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Brave Talk: Unlimited, private video calls, in browser
- scim-knox-twox 5y agoI'll never trust Brave after theirs many controversies: https://libreddit.kavin.rocks/r/FoamList/comments/q4z5js/brave_browser_controversies/ https://libreddit.kavin.rocks/r/FoamList/comments/q4z5js/bra...
- seumars 5y agoCan a web browser actually just be a web browser nowadays? Seriously, is there really not a market for such a thing?
- tehlike 5y agofairly sure this is just a user agent gating. There's nothing about a video call that cannot be done through chrome obviously.
- tyingq 5y agoSeems likely, given this faq: >Do I need the Brave browser to use Brave Talk? >Yes and no. To start a call, you’ll need to be on the Brave browser. However, people you invite to a call can join from any browser. They just need the call link. So, most of it already functions on other browsers...they are gating the "start a call" bit. The faq has some details on some sort of encryption relay they have 8x8 run for them, so maybe there's some key management stuff in the brave browser?
- miohtama 5y agoWeb browser has become the light client of the world, what Java Applet were visioned in late 90s.
- wolverine876 5y agoNothing stops you from using Brave as just a web browser (whatever that means! Are Google Apps 'just a browser', or an app with a browser client?).
- drusepth 5y agoBrave's whole "thing" seems to be being a one-stop Google replacement for everything you could do online, but just having to trust them instead of Google. Through that lens, I can see why they're constantly adding more "route your data through us instead" already-features instead of focusing on making a good, standalone web browser.
- rossdavidh 5y agoIf by "market" you mean "money to pay for it", I think possibly not.
- scim-knox-twox 5y agoOrion Browser? https://browser.kagi.com/ https://browser.kagi.com/
- okl 5y agoAsking as a Firefox user — is it worth giving Brave a try?
- pl0x 5y ago
- easrng 5y agoNot really. I used to use it, but it was noticeably slower than Firefox and ungoogled chromium. It's basically just ungoogled chromium with a bunch of extensions preinstalled.
- jsnk 5y agoYour statement isn't true for Ubuntu and ZorinOS. Firefox on Ubuntu and ZorinOS still have breaking problems with some websites such as Google Map. https://www.google.com/search?q=firefox+google+map+ubuntu&sxsrf=APq-WBvc6x8cS2EP4a6N3fijb9y7nlWmYQ%3A1646348139007&ei=akchYtuAPdHU9APNk6WQAg&ved=0ahUKEwjb3YHghKv2AhVRKn0KHc1JCSIQ4dUDCA4&uact=5&oq=firefox+google+map+ubuntu&gs_lcp=Cgxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAQAzIICCEQFhAdEB4yCAghEBYQHRAeMggIIRAWEB0QHjIICCEQFhAdEB46BwgAEEcQsAM6BQgAEIAEOgYIABAWEB5KBAhBGABKBAhGGABQ0AJY3hNgsRVoAXABeACAAXqIAaUEkgEDNS4ymAEAoAEByAEIwAEB&sclient=gws-wiz-serp https://www.google.com/search?q=firefox+google+map+ubuntu&sx...
- BeefWellington 5y agoSeems like that must be an Ubuntu-specific problem? Working fine for me on: - Debian, Raspbian - Arch, Manjaro - Fedora
- wolverine876 5y ago> It's basically just ungoogled chromium with a bunch of extensions preinstalled. That's not true. It has, in an easy-to-access UI many privacy protections, including fingerprinting and tracking, and even disabling JavaScript per site (EDIT: Among other things, including a crypto payment system, IPFS, and more.)
- endisneigh 5y agoI wonder if Brave or any other browser will eventually allow for some sort of "delegation" ability to be introduced, where you can use your own spare compute to effectively run the tab on another machine but present it nicely (with even things like being able to select the text and copy) on the present. Brave is really introducing many of these features and I fear it'll be the same slogged down mess as all of the other browsers when you use them all at once.
- sneak 5y agoBrave seemed to start out as an ad replacement system. There was a crypto token involved and an ICO. Then they decided to be a Patreon-style support-any-website thing, which turned into legal hot water when they started accepting money for people who hadn't signed up. Now they seem to be doing the privacy-browser thing, like Firefox was before it went all "spyware on by default". Then there was a search engine? And now video calls? This seems like a team and some funding in search of a problem, like a heat-seeking missile without a target. From an outside perspective, the product strategy seems entirely incoherent. Who are the competitors? Ad networks? ERC20s? Mozilla? DuckDuckGo? Google? Zoom? I've no idea what is happening with this company, and from a personal standpoint, I don't use products that aren't a component of some larger mission or vision, as they're usually just a quite temporary affair until such time the (seemingly aimless) organization evaporates. Every additional pivot and product launch adds to my confusion and reduces my understanding of (and respect for) the brand. I have no idea what the Brave brand is supposed to represent, or what the company's stated purpose is. This seems like a major failure of their communications. EDIT: TFA says "Unlimited, private video calls, right in your browser. No extra apps.". I'm using a browser, but the CTA button says to download an extra app: a different browser. I'm really hoping we're not at the point now where "in browser" now generically means "in the browser I want you to use". That, to me, would be a good and clear sign that apps have killed the web. EDIT2: It looks like this is also a paid subscription service if you want more than 4 call participants. This adds to my total confusion about Brave's revenue plans. Does this mean I have to pay you and then also shill your browser to my 4+ other callers?
