Former Mozilla CEO Launches Security-Centric Browser Brave

Good on Brendan by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 02:06 · Score: 4, Insightful

I've looked at his offering, and it's a step in the right direction. It's not as aggressive as what I currently do using Mozilla, but again, it's better than the default.

Whenever I visit people at home, they inevitably ask me to look at their computers and I'm always horrified by the shear amount of dreck online compared to my own laptop. I leave them with no tracking, no ads, you name it. Another happy "customer".

The Web has become too much about money. Not everything needs to be about money. The last several years has seen me not trusting bloggers as much as I would if they were not in it for the money. There are still a few good tech blogs with no ads, no flogging this or that. Old school BBS, Usenet-style information trading. Always the best.

Were I a billionaire, I would give away services with no ads, no tracking, no analytics, just to undercut the monsters like Google and Microsoft to show that it doesn't have to be about the money. Apple has more money in the bank than most countries and they smile, all along letting little girls slave away in the tech sweatshops of China and elsewhere, making their wares for pennies on the dollar, yet expecting Americans to pay highway robbery prices for a device that costs less than 1/4 of the asking price to bring to market. There's a difference between making a living and making a killing. Shareholders are the moral death to any company.

Re: Good on Brendan by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 03:40 · Score: 0

Would you be able to share what you do to the browser for all of this? Is it noscript, HTTPS everywhere and one of the ad blockers or do you have more than that?
Re:Good on Brendan by naris · 2016-01-21 03:53 · Score: 5, Insightful

Really! you think replacing (NOT blocking) ads with other ads where the revenue goes to the browser maker instead of the site is a step in the right direction! How is this NOT about money?
Re:Good on Brendan by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 04:00 · Score: 0

If I had the cash, I'd probably see about making an organization whose job is to be a clearinghouse. People pay a subscription fee, or revenue would be part of government taxes to support Internet infrastructure, and sites would get revenue by the amount of traffic they get. Of course, click fraud and other things would have to be addressed... but it would be a way where websites would get paid just as they do by advertisers now, except there wouldn't be the pressure to have one quarter of a picture, and 8-9 pages of ads. Actual content would appear again, as website designers can focus on that again.
Re:Good on Brendan by mlw4428 · 2016-01-21 04:51 · Score: 2

"Were I a billionaire, I would give away services with no ads, no tracking, no analytics, just to undercut the monsters like Google and Microsoft to show that it doesn't have to be about the money. Apple has more money in the bank than most countries and they smile, all along letting little girls slave away in the tech sweatshops of China and elsewhere, making their wares for pennies on the dollar, yet expecting Americans to pay highway robbery prices for a device that costs less than 1/4 of the asking price to bring to market. There's a difference between making a living and making a killing. Shareholders are the moral death to any company."

No you wouldn't. People would expect you to fix things that were broken. Today's world is 24/7/365. I would agree that shareholders are killing social responsibility for corporations, as long as the shareholders we're talking about aren't the individual person trying to make a buck for retirement. The shareholders I think of are the algorithms that run complex software designed to buy/sell stocks as quickly as possible to undercut orders they see coming in "upstream." The stockholders I fear are big mutual fund brokers who don't care about individual companies, but about ROI and quarterly dividends. These are the types of shareholders that demand that companies with the domination of Walmart or Microsoft or Apple continue to show "growth". Even when there's nowhere left to "grow", but 3rd world countries who can't afford the products/services to begin with.

But you wouldn't give away services. You wouldn't stay a billionaire that long if you did...of course I assume you mean to make an impact with a meaningful amount of people (millions) and not like close family/friends.
Re:Good on Brendan by KGIII · 2016-01-21 06:24 · Score: 1, Troll

I don't have that much money but, and this is a bit embarrassing, I sold my company for a 9 digit sum back in 2008 - when there were "shovel ready jobs." (I did traffic modeling - including pedestrian but that's not important for today.) I gave away, counting taxes, over half of that amount - it was a HUGE sum of money. Yet, I now have more money than I had before. How? Well, I like to invest in small, novel, or interesting things. A good example (and you can do the math yourself) is that I bought 2000 shares of Tesla when they were $24 each.
Point? Don't paint with such a broad brush. You'll miss the finer details. You'd shit a brick if you knew how much I donated each year - and yet I still keep making money faster than I can reasonably spend it. So, I find what looks like a good cause and figure out how to make a semi-anonymous donation (I ask to not be included by name) and call it good. Hell, I've even donated to NASA.

--
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Re:Good on Brendan by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 10:45 · Score: 0

Even if you could do that, people wouldn't switch if it doesn't get popular enough first.
Re: Good on Brendan by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 14:29 · Score: 0

You're in such a small minority that your case really doesn't matter.
You talk about your own experiences a lot, but, the reality is, those are nothing more than anecdotes.
It's great you're able to do what you want, but it's kind of meaningless in the broader context of how society works.
Re:Good on Brendan by doccus · 2016-01-22 05:26 · Score: 1

I immediately requested a dev build which is all there is at the moment. Nevertheless. it's a REAL step up from broken browsers... There's a waitlist but hopefiully I'll get a copy soon..
Re:Good on Brendan by Lord+Flipper · 2016-01-22 06:28 · Score: 1

I've looked at his offering, and it's a step in the right direction. It's not as aggressive as what I currently do using Mozilla, but again, it's better than the default. Whenever I visit people at home, they inevitably ask me to look at their computers and I'm always horrified by the shear amount of dreck online compared to my own laptop. I leave them with no tracking, no ads, you name it. Another happy "customer"
...
There's a difference between making a living and making a killing. Shareholders are the moral death to any company.

This. Pardon my "me too," but, there's no mods above "5," so there we are...
Re:Good on Brendan by kmoser · 2016-01-22 06:40 · Score: 1

Were I a billionaire, I would give away services with no ads, no tracking, no analytics, just to undercut the monsters like Google and Microsoft to show that it doesn't have to be about the money.
Undercutting the competition by providing things too cheaply (or free) is anti-competitive. Once you captured enough customers/eyeballs, the FTC and DOJ would fine you into oblivion.
Re: Good on Brendan by KGIII · 2016-01-22 14:30 · Score: 1

Sadly, you missed the point entirely. I am in a small minority but recent stats, cited with proof and everything, showed that even the US millionaires were almost all self made. Now, honestly, I certainly exceed that amount and largely due to luck, being able to take risks, and having the good fortune to be able to hire very smart people - it's not something great that I did on my own.
But, as I said, you missed the point entirely and proved my point exactly. Don't paint with that large brush. You miss the finer details. There are people who assume that I committed untold crimes to get what I have. There are people who think that all I want is money. There are people who think I'm just trying to accumulate as much as I can so that I have a high score.
I'll give you an example... I purposely did not lie but I did not reveal my financial status to my girlfriend until it reached the point where we had pretty much figured out we were going to end up stuck with one another.
It's not my story to tell but, I have her permission. She's almost 40 years my junior. She was taking care of her younger brother but the State moved him in with relatives who could barely afford it. She was one day away from living on the street as the hotel bill was not paid for beyond one last night when I first met her. She assumed that the charity had found the money to keep her in the hotel. Her parents are in jail, going to prison for a while, for manufacturing meth.
Her brother and those relatives have a bank account that delivers an extra $3500/month now.
She will never have to work a day in her life - she's already worked harder than most people ever will.
The reason I made it a point to avoid conversing about my accumulation of bits of paper was because people can be pretty shitty and money can change them. She, her brother, and the relatives that took him in (and had no room nor money for her) were straight up fucked. They were below the poverty line and they worked, well - my girlfriend didn't, she was finishing a couple of classes to get her diploma and her highest hopes was to get a job at FUCKING BURGER KING.
Please, please don't paint with such a broad brush. She's the most beautiful (physically and mentally) person you'd ever meet. Some Slashdotters met her over the weekend after NYE. She'd never held a $100 bill. She'd taken care of her brother since she was five.
They are anecdotes, but do you know what anecdotes are? They're data points. Don't paint with such a large brush. Really, you do yourself a disservice by doing so. Have you ever seen someone who's never once, in their entire lives, had nothing to worry about - be absolutely free of all worries? I gave her a debit card, it get topped up automatically by my accountant back in Maine. There's only $10,000 on it at a time. I think she's spent less than $500 since September and that's the richest she's ever been. She had no idea. None. She had tears in her eyes when I showed her a couple of my balances and my trading accounts. Then she wiped them away and asked if we could still go to dinner.
She'd never owned a pair of properly fitted shoes. She'd never had her hair done professionally. She'd never had a manicure. Shit, sometimes she didn't even have tampons.
It's not just an anecdote, it's a real person and I love her and she loved me when she thought I was pretty damned poor and "just out looking to see what life had to offer." She didn't realize the car was as expensive as it was. I wore jeans and t-shirts from L.L. Bean. I looked, dressed, and acted like normal - just didn't allow the conversation to turn to income.
You go ahead, you call her an anecdote. I'll watch and listen. Seriously, do you want a phone number or do you want to call her an anecdote in person? I'm in Panama City Beach, Florida at the moment. Not just one but several Slashdotters can tell you how to get to my house here. You tell her bother that he's an anecdote. You tell his family that can now take care of him that they're an anecdote. You

--
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Re: Good on Brendan by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-24 00:52 · Score: 0

TL;DR, something about brushes.
Re: Good on Brendan by KGIII · 2016-01-24 13:52 · Score: 1

Contrary to popular opinion, anecdotes are data. That brush, it's large and when you paint with such a large brush you miss the finer details. That gives you the wrong picture, or a very biased one. It's not nearly as dire or unfortunate as you seem to think. Chances are really good that you have it much better than you imagine and, while it's not perfect and there's room for improvement in many things, you've got lots of chances to do things with your life that others can only dream of. Take advantage of that, or not... Nobody listens to me anyhow. Seriously, life's not so bad.

--
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Re:Good on Brendan by mlw4428 · 2016-01-25 02:24 · Score: 1

Donating money isn't the same thing as providing the actual service. Let's say he wants to give away internet to all of Minneapolis. Honestly we're only serving .001% of the US population...so let's go then with NYC. NYC's population (as of 2013) is 8.406 million. The US population is 318.9 million...so now we're into numbers that we can kind of shrug our shoulders and go "eh a difference was made". Now Manhattan Island itself runs 13.4 miles long and 2.3 miles wide (at its widest). How much cable would have to be laid (or purchased)? Now let's assume you have to run your drops to each household because you're a real philanthropist willing to put your money where your mouth is. I've seen estimates that put the number of buildings on Manhattan Island at around 60000 buildings. Many of those are multi-level buildings, but let's just be snarky and assume we have a magic wifi hotspot that will carry signal to as high of a floor we want with the same latency as CAT 5e. You still have to have techs go out and lay those drops. You'll need switches and routers for provisioning. You'll need staff to configure, setup, and maintain those. You also care about security so you'll need to be applying patches/updates. And you'll want firewalls.Now people are sometimes bad and the courts sometimes needs to knock a few heads in a legal manner for things like child porn or whatever. So you'll need some way to handle subpoenas for records and, of course, you'll need to store those. You'll also need staff to assist in managing the staff of techs, benefits, and vehicles. There's also tools and expendables you'll need to consider.

Are you starting to get a feel for where I'm going? You might have great ROI, but honestly you only pulled back about $350K. Take out taxes and broker fees and you might have enough to handle a few techs. Certainly not their benefits nor the managing staff's benefits. We haven't even gotten to things like software licensing, legal paperwork/attorney fees, and other administrative costs. Also there's the value of your own time to consider.

Giving away money is far easier than actually building/running an organization. To suggest a single digit billionaire has the capital to do this is ludicrous. As an example just Verizon's wire-line business pulled in 15.6 billion in 2014. That was a small amount of Verizon's total revenue of $157 billion. Of that only $9.625 billion remained as net income. It is simply not possible for an individual to give away free internet to any chunk of the population larger than maybe 1/4 of a percent.
Re:Good on Brendan by KGIII · 2016-01-25 10:23 · Score: 1

I think you're still missing the point. I can only give myself as an example because I can't, and won't, speak for others. I've done things like go help build a house for Habitat for Humanity. I not only provide all the computer equipment (literally, all of it) for a small, local, elementary school (who'd otherwise probably still be using Apple ][ computers) but I even help out their single, solitary, IT guy with donated time and effort.
No, I don't (and can't) give services like universal broadband but I did pay for the CO and upgraded lines to be run into the unincorporated township that I live in, in NW Maine - just above Rangeley.
Your post, perhaps I misread it, was seemingly indicating that people don't do things like provide services beyond the donation of cash when they've managed to accumulate some wealth. That's incorrect. I know numerous folks who do things like I do. We do it quietly, not for thanks or accolades, but because we can and because it needs doing. Some have more, or less, wealth than I but we do work to help others who are less fortunate - up to and including services, perhaps even simple services like helping to cook and clean up in a soup kitchen. Bringing hot meals to the single and elderly on holidays is another.
No, it's not broadband but some of us do give services and self. Of course, people who haven't accumulated any wealth will often say the things they'd do and have grand plans for their day in the Sun. The funny thing is, they don't realize how little something like a million dollars is these days. It seems like a lot. It isn't. I think that might be part of what you were getting at but, reading your first post, indicates (still - with rereading) that you imply that those who have been fortunate do not actually give of themselves and that, somehow, shareholders are the ones responsible for the bad shit. I, for instance, own a whole lot of a whole bunch of different companies and I can tell you - I've never once urged or asked a single one of those companies to do anything unethical in the name of maximizing profit. I've also gone to great lengths to aid those in need when and where it was reasonable to do so. It's the responsible thing to do.

