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Brave's AI assistant now integrates with PDFs and Google Drive

136 points by thek3nger 3y ago

donkeyboy 3y ago
Different topic, but can someone talk about which browser they use now? I’ve used Chrome for the past N years with ublock Origin, but recently I’ve been getting some ads on Youtube. Also some websites just didn’t work in Chrome. I switched to Brave a week ago and things seem ok, but it’s a weird browser with Tor built in, and also Spotify.com always crashes with a Memory problem. Does anyone have any thoughts on browser preference these days?
- alanjdev 3y ago
  I use Safari for personal browsing, Firefox for work stuff (because my work machine is Windows). Firefox with uBlock Origin works quite well at keeping me mostly safe from ads.
- timeon 3y ago
  Firefox is safe bet. But not sure why would Brave have special problem with Spotify, it is Chromium based.
- web3-is-a-scam 3y ago
  I’ve been using Firefox for nearly two decades and I’d be hard pressed to switch now. I’m practically married to it: through sickness and health.
- ejb999 3y ago
  I use brave exclusively for years - zero problems - seems faster to me than other options. Also use it with Spotify and can't remember ever having an issue (brave on mac if it makes a difference). Yes it has Tor built-in, but you don't ever need to use it - it's just there in case you do (I have never needed it myself).
- dwighttk 3y ago
  I use Brave for YouTube and things that require Chrome and Safari for everything else. Oh… Firefox for when I want to load Facebook. Like once a quarter.
- polyvisual 3y ago
  Brave is great. I disabled all the web3 stuff and tidied up the homepage so it doesn't show me all the news etc. The only issue I have is that the sync between my iphone, macbook, windows can sometimes get out of sync.
- andyjohnson0 3y ago
  I'm very happy with Firefox.
- rplnt 3y ago
  I hated Firefox for the longest time, because it was a sub-par browser with a cult following, but since Chrome ruined any competition I went through several chrome-based browsers (never Chrome itself due to severe lack of basic functionality) and am slowly ending up with FF as my primary browser. My standards have lowered substantially, and firefox is just good enough. Always using more browsers and trying something on the side, but while there are some nice features to be found, there is always a major drawback. I had high hopes with Vivaldi, but it's a broken mess that I can't recommend.
  - malauxyeux 3y ago
    Would you mind saying what you would like to do but can't with FF? I don't think I'm part of a cult, but I've used FF as my default browser for over a decade and I guess I don't know what else people want from a browser.
    - rekoil 3y ago
      For me it's how user-defined search engines work. In Chromium-based browsers you can just supply a URL-template, a name, and a shorthand, and you're off to the races, it takes 10 seconds to add one. In Firefox it used to be you needed to like create your own little mini-addon or something like that, and these days they have "smart bookmarks", but it's such a weird name and doesn't really work the same. At any rate, I have 100 different little shortcuts defined like for example "tren" which takes the given text, puts it into a translator, and auto-detects language and translates to English. Ditto "sven", "ensv", "trsv", then I have "wiki", "wikise" (Wikipedia Sweden), "wikt", "aw" (ArchWiki), etc., etc. I use these hundreds of times a day, and when I tried converting to Firefox (before I eventually landed on Brave) I couldn't find a simple way of moving these from my Google Chrome profile to Firefox and have it work like I expect it to. Perhaps that's possible now?
      - Vinnl 3y ago
        It's not the same, and you can't import them from Chrome, but I'll share what works for me just in case it works for you as well. Which is: set DuckDuckGo as your default search engine, and use their "bangs" - you'll be able to guess most of them, and never have to set them up yourself. For example, you could use !deepl, !wiki, !wse, !wt, !aw, etc. etc. (If you do still want to use e.g. Google for search, you can use !g.)
- rekoil 3y ago
  Been using Brave since I think around 2019? Very happy with it, love the integration of IPFS, ENS, Unstoppable domains, and the removal of all the Google trash present in Chromium. Fully end-to-end encrypted sync as well. Don't use Tor much, but it's great that it's easily accessible if I need it.
- alisonatwork 3y ago
  Cromite[0] is the best on Android, it's a privacy-oriented open source patchset on top of Chromium. Cromite has a desktop build, but it's a bit more experimental than the mobile build, so you can use Ungoogled Chromium[1] instead. Ungoogled is also a privacy-oriented open source patchset on top of Chromium. Check the beta flags to enable some more interesting features like getClientRect anti-fingerprinting measures (unfortunately breaks some React-based sites that go into infinite re-render loop). Both of these browsers selectively include patches from Brave, but they are community-oriented builds so imo more trustworthy than Brave, which continues to package various shady anti-features and always will because it's backed by a for-profit company. LibreWolf[2] is the nicest Firefox-based one for desktop, I think. It's pretty hardcore, though, I most only use it to visit mainstream social media sites. I tried a bunch of the Firefox-based ones on mobile and none of them clicked for me. Cromite is just too slick on Android. Put the address bar at the bottom and off you go. Only downside is no online syncing of tabs and bookmarks, but meh. You can save all open tabs to bookmark bar in one hit then export your bookmarks, send the file through whatever E2EE channel you want to your other device, import and reopen them again. [0] https://github.com/uazo/cromite https://github.com/uazo/cromite [1] https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium [2] https://librewolf.net/ https://librewolf.net/