- cheald 5y agoThis is just a whitelabeled Jitsi deployment. They might've added some extra features, but you can get the same at https://meet.jit.si/ https://meet.jit.si/. If you want to run your own server, you can deploy the software pretty easily (docs at https://jitsi.github.io/handbook/docs/devops-guide/devops-guide-start https://jitsi.github.io/handbook/docs/devops-guide/devops-gu...). I set up a Jitsi deployment for my company in mid 2020 when everyone went online, and it's served us quite faithfully.
- todd3834 5y agoNot sure if you meant this literally or figuratively but it does appear to be a different codebase primarily in TypeScript vs JS (Jisti meet). I didn't dig enough to see if it was fork or not but it doesn't look like a white labeled jitsi https://github.com/brave/brave-talk https://github.com/brave/brave-talk
- detaro 5y agoIt uses jitsi's embedding API to build custom UI, subscriptionsm,... around Jitsi as far as I can tell. Jitsi isnt in that repo.
- cheald 5y agoThe UI is definitely at least lifted from jitsi-meet, and if you look at the dev console you can see that it's using lib-jitsi-meet. I'm not sure what the backend is, but I'd be surprised if it's not just straight up jitisi-videobridge. They might have built some stuff on top of lib-jitsi-meet but the actual bones of it (such as the encryption, which is likely to be of interest to HN types) is almost certainly gonna be Jitsi itself. I suspect that the project you linked is basically just some chrome around the actual Jitsi internals.
- thenberlin 5y agoHaven't done any codebase spelunking, but their FAQ at the bottom of the page states it pretty clearly: "Who provides the Brave Talk service? The Brave Talk service is provided in partnership with 8x8. And the service is built on the open-source Jitsi platform."
- panny 5y agoHow does this differ from visiting app.element.io? It says there's no login, but how do you call someone without an identity to call to/from?
- cheald 5y agoStarting a meeting generates a random URL which you can share with others. It's more analogous to a Zoom call than a direct user-to-user call.
- wolverine876 5y agoHN readers might be interested in this section: The video and audio from your call are transmitted to other participants with the help of a Video Bridge server that’s run by Brave’s partner, 8x8. When you enable Video Bridge Encryption in Security Options, your browser exchanges keys with other call participants, and these keys are used to encrypt the video and audio streams. Only people with keys can see your calls. Assuming no malevolence, neither Brave nor its partner, 8x8, have this key by default. However, there are some important limits to Video Bridge Encryption. If you want to include a phone participant in your call, have more than 20 participants, or want to include users with incompatible browsers (Safari, most iOS browsers, and browsers based on Chromium version 83 or below), this encryption setting will not work. If you record a call, 8x8’s servers will receive a set of keys to decrypt the video/audio stream in order to process and store that recording. Brave will continue to improve Brave Talk’s encryption properties and work to remove some of these limitations. Read a more detailed description of Jitsi encryption (the open source basis for Brave Talk).
- sebmellen 5y agoJitsi has been around for quite a while. Now I'm not sure what makes Brave Talk any different. https://meet.jit.si https://meet.jit.si for those who are interested.
- wolverine876 5y ago> Jitsi has been around for quite a while. Now I'm not sure what makes Brave Talk any different. It makes Jitsi available to many people who wouldn't otherwise use it. If you care about Jitsi and people communicating, that's great. If you care about marketshare and fame, that's not.
- wolverine876 5y agoA few observations: * Encryption is not enabled by default. * They call it private, but I don't see how the metadata - who you talk to, which is as important as what you say - is private. * "Assuming no malevolence ...": Assuming no malevolence, we don't need to encrypt anything. Though even if we assume malevolence, if we trust Brave to make the browser, they can do almost anything they want regardless, without our knowing much about it.
- rmbyrro 5y ago> How are my calls with Brave Talk encrypted? (...) Assuming no malevolence, neither Brave nor its partner, 8x8, have this key by default. I'm sorry, when did we start to take security measures assuming no malevolence?
- meekmind 5y agoI think perhaps they are insinuating that this is secure assuming Brave, 8x8, and/or your meeting participants are not compromised outside the scope of the application. Though I'd agree that phrase does a poor job of communicating that.
- chrismorgan 5y agoProtonMail have been selling this for years. And not mentioning it much. The fact of the matter is that first-party end-to-end encryption is pretty much broken by design, and very few people ever talk about this.
- rmbyrro 5y agoCouldn't this be solved by Diffie-Helman key exchange? [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffie%E2%80%93Hellman_key_exchange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffie%E2%80%93Hellman_key_exc...