--
"So long and thanks for all the fish."

Interesting team by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 02:08 · Score: 3, Interesting

So, Elissa Shevinski, noted self-proclaimed feminist and author of the anti-SFBay-discrimination book Lean Out, is working as the Head of Product for a browser startup by Brendan Eich, most famous for being forced out of Mozilla for funding anti-LGBTQ views through funding efforts against CA Prop 8. This is weird.

Re:Interesting team by alvinrod · 2016-01-21 02:30 · Score: 1, Informative

And the other day the Human Rights Campaign endorsed Clinton over Sanders for president even though Sanders has a far longer and better track record when it comes to support for gays and Clinton was even previously opposed to gay marriage for a good chunk of her political career.

Politics makes for strange bedfellows and it wouldn't surprise me if Elissa was another one of those feminists who has more in common with someone like Benny Hinn than they do with supporting the actual ideals of the movement. I've never heard of her before, so I have no idea what she believes in or supports as far as positions go, but it does stand out as strange. Then again, the overreaction related to Eich was pretty damned ridiculous to begin with, so it may be something anyone with half a brain could look past when there are bigger things at stake. So perhaps she's not one of those idiots more interested in grandstanding on platitudes or ideological purity and someone who'd prefer to get something with actual significance accomplished.
Re:Interesting team by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 03:09 · Score: 0

Brendan Eich, most famous for being forced out of Mozilla
LOL, no.
Re:Interesting team by Buchenskjoll · 2016-01-21 03:24 · Score: 1

Politics makes for strange bedfellows and it wouldn't surprise me if Elissa was another one of those feminists who has more in common with someone like Benny Hinn than they do with supporting the actual ideals of the movement.
You most mean Benny Hill. There, fixed that for you.

--
-- Make America hate again!
Re:Interesting team by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 03:42 · Score: 0

Uhh no. Benny Hill was miles more respectable than Benny Hinn ever was or ever will be.
Re:Interesting team by vel-ex-tech · 2016-01-21 04:15 · Score: 0

Holy fucking crap.

So, Elissa Shevinski, noted self-proclaimed feminist and author of the anti-SFBay-discrimination book Lean Out, is working as the Head of Product for a browser startup by Brendan Eich, most famous for being forced out of Mozilla for funding anti-LGBTQ views through funding efforts against CA Prop 8. This is weird.
This is not weird at all. Feminism has always been anti-GBTQ. See the comment I just posted in the Ashley Madison discussion but substitute gay men for trans women. Feminism only fights for homosexual rights when it's the L's rights we're talking about. I can only figure that Eich does not have a quarrel with lesbian marriage.
Well, shoot. I really was thinking about giving this browser a spin. I don't really care about Eich's beliefs, just that he does not profit from my use of whatever browser. Thanks for the heads up about the connection to feminism, AC.
Knowing that feminism is involved, this browser is now dead to me due to the cold war with actual real life consequences for me feminism has declared.
Somebody else can link to squirrelking's Full Life Consequences for the lulz. I have nothing to lol about at the moment.
Re:Interesting team by AmiMoJo · 2016-01-21 05:02 · Score: 1

She has written and spoken about this at length. She says she doesn't want to only work with people who share her views, and also hopes to effect change by engaging with such people.

--
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Re:Interesting team by SvnLyrBrto · 2016-01-21 06:56 · Score: 1

There are any number of simple explanations.
1) Just because Eich hates gay people doesn't necessarily mean he hates women too. Just because both groups are traditionally crapped upon by the conservative mainstream doesn't mean every member of said mainstream thinks identically. No such thing as a collective hive mind yet, after all.
2) Some factions of feminism (Not all, mind you.) are fairly hostile towards gay people, especially gay men. To this faction, just having the Y-chromosome automatically makes you an evil oppressor and supporter of rape culture, despite the fact that gay men, by definition, sit entirely outside the feminism vs. misogyny conflict.
3) Some people are simply happy to compromise and throw out any principle if they think there's money to be made.
What's going on is probably some combination of all three.

--
Imagine all the people...
Re:Interesting team by UnknownSoldier · 2016-01-21 07:16 · Score: 0

No, famous for designing and implementing JavaShit in 10 days. (How many noob language mistakes can one make??)
Re:Interesting team by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 07:18 · Score: 0

You must mean "most."
Re:Interesting team by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 08:20 · Score: 0

despite the fact that gay men, by definition, sit entirely outside the feminism vs. misogyny conflict

No. Not at all. That would only be true if the issues Feminism addresses were solely related to knocking boots.
That said, as someone who (unwillingly) was involved in second wave feminism during the 1980s, the anti-gay subset of feminism from that era was always small and overwhelmingly drowned out by the vast majority who saw homosexuals as another marginalized group who deserved support. And post-second wave feminism is virtually free of it completely.
A more likely reason for this particular feminist teaming up with a known homophobe is for the same reason most of us work with people whose views we find offensive - that's what you do in an ordinary world, you can't live your life boycotting people every day. Sometimes you have to work together.
Re:Interesting team by erapert · 2016-01-21 09:08 · Score: 2

1) Just because Eich hates gay people doesn't necessarily mean he hates women too. Just because both groups are traditionally crapped upon by the conservative mainstream doesn't mean every member of said mainstream thinks identically. No such thing as a collective hive mind yet, after all.
Just because he doesn't think the state should subsidize gay marriage doesn't mean he hates gays. I don't think the state should subsidize tobacco but I don't hate smokers.

3) Some people are simply happy to compromise and throw out any principle if they think there's money to be made.
Or maybe they're actually just practicing tolerance.
Re:Interesting team by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 12:54 · Score: 0

He's never said anything about the state "subsidizing" homosexuality - what the fuck would that be anyway? He donated money (knowingly) to an organization that was portraying gays as dangerous to children.
Will you stop making up shit about why he opposed gay marriage? Because all of these "Well, I disapprove of gay marriage for my own logical reasons therefore he must be logical too" rants are absurd given they bear no relationship to WHAT HE ACTUALLY DID.
He opposed gay marriage because he hates gays. Period. That's why he did it. Not out of some misplaced concern about their affect on the deficit, the rights of religions, or any other crap.

And will insert its own ads... by Galaga88 · 2016-01-21 02:08 · Score: 4, Insightful

So, the main selling point of this browser is that it will block ads, right?

The summary fails to mention that the plan is to start inserting its own ads.

You know, I hate ads as much as everybody else. But that just feels dirty to me.

Re:And will insert its own ads... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 02:13 · Score: 0

From what I can tell it's supposed to strip out ads and then put back "good" ads (whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean). It also looks like they want to have some kind of subscription model where users can pay to not see ads at all.
Yeah, fuck that noise. I'll just stick with Pale Moon and Chromium and block ALL ads.
Re:And will insert its own ads... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 02:39 · Score: 0

Maybe this will do a better job of blocking ads. And since it's open-source, there'll be a fork of it that doesn't replace them with new ads.
Re:And will insert its own ads... by sumdumass · 2016-01-21 02:48 · Score: 3, Insightful

Lol.. it doesn't claim to remove ads, it claims to remove tracking and malware inserted by ads. It stops ad networks from knowing that you visited dirtylittlewhores.com a short while before checking toysrus.com for the yoda doll (that you can put up you ass) and stops drive by downloading.
Let's get a grip on reality here and at least read the site before jumping to conclusions.
Re:And will insert its own ads... by rycamor · 2016-01-21 02:55 · Score: 2

It's actually the only sane approach to the modern web. The web can't be "free". Someone's got to pay the bills. It either has to be ad-supported or subscription-based. Think about it: if you go subscription-based for everything you are MUCH more trackable than an ad-based web.
The current ad-based web is an absolute nightmare. The average person who doesn't know the magical combination of browser add-ons ends up with a frozen browser several times a day. Try to even have 6-7 tabs open in Chrome or Firefox and you end up with problems.
Not to mention, the current ad-based web is scary intrusive.
If you read the details on Eich's approach:
1. He is protecting your privacy. Ad impressions are guaranteed on the buyer side, but your identity is protected. That is built in.
2. He is not "choosing" the ads you see. You get to choose the type of ads you will see, based on a blind profile that doesn't reveal your identity to the advertiser
3. It places sane limits on the number and placement of the ads.
I've been on the web since day one. I never minded a moderate amount of advertising. Anyone who does is a ridiculous sourpuss of a human being. What I mind is them ferreting out my identity, and ruining decent websites with ads that pop up, or under, or run extravagant javascript code that crashes my browser, or... Flash, just anything Flash, or auto-playing video and audio, etc... If we can get rid of that, I'm all for it.
Re:And will insert its own ads... by robmv · 2016-01-21 02:56 · Score: 4, Insightful

Exactly, it is not a new browser, It is a new ad company that has a browser.
Re:And will insert its own ads... by gstoddart · 2016-01-21 02:57 · Score: 5, Insightful

No, dude, seriously, read closer ... he's going to block the ads already there, and then put in his own ads:

When Brave is ready, it'll replace the missing content with its own ads.
The ad newtwork can't track you because it doesn't serve ads to you.
And then he charges someone else to sell you ads.
The now mysteriously missing engadget link is the source of that quote.

Let's get a grip on reality here and at least read the site before jumping to conclusions.
Oh, do lets.
Because the business model is replacing existing ads with new ads under the guise of giving us less tracking and more security.
This is about creating his own ad network, and telling us it's for our benefit.

--
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Re:And will insert its own ads... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 03:28 · Score: 1

The network was designed on open standards and anyone is free to make their own network (eg: LAN, wireless mesh/community networking).
It can still be free it's just corporate greed has come in to milk it for money just like they did TV, newspapers and radio.
Seriously join a community wireless network, if there isnt one near you create one!
Re:And will insert its own ads... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 03:29 · Score: 1

It's actually the only sane approach to the modern web. The web can't be "free". Someone's got to pay the bills.
No no no, I'm a self-entitled millennial! Gimme gimme gimme!!
Re:And will insert its own ads... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 03:31 · Score: 0

Learn to read you illiterate shitstain.

but rather than simply blocking all ads on the web, the browser relies on a private cloud that could replace exiting website ads with ones that Brave claims are anonymous, and better suited to users
Yeah, now what you stupid fuck?
Re:And will insert its own ads... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 03:36 · Score: 0

I know people don't tend to RTFA around here but you really should have to save yourself the embarrassment of looking like an idiot.
Re:And will insert its own ads... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 03:45 · Score: 0

It's actually the only sane approach to the modern web. The web can't be "free". Someone's got to pay the bills. It either has to be ad-supported or subscription-based. Think about it: if you go subscription-based for everything you are MUCH more trackable than an ad-based web.
I'm already paying my ISP for the privilege of accessing the Internet (including the web), so why should I be expected to pay more for its content? Either by watching ads, subscribing to services, or whatever? I run a few small-time websites that I give access to for free, and I couldn't care less about tracking, ads, or whatever (mostly because my sites are low-traffic enough that I can afford the out of pocket expenses myself).
For bigger sites that cost more to run, ads are one way to generate revenue, so are subscriptions, but those are not the only ways to cover costs. They could also sell standard stuff like tee shirts or other tchotchkes, they could take microdonations, they could go the patreon route, and so on. Ad revenue is propping up a lot of sites that have awful content (or frequently no original content at all), but inexplicably lots of traffic, and it wouldn't hurt my feelings if there were less of those around.
Re:And will insert its own ads... by rycamor · 2016-01-21 03:49 · Score: 1

I absolutely agree anyone is free to set up a free website and pay for it with their own money... and many do. I also agree that anyone is free to go to a website that supports itself with ads. And any website that uses an *honest* ad system (I.E. serving them from their own server) can't even be subverted by Brave.
And, anyone is free to keep on supporting the current web, disaster that it is. We all have choice, at this stage of the game. I'm saying Brave is the only sane choice for the greater commercial web. I'm all for community wireless and all that sort of stuff. It's not going to scale. It's not going to replace the big web. Commerce happens. Call it greed all you want, that won't change how life works. I prefer a consumer-choice based approach that lets us at least reign in the corporate insanities, which is what Eich is trying to do.
Re:And will insert its own ads... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 03:55 · Score: 1

Bullshit. The only ones who will die off are the sites that don't actually offer anything of value or real products to sell. The rest of the internet will route around them and fill in any gaps.
I was on the internet for years before all of the advertising douchebags came along and it worked just fine.
Re:And will insert its own ads... by tdos20 · 2016-01-21 03:57 · Score: 0

This is essentially the same thing that Lenovo were doing with superfish - remember the outcry over that?
Re:And will insert its own ads... by Merk42 · 2016-01-21 04:01 · Score: 1

It's actually the only sane approach to the modern web. The web can't be "free". Someone's got to pay the bills. It either has to be ad-supported or subscription-based. Think about it: if you go subscription-based for everything you are MUCH more trackable than an ad-based web.
I'm already paying my ISP for the privilege of accessing the Internet (including the web), so why should I be expected to pay more for its content? Either by watching ads, subscribing to services, or whatever?
I already pay for my car and gas and roads (via taxes). I have to spend even more money once I get to the store? They should give me their products for free.

