18 ms·

Goodbye Brave

164 points by amrrs 5y ago

hereforphone 5y ago
I switched from Firefox and I've been happy so far. It's not perfect, but not as bad as the others. As others have said here be careful what extensions you install. I also don't sign up for sync, or password manager, or any of that stuff as I don't trust it enough on any browser. Several months into Brave and I have no urge to turn back yet.
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  Happy to hear that you're enjoying Brave. Regarding your concerns over Sync, we publish details on our Brave Sync works at https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Brave-Sync-v2 https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Brave-Sync-v2. Good that you're cautious though :) Sampson (Brave Team)
therios 5y ago
This is a use case on how social media was a mistake. A random guy has issues installing some extension, doesn't know how browsers work and somehow, due to algorithms, got his inane opinion amplified and here we are debating Brave. All because of yet another ignorant opinion that somehow is considered authoritative...
krisrm 5y ago
Seems a little ironic to call out a piece of software whose literal job it is to connect to the internet for... Connecting to the internet. Tongue in cheek aside, I don't know much about Brave - is there some specific reason that it needs an always-on server to call home to?
- thayne 5y ago
  Perhaps a little ironic, but very valid. You shouldn't have to connect to brave servers to be able to go to your search engine, email,local network service, etc.
  - fastball 5y ago
    Right but that's not what happened. The author needed to be able to connect to Brave's servers in order to install an extension to the browser from the chrome web store, to where Brave is proxying requests.
- rmbyrro 5y ago
  The issue isn't that it requires internet connection, obviously, but that it requires connection to a specific IP (Brave server) before you can use some features.
  - sh4un 5y ago
    Make sense if they have a proxy to avoid direct Google contact.
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  The user attempted to install an extension; this results in a request to Google's Servers (which Brave proxies to prevent users from making unintended contact with Google). If Brave's proxy happened to return a 401 response (requesting authentication), then the user would see the "Access Denied" message shown in their screenshot. It's also possible that this message could have come from Google's own server (via the Brave proxy). It's not possible to tell from the data available. We're looking into this from our end, to see if there were any recent proxy-interruptions which might explain the user's experience. Sampson (Brave Team)
  - jonathansampson 5y ago
    Resolved: User had a very out-of-date build of Brave. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29471236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29471236 for more details.
encryptluks2 5y ago
The thing I don't understand about Brave users is that they are essentially using Chromium with a bunch of extra bloat added. Wouldn't it make more sense to just use Chromium with the extensions that you want and need?
- rjzzleep 5y ago
  It has a pretty good adblocker integrated, which puts it ahead of chromium in terms of ad blocking. you can use the engine outside of browsers as well. It also has a decent working sync that doesn't require google services if you don't use their google services. It used to be worse, when it was still CEF based.
- udbhavs 5y ago
  Chrome does not block ads on mobile or support extensions that can
- deadalus 5y ago
  Ungoogled Chromium = no auto-updates, extensions hassle, few users so you can be fingerprinted
  - junon 5y ago
    The extension hassle is fixed now. I'm less concerned about fingerprinting, most people can be fingerprinted these days. Too many APIs available in browsers. I'm more concerned with the constant phoning home that Chrome does.
- schleck8 5y ago
  It does include some hardening against fingerprinting. In contrast to Ungoogled Chromium it's properly compiled and can be updated easily.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  uBo has limitations on chromium which I assume can be worked around by a browser but not the extension: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
sombremesa 5y ago
Weird that this person doesn’t even consider Firefox, the only browser that lets you have Adblock and other addons on mobile (but not on iOS, sadly).
- weq 5y ago
  I switched to firefox after NEVER using it before when google started forcefully logging me in. Honestly, i havnt missed it all. Firefox on mobile is awesome - plugins work! Plus, no longer does google know where i am anymore. Its ability to track and suggest ads to me is pathetic.
  - chii 5y ago
    > no longer does google know where i am anymore i doubt it - they probably know just as much from extrapolation off other data points, even if the browser data point is gone.
  - echelon 5y ago
    My one gripe about Firefox mobile is that "pull down to refresh" and other common gestures don't work. Unless I'm missing something, there aren't settings available to enable this. Is this some kind of patented behavior that Mozilla is afraid to implement?
    - rmbyrro 5y ago
      That we have to worry whether "pull down" is patented shows how far the patent system is from fulfilling its promise.
      - echelon 5y ago
        I was curious, so I just looked it up. "pull down to refresh" is patented by Twitter: https://www.theverge.com/2013/5/21/4350826/twitter-pull-to-refresh-patent-innovators-patent-agreement-announced https://www.theverge.com/2013/5/21/4350826/twitter-pull-to-r... And Firefox implements the feature in Nightly (this is an old thread, so perhaps it has already landed in mainline) : https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/nzfcak/why_do_we_not_have_pull_to_refresh_on_firefox/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/nzfcak/why_do_we_n...
schleck8 5y ago
I think this is due to Brave proxying some Google requests through their own servers, because otherwise the same people would complain that a Google server is being contacted. > I am thinking of going back to [Chromium] with the usual extensions like Ghostery, AdBlock+ > [Brave's] amazing ad-blocking and tracker protection If you just need an adblocker, sure. At this point everone should have heard of uBlock Origin.
- i13e 5y ago
  Unfortunately I still see too many people use Adblock plus and the like which leads me to believe ublock origin lacks some sort of name or brand recognition with your average user
  - sofixa 5y ago
    I think ABP+ was just first to mass market penetration, and people still associate it - ad blocker -> ad block plus.
    - i13e 5y ago
      ABP's purpose is in its name. If a layperson only knew uBO by it's name best case they'd be confused and worst case they'd think it's malware (even though it's phenomenal)
  - ChainOfFools 5y ago
    on a fresh install of FF, if I click on extensions it shows AdBlock± as the first in a list of suggested add-ons. Also in that list is Ghostery. no sign of UBlock Pay for placement?
    - 0xdeadb00f 5y ago
      I haven't looked at the recommended add-on page for a while but I do recall ublock being on there at one point.
  - akvadrako 5y ago
cmeacham98 5y ago
Hi author, if you're here on HN please consider ditching sketchy extensions like Ghostery (sells your user data) and Adblock+ (participates in paid bypass of "acceptable ads" program) for the open-source and user-focused uBlock Origin (https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock). Also, if you haven't tried Firefox since the quantum days come back and give it another try.
- NmAmDa 5y ago
  uBlock origin put Ghostery lite in list of good replacement for people on safari so I'm confused now. https://github.com/el1t/uBlock-Safari/issues/158 https://github.com/el1t/uBlock-Safari/issues/158
  - cmeacham98 5y ago
    uBlock for Safari is run by some mostly unrelated third party, and what you linked specifically is an issue by "ghost".
    - DHowett 5y ago
      “ghost” is GitHub’s deleted user placeholder, not somebody affiliated with Ghostery.
      - cmeacham98 5y ago
        I wasn't intending to imply it is (tbh I internalized that as common knowledge), my intended point is the issue with this Ghostery recommendation was created by some random unknown and presumably unrelated Github user.
        julius_deane 5y ago
        impact > intent You are not being attacked by parent. Parent is merely pointing out the difference so other users are aware of it. You could just thank them for the clarification and move on.
kome 5y ago
