This is an open source, rebranded Firefox and Firefox-like browsers could use some publicity. It promotes privacy and privacy can use some publicity too. Tor too.
Mullvad seems to be honest in the fact that their business model is selling VPNs and it's nice they are saying it's not enough. They are not saying that you might not need one though.
We need a Firefox with good defaults and it seems like this browser is such a thing. I'd prefer these privacy features to be in upstream Firefox but I guess world is not perfect and that Firefox still relies on revenues from Google so can't be as privacy-focused as it should.
My little concern I guess is that this browser will push for their service so it's a bit like an ad for them, at least with its name. But fair enough, and at least the business model seems healthy.
With Mullvad already being a Mozilla partner for their branded VPN, all this actually look good. They seem to be spending their money on worthy stuff.
I quite like Mullvad. I haven't needed to use them much (mostly when my ISP has wonky routing and I need something semi-urgent), but their service is pretty good, their website feels like it's designed for the more "techy users". Their billing is the least sketchiest of VPN providers, with no ticking clocks, no upsell and other nonsense.
I also like they provide a Wireguard file and a way to filter it, so it's super easy to get started.
I share a VPN subscription with my father, I use it for torrenting so my ISP can't snoop on me, and he uses it to bypass geo blocking to watch UK shows (things like BritBox, Netflix, BBC etc.) in another country. Unfortunately, there is no way to legally pay for most of these services and watch them from abroad.
I tried to get us to use Mullvad, as it was perfect for me, but for him it was constant problems with the services he used, whereas the sketchier providers like NordVPN and ExpressVPN always worked without issues.
Problems with services are to be expected when using Mullvad. Their IPs are all recognised as originating from datacenters. You might be lucky, but often not.
Sketchier VPN providers use "home ips" and rotate them regularly in order to defeat Netflix or other services blocking them.
Sketchier providers often use dubious methods to acquire their exit nodes.
Often they pay someone to include their code in a "free" software or browser extension (or malware) that allows them to route traffic through the host.
Oxylabs is one of the larger examples whose record is somewhat dubious.
IIRC the mylobot botnet is responsible for providing the vast majority of residential (home) IP addresses for residential VPN providers (who are then sold to expressvpn/nordvpn). The whole business is incredibly shady and nefarious and nordvpn/expressvpn must know from whom they contract their residential vpn services from.
BHProxies is the largest residential proxy provider on the internet and almost all of their proxies are acquired through the botnet above.
Seconded. I refer to them as shady because I have no way of knowing what they do with your data. I didn't even consider that they'd have a whole botnet market going on too. This definitely needs to be more public.
Agreed - I assumed they had some way of getting IP addresses that don't come from an AWS/Azure/Google/whatever datacentre block but I just assumed they bought residential blocks from ISPs or something like that.
Is there a source for expressvpn actually using BHProxies? I had no clue it was that sketchy. It is owned by a public company, so that's pretty substantial news if true.
I would be very skeptical of the claim, quite worrying to see multiple people accepting that as a fact without any kind of evidence to support the claim.
I'd be shocked if any of the major VPN providers were involved with illegal residential proxies. It just doesn't make sense, can you imagine just how unstable and slow those connections would be? Why would they risk being legally liable when there exists legal residential proxy providers that get their IP's from people that voluntarily share their connection (honeygain etc.)? I've never heard of any of the big VPN providers offering residential connections. As I understand the VPN providers that promise support for netflix and similar streaming services just acquire newer IP's from time to time but the connection still goes through a regular datacenter, definitely not from some random dude's home.
The proxy market is more so targeted towards developers who scrape data and criminals that do credential stuffing/other criminal activity.
I'm not saying I trust the above claim (I have no idea) but this
>can you imagine just how unstable and slow those connections would be
Yes, yes I can and they are. I tried them some time ago before I found out how shady they are and encrypted connections were like 2 Mbit while Mullvad gave me many many times faster bandwidth with higher encryption. Their support was completely useless.
