Opera GX Gaming Browser | Hacker News Reader

Opera GX Gaming Browser

opera.com

I really loved Opera before it became chromium based but I do still like opera. They've integrated a lot of nice features which makes it a more compelling offering than chrome without any additional add-ons.

I also think that setting resource limits for the browser is a good feature.

I do not see why this needs to be broken out as a separate browser for #Gamers though. I guess it might help them gain market share because it's "new" but I think it's more likely to cause a lot of eye-rolling instead.

it's for market segmentation for advertisers. This way they can sell aggregate data and ad impressions that's targeted to a very specific and profitable segment.

Like google's 'flocks' concept, but maybe less moving pieces.

This FLoC?

https://github.com/jkarlin/floc

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flock_(web_browser)

>https://github.com/jkarlin/floc

this is the one I mean, yes.

This reminded me of the Flock browser which was an interesting take on browsers like 10 years ago!

You might check out Vivaldi, created by one of the founders of Opera Software. Has a ton of UI customization options built-in.

https://vivaldi.com/

It’s also Chromium based

But it's not owned by a Chinese company. Opera is and that makes me question how trustworthy it is. There hasn't been evidence to suggest it's not, but I'm not comfortable running it on my machines.

The term I heard recently was "distrust and verify", a modern spin on the Russian proverb "Trust, but verify" which was made famous by Ronald Reagan during the first Cold War [1].

In software industry, following the "distrust and verify" strategy makes particularly good sense. Software that is not open-source cannot be verified, so should only be used in carefully sandboxed environments.

In 2020, why would anybody use a closed-source web browser?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust,_but_verify

I believe it was Pompeo who recently said that. It's about right for some of the things going on lately.

Any software from China or Russia falls into that category for me. Some other places would too if it was more common to see mainstream software from them.

I agree with you on the web browsers. Hardly anyone uses an open source browser though. Most of them have open source components mixed with closed source blobs to the point where you don't really know what it's doing. Chrome is a good example where they go as far as to scan your machine for malware, but it's not the only one.

What's their business model? Got to say, the browser looks pretty slick.

It's a great browser, as customizable as you'd expect a spiritual successor to Opera to be. Unfortunately you largely have to take their word when it comes to privacy, but they seem trustworthy enough.

Fwiw many of the Opera engineers who worked on Presto moved over to work on Chromium and have done amazing work improving performance, standards compliance, and other cool web features. The browser itself might not live on but the expertise does.

Really?

I read somewhere they laid of a huge part of the C++ team back in the day, when they switched to Chromium.

So that "many" you mention is what, 5%, 20%, 50% of the original Presto team?

Their business model is/was selling users' data. I met several sales teams at Opera back in the 2010s while I worked with one of the world biggest smartphone seller (i.e we chose which app to preinstall on zillions Android devices). They had no shame explaining in details how we and our partners data could use the data to profit against their very own users. How could one imagine using their product after such cynical presentation? I wish this was better known.

I actually really love the idea of browsers tailored towards specific segments. They were made before the dangers of always-on social were super apparent, but I loved the idea of Flock and Rockmelt when they initially came out.

Also a user of Flock. Metaweblog was the best

I don't quite get what this is... Is it a gaming platform like steam? They don't list any of the games you can play on it. There are very few details on this page.

The download link just grabs an .exe file, so I can't test it because I'm not running Windows.

it is just a web browser :D

Opera markets it as a gaming browser because they have some features for web based gaming

Seems the main point of this browser is that it limits the memory and cpu cycles, so more memory and cpu cycles are available for games.

I guess it can be nice. When I use Safari, it seems some sites can bring my Mac down to its knees occasionally. Especially back when my Mac still had only 8 GB RAM, though recently I upgraded to 24 GB and I don't have many of these issues anymore.

Found a workstation for a $179 with 96gb of ram and a quadro card. King of pci 2.

Linky?

Hell, I've been asking this for years for my development machine, especially running a bunch of heavy apps (like slack) through the browser.

It's worth noting that Qihoo 360 still owns Opera and has a reputation for spyware/adware (separate from the Chinese Communist Party / Made In China issues).

And there's that whole predatory lending business Opera makes a lot of its money from.

Here's an example, right on Google's Play store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.loan.cash....

