailing address, product shipping address, and accounts to cross-verify your identity to each alias or "anonymous" avatar you use on that machine.

Just be glad that Alphabet doesn't own Cloudflare, Path Networks, or other similar major services that can deliver traffic on both ends of a client or its source.

Scumbini also mentioned Cohorts. It's a type of label that makes profiling technically legal. I bet that although cohorts is a reasonable advertising tool for stratifying people and their economic values, another reason for cohorts is to create legal profiling across the various legal systems of the EU and USA which have "anti profiling" laws.

If you don't see a problem with Google having a stranglehold on web standards yet still want avoid Chrome proper for privacy reasons you can't see beyond your nose.

With total control and no proper alternatives they'll have even less opposition to implementing things like, and/or worse than [en.wikipedia.org] FLoC and should it happen you and everyone else is fucked by it. Yeah Mozilla governance has been dog shit since they ousted Eich for wrongthink but it's literally all that's left as an alternative. If and when it dies anything they want to push won't have to even consider other browsers, and you best believe they'll act like it. All they have to do is require "Spec X" to use Google services and they can justify it with "Well no modern browser exists that doesn't support it.".

Maybe I misspoke or was not clear in what I meant. It's not that I "don't see a problem with" Google having a stranglehold on web standards.
Of course that is not something I want to happen.

The thing is, I don't see how me using a shittier browser will stop that from happening.
It's not that I "like" using a Chromium-based browser. Choosing one of the imperfect options available does not mean I'm entirely happy with it.

All they have to do is require "Spec X" to use Google services and they can justify it with "Well no modern browser exists that doesn't support it.".

As cumbersome or unrealistic as this might sound to some users, I genuinely do plan my life around being as little dependent on the internet as possible. I do not have a smartphone. My telephone does not have a touch screen, a color display or internet access. None of my e-mails, calendar appointments, address book etc. are "in the cloud". My work happens entirely in the meatspace. My files are stored offline, with the most sensitive being physically disconnected from the web.

In the event of such a "takeover" of the internet, where no browser alternatives aside from the tech giants existed, I truly am willing and able to leave the web. And it's not just empty talk. Literally all of my major life decisions in the past decade have been made with this possibility in mind.

As cumbersome or unrealistic as this might sound to some users, I genuinely do plan my life around being as little dependent on the internet as possible. I do not have a smartphone. My telephone does not have a touch screen, a color display or internet access. None of my e-mails, calendar appointments, address book etc. are "in the cloud". My work happens entirely in the meatspace. My files are stored offline, with the most sensitive being physically disconnected from the web.

In the event of such a "takeover" of the internet, where no browser alternatives aside from the tech giants existed, I truly am willing and able to leave the web. And it's not just empty talk. Literally all of my major life decisions in the past decade have been made with this possibility in mind.

For someone with so much potential to be based, you sure are cringe.

The thing is, I don't see how me using a shittier browser will stop that from happening.

If by shittier you mean 'more configurable and expansible (still true even after they killed XUL/XPCOM), with support for proper color rendering,' then fine.

Anyway, using the defense that you're "just one person" is such a lame cop-out. It's that mentality that keeps us in submission. Nothing will change unless the people who know about a problem do their part to rectify it.

You seem to be willing to go out of your way to avoid the web as a hard dependency, which is why it strikes me as odd that you'd choose to submit to Google's will in this case.

Before you say something about "picking your battles," I also have no social media profiles as such; the closest I get is web forum accounts (like this one) and IRC handles. I save everything I can locally so that if I disconnect I'll still have whatever information I actually value (technical or for entertainment). I actively refuse to use "software as a service" spyware like Discord. Am I fighting a losing battle? Perhaps. But at least I'm actually trying to be the change I want to see.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: May 31 2022, 03:00

So, given the theoretical choice (where you have to use one, and there are only two options) between buying hardware that is actually designed manufactured by North Korea and buying hardware designed and manufactured in Switzerland with some funding from North Korea, you'd choose the one that's directly designed and manufactured by North Korea if it performs 5% faster?
Don't ask me how something made in North Korea is commercially available here, it's an analogy. I could use Afghanistan instead of North Korea in this analogy and make it about terrorism.

You know just as well as I do that "99% free software" is the same as 0%. In the same vein, being "somewhat a product of Big Tech" is all the same whether it's 95% or 5%.
Brave is open source. If it did have the privacy issues of Chrome, someone would've noticed it. I don't care if the bit of code that renders the web page or whatever is made with Google hands. If there was a piece of code that leaked my private information, someone would've noticed.

Do you have an Android phone? It feels both amazing and sad that out in the "real world", people don't seem to care much about privacy or being tracked by their smartphones. When all the products are by the same company, that makes it even easier to combine the data such as google android in a smartphone.

No. And not an Apple phone either. My phone's processor is so slow and memory so scarce, it's physically impossible for it to run spyware. It can receive phone calls and text messages, that's about it.

You said NO to chrome. On your anti-chrome PC, you also cannot use gmail

I don't.

send email to someone who uses gmail or you can be identified.

I doubt that "just happens" as soon as I message one gmail account.
Yes, I'm aware that companies like Google can use vast amounts of data to fingerprint users. Even without a login, they'll detect patterns. I've done all I can on the software front to avoid that, randomizing outputs and being as difficult to detect as possible. Not to mention, I buy functionally all my purchases offline using cash. Is it perfect? I'm sure not. Would using Firefox instead of Brave make a difference? I doubt it.