I run a few small-time websites that I give access to for free, and I couldn't care less about tracking, ads, or whatever (mostly because my sites are low-traffic enough that I can afford the out of pocket expenses myself).
Sure that works for low traffic websites, or if you're rich to be able to bleed money...

For bigger sites that cost more to run, ads are one way to generate revenue, so are subscriptions, but those are not the only ways to cover costs. They could also sell standard stuff like tee shirts or other tchotchkes, they could take microdonations, they could go the patreon route, and so on.
lol you expect people to voluntarily pay for a thing! Ugh, there's that stupid Wikipedia banner again. I can't wait until they leave me alone about it again (when other people, that aren't me fund it)

Ad revenue is propping up a lot of sites that have awful content (or frequently no original content at all), but inexplicably lots of traffic, and it wouldn't hurt my feelings if there were less of those around.
If the sites are so bad, why are you (or other people) visiting them, thus giving them revenue from ad impressions? If you're not going there, why do you even care they exist?
Re:And will insert its own ads... by CrashNBrn · 2016-01-21 04:01 · Score: 1

This is about creating his own ad network, and telling us it's for our benefit.
So, just like Opera and Vivaldi then. Seems to be about what you get when you start with Chromium.
Re:And will insert its own ads... by thegarbz · 2016-01-21 04:07 · Score: 1

Because the business model is replacing existing ads with new ads under the guise of giving us less tracking and more security.
Didn't some ISPs attempt this before having their own legal teams shout ABORT in their face?
Re:And will insert its own ads... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 04:30 · Score: 0

It's actually the only sane approach to the modern web. The web can't be "free". Someone's got to pay the bills. It either has to be ad-supported or subscription-based. Think about it: if you go subscription-based for everything you are MUCH more trackable than an ad-based web.
I'm already paying my ISP for the privilege of accessing the Internet (including the web), so why should I be expected to pay more for its content? Either by watching ads, subscribing to services, or whatever?
I already pay for my car and gas and roads (via taxes). I have to spend even more money once I get to the store? They should give me their products for free.
I can go into a store and not buy anything, but I should feel obligated to give websites I visit money (via viewing ads)? The website should earn my money, they aren't just entitled to it because their business model is broken.

I run a few small-time websites that I give access to for free, and I couldn't care less about tracking, ads, or whatever (mostly because my sites are low-traffic enough that I can afford the out of pocket expenses myself).
Sure that works for low traffic websites, or if you're rich to be able to bleed money...
If you're so big that you can't fund at least the majority of your operations without ad revenue, then I'd say your business model needs work.

For bigger sites that cost more to run, ads are one way to generate revenue, so are subscriptions, but those are not the only ways to cover costs. They could also sell standard stuff like tee shirts or other tchotchkes, they could take microdonations, they could go the patreon route, and so on.
lol you expect people to voluntarily pay for a thing! Ugh, there's that stupid Wikipedia banner again. I can't wait until they leave me alone about it again (when other people, that aren't me fund it)
If the content is good enough, people will pay for it, and if it's no good, people won't pay for it, and the site will die a natural death. Excellence should be rewarded, but we instead tolerate mediocrity because, hey, it's "free".

Ad revenue is propping up a lot of sites that have awful content (or frequently no original content at all), but inexplicably lots of traffic, and it wouldn't hurt my feelings if there were less of those around.
If the sites are so bad, why are you (or other people) visiting them, thus giving them revenue from ad impressions? If you're not going there, why do you even care they exist?
I don't visit them. If other people (even lots of people) decide that they want to fritter away their whole Internet life at content-free places like Buzzfeed or whatever, then that's no skin off my nose. If advertisers have decided to get more obnoxious in their tactics to target that kind of web citizen, which then bleeds over into the websites that I do like and support, well, then it becomes everyone's problem.
Re:And will insert its own ads... by vel-ex-tech · 2016-01-21 04:36 · Score: 1

The web can't be "free". Someone's got to pay the bills.
The red site seems to be doing fine.

magical combination of browser add-ons
Ghostery and either AdBlockPlus or uBlock. I haven't used uBlock so I can't offer an endorsement there.

He is protecting your privacy.
Here's where I've probably got my tinfoil on too tight. We know that feminism is involved in this browser. So I have to ask: is this browser really going to protect my privacy?
I've probably dropped enough hints that it would be trivial to dox me (feminism is holding me accountable for things that have happened in real life, not online as far as I know), but wouldn't it be convenient if this browser phoned home with logins to say A Voice for Men and similar websites? It would be easy to identify somebody who's a trans woman, a gay man, an intactivist, or an MHRA (yes, a strange constellation of people that feminism absolutely hates) and then proceed to collect all of their online identities. Sooner or later, the target will access a bank account or pay a bill, then *boom* insta-dox.
I'd keep my eye on this thing. 2015 was merely a warm-up for the ill-termed SJWs and rape culture. It's not just on college campuses any more. In the end, it's probably a distraction from TPP/TTIP/TISA and the Clinton coronation.
Re:And will insert its own ads... by bluefoxlucid · 2016-01-21 05:05 · Score: 1

It's not a sane approach because advertising is a bubble.
The only sane approach is direct monetization of services. Could you imagine Facebook with a $1/year subscription?
I have actually considered this a lot. I've been working, conceptually, on something like Craigslist, but more modernized. A system to categorize and find things. Meetings, landmarks, objects for sale; it's more abstract in design. I started sketching out a basic reputation system so people can mark and comment on listings, then filter away things like new accounts (younger than so many days) or accounts with significant consensus on positions (spam, illegal activity, etc.). Basically thinking on how to anti-spam without an army of spam hunters. There'd also be an upvote system, so we're looking at a post-and-user karma system (reddit).
I've considered a cash gate model as well, with a $1 yearly subscription. I noticed spam accounts on Facebook go away quickly; probably the same for MySpace. Craigslist has a flagging system, but I think that gets abused. The most egregious cases--the ones who send links to alternate sites or porn sites, or claim you've won the lottery--die quickly. Those accounts last minutes in most popular services. In something like Craigslist, people tend to roll by listings that say things like "s%ale get b1ggr p3n!s" without opening the listing and flagging as spam, so that doesn't work so much; it's the more subtle ones who can lure you in, but not actually catch you, where people flag the post away.
The point is spammers would spend money. If they last 1 hour and only operate in a 4 hour peak period, every *one* account-year costs $1500. Registering 100 accounts and flooding the place would cost a spammer $150,000/year; and 100 spammers in the same area are competing for the limited resource of attention. I want something that's hard to monetize effectively as a gateway for spam and scams, and that carries the risk of constant capital investment. It probably helps that I could ban credit cards (or cardholder-zipcode pairs) and paypal accounts if they misbehave.
Within that whole model is an assumption that people would not mind sending money via a considerably safe method (ShopSafe card, Paypal) to get an account; and that people don't care about a dollar per year. Give me one million users and that's a million dollars per year; consider Spotify's 10 million paying subscribers and 40 million total users, and you realize this could become *quite* lucrative.
Even Google has roughly 2.2 billion users. If the ad model imploded, Google would have $2.2 billion of revenue from a $1/year subscription model giving everyone access to Youtube, Gmail, and so forth. That's more operating revenue than Sinclair Broadcast Group. Google's income is $71.5 billion, with $16.4 billion of profits: they'd need $51.5 billion, or $23.50 per user per year, to break even--about $2/month.
Think about that: Google provides YouTube, Gmail, Google Apps, Google Maps, Google Drive, Google+, Google Talk, Google Voice, and a few other minor applications. They provide business services. They research things like self-driving cars. All this for $2/user each month.
Now tell me how much a New York Times subscription should cost.
Hint: $1.9 million income per year. 1 million digital-only subscribers, plus 1.1 million print-and-digital subscribers. 2.1 million users. 90 cents per user per year.
The best part? If this became the standard model for big, broad-audience sites, advertising would face scarcity. Instead of ads plastered over every inch of the Internet, you'd have TV broadcast, radio broadcast, and small sites. Ads would be a thing you have on your personal blog; and those outlets would be *the* major source of advertisement impressions. They'd be premium placement, because ads do not exist

--
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Re:And will insert its own ads... by AmiMoJo · 2016-01-21 05:11 · Score: 2

Clever plan. Create an ad-blocking browser, but then create your own advertising network that works with it. Site owners have a simple choice: join your network or get $0 in advertising revenue from that user.

--
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Re:And will insert its own ads... by cfalcon · 2016-01-21 07:17 · Score: 1

> It's actually the only sane approach to the modern web. The web can't be "free"
Let me disagree with both of those.
First, more fucking ads is not particularly sane. Ads suck. They hurt people.
Second, the web can be free. It would be a much smaller web, but it could absolutely exist. Plenty of people run websites that aren't profitable, and that's always been the case. What you can't have is a giant industry built on something without a way to monetize (literally: "turn into money") that thing.
But a lot of things aren't monetized, and they exist. They just aren't the subject of an industry.
It's ok for any given something to not support an industry. The ad industry has no particular right to an income stream, any more than I can start charging you for oxygen.
> Think about it: if you go subscription-based for everything you are MUCH more trackable than an ad-based web.
I hope I've demolished your false dichotomy well enough to move on. If not, consider that you have several options: a profitless web, an ad supported web, a web controlled by an agency that rewards contributors in some way (socialistweb?), or simply not a giant shitbag of ads and not profitable... plus whatever I couldn't think of in 30 seconds, which is probably a lot.
So lets move on to one of the MANY MANY things you could do instead of ads (not the "only other thing"), that you bring up, and that is a subscription model.
Whenever ad apologists squeal, part of it is about how expensive and hassley it is to have a subscription. Sometimes they also bring up the fact that it's a privacy problem.
The first argument- expense- is not true. A model where I pay every website some trivial amount on pageview, via some unspecified method is inherently more efficient than the model where the website is paid by an advertising industry that in turn gets its money from clients. If a website gets X dollars (where X is obviously much less than 1/100th of a dollar) for every single page view I give them because of an ad company paying them for each view, that means that I, the viewer, am ultimately paying much MORE than X. Maybe not that second, but somehow. There's a whole industry as this middleman- it is assuredly the LEAST efficient solution we could come up with.
As for the hassle, much like there's no way to actually end up with me paying X per pageview, this is only true from a technical perspective- it assumes everything exists exactly as it does and won't change. If you had to log in everywhere and give every website 30 cents per month or whatever, that would obviously not be a very clever way of doing things (and this lack of a solid solution is a big part of why advertisement has moved so solidly into online stuff).
It's not a problem in principle: it's a problem in practice, but just for now.
Finally, privacy. Certainly if everything I went to had to get some login and therefore my whole web cycle was tracked, that WOULD be bad, right? Well, first, advertisers have been trying VERY VERY hard to do exactly this, ignoring laws, brutally exploiting issues in browers and OSes, uses every available piece of obfuscated javascript, backdoor deal, flash cookie, whatever they can. Whatever they can. They've done more to fuck with online privacy than any government thus far. So clearly they are not the good guys.
Is it IMPOSSIBLE to browse in a way that doesn't identify you under the "subscribe to the web" theme? Not really. The most naive implementations, sure. But an ISP middleman could obfuscate this, standards that don't permit the source could be written, and laws could even be written to ensure that metadata is destroyed promptly.
Just because the most naive subscription model you could think of wouldn't be cheap, private, or easy doesn't mean that one could not exist.
Ads are fucked up. Making a browser that is clever enough to spot ads, and evil enough to paste over them with OTHER ads is hella more fucked up. And remember, this will greatly encourage an advertiser to slip his ads in other ways- way more than an adblocker will ever do, because this approach actually takes away your views from the subset of viewers that are NOT hostile to seeing ads.
Re:And will insert its own ads... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 07:23 · Score: 0

I'm a ridiculous sourpuss of a human being. I've noticed that just about everybody seems to be fine with advertisers shouting at them from TVs, radios and everything else. I'm not like those people. The fact is, in my experience, most people just can't be bothered to do anything about it. They don't care.
Re:And will insert its own ads... by sumdumass · 2016-01-21 07:35 · Score: 1

But he never says he is going to remove or stop advertising,. He says there is a subscription model if you want no ads but his entire contention is about tracking and privacy.
I assume he is going to compensate the sites for the lost ad revenue but I'm guessing on that.
As for starting his own ad service or network. I don't care about that. I don't like the tracking and links to gay bars because i read a story about lgbq or what the hell ever it referred to now.
Re:And will insert its own ads... by sumdumass · 2016-01-21 07:39 · Score: 1

You should practice what you preach. There will be ads just like i said. What is being removed completely is the tracking and infections just like i said. Your quoted line even says as much
Re:And will insert its own ads... by sumdumass · 2016-01-21 07:42 · Score: 1

What did I say that was incorrect. Ads will be there. The claim is not to remove all ads but to remove the tracking as i said.
Re:And will insert its own ads... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 08:28 · Score: 0

I work for Brave so I am really getting a kick out of most of these replies.
Some of you guys are very good at making it sound like you know what you are talking about, but trust me, you don't.
I think you just want to make yourself sound smart, when in reality you don't know what you are talking about. This is how bad info gets passed around.
If you don't know about the topic....don't make yourself sound like you do. Because some Slashdotters believe anything they hear.
Re:And will insert its own ads... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 09:10 · Score: 0

Didn't some ISPs attempt this before having their own legal teams shout ABORT in their face?
No, they didn't. What they tried was redirecting...
broken-domain.con ... to ...
isp-rebranded-google.com/q=?broken-domain
in an attempt to get you to where you're trying to go (or to who can sell you something that might have something to do with broken-domain)
Re:And will insert its own ads... by sumdumass · 2016-01-21 09:21 · Score: 1

I took their claims right off their website. I seriously doubt you work for brave unless you are the janitorial services or something. You couldn't even point to what was incorrect or correct it. Your laughable at best. Otherwise pathetic.
Re:And will insert its own ads... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 11:36 · Score: 0

Now you're being purposefully obtuse because you got called out for your lack of reading and comprehension abilities. Brave claims to REPLACE ads with their own ads. REPLACING something requires REMOVAL, you stupid fuck.
There will be ads, but they will be Brave's own ads from their own cloud service AFTER they have removed the already existing ads. Try to keep up, dipshit.
Re:And will insert its own ads... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-22 01:40 · Score: 0

You come across as quite loopy, you know.