I cannot understand why technically savvy people keep using spywares like Brave (https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/brave.html https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/brave.html) or Chrome (https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/chrome.html https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/chrome.html) when we have better alternatives such as Vivaldi (https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/vivaldi.html https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/vivaldi.html) or Firefox (https://spyware.neocities.org/guides/firefox.html https://spyware.neocities.org/guides/firefox.html)
- iszomer 5y ago
  Got conned by BAT and have a growing sentiment that by continuing to use Brave, I'm enabling the company to make back the advertising earnings promised; I refuse to do KYC to redeem them.
  - jonathansampson 5y ago
    KYC is only required (by law, with which Brave must comply) for those wishing to cash-out (or deposit their own) BAT (into or out of the Rewards Wallet). No KYC is required for the use of Brave's general-purpose "Brave Wallet". Also, no KYC is required for users who wish to earn BAT (via Brave's privacy-respecting Ads) and use said BAT to support content creators. Sampson (Brave Team)
- opan 5y ago
  Isn't Vivaldi proprietary? I would cross it off the list as well. Then maybe add qutebrowser, nyxt, and ungoogled-chromium.
  - foxrider 5y ago
    While it is technically proprietary I'll ask you to read their statement [0] on the matter. The absolute majority of the code base is open. [0]: https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-browser-open-source/ https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-browser-open-source/
    - 5y ago
shmerl 5y ago
Hello, Firefox.
keyle 5y ago
It's so bad lately that I'm working on my own web browser in my free time (off WebKit, won't be big, or public and will be a pile of hacks) but at least I won't rely on this mess.
- donkarma 5y ago
  what are you doing in terms of javascript?
- hosteur 5y ago
  Please consider making it public FLOSS. Even if a bunch of hacks. We need more diversity in this area.
elias94 5y ago
Why not Firefox?
KingOfCoders 5y ago
I left Brave when I thought the ad blocking got worse and I'm no back with FF which to me has the same protection but better progress.
yosito 5y ago
Brave on Android requires Google Play Services. So that's a big no for me.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jptech 5y ago
  Will it not work without it?
  - yosito 5y ago
    https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/15344 https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/15344
- jcynix 5y ago
  On F-Droid there's a version of DuckDuckGo's browser available. Suits me.
  - jmnicolas 5y ago
    I use Bromite, it's very good at ad blocking by default (no add-ons necessary) and it's not affiliated to anyone (AFAIK).
  - yosito 5y ago
    I use Firefox.
i13e 5y ago
This title seems a little clickbaity to be honest and I'm not sure how accurate the author's portrayal of Brave's server side is. Based on intuition I imagine the inability to install extensions has something to do with Chrome's locked down web store forcing Brave to make it's server-side act as a middle man to the chrome web to download and install extensions. Therefore this would be a google/chromium/intentional design flaw and consequence of prioritizing UI/Security over simplicity. If someone understands this better feel free to explain below.
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  The problem is definitely a bit more complicated. While it's possible this issue did not involve an issue with Brave at all, it's also possible that it did. The behavior observed (inferring from the screenshot) suggests the user's access to this extension was denied at the time. A 401 response (Unauthorized) from Brave's proxy-endpoint (go-updater.brave.com in this case, I believe) would result in this message being shown. It is entirely possible the user happened to catch a rare, transient issue with our proxy. Sampson (Brave Team) Brave proxies Google endpoints to prevent users from making unintended contact with Google.
  - jonathansampson 5y ago
    Resolved: User had a very out-of-date build of Brave. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29471236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29471236 for more details.
  - i13e 5y ago
    Thanks for the explanation Sampson! I love reading your internals explainers for Brave on HN and I really appreciate how active your team is when it comes to providing information to end users.
hammock 5y ago
Does Chromium track you as much as Chrome does?
- junon 5y ago
  No. But it still does. Look up "ungoogled chromium".
reflexe 5y ago
Brave is a bit shady with its hard coded ad whitelist. That does not scream "user trust".
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  There is no hard-coded ad whitelist. This is misreporting from years ago, based on an individuals confusion over a filename. Brave does not whitelist any third-party ads or trackers. Sampson (Brave Team)
  - xtracto 5y ago
    Correct me if I am wrong but Brave doesn't block ads in Google search results [1]. Wouldn't that be part of an ads whitelist? [1] https://i.ibb.co/nPfpdP7/image.png https://i.ibb.co/nPfpdP7/image.png
    - jonathansampson 5y ago
      By default, Brave tends to leave first-party advertising alone. As such, Google ads on Google sites aren't usually blocked in Brave. Google Ads on non-Google sites are, since they are one of the primary means by which user-data is harvested across the Web. We believe that you should have the right to run ads on your own domain(s). That said, Brave offers an 'Aggressive' mode (via the shields) which will go even further than our default behavior, and blocking numerous ads and other elements even when they belong to the domain being visited.
      - freediver 5y ago
        > By default, Brave tends to leave first-party advertising alone. Curious why? Do you think that ads in Google search are good for the user and not privacy-invading? Those ads account for most of Google's revenue. Do you not have a problem with claiming this on the homepage: "Brave blocks all creepy ads from every website by default." when this is clearly not the case? Or Brave does not consider Google a part of the "big tech" it is "helping to ditch"?
growt 5y ago
For me brave mobile was the only usable browser on android because it has a bottom tab bar. I don’t know why chrome itself ditched it, does nobody at Google have a >6 inch phone? Then I discovered edge on android and it is really good (if you can live with the fact that it is from Microsoft). Now I switched to iOS and safari has bottom navigation by default.
- rmbyrro 5y ago
  Microsoft has changed a lot. They should probably have changed their name, at least for dev-related stuff. I think maybe you have a 1990's era Microsoft view?
  - istjohn 5y ago
    Windows is full of ads. They are pushing Edge on users who select other browsers as default. Have they really changed?
    - rmbyrro 5y ago
      I don't like Edge, but the comment suggests one may like the product and only "if you can live with the fact that it is from Microsoft" one could use it. My suspicion is that this sort of comment is motivated by a 1990's view of Microsoft. They much different company now, for sure. I'd say Apple did something worse than ads with the image scanning privacy invasion. Even retroactive in time. This is no go for me. But many are OK with this sort of disrespect by Apple while pointing fingers on others like MS? I don't think it's a good line of thought...
- Markoff 5y ago
  Kiwi Browser has bottom tab bar I think and it has extensions unlike any other Chromium Android browser (let's ignore their useless implementation in Yandex and some other hacky ungoogled browser)
gtsop 5y ago
For people discussing alternatives, consider LibreWolf. It is firefox with the privacy nob turned to 11 out of the box, have been daily driving it for a few months now without any issues. https://librewolf.net/ https://librewolf.net/
- maccolgan 5y ago
  Don't forget to enable IPv6 and WebRTC.
  - gtsop 5y ago
    As far as I am aware ipv6 and webrtc are privacy regressions, so one should enable them only if necessary.
    - maccolgan 5y ago
      How is IPv6, a protocol that is superior to the IPv4 mess we have come up with to cope with the fact that 32 bits aren't enough to represent each unique computer, a privacy regression? Is the end-to-end principle of the internet a privacy regression too?
      - gtsop 5y ago
        IPv6 enables insane precission of device tracking. A side effect of not having enough ipv4 addresses and using NAT is that all your home devices let's say, go out on the internet using only a single IP address. Also, the geo-location accuracy using ipv4 is at the level of a city. With ipv6 you can get to a geolocation accuracy of a building block and confidently target individual devices within ones home network since they will use unique ipv6 addresses. Surely, privacy minded people will find a way around those, but out of the box ipv6 is a privacy regression for the reasons listed above
