Genuine question: I use brave currently. I really heavily on multiple profiles (work, side-business, personal) that are easy to switch between or have active all at the same time in separate windows.
I tried firefox, but in my experience, the method for changing “profiles” was unintuitive and cumbersome. Was I just doing it wrong, or does Firefox not have that same kind of feature?
I really wanna use Firefox, but that’s a deal-breaker.
There are a few ways! I have separate Firefox profiles for everything.
The least effort way is to visit about:profiles, then you get a list of them all and can add/remove them. I have it bookmarked or pinned as a tab in all of my different profiles.
Second, but takes more effort is you can make desktop or start menu shortcuts to the profiles. In short (on windows at least) you copy the Firefox shortcut, edit it, then add -p “Profile Name”. There might be more to it? Maybe good to Google this one for a better description. But I literally have a start menu shortcut for all like 7 of mine, then it’s just like launching a different application.
Or have a shortcut that has something like this as its target: “C:Program Files (x86)Mozilla Firefoxfirefox.exe” --ProfileManager --allow-downgrade -no-remote
This just opens the profile manager every time. The only caveat is that you have to click “launch” every time as there’s no timeout. But I also do have an autohotkey script that does the timeout for me, pressing “enter” after 30s.
Why is it shitty? TBH my biggest problem with Brave is their push for the crypto ad tokens. Any company pushing crypto shit instantly gets put on my shit list.
No. Couldn’t care less what the founder did or didn’t do. We need as many non-Google browsers as possible. The problem with Brave is that it is a chromium browser.
No, I’m not. Chromium doesn’t exist in Windows unless you install a program that includes it. Chromium web engine is “native” to the chromium web browser, not to any OS (except maybe ChromeOS). As espi mentioned, Internet explorer’s mshtml is the only engine “native” to Windows. Just look at the Opera browser, they changed web engines from Presto to chromium; that’s not using “what’s native to the platform” (Opera works across all OS’s with chromium, except for iOS for the restriction I mentioned before), it’s using what the developers/company want to use to render their pages. Nothing in Windows itself provides any of the chromium engine “pieces”
Chrome has EMET disabled because it’s own memory protections conflict and it just won’t execute.
When you’re make a web view for Windows you’re either bringing a long your own rendering or using Edge because it’s included.
No one wants to secure their own rendering which is why they all use whatever is already there which is EMET which is a pita to test so they just go with Edge.
native is just jargon for “what is already there.”
EMET? The framework that was end-of-lifed in 2018? I’d bloody well hope Chrome doesn’t use something that isn’t supported anymore.
Chrome’s sandboxing is weird and prone to breaking, but at least it isn’t stuck relying entirely on a kernel framework exclusive to an OS that people are extremely hesitant to keep up-to-date.
What does this even mean. Chromium or Webkit are not "native" to an OS. OSs don't magically include browser engines, its not a critical component of an OS either.
Most OSs do come with browsers preinstalled, but they are programs just like any other. You can remove Safari from macOS (albeit its pretty hard because root is read only and signed), you can remove Edge from Windows. In my desktop with Windows 10 the only browser I have is Firefox (not even Edge), does that make Gecko the "native" browser engine?
If anything, the native browser engine for Windows would be MSHTML from Internet Explorer.
Brave works for what I need it to do. I don’t like lending credence to bigots(secret or otherwise) but if someone is gonna say “don’t use this browser” they need to list a replacement that has the same functionality. And it can’t be “just use duckduckgo” because we all fucking have that on our phones and none of us can use it as our primary browser and we all know exactly why. 😒
Do you have a source for the claim that DuckDuckGo browser is selling user data to Microsoft?
You might be referring to the time when the DuckDuckGo browser was blocking all known trackers except Microsoft trackers. After that information was made public and users complained, DuckDuckGo was able to renegotiate its agreement with Microsoft so that it can block their trackers.
Furthermore, DuckDuckGo now publish their blocklist on GitHub.
So this privacy issue has been rectified now. But even if it hadn’t, failing to block Microsoft trackers isn’t the same as collecting data and selling it to Microsoft.
But if you are aware of DDG browser selling data to Microsoft, please share a source.
For me personally, the one and only reason I don’t main Firefox is because it doesn’t work with Chromecast and I use that a LOT. I would switch to FF tomorrow if I could easily and reliably cast with it.
On Android, Firefox is still less secure than Chromium-based alternatives: Mozilla’s engine, GeckoView, has yet to support site isolation or enable isolatedProcess.