How is this not slashvertisment? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 02:10 · Score: 1

From TFA: "By default Brave will insert ads only in a few standard-sized spaces."

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 02:12 · Score: 3, Insightful

Not only is Eich a bigot, but he doesn't even know how to display text without requiring JavaScript. How good can his little me too browser project be if he's that incompetent?

Equally bigoted are the people who couldn't handle his views.

Brave is an Ad Funnel by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 02:15 · Score: 5, Interesting

The first mention I saw of Brave was this morning on a site, I think linked from another Slashdot article, run by the advertising industry. The insiders on that page were touting Brave to one another as a new platform that will send ads only from servers it controls. "More importantly", they said, everybody will get a share of the proceeds—Mozilla and advertisers both. It's clear that users of Brave will have no option to block the ads that appear in any way. So if you're ready to let someone else decide that certain ads are okay and you ought to see them, this is your browser. I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot fucking pole.

Re:Brave is an Ad Funnel by fey000 · 2016-01-21 02:24 · Score: 3, Funny

Had I wanted someone else to administrate my computer I would have installed WIndows 10.
Re:Brave is an Ad Funnel by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 02:48 · Score: 0

Had I wanted someone else to administrate my computer I would have installed WIndows 10.
It is ok to be against telemetry collection in software products, purportedly done for product improvement purposes, which is what the "Windows 10 spywaregate" is all bout (btw. now also mostly present in Win7 and onward). But Slashdot of really old used to be against FUD, now a lot of the posts and claims seems to be on the FUD side and little concerned with technical accuracy.
Re:Brave is an Ad Funnel by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 07:58 · Score: 0

It's clear that users of Brave will have no option to block the ads that appear in any way.

Does someone have a source that confirms this?
For me, this is by far the biggest issue with Brave, and I need a precise answer to this. Since Brave is based on Chromium, I would expect that it would be compatible with the Chromium add-on ecosystem, and thus, it should allow me to install any add-on of my choosing, including an ad-blocker.
Can anybody tell me if I'm right or wrong about this?

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 02:17 · Score: 0, Insightful

Equally bigoted are the people who couldn't handle Adolf Hitler's views.
Equally bigoted are the people who couldn't handle slaver owners' views.
Equally bigoted are the people who couldn't handle rapists' views.

Seriously, you sound just like Orson Scott Card when he got called out for being a homophobe. Sorry, but intolerant people don't get the protection of tolerance.

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 02:21 · Score: 0

Hitler? Slavery? Rapists? You are off the rails, pal.

Intolerance is intolerance. End of story.

Re:No thanks by gustygolf · 2016-01-21 02:22 · Score: 1

he doesn't even know how to display text without requiring JavaScript.

That must be why he invented it.

--
"Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 58 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment" -- slashdot, driving users away.

Lawyers are Going to Love This! by Irate+Engineer · 2016-01-21 02:22 · Score: 2, Insightful

So let me get this straight - Brave strips ads off of websites, replaces them with those of Eich's choosing? Ha ha, fuck no.

Aren't the advertisers going to be a little bit pissed about this? This is like renting a billboard to put up your advertising, then some other guy comes down, tears down your ads and replaces them without paying.

Brave is a dumb, dumb idea. Hard to believe, but anybody looking to block advertising is not willing to replace it with other advertising. And advertisers would just need to count hits from Brave browsers to assess legal damages.

--

Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!

Vote for Bernie in 2016!

Re:Lawyers are Going to Love This! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 02:34 · Score: 0

It's more like giving away augment reality goggles that overlay billboards with images of other advertisements. Nothing is torn down, but a section of the population is immune to your old advertising plan and subjugating themselves to someone else's new advertising plan.
For those who oppose the malware vector of cross-site advertising, this may be an acceptable compromise that benefits everyone except the web pages who are trying to get ad revenue in the first place. Until those pages form a class-action lawsuit to demand their rightful $0.0000001 per page hit from Brave, then this results in a slightly less malicious non-adblocked internet browsing experience.
Re:Lawyers are Going to Love This! by HeadSoft · 2016-01-21 02:44 · Score: 1

Except it's not a billboard, or if it is, it belongs to Eich right? Whatever he puts on it is his business. If you don't like looking at "his billboard" don't use his browser. I'm a researcher and programmer, like many others on here. How many of you want to know that you're legally restricted from "some kinds of code that might hurt some random advertiser's bottom line?" Especially since what kind that is would be totally up to debate, but as you know... Debates in courtrooms are not the place anyone wants to be.
Remember, laws ALWAYS limit freedom. Not just the freedoms you gave up, but others you're not yet aware of.
Re:Lawyers are Going to Love This! by gstoddart · 2016-01-21 02:45 · Score: 1

Ah, but business models are magical things, comprised of wishful thinking and unicorn farts. They make the world go around, without business models we'd all be stuck to live in dismal reality.

When Brave is ready, it'll replace the missing content with its own ads, splitting the revenue between itself (15 percent), publishers (55 percent), ad suppliers (15 percent) and even you, the user (10 to 15 percent). Eich sees it as an attempt to "chlorinate the pool" for ads, starting from scratch to build a better business model that respects web surfers. The Brave spots will be based on tags from your browsing history, although you can change or remove those tags if you're worried.
So, you may get a little kickback as incentive, but I suspect it's only if you click and buy.
They go all scorched earth on other ad companies, and you opt in to a new set of ads. Their revenue comes from blocking someone else's ads, and undercutting them to sell that ad space to someone else, and claiming to protect your privacy
Your billboard analogy is kinda close ... it's more like using VR goggles to make you see different ads. The original billboard is still there for others to see.
But, and this is key, I'm not required to see your ads, and your copyright doesn't include the ads. You can't force me to see your ads.
As far as tracking hits from the browser? Wow, so you build a browser which spoofs its user agent, or randomly picks one. They'll never solve that problem.
I'm not sure who the target is here. People like me, who are gonna block the hell out of your ads and never see them ... we're not going to sign up for a new set of ads. People who aren't blocking ads ... well, they're not blocking ads.
This is an opt-in, ad-affiliate program, which loosely promises to protect your privacy and give you a kick back from ads ... so you get a few shekels to see ads (or possibly only if you click and purchase), and someone gets your analytics data, which they'll abuse and sell anyway. You know they will, it will be right there in the EULA anyway.
Frankly, I don't see the value here ... rich asshole comes up with business model to take someone else's product (Google), use it to rip off someone else's revenue stream (the sites in question), and use it to skim off the top for his own enrichment, and warps up the whole thing like some noble crusade to protect privacy and clean up the state of advertising -- right up until he stops caring and serving up the same ads with the same malware.
A real Robin Hood.
Sorry, I'll stick with the privacy extensions I have in Chrome now. I know what I've told them to do.

--
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Re:Lawyers are Going to Love This! by bentcd · 2016-01-21 02:54 · Score: 1

Hard to believe, but anybody looking to block advertising is not willing to replace it with other advertising.

I'm not so sure about that. A lot of people who block ads are doing it due to the malware threat. If Brave can establish itself as a browser that only serves safe ads (and perhaps even non-obnoxious ones) then I can see a lot of users going for this.
It's not much different from the way AdBlock is pushing with their acceptable ads programme (or whatever it's called).

And advertisers would just need to count hits from Brave browsers to assess legal damages.
This is probably more of an issue but it seems like a tangled legal territory to try and get damages from, if it's the users themselves who are making the decision to replace malware-infested ads with safe ads.

--
sigs are hazardous to your health
Re:Lawyers are Going to Love This! by Jason+Levine · 2016-01-21 02:57 · Score: 1

Not to mention the website operators as well. If someone has ads on their site, the purpose is to help pay for the site operations. A program that removes the ads and replaces them with its own ads is just harmful to the website operators.

--
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Re:Lawyers are Going to Love This! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 03:00 · Score: 0

So let me get this straight - Brave strips ads off of websites, replaces them with those of Eich's choosing? Ha ha, fuck no.
At least you won't be getting ads for gay porn
Re:Lawyers are Going to Love This! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 03:43 · Score: 0

No it's not like a billboard blabla, dickhead.
I can run on my machine whatever software I want and my browser can filter, alter, and display your advertisement infested web page in any way I want. No advertiser is entitled to force me to display his ad, there is no law or regulation that would allow an advertiser to enforce such a frivolous wish.
So yeah, "brave" is in the clear, except that nobody will use it if it doesn't have a decent ad blocker for the "brave" ads. So it will fail anyway.
Re:Lawyers are Going to Love This! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 03:45 · Score: 0

Another who did not RTFA.
Website operators will receive the bulk of the money from the sanitized ads.
Re:Lawyers are Going to Love This! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 03:46 · Score: 0

Users are free to fuck with my website data after it's gone through the pipes and made it to their machine (not necessarily rendered.)
Other companies MAY NOT fuck with my website, as that violates my copyright on my layout and presentation of my website. It also removes MY advertisers, causing tortious interference of contract.
Nope, Brave is about to be dead as fuck in the courtroom.
Re:Lawyers are Going to Love This! by bluefoxlucid · 2016-01-21 05:07 · Score: 1

This sounds like the 1990s "make money while you buy" applications that showed ads and gave you 10 cents per hour.

--
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Re:Lawyers are Going to Love This! by 110010001000 · 2016-01-21 05:44 · Score: 1

I'm pretty sure that it doesn't FUCK with your website. It is a browser. It doesn't have write access to your website. For christ sake.
Re:Lawyers are Going to Love This! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 05:45 · Score: 0

>and replaces them without paying
They do pay. Brave, knowing advertising is here to stay, will clean up the crappy, blinky, scripty, malware ridden ads and replace them with generic non-customized ads. And will split revenue with website they just blocked. Capiche?
Re:Lawyers are Going to Love This! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 06:26 · Score: 0

It is modifying what I originally intend to display to the user before the user ever has an option to do the filtering themselves. It interferes with the ad display agreement I have with those buying ad space from me. This causes me and my advertisers damage. Are you dense?
Re:Lawyers are Going to Love This! by SvnLyrBrto · 2016-01-21 07:14 · Score: 1

Not really. A better "real-world" analogy is a person wearing augmented-reality goggles... MS hololens, some future evolution of Google Glass, or an Oculus + GoPro hack... as they walk around town. Said person then runs software on his own goggles that blocks out the billboard from his vision and overlays some other content. The original billboard is still intact and there to see for anyone who wants to do so.
I fail to see any problem. (Other than the involvement of Brendan Eich.) How I choose to see the world or internet, and what tools I use to do so, is my choice, no one else's.

--
Imagine all the people...
Re:Lawyers are Going to Love This! by sonamchauhan · 2016-01-21 07:19 · Score: 1

> So let me get this straight - Brave strips ads off of websites, replaces them with those of Eich's choosing? Ha ha, fuck no.
I get that you are irate about this, but ...
- these are my eyes
- ... and unless I am contractually obligated otherwise...
- ... websites can't sue me (or my agents) for choosing what to see
> Brave is a dumb, dumb idea.
Sort of ... it doesn't go far enough and just ends up moving ad content from one platform to another. Unless Brave transforms into some sort-of hyper-personal Siri/Cortana, not enough users will find value in it -- they will just use ad-blockers.
But the underlying problem it addresses is serious enough for it to be somewhat successful. Ads have become obnoxious. My eyeballs automatically skip parts of the screen by habit. Something has to give. Brave is just being gmail for the web. Sure - you can run your own mailserver, but you'll be inundated with spam. People opt for sites like gmail because (a) cost (b) spam filtering. Expect other browsers to follow.
Now - there'll be a lot of sound and fury once website publishers realise the old model is dead, as browsers finally hand control to the user. This has always been possible (e.g. older browsers gave a prominent place to 'User CSS')
> And advertisers would just need to count hits from Brave browsers to assess legal damages.
What legal damages? :-) And can Brave browsers be distinguised from, say, Chromium with Privacy Badger? The only option a website has is anti-adblock technology. i.e. if a browser fails to load ads (say, when the page is halfway loading), or if you can't fingerprint the browser, block it. Expect ad-aggregators like Double-Click offer this as an option to some customers.
Re:Lawyers are Going to Love This! by SvnLyrBrto · 2016-01-21 07:23 · Score: 1

I'm pretty sure Brave does not function by using a proxy operated by the comapny. It's a tool that users use once the data has, as you say, "gone through the pipes and made it to their machine", to choose how they wish to view it. It's basically a re-hashed browser with an AdBlock Plus clone built in, and less transparency on what will be considered "acceptable" ads.
AdBlock Plus has, by the way, already been attacked in the courts by the advertising industry, and been found to be 100% a-ok kosher.