        maccolgan 5y ago
        >IPv6 enables insane precission of device tracking. A side effect of not having enough ipv4 addresses and using NAT is that all your home devices let's say, go out on the internet using only a single IP address Use random addresses, no further words needed. If you are actually that paranoid, feel free to use stateless translation to change the host part of the IP. >Also, the geo-location accuracy using ipv4 is at the level of a city. With ipv6 you can get to a geolocation accuracy of a building block and confidently target individual devices within ones home network since they will use Unless your ISP is announcing unique /48s of individual building block, no. If your home router gets a static IPv4 address, the same problem prevails, not relevant. >Surely, privacy minded people will find a way around those, but out of the box ipv6 is a privacy regression for the reasons listed above Out of the box IPv6 offers the same privacy regressions as the original IPv4 before we fucked it to high hell. NAPT is a royal pain for any P2P protocol.
newscracker 5y ago
Emphasis mine in the below quote: > "Arunmozhi is a freelance programmer and an open-source enthusiast." I'm surprised, shocked and dumfounded that Firefox is not even mentioned while Vivaldi and Chromium are being considered. For someone who put up with Brave for years and its other issues, it really seems strange that Firefox is not in consideration.
- bavxo 5y ago
  He’s an open source enthusiast, not an idiot.
  - DonHopkins 5y ago
    You're a GamerGate Enthusiast, an AntiVaxer, a Climate Change Denier, a Troll, and an Idiot.
    - bavxo 5y ago
      After sinking so many hours into the sims 1, being insulted by its main programmer is probably the biggest honour I’ll ever receive. Thanks.
- aero-glide2 5y ago
  I have two problems with Firefox - I use "print to pdf" often and Chromium renders that more accurately. Some sites are better supported on Chromium. Other than these two, Firefox is very good. (On the other hand, Firefox mobile is quite slow).
  - leshenka 5y ago
    > Some sites are better supported on Chromium This is "self eating snake" type situation. Many webdevs ignore Firefox because of its market share and this yields worse support. People don't like "worse support" and use it as argument (excuse) for using Chrome. However I've only noticed problems in Firefox with various "chrome experiments" and WebGL performance. Oh and sometimes it's hanging and taking too long to load some source maps on large projects.
richardfey 5y ago
I think any other browser would also need a server with the hosted extension packages, so the point here is misguided: you did not get an error related to Brave servers while *not* using Brave services.
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  Generally speaking, other Chromium-based browsers simply load the CRX (extension file) directly from Google's server. This puts the user's device in direct contact with the advertising and data-harvesting giant. In Brave's case, we proxy the requests to prevent direct contact. As such, when a user attempts to install an extension in Brave, the browser sends the request through a *.brave.com endpoint, which relays it to Google, and returns the CRX (or other response). In the author's case, they may have sent an invalid request to Brave's proxy endpoint (e.g. missing or invalid service key). This can happen when you're using an out-of-date build of the browser. It's not clear to us at this time what caused the "Access Denied" error, but we know that a missing/invalid key could yield these results. Sampson (Brave Team)
  - jonathansampson 5y ago
    Resolved: User had a very out-of-date build of Brave. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29471236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29471236 for more details.
  - richardfey 5y ago
    Sure, but my point is that you cannot complain about the extension store being down while...trying to use the extension store. Nothing has a SLA of 100% (I know that this was not due to downtime, but the possibility remains). It would be different if he was trying to visit www.archive.org and got an error from www.brave.com
bbbobbb 5y ago
Brave is the only browser on my iPad that blocks majority of ads. I have went as far as try to pay for ad blockers in the app store (this is my first and last apple device so it is a weird concept for me). If I could just install unblock origin or find system wide adblocker then I would use that instead
- aero-glide2 5y ago
  Does iPad have something similar to DNS66?
  - schleck8 5y ago
    You could try the VPN workaround to set up a DNS level blocker, I'm pretty sure it works with NextDNS' app.
cdmckay 5y ago
Recently made the same switch. I went back to Firefox and haven’t looked back.
aero-glide2 5y ago
I love Brave, but not the crypto stuff. Thankfully its easy to turn off. Here are the steps I follow after installing Brave browser : https://gist.github.com/Sgt-Miller/96277273dab6422bb913629679b54657 https://gist.github.com/Sgt-Miller/96277273dab6422bb91362967... Hope the backend issue mentioned gets fixed. Tweet to Brenden, he's always quick to respond.
fastball 5y ago
Everyone wants to talk the respective merits of Brave vs Firefox vs ____, but I just want to talk about how the post itself is dumb. You're installing an extension from a web store. Of course it doesn't work if there is a problem with the backend servers. Where do you expect to get the extension from?
- leodriesch 5y ago
  As far as I understood the backend issue was on Braves end, while the Chrome Web Store was fine. So installing the extension worked in Chrome, but not in Brave, because they had some backend problems, while the installing of an extension should not need the Brave servers at all.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - jonathansampson 5y ago
    Brave proxies Google-endpoints to prevent users from unintentionally making contact with Google servers. If our proxy receives a bad request, or has some other unlikely, transient issue, it will respond with a 403 Status (which results in the "Access Denied" message being displayed). In this instance, the user may have been on an out-of-date build of Brave; it's not clear from the report. Sampson (Brave Team)
    - jonathansampson 5y ago
      Resolved: User had a very out-of-date build of Brave. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29471236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29471236 for more details.
- jacksonkmarley 5y ago
  Must admit this was my question as well. It seemed from the post that the browser was still working but the extensions couldn't be installed. Not ideal but seems like a weird response. Is the point that there should be a separate source of extension packages or something?
silisili 5y ago
I posted here on HN asking if Brave mobile was broken for anyone else one night, for little response. My wife and I both use Brave, and it just hung at startup. Unsatisfied, I checked the Reddit sub the next day, and saw tons of complaints. Apparently if the Brave backend is down, it won't even launch. This is a huge problem that makes me entirely skeptical of not only the browser, but that anyone in charge has any idea of what they are doing. Currently testing alternatives...
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  No service outage should ever cause the application itself to be unusable. Which mobile platform are you using? If the browser cannot successfully contact our backend services (for things like update checks, or refreshing its internal list of known-malicious URLs to avoid) then it will simply carry-on and attempt those requests at a later point. Sampson (Brave Team)
- petemill 5y ago
  Brave team member here. This was not a server issue but was a daylight savings time bug.
  - silisili 5y ago
    Thank you Pete. Is there a link or can you share more? Why would a DST bug prevent an app from opening at all?
    - jonathansampson 5y ago
      Great question! Dates and times are one of the most loathed obstacles in writing software that needs to work a particular way across millions of devices situated all across the globe in different regions and time zones. In our case, we had a bit of code that aimed to measure the time until midnight/tomorrow. But when clocks change at midnight (jumping forward or backward), you can wind up with days that appear to be longer than 24 hours in length. And when a day is more than ~24hr in length, you wind up with unexpected answers to seemingly simple math equations. A bit of logic, responsible for setting up a timer, wound up scheduling numerous timers when our 'How long until tomorrow' code began returning negative numbers. That set of unintended timers locked-up the application itself. You can see our issue for the behavior here: https://github.com/brave/brave-core/pull/11030 https://github.com/brave/brave-core/pull/11030. For 10 minutes of anxiety, check out 'The Problem of Time & Timezones' from Tom Scott of Computerphile: https://youtu.be/-5wpm-gesOY https://youtu.be/-5wpm-gesOY. It's a fantastic summary of the issues programmers face when dealing with time :) Sampson (Brave Team)