- Delumine 3y ago
  I love edge, even before the AI stuff, it had a great feature set and less memory consumption than Chrome
- Vinnl 3y ago
  If ads, in particular on YouTube, are the problem, anything Chromium-based is probably only going to get worse and worse (see [1] and [2]). So that basically leaves you with Firefox and Safari. I work for Mozilla (speaking for myself, of course), so I'll leave you to guess which I'd recommend :P [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b... [2] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/09/googles-widely-opposed-ad-platform-the-privacy-sandbox-launches-in-chrome/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/09/googles-widely-oppos...
- 65 3y ago
  I still use Chrome, mostly because I much prefer Chrome dev tools over any other dev tool options. And I have a bunch of custom browser extensions I've made for Chrome. I haven't had issues with uBlock Origin - very occasionally an ad will seep through on YouTube, maybe once every 6 months, but when that happens I refresh the page and the ad is gone. Safari is the new IE and Firefox I've always found to just be alright - for sure not as big of a fan of Firefox dev tools over Chrome dev tools. And Firefox scrolling behavior can be annoying.
- bad_user 3y ago
  I use Brave. It's a fine browser. The ad-blocking is almost on par with uBlock Origin. And I like its built-in Tor, BTW. I don't have any issues with Spotify.com, and it doesn't crash on me. I'm on a Macbook Pro M2 Max, and I also use it on a Galaxy S21U (Android). I tried using Firefox on and off, but it's sadly technically inferior to Chromium, and that gap has gotten worse. It still has things that it does better than Chromium browsers, like history sync actually working, or reader view. But those are few and far between. And Multi-Account Containers, one of its apparent advantages, comes with the caveat that Firefox doesn't have usable profiles and the security for its extensions is worse (e.g., no click to activate, no ability to disable extensions in certain containers). What finally pushed me to Chromium is the poor PWA support in Firefox. On Android, it has bugs that haven't been fixed for years (never mind the poor performance that's well known), and on desktop they've basically dropped the ball. I use several PWAs. If it's a chat app, I use it as a PWA. Also Spotify, since you mentioned it ... as I like having better sandboxing and ad-blocking in my apps. On Android, too.
- kbelder 3y ago
  I use Chrome for work on all my devices, and avoid any non-work browsing on it. It's an attempt to keep the two halves of my life apart. For all personal browsing and projects, I generally used Firefox, but switched over a couple years ago to using Brave on the phone, and am kind of half-transitioned from Firefox to Brave on desktop. I've been a Firefox user forever, but it's slowly losing me.
- shever73 3y ago
  I've been using Brave for a few years now. It's speedy enough, and does a great job of blocking ads and trackers. I've never had issues with Spotify and I like the auto-dismissing of cookie banners too.
- PKop 3y ago
  Firefox on Linux because touch-pad gestures for forward and back navigation don't work on Chromium browsers and also Firefox gives me a nice vertical tab setup with Tab Center Reborn + custom userChrome.css A tip I found recently in about:config browser.compact.show=true to bring back the compact layout option, results in very good use of space on laptop along with vertical tabs and also Firefox allows the vertical tabs to be moved to right side which is nice.
- godelski 3y ago
  Firefox I know what you're gonna say, but forgetting everything else there's one important factor you should consider. Chrome has a (near) monopoly and resolving that monopoly requires using non-chromium browsers. But on top of that, Firefox is fast, secure, has privacy in mind, and a rich set of add-ons. But most of that is true for any browser you pick. There really aren't big differences between browsers and often we're making mountains out of mole hills when we compare. But I'll say, firefox has ad-blocking on mobile (plugins on mobile, like 800 exist)
- nyarlathotep_ 3y ago
  Brave or Firefox with UBO a few userscripts, and a lightly tweaked user.js/userChrome for nice-looking tree-style tabs, in no particular order. Haven't had Chrome installed on any of my machines for ~5 years at this point. Not the biggest fan of Brave (especially considering this latest AI crap, and all the weird crypto stuff), but I'm satisfied with it overall. FF still remains #1 in my eyes and usage, but has to be tweaked to my liking.
- AzzyHN 3y ago
  Firefox + uBo. TOR browser uses Firefox as a base for a reason, and uBo works best on Firefox
- soundnote 3y ago
  Brave. I pretty much turn most things off and use it as a more private Chrome with vertical tabs.
_the_special_ 3y ago
The first browser to index (locally preferably) my browsing history and help me extract/surface useful information from previous pages I have visited will win me over. So far they all seem to be offering the same kind of AI that will crawl the current page and extract information from it.
- Sabinus 3y ago
  If Firefox could sprint some good APIs in they could get some incredible plugins going.