You know just as well as I do that "99% free software" is the same as 0%. In the same vein, being "somewhat a product of Big Tech" is all the same whether it's 95% or 5%.

What does this even mean in the case of "Brave" though? I fail to see anything here except "whataboutisms."

If there was a piece of code that leaked my private information, someone would've noticed.

[en.wikipedia.org] Oh, you sweet summer child. That bug took a quarter of a century to be discovered, and that's in bash; its code base is a tiny fraction of the size of the monstrosity that is Blink/V8.

You appear to have never actually built or tinkered with the Blink/V8 codebase. I have when trying to port it to PowerPC 32-bit (for the V8 javascript engine that node-based bullshit depends on, among other programs like some ebook readers/PDF viewers).

All software should fundamentally be untrusted. That includes Mozilla products, as well as anything you write yourself unless you built the computer from nothing and wrote all the software yourself. Your argument is therefore silly at best. [www.cs.cmu.edu] Reflections on Trusting Trust - Ken Thompson.

Also, there's a reason the Tor project doesn't recommend or use Chromium-based browsers, and if you want a hint it has to do with information leaking.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: May 31 2022, 03:09

Anyway, using the defense that you're "just one person" is such a lame cop-out. It's that mentality that keeps us in submission. Nothing will change unless the people who know about a problem do their part to rectify it.

I didn't use that excuse.

If by shittier you mean 'more configurable and expansible (still true even after they killed XUL/XPCOM), with support for proper color rendering,' then fine.

I don't really care what is theoretically possible "on paper". Firefox does not have the extensions, or equivalent of the extensions, that I like using. It's slower when loading bloated cancerous websites. It creates more errors and crashes more often.
I know this, because I've used it extensively.

What shows up on a spreadsheet on /g/ is not the same as real life. I don't want to deal with bullshit in my daily life just to be theoretically more "based". Especially when it doesn't come with any tangible advantages, such as increased privacy.

you'd choose to submit to Google's will in this case.

You might repeat the "lipstick on a pig" narrative, but Brave is not Chrome.
Yes, the part that processes websites is lifted from the work done by Google. But Google also wants all the other parts of Chrome, making it easier for them to spy on me.
"Submitting to Google" would be using Chrome. Not just the good parts of Chrome, but Chrome altogether. Let's be realistic here, 99% of computer users don't even mind checking if you can have one without the other. I am not "submitting" when I try to have the best of both worlds, with the aspects that I'm most opposed to, or ones that I would find "deal breakers" being stripped and nullified.

It creates more errors and crashes more often.
I know this, because I've used it extensively.

I am using it right now and haven't had a single straight-up crash this year.
Are you using Windows, by any chance? You sound like a Windows user.

I don't really care what is theoretically possible "on paper".

OK then. How about concrete examples?

Firefox 95, with the old about:config re-inserted and the UI completely rearranged to suit my tastes using userChrome.css.
[i.imgur.com] (IMG:[i.imgur.com] https://i.imgur.com/chGibpfg.png)

I'd ask about your addons, but I really do not care because I don't believe such addons don't exist - especially with most being portable to FF now (which implements a superset of Chromium's API).

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: May 31 2022, 03:18

Oh, you sweet summer child.

Well, like I said earlier.

(supposedly, who knows)

Of course I'm not pretending that being open source is a guarantee that there are no privacy violations. But there is a limit to what is reasonable, and I find it reasonable to expect that if such privacy violations where present in a high-profile open source software, someone would've noticed them. I don't take that as 100% fool-proof assurance. But it's good enough. If you were to obsess over certainties you could never do anything in life. It's about playing the odds, and making reasonable choices based on them.

What does this even mean in the case of "Brave" though? I fail to see anything here except "whataboutisms."

It means that there is no one perfect solution. If there was, things would be simple. Everything is a compromise. I don't see any big advantage to using Firefox that would balance out the negatives.

The big advantage is avoiding an absolute monopoly.
If that means nothing to you, I have nothing more to say because you're a lost cause.

Are you using Windows, by any chance? You sound like a Windows user.

Of course. It works better for what I'm trying to accomplish.

I've used Linux as my primary desktop environment for 5+ years. I've used a Mac for almost 10. In my professional environment and in college I used Linux exclusively. I am not the "just doesn't know any better" strawman.

Seething about me using Windows is like seething about me using Brave. It works better, even if there is a "less corporate", more gimmicky, worse functioning, just as imperfect alternative out there.

You might repeat the "lipstick on a pig" narrative, but Brave is not Chrome.
Yes, the part that processes websites is lifted from the work done by Google.

A browser is fundamentally a tool to view webpages. You claim to care about Google's stranglehold, but your actions show you clearly do not.

Prefer using firefox since i utilize a lot of the multi-account container plugins, never heard something like that on chrome or chrome-like browsers

I just want to say that M$ making alt-tab page through MS Edge browser tabs as well as normal MS Windows windows is fucking terrible.

That's what ctrl-tab/ctrl-shift-tab are for.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Jun 1 2022, 00:08

FF but every other update it gets shittier: customization gets cuts down, browser gets laggier, sometimes I just want to switch but all the other browsers are even worse... It feels like I'm stuck in a shrinking bubble aboard a sinking ship.

Firefox and Edge, Yes
Chrome, No

emm (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/mellow.gif) , i do not care, because they are all bad