MrDresden 5y ago
I've never used Brave (simply because I really like Firefox as my daily driver) so I can't speak to the qualities. But it seems ad blocking is always mentioned as a feature. Might I recommend trying piHole at the intake into your homes. Instead of relying on the application doing filtering, simply do it for the whole network (yes, caveats apply).
iJohnDoe 5y ago
All these posts mentioning Firefox. If anyone has read HN for any length of time, then you’ll know all the shady stuff Mozilla/Firefox has done. And not just hand waving “crypto” stuff that Brave gets accused of doing, but truly slimeball stuff. Firefox and Normandy, when the certificate expired, it also disabled NoScript in the Tor browser which disabled some security. Might not be a coincidence in the attempt to expose some targets. Using Tor. Their horrible start page that pushes political agendas, and gets reimplemented even when you have specified your tab and start page. Pushing their VPN when you launch Firefox. The list goes on and on that is pretty embarrassing, that none of the other browsers even come close to that level of behavior.
- kafkaIncarnate 5y ago
  A certificate expiration to disable tor browser is some serious tinfoil hat stuff. Certificate duration is usually extremely long, so they would have to have been in some long-con with an intelligence agency or something. I haven't noticed their start page because I always disable it, but if they have some sort of news feeds on it then anyone nowadays would call it something or other. A company that claims to support privacy launching a VPN service to support their development? Yeah so shady, they should have started a marketing company instead like Chrome! /s
Markoff 5y ago
Hah, article lists exactly two options I would suggest - Chromium and Vivaldi, I just switched last week from Edge to Vivaldi. Tried for a moment Brave, but immediately ditched it since you can't even customize address bar or toolbar. Switched to Edge maybe last year after years with Firefox, but I was fed up with its hostile developers, who care more about their nerdy features than actually what users want, which is why Firefox declined into irrelevance. edit: also get Kiwi Browser if you are using Android, the best Android browser, one of very few Chromium browsers with proper extensions support
iClLCsqJha 5y ago
Somehow all these browsers doesn't appeal as much as Mozilla/FF, since beginning. Never made a switch. If i were forced to use GOOG/MSFT stuff, just use it once and uninstall has been the pattern. Never looked back.
oakfr 5y ago
This article seems to spawn many threads on online advertising, but the initial comment from the author seems to be more around a system/architecture issue (i.e. why should a browser require backend servers). I am writing this comment here to see what people think about this question specifically.
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  Brave proxies Google endpoints (see https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-Chromium-(features-we-disable-or-remove)#services-we-proxy-through-brave-servers https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-... for a list). This is to prevent users from making unintended contact with Google. This particular error ("Access Denied") encountered by the author could be from Google, but could also be from a transient issue with the Brave proxy serving a 401 response (or similar). Sampson (Brave Team)
  - oakfr 5y ago
    Thank you for your reply!
  - jonathansampson 5y ago
    Resolved: User had a very out-of-date build of Brave. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29471236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29471236 for more details.
mclightning 5y ago
I am still using Brave, but I am immensely bothered by them forcing us into using their own wallets (out of deals they make, None uses Uphold! except forced by Brave) instead of any decentralized option. Then constant bugs when paying out BAT rewards, causing you to lose them, but never refunds you.
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  Uphold (and Gemini) are required only for those who wish to KYC. Brave cannot act as a funnel for unchecked funds between large advertisers (e.g. Walmart, Amazon, Coinbase, etc.) and anonymous external wallets. If a user wishes to "cash out," Brave must comply with relevant AML laws and regulations. Note, this requirement only exists for uses who wish to "cash out" or deposit their own BAT, and only for the Brave Rewards wallet (Brave Wallet, a general purpose wallet in the browser, does not have any such requirement). I'm sorry to hear that you experienced an issue with the distribution of BAT rewards; I'd be happy to assist and see to it that you receive all rewards for which you are rightly owed. If you have a Twitter account, send a DM to @BraveSampson to proceed. Sampson (Brave Team)
  - mclightning 5y ago
    Hmm I understand. Some launchpads are using external KYC systems allowing for verification while using Metamask. I wish something like that would be possible. Lost funds weren't much to bother with. It was just, I had disabled "automatically pay to creators" option on all my devices, but I saw a transaction go out. Then I checked on reddit, and some other people had similar issues. I will still keep using Brave, no worries. I think it is a good project nevertheless. My complaints are more just small pet-peeves, no biggie. Keep up the good work. Thanks
    - jonathansampson 5y ago
      Which external KYC options do you use and enjoy? I'd be more than happy to take a look and discuss them with our team for consideration. Regarding lost funds, the only way Brave should ever make an automatic contribution when auto-contribute is disabled is if the contribution were queued up prior to disabling auto-contribute. You can check brave://rewards-internals/ (specifically the Contributions and Event Logs tabs) to compare timestamps to see if a contribution was processed after you disabled auto-contribute. Happy to help claw-back any rewards lost to a bug (if that be the case). Whatever I can do to improve your experience with Brave; just let me know :)
justshowpost 5y ago
Anecdote-tier remark: Try to edit "search engine definitions" which Mozilla pushes to your Firefox deployment when they just discovered who are you to kill intrusive and thin affiliate entries and then allow Firefox to update itself to see it restores their monetization stuff. PS: I don't get why that tweet about making tea is relevant at all.
Overtonwindow 5y ago
I generally believed Brave was a good idea, but it's performance and stability leaves a lot lacking. Instability in particular made it unusable at times, but figuring out why usually went back to ads failing to load. If you are blocking an ad, could a website react to that by slowing, or disrupting your connection?
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  Are you able to share examples of sites which aren't loading well in Brave? We'd be happy to take a closer look and see what can be done. To your question though, it's technically possible for a site to throttle bandwidth for users who are blocking ads, but this would be a complicated and extremely error-prone process. It would likely result in far too many false-positives to be considered by any major site. Not to mention, it's entirely possible to make a site think an ad has loaded when it fact it has not (Brave does this in some cases). Sampson (Brave Team)
throwawaybutwhy 5y ago
Yeah, let's hop on the cancel train with knee jerk accusations amplified by trigger happy crowds. Especially when Manifest V3 is around the corner. I hope Brave folks will be brave enough to keep Manifest V2 / uBO running.
jonathansampson 5y ago
The author was able to confirm (see https://arunmozhi.in/2021/12/06/goodbye-brave/comment-page-1/#comment-908 https://arunmozhi.in/2021/12/06/goodbye-brave/comment-page-1...) that they had been using version 1.18.77 of Brave (released nearly one year ago in December of 2020). This version of Brave did not contain service-keys for authentication with the proxy-server which shields users from unintended contact with Google. As a result, when Brave began to enforce key-requirements for requests (a recent change), this out-of-date build of Brave could no longer install extensions (since it could not utilize the proxy service). Many thanks to the author for diligently assisting with this investigation. Sampson (Brave Team)

