They do more Linux and Mac porting than any other company I know. Back in the day I believe they were actually game developer, but they seem to have become specialized in porting games specifically.

You really think that?

I mean, people are people. We do some stupid and shitty things.

Well I mean, if anyone needs to know, it’s him, right?

the issue is not only the Brave browser itself, but the owners of it.

I mean, that an issue, sure. But I gotta be honest with you, I care far more about the practicalities of the technology than the personalities behind them. So I guess that’s where we see things differently. Don’t let me get in your way on that front, if that’s what really matters to you.

I see browsers as being problematic in general right now and new solutions are needed. If you’re happy with tracking and spying at the browser level, then fine, but I’m interested in how we can put an end to that.

“Rolling your own” cryptographic system is rarely a good idea. There are countless examples of companies and governments deciding to ignore existing tested and verified standard industry tools on the basis they’re more vulnerable because they’re more well known, but that decision tends to bite them in the end because the solution they come up with has some critical vulnerabilities they didn’t notice in time. These things are easy to miss when there isn’t a whole global community of security professionals looking at the code.

Now I’ll admit that the US government could absolutely create a comparable or even superior solution if they put the right people and enough funding behind the project, no doubt. There is the question of whether or not it’s worth doing, worth the investment. If budgets are tight (because conservatives are so concerned about govt spending 🙄), I’d certainly rather they use signal than they decide to dedicate almost enough funding and develop something that almost works; that could also be disastrous.

Honestly, the best move for the government is probably to make their own app utilizing existing standards. The signal protocol is perfectly open and free, they just need their own clients. Well, that and some identity verification in the account creation process. But yeah, If they had their own app, they could design it to do some useful things, like verify all members in a group have appropriate security clearance. That might have come in handy…

So yeah, I don’t really disagree with you, they should probably be using their own system. But I think it’s easy to think that any bespoke system would inherently be superior, and that very much isn’t the case. And with that in mind I’d say it’s truly not a crazy or negligent choice to use the existing best-of-class systems off the shelf. It’s maybe not the best choice, but it’s not a bad one.

Nice strawman you got there. I think anyone with eyes can see I didn’t bring them up because most (all?) Lemmy users know Firefox and its forks exist.

It’s not a strawman, it’s the problem. You may not have mentioned it, but I didn’t think it needed mentioning, between the three companies I mentioned, they makeup 90% market share for browsers, that’s the vast majority of browsers. Are there others? Absolutely. I primarily use Firefox myself, but they’re starting to lean more toward sharing data as well… So I don’t know what let you think you have to stand in here.

That’s… Literally how browsers used to work. Netscape was a paid browser. Orion is starting to look into that model as well.

And Netscape? When was that paid? I can’t think of an era when that was paid… Was that like during the Mozilla period, when the browser sucked, or before that? Whatever, that clearly didn’t work at any rate, cause they aren’t still doing it. But I swear I used to use Netscape in the 90s, I can’t remember it being paid…

But no it would not work for browsers just because it works for Linux. Nobody needs support for a browser, so there’s no reason to pay for that. I’m sorry presenting that to you as a question meant you wouldn’t think about it.

That’s a really concise and thoughtless way to excuse Google, Microsoft and Apple for monetizing spying on every person on earth for profit.

And yes, Linux distros have a business model. I’m happy that distros found a business model through offering official support to corporations, it makes it truly free to the rest of us. It also helps that their competition is very expensive. Will that model work for a browser? What do you think?

Yes, they have some secure communications systems, but none that are safe to use on a mobile device. Signal is literally more advanced than what they’re using. It’s far from insane.

Yeah, this article was truly a fascinating read! The one thing that surprised me from Goldberg though, was that he continually questioned their use of signal. I mean, why wouldn’t they use it?

They could try to develop their own secure messaging app, but what would be the point of that when another already exists and they can verify the code is air tight because it’s open source. And, developing their own app would mean the possibility of relying on software that could contain unknown bugs or vulnerabilities.

The only safe cryptographic systems are open source ones.