  - vdaea 3y ago
    I don't know much about the WebExtensions api but it's likely the apis are already there.
- freediver 3y ago
  How much would you be ready to pay for that?
  - rplnt 3y ago
    Fully local (or private cloud sync) I would go as high as $2 a month. Cloud based solution, which is the only solution I expect, not interested just yet. (note: not OP)
  - davidy123 3y ago
    $0, unless maybe someone finds a way to not pillage the data of the service and add a lot of actual value, and doesn't squat on this ultimately simple thing that should be a small piece of a much larger thing. open source AI and browser/OS companies are going to provide an answer soon anyway.
- Moldoteck 3y ago
  I guess this can be done with an extension that would work on all browsers. Like parse each page, save compressed text that supports fast decompressing (maybe even images), build tf/idf + cosine distance for verbantim searches & save in db and maybe add some ai to enhance the search. The next steps would be custom ai searches like "show me pages related to x", it'll quickly decompress the pages & apply the search for each but there are different approaches, like maybe saving history on a server and apply some ai model with huge context or do an initial filtering with tf/idf and apply ai after that.
vouaobrasil 3y ago
In my opinion, the goal of increasing automation has gone from a useful relief of labor to an obsession that will lead nowhere. Globally, this seems to be reflected only by increasing resource use and increasing ignorance of the natural world by producing purely for the sake of making consumerism more efficient. AI assistant in a browser...it's getting ridiculous.
- rplnt 3y ago
  > for the sake of making consumerism more efficient If only. This wave of AI integrations is primarily focused on pleasing (potential) investors.
  - WillAdams 3y ago
    You need customers who bring in money to please investors over the long-haul.
  - benreesman 3y ago
    If only. This wave of AI integrations is happening in a context/framework for normalizing naked avarice so that preposterous power can be concentrated in the hands of the rich and dubiously ethical.
- Almondsetat 3y ago
  You just assert that it is ridiculous without any motivations
- realharo 3y ago
  AI assistant in a browser makes sense if it's acting as an extension of your memory - for example you're browsing some items you're considering buying, and the assistant creates a summary spreadsheet with their comparison, that you can later look at, etc. Could be useful for things like real estate. Most AI tools I've seen however can't seem to get away from the classic "prompt -> response" chat UI.
- surajrmal 3y ago
  Some ai features make a lot of sense. Automatically organizing tabs is amazing for helping me not get lost in a sea of tabs. Longer form auto complete saves me time, at least on mobile. I used to rely on Reddit comments to summarize trashy low quality articles to give me the primary points. Now that I've been reddit sober for a while, it's been helpful to have my browser do that summarization for me, helping me stay away from Reddit. I can't say I will use every ai feature, but so far they've been helpful. I don't feel more ignorant. What I think makes people ignorant is outsourcing labor tasks like a cleaner for the home, a gardener for the yard, or handyman for basic repairs. I don't think those are necessarily wrong to outsource though.
greymalik 3y ago
How do they support this financially?
- temp0826 3y ago
  They're at the top of the pyramid for their shitcoin. Probably one of the best modern grifts out there.
  - rekoil 3y ago
    And regular advertising (where the audience doesn't get paid for consuming adverts) isn't a grift?
    - bheadmaster 3y ago
      Regular advertising doesn't promise the user that they will get paid for clicking ads. Regardless, whataboutism doesn't make Brave's scheme any less of a grift.
      - rekoil 3y ago
        Fair enough, but you do get paid so that isn't a broken promise or anything, it's just not that much because their ad network hasn't really been much of an ad network. I had it enabled for a while, thought it was a great idea, but it's so little money that I've gone back to just disabling it personally.
      - salad-tycoon 3y ago
        You don’t need to click the ads. You swipe them away. It’s based on attention not clicking. Not trying to be pedantic but it’s a difference. You can also disable them. I did. Although when I had them on actually got some pretty good deals. Anyways, I just use safari these days and brave lives for YouTube for me to bypass ads and download for offline viewing.
    - kibwen 3y ago
      Who ever said regular advertising isn't a grift? Advertising in general is just psychological manipulation designed to make you sadder and poorer by manufacturing a specific discontent in the victim and then selling them a supposed cure for that discontent.
ss64 3y ago
Friends don't let friends use Brave.
- pcdoodle 3y ago
  You mean chrome
  - tomrod 3y ago
    Brave for mobile, Firefox for desktop. Firefox on mobile is a poor experience for accessibility. Also, in my experience, the delivery was quite better for Firefox Mobile before 2021. Not sure what all changes, but it really impacted my use.
- rekoil 3y ago
  I really don't get this hate Brave gets on HN and other tech forums. It's a de-Googled Chromium fork which retains support for Manifest v2 extensions and has a bunch of neat extra features like first-party ad-blocking, an (underused and probably at this point should be considered a failed experiment) advertising network where users are paid for the ads they consume, Tor-integration, Web3 integrations. Yes, it defaults to enabling their advertising features, but that's just it, a default setting, it isn't hard to disable if you don't want to "take part of the experiment".