164 points by amrrs 5y ago

I switched from Firefox and I've been happy so far. It's not perfect, but not as bad as the others. As others have said here be careful what extensions you install. I also don't sign up for sync, or password manager, or any of that stuff as I don't trust it enough on any browser. Several months into Brave and I have no urge to turn back yet.

jonathansampson 5y ago
Happy to hear that you're enjoying Brave. Regarding your concerns over Sync, we publish details on our Brave Sync works at https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Brave-Sync-v2 https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Brave-Sync-v2. Good that you're cautious though :) Sampson (Brave Team)

therios 5y ago

This is a use case on how social media was a mistake. A random guy has issues installing some extension, doesn't know how browsers work and somehow, due to algorithms, got his inane opinion amplified and here we are debating Brave. All because of yet another ignorant opinion that somehow is considered authoritative...

krisrm 5y ago

Seems a little ironic to call out a piece of software whose literal job it is to connect to the internet for... Connecting to the internet. Tongue in cheek aside, I don't know much about Brave - is there some specific reason that it needs an always-on server to call home to?

thayne 5y ago
Perhaps a little ironic, but very valid. You shouldn't have to connect to brave servers to be able to go to your search engine, email,local network service, etc.
- fastball 5y ago
  Right but that's not what happened. The author needed to be able to connect to Brave's servers in order to install an extension to the browser from the chrome web store, to where Brave is proxying requests.
rmbyrro 5y ago
The issue isn't that it requires internet connection, obviously, but that it requires connection to a specific IP (Brave server) before you can use some features.
- sh4un 5y ago
  Make sense if they have a proxy to avoid direct Google contact.
jonathansampson 5y ago
The user attempted to install an extension; this results in a request to Google's Servers (which Brave proxies to prevent users from making unintended contact with Google). If Brave's proxy happened to return a 401 response (requesting authentication), then the user would see the "Access Denied" message shown in their screenshot. It's also possible that this message could have come from Google's own server (via the Brave proxy). It's not possible to tell from the data available. We're looking into this from our end, to see if there were any recent proxy-interruptions which might explain the user's experience. Sampson (Brave Team)
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  Resolved: User had a very out-of-date build of Brave. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29471236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29471236 for more details.

encryptluks2 5y ago

The thing I don't understand about Brave users is that they are essentially using Chromium with a bunch of extra bloat added. Wouldn't it make more sense to just use Chromium with the extensions that you want and need?

rjzzleep 5y ago
It has a pretty good adblocker integrated, which puts it ahead of chromium in terms of ad blocking. you can use the engine outside of browsers as well. It also has a decent working sync that doesn't require google services if you don't use their google services. It used to be worse, when it was still CEF based.
udbhavs 5y ago
Chrome does not block ads on mobile or support extensions that can
deadalus 5y ago
Ungoogled Chromium = no auto-updates, extensions hassle, few users so you can be fingerprinted
- junon 5y ago
  The extension hassle is fixed now. I'm less concerned about fingerprinting, most people can be fingerprinted these days. Too many APIs available in browsers. I'm more concerned with the constant phoning home that Chrome does.
schleck8 5y ago
It does include some hardening against fingerprinting. In contrast to Ungoogled Chromium it's properly compiled and can be updated easily.
yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
uBo has limitations on chromium which I assume can be worked around by a browser but not the extension: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...

sombremesa 5y ago

Weird that this person doesn’t even consider Firefox, the only browser that lets you have Adblock and other addons on mobile (but not on iOS, sadly).

weq 5y ago
I switched to firefox after NEVER using it before when google started forcefully logging me in. Honestly, i havnt missed it all. Firefox on mobile is awesome - plugins work! Plus, no longer does google know where i am anymore. Its ability to track and suggest ads to me is pathetic.
- chii 5y ago
  > no longer does google know where i am anymore i doubt it - they probably know just as much from extrapolation off other data points, even if the browser data point is gone.
- echelon 5y ago
  My one gripe about Firefox mobile is that "pull down to refresh" and other common gestures don't work. Unless I'm missing something, there aren't settings available to enable this. Is this some kind of patented behavior that Mozilla is afraid to implement?
  - rmbyrro 5y ago
    That we have to worry whether "pull down" is patented shows how far the patent system is from fulfilling its promise.
    - echelon 5y ago
      I was curious, so I just looked it up. "pull down to refresh" is patented by Twitter: https://www.theverge.com/2013/5/21/4350826/twitter-pull-to-refresh-patent-innovators-patent-agreement-announced https://www.theverge.com/2013/5/21/4350826/twitter-pull-to-r... And Firefox implements the feature in Nightly (this is an old thread, so perhaps it has already landed in mainline) : https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/nzfcak/why_do_we_not_have_pull_to_refresh_on_firefox/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/nzfcak/why_do_we_n...

schleck8 5y ago

I think this is due to Brave proxying some Google requests through their own servers, because otherwise the same people would complain that a Google server is being contacted. > I am thinking of going back to [Chromium] with the usual extensions like Ghostery, AdBlock+ > [Brave's] amazing ad-blocking and tracker protection If you just need an adblocker, sure. At this point everone should have heard of uBlock Origin.

i13e 5y ago
Unfortunately I still see too many people use Adblock plus and the like which leads me to believe ublock origin lacks some sort of name or brand recognition with your average user
- sofixa 5y ago
  I think ABP+ was just first to mass market penetration, and people still associate it - ad blocker -> ad block plus.
  - i13e 5y ago
    ABP's purpose is in its name. If a layperson only knew uBO by it's name best case they'd be confused and worst case they'd think it's malware (even though it's phenomenal)
- ChainOfFools 5y ago
  on a fresh install of FF, if I click on extensions it shows AdBlock± as the first in a list of suggested add-ons. Also in that list is Ghostery. no sign of UBlock Pay for placement?
  - 0xdeadb00f 5y ago
    I haven't looked at the recommended add-on page for a while but I do recall ublock being on there at one point.
- akvadrako 5y ago

cmeacham98 5y ago

Hi author, if you're here on HN please consider ditching sketchy extensions like Ghostery (sells your user data) and Adblock+ (participates in paid bypass of "acceptable ads" program) for the open-source and user-focused uBlock Origin (https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock). Also, if you haven't tried Firefox since the quantum days come back and give it another try.

