Hacker News Reader

Comment by kylec | Hacker News Reader

Glad it won't include Google's WEI, but it's not like it doesn't have it's own weird junk like BAT, so I guess pick your poison.

View on HN

You can use Brave and never even enable its crypto wallet. It’s an opt-in setting iirc.

Opt in setting doesn't mean much here. While it's technically true the crypto stuff isn't "enabled", it's constantly pushed to you with no option to remove all of that during installation.

I'll walk you through it:

Upon loading the browser on a fresh install, you are greeted with a new tab page pushing Brave Rewards. With manipulative UX, there is no button to disagree or remove the feature, only a button for "start using rewards". You can hide it by clicking the 3 dots, which for most users they're never going to do unfortunately.

Looking at the address bar, there's a triangle up there with a badge. Hiding the new tab Rewards card doesn't hide this triangle. Clicking on this does not show a remove feature option. Beside that, there's a sidebar button and a wallet icon again with a badge. Clicking on this only shows a learn more button. I can right click both of these, and finally see a hide option.

Finally all of that is hidden. Maybe I browse a page or so, and then open a new tab. I'm shown an ad on the new tab screen. Right clicking it shows no hide button. So I'll try the customize button. Here's where you have to scroll down and disable the "show sponsored images" option.

All done, right? Ok let's browse Reddit for a bit. There's where you see the "tip" button under every post. Right clicking shows nothing about hiding it. So into the settings you have to go to finally remove the last bit of the feature and be prompted to relaunch the browser.

I don't see any of that. Its all disabled in my Brave browser.

I don’t recall any of that but it’s been a long time since I set up Brave. Anytime I install a new browser the first thing I do is go through all the settings and configure it, so I probably turned all that off on day 1.

I've found Brave to be more than tolerable. In relation to your annoyance with the customize HTML:

Hamburger menu -> Settings -> Brave Rewards -> Uncheck the boxes (Reddit, Github, Twitter)

---

...or the baroque but useful to know:

Hamburger menu -> Settings -> Shields -> Content Filtering -> Create Custom Filters -> reddit.com## .action-brave-tip

(which you can get to quicker with a right click context menu)

> Ok let's browse Reddit for a bit. There's where you see the "tip" button under every post.

Wait, that actually sounds like a great feature! Is there a way to get it for other browsers?

Yeah it'll be built off of web environment integrity the same way this is built off of brave's ad ecosystem.

And all of that is still less scummy than Google.

Is it less scummy than firefox? More importantly, is it less scummy than continuing to give Google control over the internet through the blink browser engine?

The only actual counterbalance to google's power in web is the firefox browser and it's basically dead because "wah wah they bought pocket wah wah there are two tiles on the new tab page that show popular websites wah wah" so alright I guess we will just do the whole IE6 debacle again this time with less willingness from regulators to fix our bullshit.

I disabled all the nonsense for a new profile just now, didn't take much. I know what bits annoy me, though. But one pass right clicking annoying UI elements, one pass through new tab page's Customize menu, one pass through Appearance in settings and you're done.

Leaves you with this:

https://i.imgur.com/LriOYog.png

The crypto related settings are also literally the only settings that don't sync across devices, and you have to manually turn it off on every new installation, I wonder why that is.

My feeling on the matter that nothing is free and every time a team like this spends their resources on some extra bauble, they are drifting from the core goal. Like Mozilla.

I was fan of their IPFS bundling, then I turned it on and it keeps chugging CPU and RAM, doing… something.

It seems it’s a go app and it’s not the best optimised thing in the world. So I turned it off again.

I’m still a fan of Brave. The only browser with actual integration of vertical tabs besides Edge (no the firefox extensions don’t count)

Vertical tabs make so much sense since monitors are wider than they are tall. It's better to reduce width than height

I know I'll probably get used to it, but I don't like how it shifts my content off-center. But I'm one of those weird one-maximized-window-at-a-time types.

Is this a weird behavior? I've always been this way.

I don't know if I'd say it's weird, but I'm not sure I get the appeal other than for trying to hyperfocus (and with similar downsides that implies, e.g. very expensive context switching).

I like the desktop metaphor that computers adopted, and one way to use it is to think of different application windows as different paper documents on your meatspace desktop. You could have a rule that only 1 piece of paper is on your desktop at any time, but I find it much easier and more efficient to work with, as needed, two or more pieces of paper on my desktop. When multiple pieces of paper are on my desktop, I can arrange them such that I can easily focus on different papers by only moving my eyes, or, if the papers are relatively far apart, by moving my head and/or the rest of my body a little too.

I personally like the desk organization rule of "1 project/task per desk", i.e. you clear your desk when switching tasks to ensure only relevant things are on your desk / within your visual domain. I use computers to similar effect with different desktops/workspaces.

Yes. There is a difference between a browser for professionals, and a browser for laptop users.

Tree style tabs has kept me on FF for a decade.

Only if you open full screen. When you tile the window to a side it is no longer the case.

YMMV applies.

Yes I enjoy grasshopper https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/grasshopper-u...

You invented a new idea: vertical tabs on both sides! Perhaps it works like a old CUI file manager

I believe Vivaldi[0] also offers vertical tabs, as does Arc[1] (albeit MacOS only at this point).

[0]: https://vivaldi.com/desktop/

[1]: https://arc.net/

Vivaldi is an excellent browser, but it sometimes seems like it has too many options. For example, tab groups and tab workspaces are almost the exact same idea.

Arc is basically someone looking at Vivaldi and hitting it with the "design stick". I didn't anticipate I'd love it as much as I do. Since it's Mac-only I only use it on my work machine, but that's 80% of my browsing anyway and I have no desire to sync my work shit anywhere else.

If you're on a Mac, Safari has had virtual tabs for a bit now.

You can turn these off as I have years ago and haven't seen since

If you don't use BAT, it doesn't bother you in any way.

> but it's not like it doesn't have it's own weird junk like BAT

Turned off by default.

I hate BAT too but comparing it to WEI is a crime.

This is why I’ll keep using Vivaldi. They don’t want WEI but also don’t add stuff like BAT or VPN to the browser.

I don't think Vivaldi is open source. But if Brave's features are so bad that you're willing to switch to an closed source browser, why not switch to Firefox?

So when I'm using OpenBSD, I use Firefox exclusively. On my Mac, I use Safari 99% of the time, but I do have Firefox installed and use it for some things, but when I need a Chromium-based browser, I use Vivaldi, instead of Chrome or Brave.

EDIT: It looks some of Vivaldi's source is available FWIW, https://vivaldi.com/source/

The UI is closed source.

https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-browser-open-source/

Would you happen to also know what the Vivaldi source code contains then?

Vivaldi is even worse for privacy (and it's not even fully open source). You're better off just using Chrome.

https://privacytests.org/

These tests just show the default settings. If you enable the ad blocker and disable third party cookies it would score a lot better.

Then if you add the same to Chrome, it'll be even better.

The ignorance so stale. Learn more about Crypto. Learn more about BAT, and its integration into Brave. Your argument is so 2018. We're in 2023 now. Update your knowledge.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com