It annoys me that the only way to access iPlayer from abroad is via a VPN. Surely opening it up and allowing international customers to pay some form of license fee could be a nice little revenue stream for the BBC? I'm guessing the reason is just "licensing issues" but if they're making the programmes then what's the problem? I'm sure there's an international market for watching the world class output from the BBC.
a few years ago I moved outside the UK and spent the best part of 3 months (on and off) trying to access BBC content, legally, still holding residency, paying domiciliary and employment taxes, and paying for a bladdy TV loicence
of course, I wanted to do this for as close to free as possible, since plugging an aerial into a tv at home also cost next to nothing
VPNs were already being detected and banned. I tried at least 4 extensively, including tcp, udp, socks, wg, obfuscated servers, etc. to no avail
dodgy residential/mobile proxies were too unreliable for live 720p m3u streams, not to mention expensive
I went through a few cheap linux VPSs with UK ip addresses, forwarding their web streams to my tv outside the UK, until I found one that seemed to work well. so much so I even invested in some fancy routing through intermediary countries for almost jitter-free stability
until a few weeks later, back to the same old shite -- everything 403 Unauthorised
after yet a few more weeks of furious head-scratching shame over the stable-now-vanished CBeebies and BritComs daily consumption, I concluded and confirmed the BBC had just started detecting and banning datacentre IPs more aggressively
it was at this ebb I discovered the wonderful world of illegal IPTV streams and adopted a fuck you too, BBC attitude
I used a small independent proxy company that I paid £50 a year annually through PayPal. I think they must've been small enough to fly under the radar of the detection algorithms. When I went onto google maps connected to the proxy, it always thought I was in Dubai, which gives you an idea of the clientele.
Maybe it was something to do with the fact that it was a Proxy and not a VPN, though I'm not sure if this makes it any less detectable. I even had a Firefox extension that automatically turned on the proxy when opening iPlayer tabs! It worked very well, though I wish I could've paid the license fee and just got access.
I dabbled with free and cheap paid-for proxies which were either injecting javascript or too flaky for live video. I saw a few of those smaller providers, but the initial outlay would have been too risky, because I am convinced the BBC throw a lot of money at residential geolocation, so if they haven't already their IP address blocks will be blacklisted at some point in the near future
interesting about Dubai though, makes me wonder if they have some sort of expat or economic deal with them. if Google thinks you're there, you can bet BBC do too. I discovered they use multiple CDNs and delivery mechanisms as fallback/best effort for the gamut of user agents, network health and device capabilities, which sometimes (but not always) sieved most (but not all) VPN and proxy locations in an indeterminate (yet authoritatively intentional) fashion, so perhaps Dubai is whitelisted on one of those. who knows. sometimes it's like rolling dice. inconsistency and implied mischief sure are strong deterrents. might investigate further at some point if I can swallow some bile first
I also used some UK shell provider (via SOCKS proxy + Putty) in the past and it worked really well. My guess is that there’s some there’s kind of threshold/concurrent connection that iPlayer looks at per IP address.
It’s pretty silly though, I would absolutely pay for a TV license if given the opportunity. Dear BBC: Shut up and take my money!
how far in the past ago, during nascent video streaming pre-VPN days? with live tv as well as VOD? if there is a relatively cheap, concrete solution I did not uncover which has been stable for over a year I would buy that wizard a thimbleful of scumble
This was about 15 years ago, definitely before when VPNs got popular… Clarkson was still hosting Top Gear. I seem to recall getting so irked that BBC America was something like 6-12 months behind current Top Gear episodes that it lead me down this path of ‘stealing’ iPlayer. It actually opened the door for me to content that I would have otherwise seen or known about, like obscure comedy shows on Channel 4 or the much better UK version of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares.
The shell provider I used was Phurix, not if they are still around or not.
Can you or someone explain why so many Brits want to watch UK television from abroad?
I’m French living abroad and have never missed French TV. The quality of the content is just very sub-par compared to American shows. They just don’t have the budget to compete. Is the UK different because it’s English speaking and perhaps it has access to a wider market and thus more capital?
The BBC has some extremely good content... nature documentaries (David Attenborough), science shows (Horizon), archaeological/history (Digging for Britain), comedy (Ghosts), comedy/news/current affairs (Have I Got News For You). The US does big budget shows very well, but for a wide variety of content I really miss the BBC when I can't access it. I'm obviously biased though.
> Can you or someone explain why so many Brits want to watch UK television from abroad?