NmAmDa 5y ago
uBlock origin put Ghostery lite in list of good replacement for people on safari so I'm confused now. https://github.com/el1t/uBlock-Safari/issues/158 https://github.com/el1t/uBlock-Safari/issues/158
- cmeacham98 5y ago
  uBlock for Safari is run by some mostly unrelated third party, and what you linked specifically is an issue by "ghost".
  - DHowett 5y ago
    “ghost” is GitHub’s deleted user placeholder, not somebody affiliated with Ghostery.
    - cmeacham98 5y ago
      I wasn't intending to imply it is (tbh I internalized that as common knowledge), my intended point is the issue with this Ghostery recommendation was created by some random unknown and presumably unrelated Github user.
      - julius_deane 5y ago
        impact > intent You are not being attacked by parent. Parent is merely pointing out the difference so other users are aware of it. You could just thank them for the clarification and move on.

kome 5y ago

I cannot understand why technically savvy people keep using spywares like Brave (https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/brave.html https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/brave.html) or Chrome (https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/chrome.html https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/chrome.html) when we have better alternatives such as Vivaldi (https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/vivaldi.html https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/vivaldi.html) or Firefox (https://spyware.neocities.org/guides/firefox.html https://spyware.neocities.org/guides/firefox.html)

iszomer 5y ago
Got conned by BAT and have a growing sentiment that by continuing to use Brave, I'm enabling the company to make back the advertising earnings promised; I refuse to do KYC to redeem them.
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  KYC is only required (by law, with which Brave must comply) for those wishing to cash-out (or deposit their own) BAT (into or out of the Rewards Wallet). No KYC is required for the use of Brave's general-purpose "Brave Wallet". Also, no KYC is required for users who wish to earn BAT (via Brave's privacy-respecting Ads) and use said BAT to support content creators. Sampson (Brave Team)
opan 5y ago
Isn't Vivaldi proprietary? I would cross it off the list as well. Then maybe add qutebrowser, nyxt, and ungoogled-chromium.
- foxrider 5y ago
  While it is technically proprietary I'll ask you to read their statement [0] on the matter. The absolute majority of the code base is open. [0]: https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-browser-open-source/ https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-browser-open-source/
  - 5y ago

shmerl 5y ago

Hello, Firefox.

keyle 5y ago

It's so bad lately that I'm working on my own web browser in my free time (off WebKit, won't be big, or public and will be a pile of hacks) but at least I won't rely on this mess.

donkarma 5y ago
what are you doing in terms of javascript?
hosteur 5y ago
Please consider making it public FLOSS. Even if a bunch of hacks. We need more diversity in this area.

elias94 5y ago

Why not Firefox?

KingOfCoders 5y ago

I left Brave when I thought the ad blocking got worse and I'm no back with FF which to me has the same protection but better progress.

yosito 5y ago

Brave on Android requires Google Play Services. So that's a big no for me.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jptech 5y ago
Will it not work without it?
- yosito 5y ago
  https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/15344 https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/15344
jcynix 5y ago
On F-Droid there's a version of DuckDuckGo's browser available. Suits me.
- jmnicolas 5y ago
  I use Bromite, it's very good at ad blocking by default (no add-ons necessary) and it's not affiliated to anyone (AFAIK).
- yosito 5y ago
  I use Firefox.

i13e 5y ago

This title seems a little clickbaity to be honest and I'm not sure how accurate the author's portrayal of Brave's server side is. Based on intuition I imagine the inability to install extensions has something to do with Chrome's locked down web store forcing Brave to make it's server-side act as a middle man to the chrome web to download and install extensions. Therefore this would be a google/chromium/intentional design flaw and consequence of prioritizing UI/Security over simplicity. If someone understands this better feel free to explain below.

jonathansampson 5y ago
The problem is definitely a bit more complicated. While it's possible this issue did not involve an issue with Brave at all, it's also possible that it did. The behavior observed (inferring from the screenshot) suggests the user's access to this extension was denied at the time. A 401 response (Unauthorized) from Brave's proxy-endpoint (go-updater.brave.com in this case, I believe) would result in this message being shown. It is entirely possible the user happened to catch a rare, transient issue with our proxy. Sampson (Brave Team) Brave proxies Google endpoints to prevent users from making unintended contact with Google.
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  Resolved: User had a very out-of-date build of Brave. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29471236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29471236 for more details.
- i13e 5y ago
  Thanks for the explanation Sampson! I love reading your internals explainers for Brave on HN and I really appreciate how active your team is when it comes to providing information to end users.

hammock 5y ago

Does Chromium track you as much as Chrome does?

junon 5y ago
No. But it still does. Look up "ungoogled chromium".

reflexe 5y ago

Brave is a bit shady with its hard coded ad whitelist. That does not scream "user trust".

jonathansampson 5y ago
There is no hard-coded ad whitelist. This is misreporting from years ago, based on an individuals confusion over a filename. Brave does not whitelist any third-party ads or trackers. Sampson (Brave Team)
- xtracto 5y ago
  Correct me if I am wrong but Brave doesn't block ads in Google search results [1]. Wouldn't that be part of an ads whitelist? [1] https://i.ibb.co/nPfpdP7/image.png https://i.ibb.co/nPfpdP7/image.png
  - jonathansampson 5y ago
    By default, Brave tends to leave first-party advertising alone. As such, Google ads on Google sites aren't usually blocked in Brave. Google Ads on non-Google sites are, since they are one of the primary means by which user-data is harvested across the Web. We believe that you should have the right to run ads on your own domain(s). That said, Brave offers an 'Aggressive' mode (via the shields) which will go even further than our default behavior, and blocking numerous ads and other elements even when they belong to the domain being visited.
    - freediver 5y ago
      > By default, Brave tends to leave first-party advertising alone. Curious why? Do you think that ads in Google search are good for the user and not privacy-invading? Those ads account for most of Google's revenue. Do you not have a problem with claiming this on the homepage: "Brave blocks all creepy ads from every website by default." when this is clearly not the case? Or Brave does not consider Google a part of the "big tech" it is "helping to ditch"?

growt 5y ago

For me brave mobile was the only usable browser on android because it has a bottom tab bar. I don’t know why chrome itself ditched it, does nobody at Google have a >6 inch phone? Then I discovered edge on android and it is really good (if you can live with the fact that it is from Microsoft). Now I switched to iOS and safari has bottom navigation by default.

rmbyrro 5y ago
Microsoft has changed a lot. They should probably have changed their name, at least for dev-related stuff. I think maybe you have a 1990's era Microsoft view?
- istjohn 5y ago
  Windows is full of ads. They are pushing Edge on users who select other browsers as default. Have they really changed?
  - rmbyrro 5y ago
    I don't like Edge, but the comment suggests one may like the product and only "if you can live with the fact that it is from Microsoft" one could use it. My suspicion is that this sort of comment is motivated by a 1990's view of Microsoft. They much different company now, for sure. I'd say Apple did something worse than ads with the image scanning privacy invasion. Even retroactive in time. This is no go for me. But many are OK with this sort of disrespect by Apple while pointing fingers on others like MS? I don't think it's a good line of thought...
Markoff 5y ago
Kiwi Browser has bottom tab bar I think and it has extensions unlike any other Chromium Android browser (let's ignore their useless implementation in Yandex and some other hacky ungoogled browser)

gtsop 5y ago

For people discussing alternatives, consider LibreWolf. It is firefox with the privacy nob turned to 11 out of the box, have been daily driving it for a few months now without any issues. https://librewolf.net/ https://librewolf.net/