--
Imagine all the people...
Re: Lawyers are Going to Love This! by Bing+Tsher+E · 2016-01-21 07:55 · Score: 1

You'd better learn to deal with the fact that your "layout" is fluid on the World Wide Web. People can choose how to render your hypertext markup on their own machines. If they chose to use this Brave browser it's none of your business. If it upsets you, program your server to respond to their User Agent as you choose.
As far as copyrighted layouts go, fuck off. Reference my first sentence.
Re:Lawyers are Going to Love This! by G00F · 2016-01-21 08:08 · Score: 1

And it's not Adds that most want to block.
It's the abusive Adds, tracking, and that kind of stuff people want to block the most.
And it's the blanket blocking all Adds that comes back to bite us. So it irks me quite a bit when I see that being pushed.

--
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
Re:Lawyers are Going to Love This! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 09:29 · Score: 0

"I'm pretty sure Brave does not function by using a proxy operated by the comapny."
If you bother to check, they're removing your ads and injecting their own. Via a cloud service, no less. This is how they get rid of all those tracking identifiers.
Re: Lawyers are Going to Love This! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 12:38 · Score: 0

Yes, PEOPLE can choose how to modify that layout. Another company removing my ads before the user gets to choose, AND INJECTING THEIR OWN ADS OVER IT, is bullshit. Unless they're going to pay me for my lost advertising revenue, I have provable damages in court and I doubt any judge is going to see that as anything other than tortious interference.

Even Rich thinks FireSux is shit. by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 02:31 · Score: 0

Funny how even Brendan Eich won't use Firefox and Gecko as a base when given the choice. Shit sux, yo.

Re:Even Rich thinks FireSux is shit. by Merk42 · 2016-01-21 03:33 · Score: 1

For it to be available on iOS, Gecko is not a choice.
Re:Even Rich thinks FireSux is shit. by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 03:58 · Score: 0

Why?
Re:Even Rich thinks FireSux is shit. by Lunix+Nutcase · 2016-01-21 04:38 · Score: 1

But the Firefox for iOS code is open sourced so he could've used it. It's not as if Chromium as is will work on iOS either.
Re:Even Rich thinks FireSux is shit. by bluefoxlucid · 2016-01-21 05:18 · Score: 1

This is the ass gecko.

--
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Re:Even Rich thinks FireSux is shit. by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 05:53 · Score: 0

Except that, oddly enough, Brave's iOS browser is based on Firefox iOS. Brave is open source (well, its browsers are, I doubt its servers will be where they'll be serving users ads from) and you can check their iOS source at GitHub.
I thought this quote interesting. Former Mozilla CTO Andreas Gal: "Brave for iOS seems to be a fork of Firefox for iOS, but it manages to block ads (Mozilla says they can’t)." Link
So either Mozilla has some reason (e.g. agreement) not to block ads on iOS, or they couldn't figure out how to. If the former, they should be called out for being deceptive. If the latter, they can use the power of open source and learn how Brave blocks ads and then do so themselves. Unless Brave is doing something like Opera Mini, where webpages are proxied through Brave's servers where they can be manipulated before being sent on to the user. Which seems bad for a privacy-vaunting browser to do.
I don't have any iOS devices so I don't really care in that regard (other than my general concern for well-being of others, as far as that goes). I also don't agree with Brave's initial premise that the web must be supported by either subscriptions or ads. I think a sizable chunk of the web can be funded by the person or organization hosting the content. Hosting is cheap. What's really being talked about is revenue generation. But as others have pointed out, a fair number of people like sharing information and will do so without a profit motive. People have been sharing and talking freely for decades; I don't see that going away. If you're interested in revenue generation, create a business plan. Alternatively, look into and push for a basic income. A basic income may be a great way to support hobbyists of all sorts. Anyway, I just don't buy that the web solely relies on subscriptions and ads. Individuals and companies can use their independent revenue streams as well, and the world won't end.
Uh, my overall point being Firefox iOS is apparently good enough to use as their base. So good for Mozilla there. I've used Firefox for Android and it's pretty good (yay NoScript), but holy hell looking at its source code makes me want to weep. I built it just to mess around with it, but it's a confusing mess of native code with a whole lot of javascript. Firefox iOS's code makes a lot more sense to me (and I've never used Swift).
Re:Even Rich thinks FireSux is shit. by Merk42 · 2016-01-21 05:54 · Score: 1

Firefox for iOS doesn't use Gecko either.
Re:Even Rich thinks FireSux is shit. by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 07:47 · Score: 0

Except that, oddly enough, Brave's iOS browser is based on Firefox iOS.
Which also doesn't use Gecko.
Re:Even Rich thinks FireSux is shit. by Lunix+Nutcase · 2016-01-21 07:48 · Score: 1

And Chrome on iOS doesn't use Blink. So mentioning iOS is a red herring to being able to use Firefox for desktop OSes.
Re:Even Rich thinks FireSux is shit. by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 08:31 · Score: 0

That's true; Firefox iOS uses Webkit as its base, not Gecko. I was pointing out that at least for one OS Eich's new browser is based on Firefox code. No versions of Brave use Gecko, other than early prototypes, but that wasn't the point I was trying to make.
I don't really see it as a great thing that chromium has dozens of variants based off of it. I haven't been impressed by any of them, this new Brave browser included. As an example, when Opera was based on Presto it had some brilliant features and a lot of customizability. It's been almost three years since Opera has been based on Blink (Chromium) and not much of the previous functionality has been added back in--it holds no appeal for me to use.
Firefox's historical extensibility has meant you don't need to fork the browser, you can just create (or install) add-ons to create the browser you want. I don't fully understand where Firefox is going now but even if they destroy themselves Pale Moon preserves a very good version of them. I find Firefox (for desktop and Android) and Pale Moon to both be very usable, and my preferred, browsers. And they're based on Gecko.

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 02:32 · Score: 5, Insightful

Good thing he is not, nor ever was, intolerant.

"There is not a scintilla of evidence that he has ever discriminated against a single gay person at Mozilla" - Dissents Of The Day. The Dish.

The only bigotry here is the bigotry you and your ilk seem so willing to project on others.

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 02:33 · Score: 3, Insightful

And I would submit that intolerance of intolerance is also intolerance. People have a right to their views, even if they are moronic, stupid, dangerous, whatever. Society has become far too obsessed with fairness, everyone on a level playing field, whatever. It's a sickness. As long as people don't harm others physically, steal, kill, or maim, let people be. If enough people can swing a vote one way, hey, the mob rules. It will swing the other way -- that's what pendulums do.

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 02:34 · Score: 0

Hitler? Slavery? Rapists? You are off the rails, pal.

Intolerance is intolerance. End of story.

What about intolerance of intolerance?

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 02:37 · Score: 1

And I would submit that intolerance of intolerance is also intolerance. People have a right to their views, even if they are moronic, stupid, dangerous, whatever. Society has become far too obsessed with fairness, everyone on a level playing field, whatever. It's a sickness. As long as people don't harm others physically, steal, kill, or maim, let people be. If enough people can swing a vote one way, hey, the mob rules. It will swing the other way -- that's what pendulums do.

Yeah, to just say "hey, the mob rules" as justification for violating basic human rights (these votes have consequences for people) explains to me why we have a different view on this.

Re:No thanks by Bruinwar · 2016-01-21 02:41 · Score: 1

How cliché, how cliché.

--
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT

Lack of english skills by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 02:43 · Score: 0

What a horribly edited source article. If I'd turned that in to my school paper in 10th grade I'd have been laughed at.

Re:Lack of english skills by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 05:46 · Score: 0

Hemingway Editor agrees with you.

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 02:47 · Score: 1

Fuck you. I don't give a fuck about the man's politics. This is America, you have the fucking right to be a bigot, a racist, whatever the fuck you want to be. If his product is better than the rest, I'll use it. I don't care how he feels about gays or whatever other protected class we've decided is being slighted today.

"Intolerance won't be tolerated." Great, fucking beautiful. At least you have the gall to come right out and say only your views deserve to be heard, and everyone else can go fuck themselves. Classic liberal/collectivist mindrot horseshit. You're on the losing team, asshole.

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 02:49 · Score: 0

The legislation he supported affected gay people at Mozilla as well.

Because...? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 02:52 · Score: 0

We need another browser to test our pages in?

Re: Because...? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 03:14 · Score: 0

Yup, chrome/chromium will be chromium, opera will be chrome, firefox will be chrome and brave will be chrome, what a brave new monoculture.
New rule seems to be "don't forget to brake the previous platform on your way out, conpetition could really hurt the bottom line of your new startup."
Re: Because...? by Merk42 · 2016-01-21 03:38 · Score: 1

Funny how you can the GP both bitch, but about opposite scenarios.

New engine? That's bad because it means more testing
Existing engine? That's bad because monoculture.

Alternative plan by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 02:59 · Score: 0

So this guy ha a different web ad plan that maybe does not involve cross site adds.
The cross site stuff is very useful for counting add views and centralizing the add serving and picking functions.

What if instead, the site you wanted to go to can directly serve you whatever add they wish.
Not served cross site, which means it would just be between you and them.
Which also means that there would be no way to account that the add was actually served.
Which means that the old system of getting paid for serving adds would not work.

So get paid for referrals instead.
If you put up an add on your site which causes the user to go to the advertizer's site, you get paid.
If the customer is unhappy that he ended up at the advertizer's site, then there should be an easy way on the advertizer's site to say so, and the original site gets negative money.

Advertizer's get much better quality referrals.
Original site folks are figuring out how to get their customers to was to go to the advertizer's sites.
This means that the advertizer's don't have to deal with adds, the folks referring customer's do this for them.

Probably won't scale allowing a small site builder can just put in a link to an add aggregator.
But it might if the small site guy just had to go to the add aggregator to get the page to serve.
He could look it over and make sure it was simple enough for how he wants to treat his customers.
This could be once per week or once per page view depending on the resources of the site builder.

Developer Tools by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 03:11 · Score: 0

The success of the browser is going to be in the success of the developer tools... Thats how you get businesses using and hiring for it. Safari and Chrome have damn good built-in inspections and tools. If he isn't going to compete there then his "idea" might as well be a browser plugin instead of a browser.

Re:No thanks by Chas · 2016-01-21 03:19 · Score: 0

And if he had problems with the nascent statute because he felt that it would be successful fully struck down via legal challenge due to poor construction/wording, and a desire to put something more concrete in its place?

Would that have made a difference?

Of course not. It's always about "He hates gays."

Note: I'm not saying that IS the reason. Just saying that people have raged on this guy with nothing more than a mere data point and a couple metric assloads (because imperial assloads are so passe) of supposition.

--

Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 03:20 · Score: 0

Sorry, but you're a stupid little shit. Eich hates a whole group of people. That is directly comparable.

There is no such thing as intolerance of intolerance. End of story.

Important to note he's not using Gecko or Servo! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 03:22 · Score: 5, Informative

The most important thing I see out of all of this is that he isn't using Gecko, despite his very long history with that technology.

He's also not using Servo, the browser engine Mozilla is working on to eventually replace Gecko.

I think this says a huge amount about the sorry state of Mozilla's offerings today.

Users of Firefox already know what I'm talking about. They know how much slower Firefox feels than Chrome, Edge, Safari, and browsers using other engines. They know how Firefox uses more memory. They know how Firefox suffers from bugs that haven't been fixed even after many years.

It's truly sad what has happened to Mozilla's products. They've shot themselves in the foot by going off on stupid tangents like Firefox OS, Persona, and especially Rust and Servo.

Rust and Servo are leading Mozilla down a dead end trail. They're a twin example of software rewrites gone bad.

Rust is basically trying to rewrite C++, but hasn't done a very good job. The syntax is no better, and sometimes much worse. Its approach to resource management is harder to understand and use practically than C++'s. There's only one Rust implementation, and it's buggy and slow. The Rust community is way too focused on social justice and censorship. They even have a moderation squad, for crying out loud! It took them ages to get a 1.0 release out, and it isn't good at all. Then there's the fact that C++ has continued to evolve and get better, along with having multiple excellent implementations.

Servo is written in Rust, so that helps explain why it's a failure so far, too. When I tried it recently, it gave me what I'd consider an experience similar to IE 3, which dates back to 1996. Servo has a huge amount of catching up to do. The entire situation is not encouraging at all.

Mozilla should end the Rust and Servo projects now, along with Firefox OS and their other failed initiatives. They need to get back to focusing on Gecko and Firefox. They need to restore Firefox's UI to the usable Firefox 3.6 approach. They need to migrate Gecko to C++14, and prepare for the use of C++17 instead of switching to Rust. They need to fix Gecko's performance issues. They need to fix the longstanding bugs.