As an example, Doctor Who sometimes releases new episodes. BBC doesn't just have UK television — they have an "on-demand" offering that actually works, and isn't sparsely populated with 15% of the episodes like some other services (cough Xfinity cough).
Interesting. I'm British and I enjoy quite a lot of French TV: Engrenages (Spiral), Le Bureau des Légendes (The Bureau), Au service de la France (A Very Secret Service), etc.
for me it was for watching live BBC News (BBC World News didn't cut it), and a few weekly quizcoms. plus a couple of kids' channels. there is a vast difference between UK- and American-centric channels which didn't appeal
Perhaps roll your own VPN using a home router that can act as a VPN server? That way you can use your home internet connection...assuming its upload speed is fast enough.
A shame BBC can't accommodate its paying customers who happen to be abroad.
yes in hindsight, had I known the BBC would stoop, I could have set up something from an actual home IP. whether that be forwarding their web streams or forwarding a few OTA DVB-T2 streams. but even that could require physical presence for emergency debugs, reboots, retunes..
With the cultural capital that BBC had especially 7 to 10 years ago, I'm pretty sure they would have been at league with Netflix and the like if they had opened it up. Dr Who was huge back then in the US, and you had Sherlock and a few other shows. I think people were just pirating it (?) but lots of people I knew were huge fans.
Given a) they started experimenting with iPlayer pretty early in the streaming came, and b) they have a huge and valuable back catalogue, it's always amazed me that they didn't open up pay-per-view and subscription options for an ex-UK audience.
I've always suspected there's a good reason why not behind the scenes - maybe because a successful PPV operation would lend huge weight to people in the UK seeking to abolish the license fee?
There was something called Kangaroo [1] which was a partnership between BBC, ITV and C4 but it got blocked by the competition commission. Now it's run under Britbox I think!
Shows are often made by production companies on contract and licensed for domestic distribution. Licensing for international distribution might be significantly more expensive.
They might get some revenue, but they would need to build and maintain a streaming service with payments, and that’s not free. They might also be limited by contracts with local broadcasters, which give them exclusive rights to online distribution within their country, even if they do not exercise them now.
> … he uses it to bypass geo blocking to watch UK shows (things like BritBox, Netflix, BBC etc.) in another country. Unfortunately, there is no way to legally pay for most of these services and watch them from abroad.
how are people supposed to react to this ? Those are two reasons why legal providers make life so difficult for innocent people. The response will be to enable more intrusive record keeping and more very-low bandwidth for me, because of you.
I want to second this and add that they make it very easy to make non-recurring payments. So many modern software companies do everything they can to hook you into an endless subscription, but Mullvad is refreshing in this regard. I only use a VPN once in a while and when I need one I just throw Mullvad a few bucks for one month plan, which they make as seamless as possible.
It's a custom build of Firefox with somewhat sensible, sometimes strict, privacy respecting default settings.
There's also the Arkenfox user.js which you can put on top of vanilla Firefox, aiming for the most privacy and security possible.
https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js
My issue with these browsers, including Firefox with things like fingerprint resisting enabled, is that it breaks a lot of sites. Add a VPN to the mix and a lot of sites flat out refuse to let you interact with them, or they give you 5 minutes of captchas, or they require 2 factor login despite asking them to remember your device. I have to open some sites (banking, brokerage, health insurance) on a near-daily basis in Chrome with no extensions and no VPN instead of my regular firefox+vpn.
A lot of sites allow interaction even with the above but they shadowban you without telling you. Craigslist shadow bans and auto-spam-filters any submissions done with a VPN, and then also auto-spam-filters any subsequent submissions on the same account even with the VPN turned off.
Reddit also universally spam-filters any submissions and comments done under a VPN, and rate limits your commenting a shitload on VPNs.
Arkenfox is great, although worth noting that there are always privacy vs. security vs. usability tradeoffs. The best usability settings (in terms of sites just working at least) are generally the Firefox default and Arkenfox defaults aims for privacy mostly but they also have some of the best descriptions of available configuration available anywhere (often the only other source of any kind of information is a brief comment in the source code that assumes familiarity with Firefox code). Personally, I aim for the best security and accept that that makes me unique.