maccolgan 5y ago
Don't forget to enable IPv6 and WebRTC.
- gtsop 5y ago
  As far as I am aware ipv6 and webrtc are privacy regressions, so one should enable them only if necessary.
  - maccolgan 5y ago
    How is IPv6, a protocol that is superior to the IPv4 mess we have come up with to cope with the fact that 32 bits aren't enough to represent each unique computer, a privacy regression? Is the end-to-end principle of the internet a privacy regression too?
    - gtsop 5y ago
      IPv6 enables insane precission of device tracking. A side effect of not having enough ipv4 addresses and using NAT is that all your home devices let's say, go out on the internet using only a single IP address. Also, the geo-location accuracy using ipv4 is at the level of a city. With ipv6 you can get to a geolocation accuracy of a building block and confidently target individual devices within ones home network since they will use unique ipv6 addresses. Surely, privacy minded people will find a way around those, but out of the box ipv6 is a privacy regression for the reasons listed above
      - maccolgan 5y ago
        >IPv6 enables insane precission of device tracking. A side effect of not having enough ipv4 addresses and using NAT is that all your home devices let's say, go out on the internet using only a single IP address Use random addresses, no further words needed. If you are actually that paranoid, feel free to use stateless translation to change the host part of the IP. >Also, the geo-location accuracy using ipv4 is at the level of a city. With ipv6 you can get to a geolocation accuracy of a building block and confidently target individual devices within ones home network since they will use Unless your ISP is announcing unique /48s of individual building block, no. If your home router gets a static IPv4 address, the same problem prevails, not relevant. >Surely, privacy minded people will find a way around those, but out of the box ipv6 is a privacy regression for the reasons listed above Out of the box IPv6 offers the same privacy regressions as the original IPv4 before we fucked it to high hell. NAPT is a royal pain for any P2P protocol.

newscracker 5y ago

Emphasis mine in the below quote: > "Arunmozhi is a freelance programmer and an open-source enthusiast." I'm surprised, shocked and dumfounded that Firefox is not even mentioned while Vivaldi and Chromium are being considered. For someone who put up with Brave for years and its other issues, it really seems strange that Firefox is not in consideration.

bavxo 5y ago
He’s an open source enthusiast, not an idiot.
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  You're a GamerGate Enthusiast, an AntiVaxer, a Climate Change Denier, a Troll, and an Idiot.
  - bavxo 5y ago
    After sinking so many hours into the sims 1, being insulted by its main programmer is probably the biggest honour I’ll ever receive. Thanks.
aero-glide2 5y ago
I have two problems with Firefox - I use "print to pdf" often and Chromium renders that more accurately. Some sites are better supported on Chromium. Other than these two, Firefox is very good. (On the other hand, Firefox mobile is quite slow).
- leshenka 5y ago
  > Some sites are better supported on Chromium This is "self eating snake" type situation. Many webdevs ignore Firefox because of its market share and this yields worse support. People don't like "worse support" and use it as argument (excuse) for using Chrome. However I've only noticed problems in Firefox with various "chrome experiments" and WebGL performance. Oh and sometimes it's hanging and taking too long to load some source maps on large projects.

richardfey 5y ago

I think any other browser would also need a server with the hosted extension packages, so the point here is misguided: you did not get an error related to Brave servers while *not* using Brave services.

jonathansampson 5y ago
Generally speaking, other Chromium-based browsers simply load the CRX (extension file) directly from Google's server. This puts the user's device in direct contact with the advertising and data-harvesting giant. In Brave's case, we proxy the requests to prevent direct contact. As such, when a user attempts to install an extension in Brave, the browser sends the request through a *.brave.com endpoint, which relays it to Google, and returns the CRX (or other response). In the author's case, they may have sent an invalid request to Brave's proxy endpoint (e.g. missing or invalid service key). This can happen when you're using an out-of-date build of the browser. It's not clear to us at this time what caused the "Access Denied" error, but we know that a missing/invalid key could yield these results. Sampson (Brave Team)
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  Resolved: User had a very out-of-date build of Brave. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29471236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29471236 for more details.
- richardfey 5y ago
  Sure, but my point is that you cannot complain about the extension store being down while...trying to use the extension store. Nothing has a SLA of 100% (I know that this was not due to downtime, but the possibility remains). It would be different if he was trying to visit www.archive.org and got an error from www.brave.com

bbbobbb 5y ago

Brave is the only browser on my iPad that blocks majority of ads. I have went as far as try to pay for ad blockers in the app store (this is my first and last apple device so it is a weird concept for me). If I could just install unblock origin or find system wide adblocker then I would use that instead

aero-glide2 5y ago
Does iPad have something similar to DNS66?
- schleck8 5y ago
  You could try the VPN workaround to set up a DNS level blocker, I'm pretty sure it works with NextDNS' app.

cdmckay 5y ago

Recently made the same switch. I went back to Firefox and haven’t looked back.

aero-glide2 5y ago

I love Brave, but not the crypto stuff. Thankfully its easy to turn off. Here are the steps I follow after installing Brave browser : https://gist.github.com/Sgt-Miller/96277273dab6422bb913629679b54657 https://gist.github.com/Sgt-Miller/96277273dab6422bb91362967... Hope the backend issue mentioned gets fixed. Tweet to Brenden, he's always quick to respond.

fastball 5y ago

Everyone wants to talk the respective merits of Brave vs Firefox vs ____, but I just want to talk about how the post itself is dumb. You're installing an extension from a web store. Of course it doesn't work if there is a problem with the backend servers. Where do you expect to get the extension from?

leodriesch 5y ago
As far as I understood the backend issue was on Braves end, while the Chrome Web Store was fine. So installing the extension worked in Chrome, but not in Brave, because they had some backend problems, while the installing of an extension should not need the Brave servers at all.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  Brave proxies Google-endpoints to prevent users from unintentionally making contact with Google servers. If our proxy receives a bad request, or has some other unlikely, transient issue, it will respond with a 403 Status (which results in the "Access Denied" message being displayed). In this instance, the user may have been on an out-of-date build of Brave; it's not clear from the report. Sampson (Brave Team)
  - jonathansampson 5y ago
    Resolved: User had a very out-of-date build of Brave. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29471236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29471236 for more details.
jacksonkmarley 5y ago
Must admit this was my question as well. It seemed from the post that the browser was still working but the extensions couldn't be installed. Not ideal but seems like a weird response. Is the point that there should be a separate source of extension packages or something?

silisili 5y ago

I posted here on HN asking if Brave mobile was broken for anyone else one night, for little response. My wife and I both use Brave, and it just hung at startup. Unsatisfied, I checked the Reddit sub the next day, and saw tons of complaints. Apparently if the Brave backend is down, it won't even launch. This is a huge problem that makes me entirely skeptical of not only the browser, but that anyone in charge has any idea of what they are doing. Currently testing alternatives...

jonathansampson 5y ago
No service outage should ever cause the application itself to be unusable. Which mobile platform are you using? If the browser cannot successfully contact our backend services (for things like update checks, or refreshing its internal list of known-malicious URLs to avoid) then it will simply carry-on and attempt those requests at a later point. Sampson (Brave Team)
petemill 5y ago
Brave team member here. This was not a server issue but was a daylight savings time bug.
- silisili 5y ago
  Thank you Pete. Is there a link or can you share more? Why would a DST bug prevent an app from opening at all?
  - jonathansampson 5y ago
    Great question! Dates and times are one of the most loathed obstacles in writing software that needs to work a particular way across millions of devices situated all across the globe in different regions and time zones. In our case, we had a bit of code that aimed to measure the time until midnight/tomorrow. But when clocks change at midnight (jumping forward or backward), you can wind up with days that appear to be longer than 24 hours in length. And when a day is more than ~24hr in length, you wind up with unexpected answers to seemingly simple math equations. A bit of logic, responsible for setting up a timer, wound up scheduling numerous timers when our 'How long until tomorrow' code began returning negative numbers. That set of unintended timers locked-up the application itself. You can see our issue for the behavior here: https://github.com/brave/brave-core/pull/11030 https://github.com/brave/brave-core/pull/11030. For 10 minutes of anxiety, check out 'The Problem of Time & Timezones' from Tom Scott of Computerphile: https://youtu.be/-5wpm-gesOY https://youtu.be/-5wpm-gesOY. It's a fantastic summary of the issues programmers face when dealing with time :) Sampson (Brave Team)