Right now there are at least a few remaining users of Firefox and Gecko, although their number is dropping. There are basically no users of Servo. Mozilla's only hope for salvation is to win back the Firefox users they've alienated over the past few years. I fear that if they don't do that, then they will slide into irrelevancy. That won't be good for them, and it won't be good for the web either.

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 03:23 · Score: 0

Agreed. Eich being a bigot is a well known fact, it's hardly insightful.

Great, another Chrome-clone... by Chas · 2016-01-21 03:24 · Score: 1

Okay, we have how fucking many Chrome clones out there?

And Mozilla has essentially given up, begun slobbing the Google knob, and is in the process of mutating from an independent browser with some of the widest plugin support extant into a Chromezilla?

So, we're down to Edge and Chrome now. Both with shitty, mickey-mouse plugin support.

Fucking great...

--

Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 03:25 · Score: 0

Hitler? Slavery? Rapists? You are off the rails, pal.

Intolerance is intolerance. End of story.

What about intolerance of intolerance?

That's known as "closed-minded"

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 03:25 · Score: 1

By supporting anti-gay laws, Eich HAS harmed others. You can't really be so short sighted that you didn't know that, right?

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 03:26 · Score: 4, Insightful

LGBT: "What we do outside of the office is no business of yours and should have no affect on our employment"
Eich: "OK I'm going to take some of my own personal money and put it towards a cause I believe in"
LGBT: "What? It's against us? He's not fit to be a CEO!"

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 03:28 · Score: 0

He invented displaying text without requiring JavaScript? Then why can't his site display text without JavaScript?

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 03:28 · Score: 0

And the intolerance of intolerance of intolerance!

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 03:33 · Score: 0

OOoo Internet tough guy.

My packets are shaking in the intertubez

Re:No thanks by gustygolf · 2016-01-21 03:36 · Score: 1

He invented JavaScript, because he couldn't figure out how to make text display otherwise.

--
"Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 58 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment" -- slashdot, driving users away.

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 03:39 · Score: 0

You can only say that behind the protection of your computer. You wouldn't dare meet me face to face because you're just a little bitch.

sounds good by vel-ex-tech · 2016-01-21 03:40 · Score: 1

I'll have to give it a try.

Just as long as he's not making money off my web activity that will wind up supporting this thing where blacks can marry white women. I demand traditional marriage! Next thing you know, goats will want to marry white women!

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 03:41 · Score: 0

Isn't JavaScript just a half-assed (perhaps quarter-assed) ripoff of C syntax?

Don't take ad money by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 03:48 · Score: 0

"It's hard to blame them. How do you disrupt the status quo without sawing off the (ad revenue) branch you are sitting on?" Gal wrote.

You don't. Developers who are dependent on ad revenue have a conflict of interest. It's basically impossible for them to make good browsers.

There are only two solutions: 1) accept that you'll have a shockingly shitty browser, or 2) remove the conflict of interest, by having ads not be your revenue.

Here is why by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 04:04 · Score: 0

No, people who test pages aren't looking for browsers. You probably don't care about how well a browser serves users. That wouldn't be on the radar for people in your line of work.

This is about the other 99.98% of people. Users need another browser, because the existing ones are shitty and do absolutely stupid-crazy things like load and execute scripts which have blatantly user-hostile intent (even if sandboxed in such a manner that the dorks say its intent is irrelevant because it's not able to harm you, because they redefine "harm" to not include a bunch of crazy things, such as sucking up bandwidth, surveilling, and showing ads). So in that respect, hell yes we need more browsers.

Every software project .. every thing .. has a master. If the master whom it serves, whose interests it advances at the cost of all adversaries, isn't you, then that's the wrong software for you to be using. It's pretty fucking simple when you look at it that way.

I was shocked when Doctorow, normally not an evil person, suggested that a robot car might need to decide to kill its occupants in exchange for saving other lives. That is wrong. Your car should be willing to dismember and slowly grind up a million innocent babies if doing that saves you from breaking a finger nail. No, I'm not saying go kill babies. You're not really likely to end up with such a conflict. But hell yes, all your tools should treat you as an absolute god. (Because it is going to try to treat someone like a god. Why not the user? Tell me who it should be killing babies for, if not you.)

Everything is like that. All software I select, is judged on that basis: serve the user (I don't always get what I want, but at least I'm looking for the right things). And it's not crazy or impractical. It makes things easiest and also optimizes performance. Anything else is what's crazy. All that nonsense is how you people ended up in a world of Apple and Microsoft and Google: your very own adversaries, whom you fund!

Re:No thanks by OhPlz · 2016-01-21 04:08 · Score: 4, Insightful

Democracy only works if people are allowed to have an opinion, speak freely, and not fear losing their job because of a donation to a cause that even Obama supported at the time.

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 04:11 · Score: 1

Ahh, so if someone were to donate to drug cartels or terrorist organizations, you'd be OK with that and wouldn't want them losing their jobs.

Re:No thanks by lgw · 2016-01-21 04:12 · Score: 5, Insightful

Equally bigoted are the people who couldn't handle Adolf Hitler's views.

Adolf Hitler had every right to his views, and every right to express them, to participate in the political process. He did not have the right to use force to impose those views on others when those avenues didn't work out.

Eich was not the one that used force on others in his story. He participated in the political process to support views he had every right to hold, and every right to express. There's no evidence he ever discriminated against a gay person at Mozilla.

"Tolerance" means to accept the right of people you disagree with to exist in society, and to not try to kill them or force them out. Eich was tolerant - not accepting, which is a higher bar, but tolerant. His opponents were intolerant, and forced him out.

--
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.

Re:No thanks by bluefoxlucid · 2016-01-21 04:16 · Score: 3, Insightful

Hitler tried to exterminate an entire people, citing the dangers of the International Jewish Conspiracy and siding with Italian Fascism for its success in defeating International Jewery.

Slave owners restricted people from education. They also supported a legal system allowing the murder of an entire race of people, so long as another race of people did the murdering. They disenfranchised this group, restricting their civil rights as a whole not just by eliminating the burden of due process, but also by allowing atrocities against them ranging from cruel and unusual punishment to simply rendering judgment (with or without due process) for free speech if that speech offended another race of people.

Rapists physically brutalize people and force them into sexual submission.

Eich funded a campaign seeking to prevent State legal recognition of a social union.

Have you fought for legal polygamy? Have you demanded the IRS allow men to marry multiple women, and women to marry multiple men, and each to marry each other? Have you lobbied Congress to make marriage to animals legal, or are the Welsh beneath your morals?

Society makes two types of delineations: the concrete and the arbitrary. Our concrete delineations show a real victim, real harm, and real reasoning: we stop threats such as murder, assault, and theft, because a person carrying these actions out brings harm to others. We make other, arbitrary delineations, like age-of-consent (why does it range from 14-18 depending on state?), legal drinking age, drug laws, and alcohol laws.

If you think Eich is a terrible person for not supporting the state recognition of a legal union between two people, then you are a terrible person for not supporting the rights of parents to give their teenagers liquor, or for people with weird sexual deviant behavior to own horses.

--
Support my political activism on Patreon.

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 04:20 · Score: 0

You can only say that behind the protection of your computer. You wouldn't dare meet me face to face because you're just a little bitch.

Says the AC.

Re:No thanks by Rob+Y. · 2016-01-21 04:32 · Score: 2

A CEO job is a special kind. The CEO serves as the public face of a company, and as such needs to reflect the values of that company - at least to the extent that the customers of the company don't revolt. That's what happened here. Mozilla fans didn't like his bigotry and, since Mozilla is as much a political movement as a product, that mattered to its survival. He didn't get fired for his views, he got fired for alienating his customers, and in turn, losing the confidence of his board.

--
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 04:32 · Score: 0

Then surely you'd agree that "straight marriage" is just vaginal sex and babymaking dressed up as a "sacred institution."

Marriage is not natural, contrary to what anyone tells you.

What am I missing? by wickerprints · 2016-01-21 04:34 · Score: 1

I don't get this. Why would anyone willingly use a browser that is designed to serve you targeted advertising, when you can simply block all ads with a hosts file + adblock + noscript + etc? You're simply replacing one nuisance and security risk with another.

I have no guilt about blocking all forms of advertisement on the web, because content providers cannot assure me that such advertising does not pose a threat to my computer's security or to my personal privacy. End of argument. They're welcome to not serve me content for the choice I make, and I accept not being able to access that content. I have every right to choose which data I am being served, and they have every right to decide they would rather serve me nothing. But the notion of baking advertising into the browser itself, and passing that off as being secure and in the best interest of the user, would be laughable if it were not so obviously a deliberate attempt at deception.

Re:No thanks by phishybongwaters · 2016-01-21 04:36 · Score: 1

"Have you fought for legal polygamy? Have you demanded the IRS allow men to marry multiple women, and women to marry multiple men, and each to marry each other? Have you lobbied Congress to make marriage to animals legal, or are the Welsh beneath your morals?" That's what every fucking homophobe says. Literally. I'll give you this much, I don't see any typos.

Re:No thanks by rudy_wayne · 2016-01-21 04:42 · Score: 1

he doesn't even know how to display text without requiring JavaScript. How good can his little me too browser project be if he's that incompetent?

It's not surprising that Mr. Eich has a strong bias toward Javascript, since he invented it. The bigger problem is his proven track record of incompetence as the leader of an organization. Everything that made Firefox popular in the first place has been stripped out and thrown away.

Given his complete disdain for a decent UI, I doubt that his new browser, Yet-Another-Chrome-Clone, is going to get any traction.

What we really have here is just another rich guy with nothing to do. And I'm sure the choice of Chromium is a deliberate "Fuck You" aimed at his former employer.

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 04:42 · Score: 0

By supporting anti-gay laws, OBAMA HAS harmed others. You can't really be so short sighted that you didn't know that, right?

Re:No thanks by Alypius · 2016-01-21 04:44 · Score: 1

Dude, what bearded-Spock version of "America" are you living in? That might've been true 20 years ago, but obviously not now. Dare to be (ahem) brave and annoy a SJW, and you can expect to be sued, fired, and have SWAT teams show up at your door at 3am. But hey, at least 1984 was a cautionary tale and not an instruction manual, amirite?

Re:No thanks by Alypius · 2016-01-21 04:47 · Score: 1

Considering the proposition passed, you're clearly ok with firing more than half of California.

Re:No thanks by Alypius · 2016-01-21 04:53 · Score: 5, Insightful

Pfft, what is this "democracy" of which you speak? We lost that when people decided that shaming and silencing was a splendid little strategy. These days, calling someone a bigot merely translates into, "'Shut up or I'll harass your boss until he fires you," and when someone says they "want a conversation," they really mean, "Shut up and agree with everything I say."

Out of curiosity... by koan · 2016-01-21 04:54 · Score: 1

Could you compile something similar using standard Linux builds and/or repositories?

Leave out the crap sort of thing.

--
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 05:03 · Score: 0

Half the population of California? Your lack of analysis is showing.

Because the proposition only passed with the support of 7 million Californians.

That's a bit less than half of the actual electorate(17 million, only 80% turnout), which was a bit under half of the population of the state(estimated at 37 million in 2008). Closer to a fifth, I'd say.

And yes, I am ashamed of them, much as I was ashamed of Obama for his position on it. Fortunately, Obama changed his mind, and the California Supreme Court (and eventually the US Supreme Court), made the matter effectively moot for now.

In any case, for me, my personal interactions with Californians is minimal, I called some of my cousins to ask if they wanted any items from some property owned by an ancestor of ours, they said no, so nothing much to go on.

I have a lot more trouble with the local establishment.

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 05:14 · Score: 0

Classic liberal response. Agree with me or I'll kill you. You're not helping your fucking cause, asshole.

Re:No thanks by bluefoxlucid · 2016-01-21 05:26 · Score: 3, Insightful

I'm outside the system because I don't have any social biases. I have my own internal responses and subsequent avoidance behavior; but avoidance just means keeping myself out of meaningful contact with things I avoid. I don't smoke (anything), but I don't lobby for banning cigarettes and marijuana because it's not particularly my problem if someone else is smoking.

I also don't fuck animals, but it's not particularly my problem if some dude 5 miles away is keeping horses because his wife likes sucking them off. That's their business, as long as the horse isn't being emotionally tormented by the activity.

I don't form social attachments. I don't have an impulse to cling to a group view of how the world needs to operate and then attack others for offending my morality. Things are disgusting, but not inherently wrong; other things are harmful to others, create unwilling victims, and thus are inherently wrong. If someone dragged me into their obscene farm sex orgy, that would be a problem.

You're inside the system. You try to associate with others, think from their perspective, and protect them from ideals which distress them. To do this, you take those ideals into yourself, and become distressed by them. Other ideals are meaningless to you. You look at polygamy in Utah and claim there's something wrong with *those* people, and they shouldn't be allowed to do that, or at least that it's not important and there's no civil rights crisis because marrying 6 people is against the law and they should know better. They're not *your* social group, and nobody in your social group really has any emotional investment in the cause for polygamy.

Who is the victim, but the man arrested for doing what only affects him and his willing participants?

--
Support my political activism on Patreon.

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 05:28 · Score: 0

I'm supposed to shut my mouth because SJWs? That's the exact opposite way to ensure America continues its bowl-circling and eventually joins the rest of the world in the sewer. I won't be shutting up because I'm scared of being "doxxed" or sued, fired, etc. Sorry if that offends you.