I've asked multiple times to all the brave sympathizers about "why not fork firefox, put your shnazzy customization and call it a day. By lapping up to chromium, you are only helping Google regardless of what search engine you use"
And more often than not the response has been "well we did investigate Firefox but working with it was pita so we went with easiest option"
Shit dude. You want to start a business so at least do the right thing.
If there are more Firefox forks, like there are chromium forks today, that would normalize Firefox because currently chromium is the de facto web standard.
Mullvad, who has a reputation in the HN comments for being just like... over the top amazing + great (they swear up and down they don't store traffic logs and if you don't trust them, you can pay anonymously somehow or whatever), is having a "hard time" being profitable/growing
all while
NordVPN, who has a bad reputation in HN comments for being untrustworthy and "not so anonymous", seems more well known (and therefore most likely has more paying customers and makes more money?)
What is that law called in business? when the "less good" offering wins?
Where did you get this impression? Mullvad is growing like crazy (4 times as much revenue in 2021 compared to 2020, 2022 numbers not yet public). NordVPN is obviously larger since they are older and have bought a lot of ads on Youtube but Mullvad has crazy growth and I have seen their ads in the subway here in Stockholm. Mullvad is in no way a company which struggles as far as I can tell.
> Mullvad [...] is having a "hard time" being profitable/growing
This is how I originally interpreted the parent comment as well, but they actually meant "a VPN is not enough to maintain your privacy, you also need a privacy-respecting browser."
It's because, like it or not, NordVPN is a great product. The apps are great, the design is slick, they have more servers in more countries, and offer additional value through things like Smart DNS, dedicated IP. Not to mention solid customer service.
Not sure if it's got a "law," but the reasoning seems intuitive: 1. More complex products are usually better, but being more complicated means they're harder to explain to the average customer and makes them harder to sell. 2. More widely known products get that way by stripping money out of the budget for their product to put it into advertising instead. Less money in the product means it's potentially inferior to a product that put their whole budget into development.
It's called educating your potential customers on your product.
NordVPN has spent an incredible amount of money getting their name out there.
The majority of the population hasn't a clue about what a VPN is or does. The ones that do, their only interface is "its this thing my company makes me connect to"
Of the remaining subset of people who are aware of what VPNs actually do for you, it's likely they can only name 1 or two brands: NordVPN and ExpressVPN.
So if you have the superior product, but the lesser position in the market, then get busy marketing.
Whatever you want to call it, and whatever it means to you, it must be done in some way, like it or not. Or you can sit here and complain everyone's using the big name that sucks and nobody uses your superior 100% artisinally, crafted from free-range conflict-free code, ethically "superior" app.
> So if you have the superior product, but the lesser position in the market, then get busy marketing.
Easier said than done I imagine. Big brand VPN providers charge several times more for the "same" service, or make you sign up with 3 year commitment to even come close to Mullvad's monthly pricing.
Well, many libertarians will state the rules of the free market as if they were physics law, but they are not. I think they're just post-fact invented laws to justify the ideology, but that's besides the point.
The law that "in a free market, the best product wins" has been beaten by profit-driven companies with billions at their disposal. Sure, you can have a better product. But maybe it's more profitable to have better marketing, or secondary sources of profit.
It's quite telling that VPN providers sponsor so many YouTube videos... Which require login to the biggest ad-driven company... Which will identify users by their login, no matter if they have a VPN or not!
Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776. I suppose you could say that was "post-fact" as it drew on what was happening at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and the English and Scottish agricultural revolutions among other things, but "invented" would seem a bit of a stretch.
> The law that "in a free market, the best product wins" has been beaten by profit-driven companies with billions at their disposal.
Of course, given that law then the other possibility you appear to have dismissed is that the market is not free.
I must admit I don't know much about economics. I do get tired of people dismissing arguments with free market 101s - the world seems much more complex than that, and the big capitalists have become specialists at exploiting the market for their gains.
But then I'll day: maybe these guidelines are outdated, 250 years later. For example, does the best product win? Not if the product is complex enough and people cannot quickly measure its quality. There's 10$ crap and 100$ crap, and fake reviews, and paid reviews, and swapped products, and misleading marketing.