It seems to me that nothing in life is free, including browsers. Yeah, free software exists, and that works fine for many kinds of software, but not browsers. Browsers are a living thing, they have to change constantly to adapt to the changing environment. Maintaining a browser takes effort, to an extent that far exceeds that of other programs, word processing, games, image editing, etc. A browser is a primary attack surface for all manner of malware and exploits. It’s web facing and it executes code provided by external sources. That last sentence should give you chills.

So all that is to say, that it is very much non trivial to maintain a browser. So it only stands to reason that maintaining it consistently won’t actually happen without some amount of compensation.

So how do you pay for a browser? Well everyone seems to agree, with ads. This method is apparently quite viable as a business. But I probably don’t have to tell you that there are a bunch of problematic aspects to it. User data collection (and resale) is probably top on the list of problems. It’s a pretty serious breach of privacy, I hope I didn’t have to convince anyone of that.

To get to my point though, Brave is the only browser I know of attempting to use a different model to support their project. They’re trying to allow people to just pay for the web themselves, rather than let advertisers pay for the web while users give up all their data. It may not be a perfect implementation, but from where I’m standing I don’t see anyone else even trying…

Correct me if I’m wrong though, i’d love to see other viable models.

Mine started as a gamer tag. I wanted something that sounded cute and unassuming, it was fun to see scrolling text announcements like “Ninja_AssassinX was killed by Coco Puff’s rail gun”.

I’ve played a lot of post apocalyptic video games, lately those experiences are beginning to feel more relevant than I ever wanted… But across all of them, one constant has always remained true: slavers are kill on sight.

Ah, that makes some sense. Seems like a problem that really needs to be addressed, the last thing we need is more barriers (especially financial ones) to the legal process. We need to be encouraging people to claim all the rights and representation that they’re deserved.

Well my users are my family and close friends, so I just do care about them… Some of them use a smart TV app to access Plex, which is pretty convenient as it doesn’t even require additional devices or remote controls.

The fact is, as the family tech guy I spend a lot of my effort trying to make tech as easy to use for everyone as possible. And more than anything else, making things intuitive and simple is what eliminates the most amount of hassle for me.

I gotta be honest, when I look at the problem pragmatically, it’ll be a lot easier to pay $20 a year than to switch to jellyfin and get all my users to figure out how to install clients and make it work for them.

I’m already at the point in my life where my primary concern is making things work smoothly, and if I need to throw money at something to make it work smoothly, the choice is a no brainer. (At least for some values of “money”)

Yeah, that second lawyer took one hell of a gamble. I see where they were coming from, but those are extremely risky dice to roll… And now their client is in more trouble than ever… Critical failure.

And the first lawyer… I have nothing to say, what a dumbass.

The article says she’s a “legal permanent us resident”. It’s a little weird that she’s been living in the US for 37 years and never got her citizenship. I wonder what that’s about.

Does anyone know what other nations fall into this “sensitive” classification?

Edit: I did some googling myself and here’s the list below. (The short version is: Russia and their allies, China and their allies, and broadly the middle east. Weirdly, also Taiwan)

• Algeria
  

• Armenia
  

• Azerbajan
  

• Belarus
  

• China (PRC)
  

• Cuba
  

• Georgia
  

• Hong Kong
  

• India
  

• Iran
  

• Iraq
  

• Israel
  

• Kazakhstan
  

• Korea (North)
  

• Kyrgyzstan
  

• Libya
  

• Macau
  

• Moldova
  

• Pakistan
  

• Russia
  

• Sudan
  

• Syria
  

• Taiwan
  

• Tajikistan
  

• Turkmenistan
  

• Ukraine
  

• Uzbekistan
  

I realize that’s a long list, I don’t know, should I put that in a or code block or spoiler tag?

I’ve been playing a lot of terraria with my son recently, it’s been a lot of fun going back to it. Coincidentally, I just saw the trailer for Noita for the first time last night, and thought “woah, that looks cool as hell…”

Best answer.