  - jorvi 3y ago
    > Yes, it defaults to enabling their advertising features It does not, you have to opt in. You are right in the rest of your comment thought. And in general, when you compare default configs, Brave does far more to protect your privacy than Firefox does.
    - rekoil 3y ago
      Oh it's opt-in now? It used to be opt-out, good change.
      - 3y ago
andybak 3y ago
Asked it to extract some data from a spreadsheet. It's first answer was wrong. I corrected it. It's second answer was wrong. That's when I quit. (It was a simple sheet. I said "list the names of all items where [column name] is false". There was about 60 rows)
- classified 3y ago
  I'm sure your spreadsheet software has a function for that. This will qualify your spreadsheet software as AI since it's smarter than the other AI.
lupusreal 3y ago
This is the first I've heard of Brave Leo. I hope Mozilla comes up with something competitive soon, or they might finally lose me as a user.
mcpar-land 3y ago
A lot of this new wave of "privacy focused" "we're not Chrome" browsers are A) just Chrome and B) venture capital funded. They're cool and fun now, but their ultimate goal is to burn VC money in a giant advertising pyre in hopes of pulling enough of the market away from Chrome to justify their existence. They'll either fail and burn out, or succeed and promptly enshittify to be even worse than Chrome. Please just use Firefox.
freedomben 3y ago
Unrelated but about Brave and interesting to me: I recently found myself having a large upstream project that I need to maintain some custom patches for, and there's a need for deeper customizations and I worry that my rudimentary system of applying .patch files will turn into an unmaintainable nightmare of merge conflicts after every rebase. I was thinking about possible solutions, and it occurred to me that Brave being Chromium-based must have this same challenge but an order of magnitude more difficult, so I looked for their code to see how they solved this issue. It's pretty interesting! They do basically the same thing for core Chromium, applying a (big) set of patches[1]. Incidentally, I'd be interested to hear any ideas/approaches to this problem. I'm guessing if there was something clearly better, Brave would be doing it, but it seems like there should be a better way even if I can't think of one. [1] https://github.com/brave/brave-core/tree/master/patches https://github.com/brave/brave-core/tree/master/patches
- SushiHippie 3y ago
  I don't know why they went with patch files instead of forking chromium and rebasing the changes via git. They document how developers should "rebase" chromium: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Chromium-rebases#fix-patches https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Chromium-rebases... And it looks like way more work than doing it with git via git rebase chromium/master
  - fabrice_d 3y ago
    If you do that kind of rebase you have to force-push to your branch, and that's not great for many reasons. The other option is to `git merge chromium/master` into your fork. This way you don't have to force-push, but the history is not that clean and bisecting can be tricky.
    - SushiHippie 3y ago
      Ah true didn't think of that, as I've never worked on such large projects were force pushing becomes a problem. But with manually editing .patch files you need to manually find out how to resolve the conflicts, while in a rebase git at least shows you the merge conflicts.
surcap526 3y ago
spyware is now called assistant.
surcap526 3y ago
When spyware is being called assistant. "Amazing" propaganda by corporation.
beAbU 3y ago
Is there a way to completely excise this feature from the browser?
codedokode 3y ago
Everyone seems to use LLMs the wrong way. Instead of using them to do useful work (for example: static code analysis with automatic fixing of found bugs, writing high-quality documentation), they create useless dumb chatbots. Waiting for someone to integrate a chatbot into a calculator.
- zilti 3y ago
  The last things I'd want an AI to do is "fixing" bugs, closely followed by writing documentation. It will confidently make things worse and break them.
godelski 3y ago
Isn't Brave supposed to be a security first browser? I thought this was their whole thing? So why are they using a non-local LLM? Forget your thoughts on AI for a second, and just consider what has to be done for these tasks. If you ask it to summarize the page (like the example) it has so send the information elsewhere, off your computer. Same with the PDF. This really undermines security and creates an way that exposes all your data. Their paid service even uses Claude so not entirely controlled by them either if you fully trust them to E2EE that data and then not store it. So according to Brave, using their AI leaks: - your searches - What you're viewing - What you're typing Did Brave just turn into the Chrome that it once so hated? I guess it is just orange chrome.
CaffeinatedDev 3y ago
I tried it, it's fairly good, solves a lot of the issues of not knowing the context that chat is using, but so far the responses are super lengthy. Sometimes they are even longer than the article itself haha
bozhark 3y ago
They are training off your data, I guarantee it
bzmrgonz 3y ago
Am I weird by wanting this in Mozilla? Somehow Mozilla seems more trustworthy!! Not trying to be a bigot, just thinking out-loud.