What's the best product? A good product will be generally be one that is:
- available
- at a price that the producer makes a profit
- at a price that the buyer can afford
- and does the job
Many such products may exist in a market, some "better" than others but that would be a subjective opinion. The problem with a non-free market e.g. one with monopolies or interference from governments in the form of subsidies, is that it interferes with the above list and you end up with inferior products (in terms of the above list) to those you would've had in a free market. Even the "producer makes a profit" part would be worse because there are less producers making profits, and thus fewer products, higher prices for those products remaining et cetera.
Advertising is not a bad thing in a free market. Fake reviews and the rest are, but they lead to less trust, as we see occur with Amazon, and you would go to a more trusted competitor but Amazon is a monopoly so…
> ...Even in the desktop version, Firefox's sandbox is still substantially weaker (especially on Linux) and lacks full support for isolating sites from each other rather than only containing content as a whole. The sandbox has been gradually improving on the desktop but it isn't happening for their Android browser yet.
Seems like a wash overall with how Chrome for Android lacks support for extensions entirely. Firefox for Android supports uBlock Origin, which greatly cuts down on tracking and chances to be hit by broadly-targeted malvertising.
> More bizarrely, there’s an open Bugzilla and GitHub issue on that, both a few years old.
I can understand why it's not a priority at this point, at least, given that Firefox on iOS is currently a reskin of Safari, and the door is reportedly about to open for actual competition among iOS browsers due to increasing anti-trust pressures on Apple.
It would make more sense to me to address this with a real port of Gecko to iOS, and then you can just run the full version of uBlock Origin for Firefox on your iPhone.
The thing is, while Firefox should have better sandboxing, the tradeoff at the moment is that with Chromium you get better security, but less control and privacy off the bat. With Firefox, you get less security, but more control and privacy off the bat.
I use Mullvad for 2 years and yeah it's been a good VPN. Global outage have been very rare, maybe it happened 2 or 3 times altogether. It happens however that some websites are blocking Mullvad servers, usually, it's just about switching to another server to get this working.
The desktop client also supports some obfuscation schemes (UDP over TCP) which is useful when you're in countries which block any kind of VPN. The default smartphone app doesn't support this out of the box, but they have some tutorials to setup Shadowsocks and OpenVPN to route the traffic over https as well
Firefox is already an an ad for Mullvad since the Mozilla VPN is rebranded Mullvad. It would not be terrible for them to become a more prominent corporate sponsor of Mozilla. Less eyebrow-raising than Google at least.
I've been a Mullvad user for a while now, and I have to say, their commitment to open source is truly impressive. They're living that philosophy by making their VPN client open source. Tor Browser with the security of a trusted VPN should be an great alternative
This time, there's strong marketing power though. It has a chance of being adopted by people interested in privacy but not really into computers. It matters a lot.
Now, I didn't really know about LibreWolf, I'll look into it for myself.
Using a VPN might have security implications (such as now, you have an additional central entity, maybe not in the same jurisdiction as you, that can list your network connections to a requesting entity), or not be an answer to your thread model.
I don't really blame them for this though. Buyers should also do their homework.
> Brave scrubs sites of ads and ad tracking, then replaces those ads with its own advertisements, which are not individually targeted but instead aimed at an anonymous aggregate of the browser's user base.
Separate point: calling Google an "advertising company" is way off the mark. Google runs the biggest online ad exchange in the world, requiring lots of advertisers to buy keywords and other ways of addressing customers, and publishers to partner with Google for a (small) cut of the gross revenue Google makes matching bids to asks.
Brave doesn't do any of this cloud surveillance based ad-tech. We leave ads off by default, but when a user opts in, all the ad matching is local to the browser against a catalog that's the same for a large cohort by region and human language. Ad impressions are confirmed by a Privacy Pass variant protocol. Users get 70% of the gross.
There isn't a great category for what Google is, it already won its own "google it" verb. But among many other things, it is a huge ad-tech player. Brave is small, user-first, privacy-by-default, and ads are opt in. See the difference?
That's completely false. We've been unable to get Gregg to correct his story, but we never replaced ads in pages.
We don't aggregate anything into Federated Learning, all opt in (off by default) machine learning is local to the browser. Chaum blind signature protocol (Privacy Pass standardized this) to confirm.
I know it's fun to repeat misinformation on hacker news out of ill will, but many people have verified our claims from open source audits, network audits, and more. Comments like yours just look sloppy or even malicious, even on HN.