I mean, does that mean Edge is a Google browser, too?
Chromium is open-source. Even if Google adds something malicious to the source code (such as that Web Environment Integrity stuff), it can be removed by someone else creating their own browser based on Chromium. That’s the very definition of open-source.
Related side-note: Lemmy itself is open-source, too. If the creator of Lemmy added something to the software that someone running an instance didn’t agree with, they could simply fork the original software and remove the unwanted addition. Some people do disagree with that person’s views, and yet they’re still here. Many of them joined .world and other instances instead of .ml because they disagreed with the creator’s views.
While Google, the creator of Chromium, isn’t a good company for the consumer, I personally think Chromium itself isn’t a bad idea. It’s just that Google and some other companies modify it for their own means, and those means aren’t always consumer-friendly.
All that to say: while the company that originally created Chromium is bad, the software isn’t. And while some of the companies and people using that software are bad (including Brave, IMO), some of them are looking out for their users’ interests, and those forks of Chromium are generally ok. (You should still actually do research and not pick a fork because the company developing it said it’s okay, though. Take a look at what others are saying and verify it.)
I mean, does that mean Edge is a Google browser, too?
Yes.
All that to say: while the company that originally created Chromium is bad, the software isn’t.
Only to the extent that websites are built for chromium compatibility, due to its monopoly on the internet. It’s great software because it’s the most popular software so all other smaller providers that serve that software have to focus their resources into ensuring compatibility. Chromium(Blink) itself is pretty mid, and definitely equal to WebKit or Gecko, not better or significantly worse.
In fact. Mozilla rely more in Google. If i wasn’t mistaken 90% of their money came from Google and they rely Google safebrowsing wherein it exposes your IP to Google
I mean… I’ve been using Firefox since Google silo’d all log-ins together.
On the other hand, search.brave.com is freaking incredible. It’s so much better than Google, Bing or DDG at this point, it’s shocking. I switched a couple weeks ago and it’s surreal to see so many usable, useful results on the first page again.
FYI every browser on iOS has to use webkit under the hood as per crapple’s diktat, it’s just a fork of safari like PC brave is a fork of chromium, eve Firefox on iOS uses webkit AFAIK
Why would people switch to a browser in brave that tries to sell you some crypto currency and has its own ad network? Even if you want to use a chromium based browser because of issues with Firefox, there’s much better available out there.
They haven’t been trying to sell me anything and setting up their own ad system independent from Google is a good thing, esp. when it’s transparent and optional. Brave has its problems but force-feeding users with ads or crypto isn’t one of them.
I made the switch last month from Brave for years, back to firefox. Brave is easy more effective at blocking tablets and ads, even with ublock/adblock. You can install it and just start using a cleaner web, and it’s really easy to customize gow much of an effect the sanitization is. I defended a lot of what Brave did in the early days, because what I was hearing from developers is that they were trying to monetize it in anyway possible that maintained the privacy of the user, and I understand that ethos.
It’s the years and years of missteps that finally got to me. I started to feel like I had to keep up on what they were doing to make sure nothing slipped through, and that’s not trust.
I still think they have the best ad blocking tech, it beats my pihole, it beats Firefox with extensions. It’s fast, and it displays websites reliably.
But, we do need to consider the roads we pave and the tools we use. Brenden Eich has not apologized for his donation, but at the time he did write a blog post about supporting LGBT initiatives at Mozilla and he had support from people that he worked with. He resigned because at the time there was nothing you could do to assuage an internet hate mob but resign. There is information around stating that three board members left because of his appointment, but only one actually said that,
But, we do need to consider the roads we pave and the tools we use
This is the part that every “lol just turn off the crypto crap, no problem!” responses don’t understand. There are short-term issues, and there are long-term issues. Disabling undesired stuff fixes the short-term issue. Letting Brave build up their market share, at the expense of user-first options, creates long-term problems.
Brave is terrible. But while not entirely relevant, so is DuckDuckGo. These mfs have enough money to appear in superbowl commercials lol. How can anyone trust their privacy claims when their shit is in the US and I don’t believe they’ve been audited. I suppose it’s good to find alternative results, but for privacy? Come on
The article presents almost no techical reason for Brave being bad, with the affiliate links thing being the worst offender. Don’t like the crypto stuff? Turn it off. “CEO bad” doesn’t mean much, there’re very few leaders with clean hands, if any, and the product itself works well. It’s not like Firefox doesn’t have its fair share of issues both as a product and as a company/ “foundation”
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