MrDresden 5y ago

I've never used Brave (simply because I really like Firefox as my daily driver) so I can't speak to the qualities. But it seems ad blocking is always mentioned as a feature. Might I recommend trying piHole at the intake into your homes. Instead of relying on the application doing filtering, simply do it for the whole network (yes, caveats apply).

iJohnDoe 5y ago

All these posts mentioning Firefox. If anyone has read HN for any length of time, then you’ll know all the shady stuff Mozilla/Firefox has done. And not just hand waving “crypto” stuff that Brave gets accused of doing, but truly slimeball stuff. Firefox and Normandy, when the certificate expired, it also disabled NoScript in the Tor browser which disabled some security. Might not be a coincidence in the attempt to expose some targets. Using Tor. Their horrible start page that pushes political agendas, and gets reimplemented even when you have specified your tab and start page. Pushing their VPN when you launch Firefox. The list goes on and on that is pretty embarrassing, that none of the other browsers even come close to that level of behavior.

kafkaIncarnate 5y ago
A certificate expiration to disable tor browser is some serious tinfoil hat stuff. Certificate duration is usually extremely long, so they would have to have been in some long-con with an intelligence agency or something. I haven't noticed their start page because I always disable it, but if they have some sort of news feeds on it then anyone nowadays would call it something or other. A company that claims to support privacy launching a VPN service to support their development? Yeah so shady, they should have started a marketing company instead like Chrome! /s

Markoff 5y ago

Hah, article lists exactly two options I would suggest - Chromium and Vivaldi, I just switched last week from Edge to Vivaldi. Tried for a moment Brave, but immediately ditched it since you can't even customize address bar or toolbar. Switched to Edge maybe last year after years with Firefox, but I was fed up with its hostile developers, who care more about their nerdy features than actually what users want, which is why Firefox declined into irrelevance. edit: also get Kiwi Browser if you are using Android, the best Android browser, one of very few Chromium browsers with proper extensions support

iClLCsqJha 5y ago

Somehow all these browsers doesn't appeal as much as Mozilla/FF, since beginning. Never made a switch. If i were forced to use GOOG/MSFT stuff, just use it once and uninstall has been the pattern. Never looked back.

oakfr 5y ago

This article seems to spawn many threads on online advertising, but the initial comment from the author seems to be more around a system/architecture issue (i.e. why should a browser require backend servers). I am writing this comment here to see what people think about this question specifically.

jonathansampson 5y ago
Brave proxies Google endpoints (see https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-Chromium-(features-we-disable-or-remove)#services-we-proxy-through-brave-servers https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-... for a list). This is to prevent users from making unintended contact with Google. This particular error ("Access Denied") encountered by the author could be from Google, but could also be from a transient issue with the Brave proxy serving a 401 response (or similar). Sampson (Brave Team)
- oakfr 5y ago
  Thank you for your reply!
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  Resolved: User had a very out-of-date build of Brave. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29471236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29471236 for more details.

mclightning 5y ago

I am still using Brave, but I am immensely bothered by them forcing us into using their own wallets (out of deals they make, None uses Uphold! except forced by Brave) instead of any decentralized option. Then constant bugs when paying out BAT rewards, causing you to lose them, but never refunds you.

jonathansampson 5y ago
Uphold (and Gemini) are required only for those who wish to KYC. Brave cannot act as a funnel for unchecked funds between large advertisers (e.g. Walmart, Amazon, Coinbase, etc.) and anonymous external wallets. If a user wishes to "cash out," Brave must comply with relevant AML laws and regulations. Note, this requirement only exists for uses who wish to "cash out" or deposit their own BAT, and only for the Brave Rewards wallet (Brave Wallet, a general purpose wallet in the browser, does not have any such requirement). I'm sorry to hear that you experienced an issue with the distribution of BAT rewards; I'd be happy to assist and see to it that you receive all rewards for which you are rightly owed. If you have a Twitter account, send a DM to @BraveSampson to proceed. Sampson (Brave Team)
- mclightning 5y ago
  Hmm I understand. Some launchpads are using external KYC systems allowing for verification while using Metamask. I wish something like that would be possible. Lost funds weren't much to bother with. It was just, I had disabled "automatically pay to creators" option on all my devices, but I saw a transaction go out. Then I checked on reddit, and some other people had similar issues. I will still keep using Brave, no worries. I think it is a good project nevertheless. My complaints are more just small pet-peeves, no biggie. Keep up the good work. Thanks
  - jonathansampson 5y ago
    Which external KYC options do you use and enjoy? I'd be more than happy to take a look and discuss them with our team for consideration. Regarding lost funds, the only way Brave should ever make an automatic contribution when auto-contribute is disabled is if the contribution were queued up prior to disabling auto-contribute. You can check brave://rewards-internals/ (specifically the Contributions and Event Logs tabs) to compare timestamps to see if a contribution was processed after you disabled auto-contribute. Happy to help claw-back any rewards lost to a bug (if that be the case). Whatever I can do to improve your experience with Brave; just let me know :)

justshowpost 5y ago

Anecdote-tier remark: Try to edit "search engine definitions" which Mozilla pushes to your Firefox deployment when they just discovered who are you to kill intrusive and thin affiliate entries and then allow Firefox to update itself to see it restores their monetization stuff. PS: I don't get why that tweet about making tea is relevant at all.

Overtonwindow 5y ago

I generally believed Brave was a good idea, but it's performance and stability leaves a lot lacking. Instability in particular made it unusable at times, but figuring out why usually went back to ads failing to load. If you are blocking an ad, could a website react to that by slowing, or disrupting your connection?

jonathansampson 5y ago
Are you able to share examples of sites which aren't loading well in Brave? We'd be happy to take a closer look and see what can be done. To your question though, it's technically possible for a site to throttle bandwidth for users who are blocking ads, but this would be a complicated and extremely error-prone process. It would likely result in far too many false-positives to be considered by any major site. Not to mention, it's entirely possible to make a site think an ad has loaded when it fact it has not (Brave does this in some cases). Sampson (Brave Team)

throwawaybutwhy 5y ago

Yeah, let's hop on the cancel train with knee jerk accusations amplified by trigger happy crowds. Especially when Manifest V3 is around the corner. I hope Brave folks will be brave enough to keep Manifest V2 / uBO running.

jonathansampson 5y ago

The author was able to confirm (see https://arunmozhi.in/2021/12/06/goodbye-brave/comment-page-1/#comment-908 https://arunmozhi.in/2021/12/06/goodbye-brave/comment-page-1...) that they had been using version 1.18.77 of Brave (released nearly one year ago in December of 2020). This version of Brave did not contain service-keys for authentication with the proxy-server which shields users from unintended contact with Google. As a result, when Brave began to enforce key-requirements for requests (a recent change), this out-of-date build of Brave could no longer install extensions (since it could not utilize the proxy service). Many thanks to the author for diligently assisting with this investigation. Sampson (Brave Team)