Eich is divisive, sure, but Brave is not a secure browser any more than Firefox is, with a lot of phoning home and crypto widget, that like them or not, are out of place in a browser you want to trust.
Ideally my browser and all the software I use do not connect and fetch data unless I tell them to. A browser should not be "bundled" with extra widgets for convenience.
I don't care about Brendan Eich quite as much as I care about the Google / Chrome monopoly, and Brave just makes this monopoly stronger by depending on Chrome. By being Chrome, actually.
I want the web to be built around something else than ad-/tracking-supported software and Brave is being very self-contradictory with this.
Don't use Brave if you care about the global picture / tracking around the globe.
We started on Gecko. By many measures, big spreadsheet, Chromium won. We would be dead on that short hill you want us to charge up and take with spears against Maxim guns. I share your dislike of monoculture or evolutionary kernels that win by market power more than merit, but having us die for no benefit isn't the way to overcome Google.
Brave rewards is opt-in, off by default. If you dislike ads, don't enable it.
I suggest you consider that your big-picture thinking is short sighted. Instead of spears vs. Maxim guns, the better trope and line of attack is judo: use Google's weight against it, by differentiating a level up in a way that puts users first and if they opt in, pays them 70% of the gross.
(I'm assuming you are educated on how our private ad system works. If not read my comments in the past year or so, easy to find from my profile.)
Brave is a separate fork and completely unreliant on Chrome. It also is the most privacy-focused browser so it's the opposite of "tracking-supported software".
If Chrome disappears, Brave ceases to exist. Brave totally relies on Google developers working on Chrome and do the vast majority of what it takes to build the browser. Brave only does superficial work in comparison. Brave may itself be privacy-focused but only exists thanks to Google's business model which is mostly tracking the world.
So, yes, Brave is mostly funded by tracking since it is mostly Chrome with some lightweight work on top of it.
Correct, completely forked from Chromium (not Chrome) and in separate development. Brave continues to roll out superior features while the rest of the Chromium world lags.
It does not matter that Brave lives in its own, separate source repository. This code is regularly rebased on Chromium.
Your cookies rely on the flour you use to make them even if they have chunks of chocolate that the flour doesn't have. No flour, no cookies. (Except in this case it's even worse, the cookies is already done, you just add some colors...).
I too can take chromium and put it in my own git repository and change some minor stuff. It will be "forked" and "separately" developed but it would not mean a thing.
We rebase and look at all the changes, neutralizing not only on-by-default tracking Google puts in Chromium for its own benefit, but many other experiments and flagged features. We carry forked files too.
Of course, we can't maintain all of the upstream ourselves, although we wish Google had fewer typists adding bad or marginal things; but neither can Samsung, Opera, or even Microsoft. But if Google stopped maintaining, the remaining Chromium browsers would carry on.
Your comments suggest a lack of familiarity with our GitHub.
It's not perfect (since its funding is mostly Google) but Firefox is my current browser of choice. It notably has very good support for blocking tracking and unwanted stuff thanks to uBlock Origin, which works best on Firefox according to its main developer [0]. And while it is funded with Google's money (which is a huge caveat), I still hope this changes in the future. Firefox could be funded differently. [By the way] maybe Mullvad browser is an interesting choice for this exact reason?
Other (independent) initiatives like NetSurf [1] and Ladybird [2] are on my radar. NetSurf has been around for a while; Ladybird seems impressive, achieving some great progress and result with little resources. I should actually try Ladybird more seriously when I get the chance, and maybe contribute if I find the time :-)
Wut? Citation needed. I’m sure you don’t mean his support of Proposition 8 in 2008, because Barack Obama professed the same belief in 2008… making him, in this formulation, a homophobe.
I don't think we need an umpteenth discussion about this here, it has already been discussed to hell. This is getting old. Just search Brendan Each on HN [1], this discussion happens any time he is mentioned here.
Or just read the summary on Wikipedia [2].
There's a lot of material on this topic, it's easy to make up one's opinion on this if you are genuinely interested.
But if these details are to play a factor in browser selection, one should reflect on the myriad of undesirable associations involved in going about daily life.
Just typing this reply involves an entire supply chain associated with individuals and organizations of questionable character.
