Hacker News Reader

Comment by lima | Hacker News Reader

Which browser has a better security track record?

Despite what people are saying here, chrome has a really excellent track record. Nobody is perfect. Switching just because chrome got exploited one time will likely result in you switching to something worse.

If you're paranoid, disable JIT.

Or disable JS altogether, and enjoy many sites working much quicker. Many others fail & need to be selectively allowed, but it's been worth it.

If by quicker you mean blank content, I'll agree, it is worth it.

Somehow I don't think you've tried, if you think all I get is blank content.

Actually thinking back, I get _more_ content, because there's a notable number of access screens that just don't function with JS off, leaving the whole article available.

It's not about switching because chrome got exploited one time, it's about switching not to reward unethical behavior.

well one someone posts on an article about an exploit in chrome saying that the exploit is a reason to switch, i think its fair to say its not about "not reward[ing] unethical behaviour"

Firefox with uBlock Origin. It’s astonishing how many exploits uBO stops before they ever reach your browser engine. It’s the antivirus of the 2020s.

I suggest Zen browser (fork of FF), it feels closer to chrome.

In a good way?

Yes, in my opinion. I know a couple of people who actually jumped from Chrome to Zen because of it. In their mind, Firefox is something from the past and rough around the edges. Zen gave new attraction to FF. I am all for any opportunity to disrupt the Chrome monopoly we currently have.

I hear about Zen. Random q:

It can’t trick Canva into letting you use the color picker, or otherwise enable it, can it - if someone happens to know?

(What a dumb feature to be locked to the Googlesphere.)

I don’t know honestly.

What does it mean "closer to chrome"?

I should have been more specific. I meant the aesthetics. Zen mimics Arc Browser with vertical tabs and a hidden sidebar to maximize screen space.

Brave would be a much better option if you want security and good adblocking.

Brave is just a wrapper on top of Chromium. Just like the many other “browsers” you can think of recommending.

Yes but I was responding to someone who wanted good ad blocking which could be helpful for the security of non-technical users at the minimum.

uBlock Origin won't help with this kind of targeted exploit, and Firefox has a much worse security track record.

It absolutely does help, because it blocks hundreds of thousands of shady origins.

That blocks all sorts of abuse, but a targeted exploit would be delivered on a clean domain.

uBO stops exploits? Source?

It blocks many shady domains, which stops many exploits before they ever reach your browser.

malvertising is really a method of delivering exploits, but there is no reason to think its relavent to this situation.

For non technical users, scam adverts are probably the biggest threat.

So i agree ubo is an important security technology, but its probably irrelavent to the topic at hand.

Vanadium makes improvements on Chromium. https://grapheneos.org/features#vanadium

Right, but it's value-add on a derivative, not its own standalone engine.

Most of those are just changing flags, not really unique development. Like "disable JIT" is a Chromium flag. "Zero-init everything" is a Clang flag.

It's not even a build flag, it's a setting that you can just go and enable in Chrome's own settings menu (chrome://settings/content/v8).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com