Translating their "example" scenario: > For example, for a loan of $1,000 to pay in 91 days, you will have to pay only $82 of interest, a commission of $180 and VAT (16%). The total amount to be paid would be $1,384. CAT: 151.1%, annual interest rate: 21.9%.

You get $1000, then three months later you pay it back plus 38%. Sounds legit /s

Hiring post linking Okredito to Opera: https://www.simplyhired.mx/search?q=cobranza+preventiva&l=be...

To customer belonging to high risk group (which would be main customers of lending apps) banks simply refuse to even start conversation about credit. But then it is not called predatory. Pretty clean solution. Since banks take customers with low default probability, here risk has to be unfortunately priced in. Load that is not repaid is not only revenue loss, it is also loss of capital (that company is obliged to protect) as there are really slim chances/high price to recollect.

It is not fair that usually the poorest pay the price, but the whole system is not fair. And I believe that it is actually financial apps that have some chance to democratize it more.

I do not know about Mexico, but such businesses are usually also regulated, wich is good, because at one end market knows the local conditions like capital cost and risk and at the other they do not fall into usury.

In your example: the bank lending rate in MX is already more than twice than US. Later, if you assume that for new unknown customer the delinquency probability cost has to be fixed in the price, then annualising the rate of short term loan makes it really scary. Such companies usually have better rates for returning customers.

Kind of like Discord has in its space, I love how gamer-centric optimisations can lead to better use case experiences for non-gamers. I could imagine using something like this for much more than just games.

Is there a way to configure Firefox to boot up in some sort of similarly-scaled back fashion?

Unrelated, but it's borderline frustrating how used to I have gotten to the Chrome ecosystem by now - to the point that the mere thought of switching to any other browser makes me queasy.

I tried Brave for a couple weeks but they didn't support DRM videos, so back I went to Chrome.

FYI; Brave does support DRM videos, you just need to enable it. There's a setting section for Widevine in the browser settings.

I really wonder what I would be missing, using Firefox almost exclusively.

Netflix works fine. Spotify works fine. Extensions work fine. Gmail works fine. Pocket integration (I also own a Kobo) is awesome. Syncing between all my devices works great.

Multi-Account containers are such a great feature, now I can't live without it.

Cool, I have absolutely no way of telling what this is or what it does without downloading it first?

What? If you just click the page it tells you pretty efficiently; it's one of the few good marketing pages that exist right now.

Literally without scrolling at all:

Discover Opera GX

CPU, RAM & bandwidth limiters

Need every ounce of power your machine can give you? No need to close your browser. GX Control lets you set limits on how much RAM and CPU usage your browser will take up.

Choose favourite design and color

You can customize your browser with any color you want and choose from different special effects and themes.

Twitch Integration

Never miss a live stream. With Twitch right in your sidebar, you can easily see channels you follow, who's online, and choose to receive notifications whenever someone you follow goes live.

No idea why you're being downvoted.

He's being downvoted because nowhere on that page does it mention that it's a web browser. If I didn't know what opera was before hand, I wouldn't of been sure if it was a web browser, game browser (like steam), or something else.

Also, From the HN Guidelines: In Comments

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Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

I think it's a web browser with RGBs in it.

I thought this might be a Steam style browser overlay but without having to add every game to Steam.

Doesn't look like it, though.

Qihoo 360, the Chinese company that brought Opera, recently showed the world why you should never trust Chinese hardware and software.

On the outside a browser seem harmless, but Qihoo 360, Alibaba, Tencent and all the other Chinese companies that operate popular browsers, kindly showed the world what they’re capable of when they decided to make the 966 GitHub repo inaccessible to everyone using the Chinese browsers (which many people are unknowingly doing since they come preinstalled with their cheap phones).

Just to be clear, they didn’t block GitHub as a whole, but they instead rewrote the content of a specific repo despite HTTPS being present. They could do the same with every website in the world, such as rewriting the content of Wikipedia articles, rewrite the content and websites returned in your Google search results, in your Facebook, YouTube feeds.. write fake NYTimes articles and modify the frontpage to link to them, or push the fake article to a specific group of users on social media, or rewrite Google Chrome’s download page to download a modified version that is bundled with malware. The possibilities are endless, and keep in mind that the companies themselves were willing to abuse this power to silence software developers complaining about long work hours.. imagine what the CCP would force them to do.