To apply this same level of sensitivity to daily life would be to mostly unhook oneself from modern society.
I care deeply about the safety and freedom of the LGBTQ+ community, and find little value in allowing someone else’s lack of acceptance of me dictate my life. Doing so is a form of “doing something” that does nothing but widen the gap to actual change, which can only ever happen via open dialogue.
I think there are plenty of reasons not to choose Brave based on the actual technical merits of the product.
Sure, I'm not disagreeing with you and this is actually an interesting philosophical topic to discuss (I mean it, I'm genuinely interested in this and have been wondering where to put limits on this kind of stuff).
But wondering whether is Eich homophobic? Meh. Bored of these discussions. I have set my opinion on this. It's been discussed enough.
I tend to avoid fast food in general, but I try not to orient my life around actions (or avoiding actions) that are unlikely to have any impact, especially if they involve spending more of my own energy.
Avoiding Chik-Fil-A at all costs: primarily affects me.
Being willing to frequent a Chik-Fil-A because a friend somewhere else on the political spectrum enjoys it: potentially opens an opportunity to talk.
Most of my family and their circles fit that latter description, so this is not a hypothetical. Any chance of influencing them is actively harmed by choosing/avoiding fast food based on tribal allegiance.
None of this should be construed to mean that I find their leadership team and public stances acceptable.
It has everything to do with your comment? I'm inviting anybody interested on the topic to go read about it themselves instead of rehashing the same subject again and again, since I believe everything about this has already been said already?
> You libeled someone without providing any proof at all.
On the contrary, please notice how I carefully and deliberately stated nothing about Eich, not given my opinion on this and not taken sides here.
It would not be smart, it would invite people who have opinions on this to further push this discussion.
Barack Obama opposed prop 8 in 2008, and certainly never donated money to the campaign like Eich did. There are dozens of articles about it.
But he also opposed gay marriage, so to some extent he was homophobic, at least for political reasons. He later changed his mind on it, likely also for political reasons.
But shame on you for using such disingenuous bullshit tactics to make your homophobic point: “If you call Eich a homophobe, then you also have to call <insert beloved liberal figure> a homophobe!”. For one, it ignores the fact that people’s minds can change over time, whereas Eich has never changed his stance on gay marriage and has never disavowed the money he spent trying to stop it. And two, it’s just a red herring argument and attempted hypocrisy trap.
And worse, it’s a fucking terrible hypocrisy trap. There are millions of people who support gay marriage but never supported Barack Obama, and millions more who supported Obama precisely because they didn’t want gay marriage and thought they could trust him to not change his mind on it. Obama may be beloved by some liberals, but he is a hypocrite to many on a multitude of reasons, ranging from his gay marriage flip flop, to his support of the patriot act, to the promotion of indefinite detention and torture to federal law, to the fact that he continued the pointless Iraq war for his entire term.
There is no opt-out to not use a VPN. There's... the Mullvad logo, which seems pretty reasonable. Certainly more reasonable than injecting their own ad network into your pages and pushing your home-rolled cryptocoin.
I have been using brave for a long time, and the only places where crypto is mentioned is in the new tab window. You have to opt in to add replacement.
The Tor design spec literally says it is not meant to defeat a global passive surveillance panopticon like a world government. Know its limitations and it's a fine tool. By the way, the entire Internet was built for the government.
You do realize that tor is open source and has been under scrutiny by some of the worlds leading security researchers? It may not be 100% perfect, but claiming it’s useless and ineffective simply because it was born out of government research is completely asinine.
This is an open source, rebranded Firefox and Firefox-like browsers could use some publicity. It promotes privacy and privacy can use some publicity too. Tor too.
Mullvad seems to be honest in the fact that their business model is selling VPNs and it's nice they are saying it's not enough. They are not saying that you might not need one though.
We need a Firefox with good defaults and it seems like this browser is such a thing. I'd prefer these privacy features to be in upstream Firefox but I guess world is not perfect and that Firefox still relies on revenues from Google so can't be as privacy-focused as it should.
My little concern I guess is that this browser will push for their service so it's a bit like an ad for them, at least with its name. But fair enough, and at least the business model seems healthy.
With Mullvad already being a Mozilla partner for their branded VPN, all this actually look good. They seem to be spending their money on worthy stuff.