136 points by thek3nger 3y ago

Different topic, but can someone talk about which browser they use now? I’ve used Chrome for the past N years with ublock Origin, but recently I’ve been getting some ads on Youtube. Also some websites just didn’t work in Chrome. I switched to Brave a week ago and things seem ok, but it’s a weird browser with Tor built in, and also Spotify.com always crashes with a Memory problem. Does anyone have any thoughts on browser preference these days?

alanjdev 3y ago
I use Safari for personal browsing, Firefox for work stuff (because my work machine is Windows). Firefox with uBlock Origin works quite well at keeping me mostly safe from ads.
timeon 3y ago
Firefox is safe bet. But not sure why would Brave have special problem with Spotify, it is Chromium based.
web3-is-a-scam 3y ago
I’ve been using Firefox for nearly two decades and I’d be hard pressed to switch now. I’m practically married to it: through sickness and health.
ejb999 3y ago
I use brave exclusively for years - zero problems - seems faster to me than other options. Also use it with Spotify and can't remember ever having an issue (brave on mac if it makes a difference). Yes it has Tor built-in, but you don't ever need to use it - it's just there in case you do (I have never needed it myself).
dwighttk 3y ago
I use Brave for YouTube and things that require Chrome and Safari for everything else. Oh… Firefox for when I want to load Facebook. Like once a quarter.
polyvisual 3y ago
Brave is great. I disabled all the web3 stuff and tidied up the homepage so it doesn't show me all the news etc. The only issue I have is that the sync between my iphone, macbook, windows can sometimes get out of sync.
andyjohnson0 3y ago
I'm very happy with Firefox.
rplnt 3y ago
I hated Firefox for the longest time, because it was a sub-par browser with a cult following, but since Chrome ruined any competition I went through several chrome-based browsers (never Chrome itself due to severe lack of basic functionality) and am slowly ending up with FF as my primary browser. My standards have lowered substantially, and firefox is just good enough. Always using more browsers and trying something on the side, but while there are some nice features to be found, there is always a major drawback. I had high hopes with Vivaldi, but it's a broken mess that I can't recommend.
- malauxyeux 3y ago
  Would you mind saying what you would like to do but can't with FF? I don't think I'm part of a cult, but I've used FF as my default browser for over a decade and I guess I don't know what else people want from a browser.
  - rekoil 3y ago
    For me it's how user-defined search engines work. In Chromium-based browsers you can just supply a URL-template, a name, and a shorthand, and you're off to the races, it takes 10 seconds to add one. In Firefox it used to be you needed to like create your own little mini-addon or something like that, and these days they have "smart bookmarks", but it's such a weird name and doesn't really work the same. At any rate, I have 100 different little shortcuts defined like for example "tren" which takes the given text, puts it into a translator, and auto-detects language and translates to English. Ditto "sven", "ensv", "trsv", then I have "wiki", "wikise" (Wikipedia Sweden), "wikt", "aw" (ArchWiki), etc., etc. I use these hundreds of times a day, and when I tried converting to Firefox (before I eventually landed on Brave) I couldn't find a simple way of moving these from my Google Chrome profile to Firefox and have it work like I expect it to. Perhaps that's possible now?
    - Vinnl 3y ago
      It's not the same, and you can't import them from Chrome, but I'll share what works for me just in case it works for you as well. Which is: set DuckDuckGo as your default search engine, and use their "bangs" - you'll be able to guess most of them, and never have to set them up yourself. For example, you could use !deepl, !wiki, !wse, !wt, !aw, etc. etc. (If you do still want to use e.g. Google for search, you can use !g.)
rekoil 3y ago
Been using Brave since I think around 2019? Very happy with it, love the integration of IPFS, ENS, Unstoppable domains, and the removal of all the Google trash present in Chromium. Fully end-to-end encrypted sync as well. Don't use Tor much, but it's great that it's easily accessible if I need it.
alisonatwork 3y ago
Cromite[0] is the best on Android, it's a privacy-oriented open source patchset on top of Chromium. Cromite has a desktop build, but it's a bit more experimental than the mobile build, so you can use Ungoogled Chromium[1] instead. Ungoogled is also a privacy-oriented open source patchset on top of Chromium. Check the beta flags to enable some more interesting features like getClientRect anti-fingerprinting measures (unfortunately breaks some React-based sites that go into infinite re-render loop). Both of these browsers selectively include patches from Brave, but they are community-oriented builds so imo more trustworthy than Brave, which continues to package various shady anti-features and always will because it's backed by a for-profit company. LibreWolf[2] is the nicest Firefox-based one for desktop, I think. It's pretty hardcore, though, I most only use it to visit mainstream social media sites. I tried a bunch of the Firefox-based ones on mobile and none of them clicked for me. Cromite is just too slick on Android. Put the address bar at the bottom and off you go. Only downside is no online syncing of tabs and bookmarks, but meh. You can save all open tabs to bookmark bar in one hit then export your bookmarks, send the file through whatever E2EE channel you want to your other device, import and reopen them again. [0] https://github.com/uazo/cromite https://github.com/uazo/cromite [1] https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium [2] https://librewolf.net/ https://librewolf.net/