- acoard 5y agoUsing the Diffie-Helman would be good practice, but it's not enough to assume a defence against a malevolent actor who controls the client. It's not about the key exchange itself. Essentially, a determined malevolent actor who controls the client could exfiltrate your keys easily. Maybe it's intentionally introducing a subtle vulnerability and then exploiting it server-side[0], or it's just simply doing a file upload of the keys. Basically, you can't be certain there isn't a backdoor from a malevolent actor. [0] IIRC, there was some vulnerability in the Linux Kernel a few years ago that was basically there due to an errant space. Some people theorized that this could have actually been intentionally introduced by sophisticated actors, to hide in plain-sight open source code.
- todd3834 5y agoOn github: https://github.com/brave/brave-talk https://github.com/brave/brave-talk
- a1371 5y agoI don't know how everyone's experience has been with Brave. For me, I installed it and used it for a few minutes, then forgot about it. A few days later a notification popped up on the screen advertising a cryptocurrency. Distressed, I looked for the culprit and it was Brave. So I uninstalled it. Not sure why I would use them for anything ever after that.
- echelon 5y agoThe only way to make money with a free commercially built product is advertising. The only way to make money with a free commercially built product that kills other advertising... is advertising. They don't have the coffers for this to be an instance of "commoditizing their complement" as there is no other fat revenue stream from another of their business units to speak of. (I don't even think they have multiple business units.) So they have to make money with Brave somehow. The original concept of their "basic attention token" was an experiment to see if they could drive growth by paying users to watch ads with some abstract and dubious crypto coin. Their hope is that it's attractive enough to peel users away from Chrome, then they can sell targeted ads. I don't buy it. In any case, you're not paying for Brave, so therefore you're the product. Yet again. No matter what their marketing says. There's literally no reason for Brave to exist. You can run Firefox or Chromium just fine.
- tsumnia 5y agoTheir notification ads are annoying, but you can disable them. I do use it, only get the new tab ads, which aren't bad and hey, free "pennies" (I've opted in for them).
- kybernetikos 5y agoTrackers & ads blocked 202,822 Bandwidth saved 5.23GB Time saved 2.8hours
- cyber_kinetist 5y agoWhat advantages does Brave's adblocker have over Ublock Origin?
- atum47 5y agoI've been using brave for a while now. Already made 5 dollars, haha. Joke aside it's a good browser.
- fleddr 5y agoThe tech pessimism in this community really is getting out of hand. Nothing but burns, seeking only negatives, bad faith assumptions and not giving any idea any chance. When you install Brave, it's going to ask you about that Brave rewards thing. It's opt-in. Nothing will happen if you have some sweeping rage against crypto. And the thing asking you for it, it takes one click to hide it. Congrats. Now you have an incredibly snappy browser. It's Chrome without all the Google-specific crap. Whereas using uBlock is a massive performance improvement, Brave is a similarly large EXTRA performance improvement. Click around some heavy content websites, performance is near-instant. I'm on a very high-end desktop and even then the difference between ordinary Chrome and Brave is extreme. Although privacy comparisons between browsers are complex, Brave scores high if not highest. Unlike Mozilla, they don't need to make exceptions for Google. Brave has made a few mistakes in this area, all quite inconsequential, but they were quick to correct it. They're not like Mozilla that sits 7 years on a ticket. So it's extremely fast and top-notch in terms of privacy. It has a built-in ad blocker, is has the option of using Tor for private windows, directly built-in. How cool is that? Wayback integration for 404s? Thoughtful and clever. They dare to innovate. For example, they support IPFS directly inside the browser. You may not need it, but it's an interesting technology to explore if you care about tech at all. And if not IPFS, just the idea in itself of a browser going a bit bleeding edge should be celebrated. And I extend that thought to their add-on products. Like chat or video calls, alternatives to the big tech versions of those. Why not? They may never become successful but why shut the door before you tried it? These are attempts at the alternative internet done the right way, the work that Mozilla would be doing, if they weren't so dysfunctional. Why stamp all of that into the ground before even seriously looking at it? And about that crypto-based rewards program, before you make up your mind, you know what else one can do? Try it. Wire 10$ into a wallet. Send BAT tokens to websites that you appreciate. Congrats, you now used crypto. You're not a criminal, nobody will arrest you, you didn't burn the planet and didn't get kicked out of the political party. You send small money to people you like. The shock, the horror.
- throwamon 5y agoI just replied to another comment and I'm just now reading yours, this is how I'd like to have worded mine. Brave is doing so much right (and I'm counting fearless experimentation as "right") and getting so much unjustified flak it makes me believe there's big money being poured into shit-talking it.
- temp0826 5y agoFree, but they scan your conversation for products that you mention and replace them with ads for other products. But don't worry you'll get compensated in some randomcoin. (/s if not obvious)
- langsoul-com 5y agoRip brave. They're starting to add more and more features, thus will bloat and slow down the app. Wonder how long it'll be before I need to switch.
- phgn 5y agoMore than just bloat, I wonder if there's really nothing else for Brave employees to work on. I feel the same about Mozilla's VPN.