Comment by WallyL · 2016-01-21 05:34 · Score: 1

Has ads. Do not want. [close tab, carry on]

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 05:36 · Score: 1

Considering that Mozilla has lost considerable market share since Eich's departure, it is clear that he wasn't the one driving customers away.

There have also been lots of people who ditched Firefox over their behavior towards Eich.

Buggy Chrome by victorsosa · 2016-01-21 05:38 · Score: 1

Everybody know how buggy is Chrome as one of the most security bug web browser (after IE of course) and he want to create a browser more secure from the one with the MOST BUGs ever. Check this out: http://tech.slashdot.org/story... Please make more sense and just use firefox and make a new version.

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 05:48 · Score: 1

He donated money to fund TV ads claiming homosexuals are a danger to children. So your hypothetical is irrelevent.

Brave? by fahrbot-bot · 2016-01-21 05:59 · Score: 1

If it was "brave" it would *allow* everything and deal with it.

Unless he called it Brave for other reasons, like: he consulted a witch for help, used a spell to transform Firefox into a bear. Now he must act to undo the spell before its effects become permanent.

--
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .

Re:No thanks by OhPlz · 2016-01-21 06:06 · Score: 1

IMO, there was more outrage over what happened to Eich than there was in support of the social justice crowd. Mozilla surrendered to the vocal minority. I believe part of their decline has been due to distrust. As you said, Mozilla thinks that it's part of a social movement. For many, that means they can't be trusted. Considering that browsers see everything we do online, having a malicious organization behind the browser is far too risky.

I don't like this crossing of social issues with business, it's not going to lead to a happy place. Mozilla, above most any other org, should dedicate itself to being neutral to allow for an open discussion of ideas. It's such a fail.

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 06:09 · Score: 0

There is no such thing as "straight or gay" marriage. It's just plain ole'marriage and religious orgs had their rights trampled all over so homosexuals could crowbar their way in illegally via the SCOTUS instead of the Democratic process. I believe the White House should have just stripped the benefits of being married in order to make them all equal, instead of giving more handouts to an already freeloader heavy society. Take Kurt Russel and Goldie Hawn for example. They've been in a common law marriage for over 24 years now out of protest they felt being married in the US shouldn't grant you special rights and privileges.

As for anal sex being unnatural, he's correct. It's an abnormality much in the same way as a birth defect, just of the mental capacity. Fecal contact is also one of, if not the greatest vector for disease transmission between animals besides jabbing a needle directly into one's arm so there's the increased health risk compared to traditional intercourse side of it too. To conclude I'm not religious (agnostic), my neighbors are a gay couple, there's several more single gay guys living on my block, this is a very progressive area where everyone gets along because we respect each others opinions and knowing when to agree to disagree. I've had this debate half a dozen times over the past year in backyard BBQs due to the SSM law being passed and while I'm personally happy SS couples can marry now, the movement went about it entirely the wrong way and have disgraced themselves in the process.

Re:No thanks by jader3rd · 2016-01-21 06:12 · Score: 1

And I would submit that intolerance of intolerance is also intolerance.

Depends upon the degree of intolerance. If the degree is "I don't think that someone doing that should get a tax break", I agree. If the degree is "We should go round anyone like that up, and publicly execute them" I disagree.

Re:No thanks by MobileTatsu-NJG · 2016-01-21 06:16 · Score: 2, Insightful

Equally bigoted are the people who couldn't handle his views.

It wasn't his views that drew ire, it was his actions. You have to intentionally mislead people to make your point, that's not very solid footing for you.

--

"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

Re:No thanks by AmiMoJo · 2016-01-21 06:28 · Score: 3, Insightful

And I would submit that intolerance of intolerance is also intolerance.

That's just doublespeak. If someone attacks you and you are forced to defend yourself with violence, then yeah, it's violence. Violence in defence of violence is also violence. Doesn't mean it is necessary the wrong reaction or immoral in any way.

As long as people don't harm others

Eich gave money to a fund that was trying to deny basic rights to gay people, doing them harm. Naturally, this upset many people, and is the textbook definition of bigotry. In reaction, people who were upset decided they would no longer be willing to do business with this person. That's fine, his views are not a protected attribute over which he has no control, they are something he decided upon and can freely change at will.

--
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 06:28 · Score: 0

Pfft, what is this "democracy" of which you speak? We lost that when people decided that shaming and silencing was a splendid little strategy.

So somewhere around 100,000 BC? Or whenever human reasoning developed.

These days, calling someone a bigot merely translates into, "'Shut up or I'll harass your boss until he fires you," and when someone says they "want a conversation," they really mean, "Shut up and agree with everything I say."

In other words, just like always? You can find every bit of this in the Bible, or in Greek theater, or Roman biographies. Probably in Chinese and Indian literature as well. People haven't changed, believe it or not.

Of course, sometimes people REALLY are bigots, and sometimes people do WANT to talk. Which is why people with bad motivations and intent use them, they're not stupid. They know to portray themselves as on the sides of angels. Or as the victim.

No different than con artists, even the ones who say they're stealing from you know how to use your own thinking to manipulate you.

And this has been true for as long as can be known. Who invented Lying? It wasn't Jack Black.

But seriously, you'd seem a lot less bitter if you recognized the true scope of your complaint.

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 06:30 · Score: 0

In other words: Eich's opinion has greater value than everyone else's.

You're acting like those offended by his contributions to the anti-gay ad campaign... which ended up working for a time before it was finally taken down... did something wrong by expressing their views. They didn't.

What really happened was not many on his side spoke up. The majority won, there's your democracy.

Re:No thanks by AmiMoJo · 2016-01-21 06:35 · Score: 1

Democracy only works if people are allowed to have an opinion, speak freely, and not fear losing their job

No. That's what anonymous speech is for. Freedom speech is not freedom from consequences, hence the necessity of anonymity.

In any case, political views are granted no special protection. While you can't change your sexuality, you certainly can change your bigoted views.

--
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC

Re:No thanks by OhPlz · 2016-01-21 06:55 · Score: 1

I seem to recall that the donor list to the PAC could not be disclosed legally and taking action against an employee for such donations was in fact illegal in California. So yes, there was a special protection.

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 06:56 · Score: 0

I think it has more to do with licensing.

Chromium is licensed under a BSD-like license. Mozilla uses the Mozilla Public License. This means you can create closed-source derivatives from Chromium, but not from Firefox, for instance.

Re:No thanks by OhPlz · 2016-01-21 07:00 · Score: 1

Eich's opinion was irrelevant for the position he was in. He's a person, he's entitled to his beliefs. There's no evidence that he brought that into the workplace, and it's disgusting that others would.

As for who won, how is Mozilla doing today? Not very well.

Google pwns all your data by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 07:03 · Score: 0

A security browser based on a browser developed by the data mining company, Google?? Pass.

Re:Important to note he's not using Gecko or Servo by nmb3000 · 2016-01-21 07:04 · Score: 1

I largely agree with you, except

Rust is basically trying to rewrite C++, but hasn't done a very good job. The syntax is no better, and sometimes much worse.

Rust's goal isn't to re-write C++, it's to create a safe language with strict guarantees about resources and memory use. They chose to use a syntax and keywords very similar to C++ as design choice, just as Java and C# did.

Its approach to resource management is harder to understand and use practically than C++'s. There's only one Rust implementation, and it's buggy and slow.

Correctness is usually harder than playing fast and loose. Look at const-correctness in C++ and how "difficult" that was prior to some of the C++11 changes. Rusts performance is also not that bad (especially when you compare apples/apples with C++ code that includes manual resource safety checks), and has been steadily getting better.

It took them ages to get a 1.0 release out

This is hardly valid criticism. It used to be a badge of pride in the F/OSS world of waiting for a 1.0 release that was ready and not just "the first release".

But yes, Mozilla needs to get their shit together when it comes to Firefox, and screwing around with the UI is not the answer. They really need to go back to the core principles that they used when Firefox was still Phoenix. Cut the crap, focus on standards and performance, give control to the users.

--
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 07:07 · Score: 0

That's fine, his views are not a protected attribute over which he has no control, they are something he decided upon and can freely change at will.

This stupidity does nothing to help. Disregarding the complicated situations that instill and enforce beliefs in people will only make it harder to understand and help others.

Oh the irony... by WillyWanker · 2016-01-21 07:17 · Score: 1

That in order to sign up for the beta I had to disable Ghostery and uBlock for the pop-up to display properly.

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 07:20 · Score: 0

Way to miss the point that marriage (in any combination) is not just about sex.

Re:No thanks by sonamchauhan · 2016-01-21 07:30 · Score: 1

His actions are not those of a bigot. Also, Mozilla perhaps alienated its customers more meaningfully by firing Eich.

Would Congress impeach Obama and Clinton for similar bigotry? The only difference is they've been more fleet-footed with their ethics than has Eich.

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 07:31 · Score: 1

There's no evidence that he brought that into the workplace...

He donated to Prop 8, it passed, it affected some of his workers. Not only did he bring it to the workplace, he willingly put Mozilla's name on it. His employees certainly had a right to be concerned about it.

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 07:32 · Score: 0

Except that Brave is open source so...

Also, the Android browser Brave bought to use (rather than Firefox for Android), LinkBubble, is licensed under the Mozilla Public License.

I don't think licensing had much to do with their decisions. They use Chromium (BSD-like), LinkBubble (MPL), and Firefox iOS (MPL) as their browser bases.

Chromium-based by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 07:59 · Score: 0

Too bad

Re:No thanks by OhPlz · 2016-01-21 08:01 · Score: 1

That had nothing to do with his role as CEO. If the workers are against it, they can donate to their cause or volunteer. Of course in your mind, they could then be fired. You would never stand for this behavior if the sides were reversed.

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 08:12 · Score: 0

It's just plain ole'marriage and religious orgs had their rights trampled all over so homosexuals could crowbar their way in illegally via the SCOTUS instead of the Democratic process.

Before: straights had the right to get married.
After: straights and gays have the right to get married.

How the fuck do you think they "had their rights trampled all over" if they still have the same right after the decision? I mean, explain to me how that is in ANY way logical or coherent. The heat of friction from the cognitive dissonance alone should make your head explode.

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 08:19 · Score: 0

I would like to suggest you re-read your fairness rant and check for logic problems.

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 08:36 · Score: 0

Your belligerent vernacular is so telling. If only the LGBT community wasn't so bitter and jaded then maybe the country could have had the proper dialogue to use the democratic process in a way it was intended instead of force their way past congress and laws while trampling over the rights of the religious.

To correct you:

Before: Religions have the right to decide and enforce the rules about a ceremony they created.
After: The government decided religions should be stripped of the right to decide and enforce the rules of a ceremony they created.

Personal Opinion: It was and has always been about money, not love or companionship. Couples were doing just fine even not being able to wed. They should have started their own religion with their own rules instead of forcing religions to compromise the institutions they created. The problem is that the government took a side making them look bad, and in correcting that issue, ultimately they still look bad for the way they handled the inclusion of same sex marriage into the "process."

Conclusion: The movement was disgraced having to rely on the government when they were making such good progress with winning the hearts and minds of the nation. Forcing the issue not only set them back and caused undue strife, but now you've got political leaders vowing to undo the progress made. That's what happens when you let emotions dictate diplomacy and forgo the slow peaceful progress for quick and dirty solutions. Now that I've humored you with a healthy dose of the coherent logic you so desired, I'll take my leave. If you're too immature to respect my opinion, that's on you.

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 08:55 · Score: 0

Before: Religions have the right to decide and enforce the rules about a ceremony they created.
After: The government decided religions should be stripped of the right to decide and enforce the rules of a ceremony they created.

100% incorrect. Religions still have the right to decide and enforce the rules of their ceremonies. NO church has been forced to marry gays. Many churches' leadership have been pushed to accept gay marriages by their parishoners but that is emphatically NOT government "stripping them of the right to decide."

The thing is, marriage is both a religious and legal institution. The law has to recognize the different religions' concepts of marriage in order to accommodate people of all faiths equally. In short, you can legally marry outside of any religion's rules as long as you meet the legal requirements, but the law is totally separate from religion.

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 09:04 · Score: 0

That had nothing to do with his role as CEO.

Nothing? He put his own money into it then stamped 'Mozilla' on it. It's a clear indication of how he would operate as a CEO there. The uphill battle is in justifying why he wouldn't act on his beliefs in that position. Let's stop kidding around about this, there's no way any other CEO would be given as much credit as you're giving Eich.

If the workers are against it, they can donate to their cause or volunteer.

I just love your suggestion that personal wealth should be a factor in politics. More $$$, more votes!! Whatever. Anyway you're saying they should have spoken up... they did! They didn't do anything wrong, they followed your advice. Take me, for example: I heard about Eich's promotion to CEO after he pulled that stunt and I uninstalled Firefox. His actions lost Firefox a user. I wasn't arm-twisted into it, I heard what he did, and I reacted accordingly. That affects his performance as a CEO. If he says "Take this feature out", and scores of people stop using Firefox because of it, should his performance rating at the company not be affected by that? Um, no, in both cases his actions hurt the organization. It's not like everybody pooled their money together and made a commercial about how Eich eats boogers and a bunch of disgusted people spoke up until he was fired. (.. with a bunch of pro-booger eating people claiming that by not eating boogers they actually are the real booger eaters.... etc.)