Delumine 3y ago
I love edge, even before the AI stuff, it had a great feature set and less memory consumption than Chrome
Vinnl 3y ago
If ads, in particular on YouTube, are the problem, anything Chromium-based is probably only going to get worse and worse (see [1] and [2]). So that basically leaves you with Firefox and Safari. I work for Mozilla (speaking for myself, of course), so I'll leave you to guess which I'd recommend :P [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b... [2] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/09/googles-widely-opposed-ad-platform-the-privacy-sandbox-launches-in-chrome/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/09/googles-widely-oppos...
65 3y ago
I still use Chrome, mostly because I much prefer Chrome dev tools over any other dev tool options. And I have a bunch of custom browser extensions I've made for Chrome. I haven't had issues with uBlock Origin - very occasionally an ad will seep through on YouTube, maybe once every 6 months, but when that happens I refresh the page and the ad is gone. Safari is the new IE and Firefox I've always found to just be alright - for sure not as big of a fan of Firefox dev tools over Chrome dev tools. And Firefox scrolling behavior can be annoying.
bad_user 3y ago
I use Brave. It's a fine browser. The ad-blocking is almost on par with uBlock Origin. And I like its built-in Tor, BTW. I don't have any issues with Spotify.com, and it doesn't crash on me. I'm on a Macbook Pro M2 Max, and I also use it on a Galaxy S21U (Android). I tried using Firefox on and off, but it's sadly technically inferior to Chromium, and that gap has gotten worse. It still has things that it does better than Chromium browsers, like history sync actually working, or reader view. But those are few and far between. And Multi-Account Containers, one of its apparent advantages, comes with the caveat that Firefox doesn't have usable profiles and the security for its extensions is worse (e.g., no click to activate, no ability to disable extensions in certain containers). What finally pushed me to Chromium is the poor PWA support in Firefox. On Android, it has bugs that haven't been fixed for years (never mind the poor performance that's well known), and on desktop they've basically dropped the ball. I use several PWAs. If it's a chat app, I use it as a PWA. Also Spotify, since you mentioned it ... as I like having better sandboxing and ad-blocking in my apps. On Android, too.
kbelder 3y ago
I use Chrome for work on all my devices, and avoid any non-work browsing on it. It's an attempt to keep the two halves of my life apart. For all personal browsing and projects, I generally used Firefox, but switched over a couple years ago to using Brave on the phone, and am kind of half-transitioned from Firefox to Brave on desktop. I've been a Firefox user forever, but it's slowly losing me.
shever73 3y ago
I've been using Brave for a few years now. It's speedy enough, and does a great job of blocking ads and trackers. I've never had issues with Spotify and I like the auto-dismissing of cookie banners too.
PKop 3y ago
Firefox on Linux because touch-pad gestures for forward and back navigation don't work on Chromium browsers and also Firefox gives me a nice vertical tab setup with Tab Center Reborn + custom userChrome.css A tip I found recently in about:config browser.compact.show=true to bring back the compact layout option, results in very good use of space on laptop along with vertical tabs and also Firefox allows the vertical tabs to be moved to right side which is nice.
godelski 3y ago
Firefox I know what you're gonna say, but forgetting everything else there's one important factor you should consider. Chrome has a (near) monopoly and resolving that monopoly requires using non-chromium browsers. But on top of that, Firefox is fast, secure, has privacy in mind, and a rich set of add-ons. But most of that is true for any browser you pick. There really aren't big differences between browsers and often we're making mountains out of mole hills when we compare. But I'll say, firefox has ad-blocking on mobile (plugins on mobile, like 800 exist)
nyarlathotep_ 3y ago
Brave or Firefox with UBO a few userscripts, and a lightly tweaked user.js/userChrome for nice-looking tree-style tabs, in no particular order. Haven't had Chrome installed on any of my machines for ~5 years at this point. Not the biggest fan of Brave (especially considering this latest AI crap, and all the weird crypto stuff), but I'm satisfied with it overall. FF still remains #1 in my eyes and usage, but has to be tweaked to my liking.
AzzyHN 3y ago
Firefox + uBo. TOR browser uses Firefox as a base for a reason, and uBo works best on Firefox
soundnote 3y ago
Brave. I pretty much turn most things off and use it as a more private Chrome with vertical tabs.

_the_special_ 3y ago

The first browser to index (locally preferably) my browsing history and help me extract/surface useful information from previous pages I have visited will win me over. So far they all seem to be offering the same kind of AI that will crawl the current page and extract information from it.

Sabinus 3y ago
If Firefox could sprint some good APIs in they could get some incredible plugins going.
- vdaea 3y ago
  I don't know much about the WebExtensions api but it's likely the apis are already there.
freediver 3y ago
How much would you be ready to pay for that?
- rplnt 3y ago
  Fully local (or private cloud sync) I would go as high as $2 a month. Cloud based solution, which is the only solution I expect, not interested just yet. (note: not OP)
- davidy123 3y ago
  $0, unless maybe someone finds a way to not pillage the data of the service and add a lot of actual value, and doesn't squat on this ultimately simple thing that should be a small piece of a much larger thing. open source AI and browser/OS companies are going to provide an answer soon anyway.
Moldoteck 3y ago
I guess this can be done with an extension that would work on all browsers. Like parse each page, save compressed text that supports fast decompressing (maybe even images), build tf/idf + cosine distance for verbantim searches & save in db and maybe add some ai to enhance the search. The next steps would be custom ai searches like "show me pages related to x", it'll quickly decompress the pages & apply the search for each but there are different approaches, like maybe saving history on a server and apply some ai model with huge context or do an initial filtering with tf/idf and apply ai after that.

vouaobrasil 3y ago

In my opinion, the goal of increasing automation has gone from a useful relief of labor to an obsession that will lead nowhere. Globally, this seems to be reflected only by increasing resource use and increasing ignorance of the natural world by producing purely for the sake of making consumerism more efficient. AI assistant in a browser...it's getting ridiculous.

rplnt 3y ago
> for the sake of making consumerism more efficient If only. This wave of AI integrations is primarily focused on pleasing (potential) investors.
- WillAdams 3y ago
  You need customers who bring in money to please investors over the long-haul.
- benreesman 3y ago
  If only. This wave of AI integrations is happening in a context/framework for normalizing naked avarice so that preposterous power can be concentrated in the hands of the rich and dubiously ethical.
Almondsetat 3y ago
You just assert that it is ridiculous without any motivations
realharo 3y ago
AI assistant in a browser makes sense if it's acting as an extension of your memory - for example you're browsing some items you're considering buying, and the assistant creates a summary spreadsheet with their comparison, that you can later look at, etc. Could be useful for things like real estate. Most AI tools I've seen however can't seem to get away from the classic "prompt -> response" chat UI.
surajrmal 3y ago
Some ai features make a lot of sense. Automatically organizing tabs is amazing for helping me not get lost in a sea of tabs. Longer form auto complete saves me time, at least on mobile. I used to rely on Reddit comments to summarize trashy low quality articles to give me the primary points. Now that I've been reddit sober for a while, it's been helpful to have my browser do that summarization for me, helping me stay away from Reddit. I can't say I will use every ai feature, but so far they've been helpful. I don't feel more ignorant. What I think makes people ignorant is outsourcing labor tasks like a cleaner for the home, a gardener for the yard, or handyman for basic repairs. I don't think those are necessarily wrong to outsource though.

greymalik 3y ago

How do they support this financially?

temp0826 3y ago
They're at the top of the pyramid for their shitcoin. Probably one of the best modern grifts out there.
- rekoil 3y ago
  And regular advertising (where the audience doesn't get paid for consuming adverts) isn't a grift?
  - bheadmaster 3y ago
    Regular advertising doesn't promise the user that they will get paid for clicking ads. Regardless, whataboutism doesn't make Brave's scheme any less of a grift.
    - rekoil 3y ago
      Fair enough, but you do get paid so that isn't a broken promise or anything, it's just not that much because their ad network hasn't really been much of an ad network. I had it enabled for a while, thought it was a great idea, but it's so little money that I've gone back to just disabling it personally.
    - salad-tycoon 3y ago
      You don’t need to click the ads. You swipe them away. It’s based on attention not clicking. Not trying to be pedantic but it’s a difference. You can also disable them. I did. Although when I had them on actually got some pretty good deals. Anyways, I just use safari these days and brave lives for YouTube for me to bypass ads and download for offline viewing.
  - kibwen 3y ago
    Who ever said regular advertising isn't a grift? Advertising in general is just psychological manipulation designed to make you sadder and poorer by manufacturing a specific discontent in the victim and then selling them a supposed cure for that discontent.

ss64 3y ago

Friends don't let friends use Brave.

pcdoodle 3y ago
You mean chrome
- tomrod 3y ago
  Brave for mobile, Firefox for desktop. Firefox on mobile is a poor experience for accessibility. Also, in my experience, the delivery was quite better for Firefox Mobile before 2021. Not sure what all changes, but it really impacted my use.
rekoil 3y ago
I really don't get this hate Brave gets on HN and other tech forums. It's a de-Googled Chromium fork which retains support for Manifest v2 extensions and has a bunch of neat extra features like first-party ad-blocking, an (underused and probably at this point should be considered a failed experiment) advertising network where users are paid for the ads they consume, Tor-integration, Web3 integrations. Yes, it defaults to enabling their advertising features, but that's just it, a default setting, it isn't hard to disable if you don't want to "take part of the experiment".
- jorvi 3y ago
  > Yes, it defaults to enabling their advertising features It does not, you have to opt in. You are right in the rest of your comment thought. And in general, when you compare default configs, Brave does far more to protect your privacy than Firefox does.
  - rekoil 3y ago
    Oh it's opt-in now? It used to be opt-out, good change.
    - 3y ago

andybak 3y ago

Asked it to extract some data from a spreadsheet. It's first answer was wrong. I corrected it. It's second answer was wrong. That's when I quit. (It was a simple sheet. I said "list the names of all items where [column name] is false". There was about 60 rows)

classified 3y ago
I'm sure your spreadsheet software has a function for that. This will qualify your spreadsheet software as AI since it's smarter than the other AI.

lupusreal 3y ago

This is the first I've heard of Brave Leo. I hope Mozilla comes up with something competitive soon, or they might finally lose me as a user.

mcpar-land 3y ago

A lot of this new wave of "privacy focused" "we're not Chrome" browsers are A) just Chrome and B) venture capital funded. They're cool and fun now, but their ultimate goal is to burn VC money in a giant advertising pyre in hopes of pulling enough of the market away from Chrome to justify their existence. They'll either fail and burn out, or succeed and promptly enshittify to be even worse than Chrome. Please just use Firefox.

freedomben 3y ago

Unrelated but about Brave and interesting to me: I recently found myself having a large upstream project that I need to maintain some custom patches for, and there's a need for deeper customizations and I worry that my rudimentary system of applying .patch files will turn into an unmaintainable nightmare of merge conflicts after every rebase. I was thinking about possible solutions, and it occurred to me that Brave being Chromium-based must have this same challenge but an order of magnitude more difficult, so I looked for their code to see how they solved this issue. It's pretty interesting! They do basically the same thing for core Chromium, applying a (big) set of patches[1]. Incidentally, I'd be interested to hear any ideas/approaches to this problem. I'm guessing if there was something clearly better, Brave would be doing it, but it seems like there should be a better way even if I can't think of one. [1] https://github.com/brave/brave-core/tree/master/patches https://github.com/brave/brave-core/tree/master/patches

SushiHippie 3y ago
I don't know why they went with patch files instead of forking chromium and rebasing the changes via git. They document how developers should "rebase" chromium: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Chromium-rebases#fix-patches https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Chromium-rebases... And it looks like way more work than doing it with git via git rebase chromium/master
- fabrice_d 3y ago
  If you do that kind of rebase you have to force-push to your branch, and that's not great for many reasons. The other option is to `git merge chromium/master` into your fork. This way you don't have to force-push, but the history is not that clean and bisecting can be tricky.
  - SushiHippie 3y ago
    Ah true didn't think of that, as I've never worked on such large projects were force pushing becomes a problem. But with manually editing .patch files you need to manually find out how to resolve the conflicts, while in a rebase git at least shows you the merge conflicts.

surcap526 3y ago

spyware is now called assistant.

surcap526 3y ago

When spyware is being called assistant. "Amazing" propaganda by corporation.

beAbU 3y ago

Is there a way to completely excise this feature from the browser?

codedokode 3y ago

Everyone seems to use LLMs the wrong way. Instead of using them to do useful work (for example: static code analysis with automatic fixing of found bugs, writing high-quality documentation), they create useless dumb chatbots. Waiting for someone to integrate a chatbot into a calculator.

zilti 3y ago
The last things I'd want an AI to do is "fixing" bugs, closely followed by writing documentation. It will confidently make things worse and break them.

godelski 3y ago

Isn't Brave supposed to be a security first browser? I thought this was their whole thing? So why are they using a non-local LLM? Forget your thoughts on AI for a second, and just consider what has to be done for these tasks. If you ask it to summarize the page (like the example) it has so send the information elsewhere, off your computer. Same with the PDF. This really undermines security and creates an way that exposes all your data. Their paid service even uses Claude so not entirely controlled by them either if you fully trust them to E2EE that data and then not store it. So according to Brave, using their AI leaks: - your searches - What you're viewing - What you're typing Did Brave just turn into the Chrome that it once so hated? I guess it is just orange chrome.

CaffeinatedDev 3y ago

I tried it, it's fairly good, solves a lot of the issues of not knowing the context that chat is using, but so far the responses are super lengthy. Sometimes they are even longer than the article itself haha

bozhark 3y ago

They are training off your data, I guarantee it

bzmrgonz 3y ago

Am I weird by wanting this in Mozilla? Somehow Mozilla seems more trustworthy!! Not trying to be a bigot, just thinking out-loud.