Your rationale swings both ways, incidentally. Those that supported Eich could have spoken up. The reality is that he was simply outnumbered. The irony of that in this context is downright amazing.

Re: No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 09:26 · Score: 0

I commend your honest self appraisal. Your mindset may not be for everyone, but I look forward to the day when it is widely understood and given consideration when implementing restrictions to freedom.

Re:Important to note he's not using Gecko or Servo by movdqa · 2016-01-21 09:28 · Score: 1

I'm actually very happy with Firefox these days. I have a fairly new MacBook Pro with 16 GB of RAM, SSD and performance on the browser is fine. It may be that older machines or those with lower configurations don't run as well but anything mid-range or high-end within the last two years should run Firefox just fine.

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 09:50 · Score: 0

Patton Oswald said it best: https://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/inspire-others-8.jpg?quality=94&strip=info&w=500

Re:No thanks by ilsaloving · 2016-01-21 09:50 · Score: 1

Actually, yes, he was.

He directly contributed to a cause that took away the rights of other people, for no other reason than that he didn't think they should be allowed to have them.

So no, he wasn't some innocent party just "expressing his opinion". He did a direct action, which had a negative effect on an entire class of people, for no other reason than his own intolerance.

So what if he didn't discriminate (directly) against gay people at Mozilla? He discriminated against gays in an entire *state*, which also includes Mozilla employees.

I'd be willing to bet that the only reason why he was "tolerant" at Mozilla, was cause he knew if he *did* try to start something the backlash would destroy Mozilla almost overnight. So instead, he quietly contributed to a third party, and assumed people wouldn't find out.

Re:No thanks by OhPlz · 2016-01-21 09:54 · Score: 1

The uphill battle is in justifying why he wouldn't act on his beliefs in that position. Let's stop kidding around about this, there's no way any other CEO would be given as much credit as you're giving Eich.

There is no battle to be had. His performance as CEO should be judged on what he did as CEO. He shouldn't be taken out by a character assassination over something he did years prior. If anything, the furor should have been pointed atthe board that brought him in. He was already vetted. Mozilla should have a company-wide vote if they want their workers to have a say in the selection process. This was an attack by a special interest to take someone out in a way that would be newsworthy. It had nothing to do with Eich's ability to do the job.

If the workers are against it, they can donate to their cause or volunteer.

I just love your suggestion that personal wealth should be a factor in politics.

So volunteering is out then?

Take me, for example: I heard about Eich's promotion to CEO after he pulled that stunt and I uninstalled Firefox. His actions lost Firefox a user. I wasn't arm-twisted into it, I heard what he did, and I reacted accordingly.

That's funny. #uninstallfirefox was a backlash against his removal. There was far more noise generated by those angry over his removal yet Mozilla ignored that. Now look at their market presence. This was done by a vocal minority and it has cost Mozilla significantly. Firefox may not even be a thing in the not so distant future.

Your rationale swings both ways, incidentally. Those that supported Eich could have spoken up. The reality is that he was simply outnumbered. The irony of that in this context is downright amazing.

Conservatives generally don't speak up, and I'm not sure why that is. Perhaps they were too busy doing their jobs. This is a common thing in politics. The right goes to work during the day, the left goes to protest. It's difficult to judge numbers because of this. Regardless, Mozilla has lost a lot of market presence and I'm sure the backlash against Eich's removal is a significant part of it. So who is outnumbered now?

This whole thing is a good reason why people are anti-SJW. The SJW crowd took down a CEO and in the process, destroyed the business. Like I said, if the roles were reversed, I doubt you'd be in favor of what happened. Progress isn't coming out of the closet to stuff someone else into it.

Re:No thanks by squiggleslash · 2016-01-21 10:02 · Score: 1

I would say intentionally funding ads that argue homosexuals are a danger to children is the act of a bigot.

I have issues with the reasons why Eich was pressured to leave (though ultimately I think through other, related, actions he prove himself to not be CEO material), but there's no disputing the fact his acts were rather more than simply thinking ending the ban on gay marriage was a bad idea. Donating $1,000 to help show TV ads that portray gays as dangerous to children is not the act of a tolerant individual.

--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.

Re:No thanks by AmiMoJo · 2016-01-21 10:42 · Score: 2

You misrepresent the position, making a straw man.

LGBT people should be able to express themselves at work, just like everyone else. Photos of partners on their desks, time off to care for them when they are ill, being open in the same way straight people are free to be in so many little ways.

--
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC

Re:No thanks by lgw · 2016-01-21 10:59 · Score: 2

He participated in the political process. That's how adults who cannot agree settle disputes. You fight the metaphorical good fight in the campaign, and you accept the result of the election. You're only argument is that you disagree with him.

You won, get over it.

--
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.

Re:No thanks by SillyHamster · 2016-01-21 11:18 · Score: 1

Eich gave money to a fund that was trying to deny basic rights to gay people, doing them harm.

There is no right to have your marriage recognized by the state or by society.

In reaction, people who were upset decided they would no longer be willing to do business with this person. That's fine, his views are not a protected attribute over which he has no control, they are something he decided upon and can freely change at will.

There is no justification for the thought policing you wish to impose on Eich.

But that is the way of Social Justice. Point, Shriek, Persecute.

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 12:01 · Score: 0

I didn't know Eich wrote the script for those commercials. Where did you find proof of that?

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 12:04 · Score: 0

No he didn't. He gave money to a fund that was trying to prevent changing the legal definition of marriage to include gay relationships.

Nothing to do with human rights.

There are also groups that exist which want to prevent children from marrying. One even succeeded recently in Zimbabwe. Are they also doing people harm?

The Acid test called slashdot by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 12:09 · Score: 0

If BRAVE can stop that slashdot fork called slashdot beta and its pus-ridden auto-refresh then BRAVO

Re:No thanks by squiggleslash · 2016-01-21 12:59 · Score: 1

This is the campaign to which Eich contributed. It's proper to note that his two donations of $500 each came on Oct. 25 and 28, days before the Nov. 4 vote and well after the style of the TV campaign was established.

--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.

There's always hosts files and/or firewalls by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 12:59 · Score: 0

There's always hosts files and/or firewalls to block the ads. Yes it can be done. Opera used to be a pay for browser with ads in the free model of it. I monitored where the ads were served from (many tools will do this, ones like wireshare &/or NirSoft's many great free tools also) and stopped them with my hosts file (firewalls are another option if they decide to serve them up by IP address, which also can be reverse dns resolved to a corresponding host-domain name also & vice a versa).

* There's always a way...

APK

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For the best custom hosts file? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 13:02 · Score: 0

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---

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Re: No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 13:08 · Score: 0

There is no right to have your marriage recognized by the state or by society.

None whatsoever, eh? As they say, them's fightin' words.

First off, you may want to read the universal declaration of human rights. It mentions the right to marry and for that right to be respected. You can also read Loving v. Virginia and Turner v. Saffley if you want US jurisprudence.

But fundamentally what you are doing is removing people's freedom to form contracts. That is not an absolute and unquestionable right, but it does in fact exist.

There is no justification for the thought policing you wish to impose on Eich.

But that is the way of Social Justice. Point, Shriek, Persecute.

What thought policing is that? That your actions and behaviors have consequences? How is what the anti-same sexmarriage advocates want any better?

California I will credit proposition 8 for allowing Civil Unions, but check Alabama out.

(g) A union replicating marriage of or between persons of the same sex in the State of Alabama or in any other jurisdiction shall be considered and treated in all respects as having no legal force or effect in this state and shall not be recognized by this state as a marriage or other union replicating marriage.

Alabama wouldn't even allow another mechanism. How is that not persecution?

Do tell us why we should not point out your flawed reasoning, or is that too much of a thought police to you? You should be allowed to think and say stupid and wrongheaded things and heaven forbid anybody who bullies you by calling out your bullshit.

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 13:54 · Score: 0

The article that actually has the footage had to be amended to state that only the first video was from the org he donated to, and that video presents something that actually happened in Massachusetts. It's factual. There's nothing odious about it.

Re: No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 17:02 · Score: 0

The biggest issue with your agreement is that businesses are allowed to donate money politically, as are people. By financially supporting an institution, you are indirectly supporting a variety of political/social creatures that you may or may not agree with. So business and social issues well continue to be mixed together as long as this is the case.

Micropayments by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 17:33 · Score: 0

For what it's worth, Brendan has claimed they are working on a micropayment model as well that would allow a user to turn off ads in exchange making small payments to websites visited.

It's really cool project in the abstract -- let people choose to pay not to see ads or choose to see ads that don't track them, but I don't see how it could possibly work in practice since it doesn't seem like it will be possible for Brave to negotiate ad display payments with every site on the internet.

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 17:36 · Score: 0

You misrepresent the position, making a straw man.

LGBT people should be able to express themselves at work, just like everyone else. Photos of partners on their desks, time off to care for them when they are ill, being open in the same way straight people are free to be in so many little ways.

LGBT people have no right to tell others how to think or feel just because said person disagrees with them.

Re: No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 19:55 · Score: 0

The business was destroyed because Khtml later known as WebCore (Safari and Chrome) kicked the shit out of it as it stagnated like IE before it. The general public that made up the huge majority the one time high percentage Mozilla had have not heard and don't care about this anecdote.

Conservatives don't protest because they are Conservative and accept a status quo otherwise they wouldn't be fucking Conservative. Progressives like Progress.

It's end the goddamn etymology of the names...Conserve and Progress. It doesn't take Rocket Science to intuit but it does require a little bit of reason. Something that seems to be sadly lacking by the populist movement that is making all of the news these days in Conservative circles.

Next you will be blaming the fucking Mexicans and Muslims.

Re: No thanks by ShieldW0lf · 2016-01-21 21:37 · Score: 1

It would be nice if we were all sitting around so we could fight.

Marriage has a purpose. It is a bargain society makes with fertile couples to subsidize the creation and nurturing of the next generation of mankind. It's not a human right, and it imposes an obligation on the people getting married to be loyal partners and good parents.

If it's not that, then it shouldn't exist. I reject the idea that any two people qualify for special treatment under the law just because they sleep in the same bed, and so should the rest of you.

If I've got a roommate, and the guys across the hall from us get special treatment under the law, at mine and my roommates expense, just because they "love" each other, that is not fair, and not right. No amount of bullshit, sophistry, propaganda and shaming is going to make it fair or right.

--
-1 Uncomfortable Truth

Re:No thanks by Rob+Y. · 2016-01-22 04:37 · Score: 1

Can you think of an instance where Obama or Clinton tried to deny a group of people some pretty basic right based on who they were? I doubt it. The closest you'll get is the twisted-ass pretzel logic that making an official stamp a marriage license amounts to denying her right to discriminate based on her 'religious values'. This is a pluralistic nation, and I'm sorry, but your religious values do not extend to my rights. You can think what you want, but you can't make me live according to your religious beliefs. Why is that so hard to understand?

I suppose you could try to point the finger towards universities that rescind speaking gigs to some people based on political correctness. I think that's pretty dumb too, but it's not in the same category as discrimination based on an immutable characteristic. False equivalencies are a false argument.

--
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-22 06:23 · Score: 0

LGBT crew want total tolerance and actually acceptance of their lifestyle by you.
If they find out otherwise, then they go after you, cost you your job and basically try to ruin your life.
Did Eich ever do anything to anyone? Based on a campaign contribution years old he was drilled.
Yet the rest of us are to be tolerant?

A bit disconserting by Lord+Flipper · 2016-01-22 06:32 · Score: 1

... that the fellow's site has doubleclick and google analytics built-in. No problem for most of us, no doubt (that's what "untrusted" is for), but, still... weird.

Re:No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-22 07:50 · Score: 0

I've been in and around the gay scene all my life and I can confidently say that "if you scratch a homosexual, you find a pedophile". There is more truth to this than is obvious. Gay men will gladly take a teenager under their wings. Seen it. Many times. I've spoken with dozens of gay men, and almost to a man, they prefer younger "men". Gay men are also highly promiscuous -- far more so than their heterosexual counterparts. I'm not homosexual, but I know many, many men who are. They have no reason to lie to me. Being in the fashion business lets one hear and see things that most are not aware of.

Re: No thanks by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-22 09:20 · Score: 0

Marriage has a purpose. It is a bargain society makes with fertile couples to subsidize the creation and nurturing of the next generation of mankind.

Prove it.

Re:No thanks by OhPlz · 2016-01-22 10:01 · Score: 1

There's far more to the issue than religion. But that's not really relevant here. The problem is that someone was targeted for a political contribution. It could be a progressive cause, could be a conservative cause, could be something else. I prefer a strong boundary between personal life and work life, they should cross paths as little as possible. You ought to be able to leave work when you leave work.

Re: No thanks by SillyHamster · 2016-01-22 11:13 · Score: 1

First off, you may want to read the universal declaration of human rights. It mentions the right to marry and for that right to be respected. You can also read Loving v. Virginia and Turner v. Saffley if you want US jurisprudence.

The right to marry is a different thing than a duty for others to recognize your marriage.

To exercise your right to marry, find your marriage partner and marry them. No outside parties are involved in this process.

But fundamentally what you are doing is removing people's freedom to form contracts.

Liar. A contract can exist without government recognition and enforcement. Eich did not campaign to interfere with homosexual marriage contracts. He donated to the cause of conserving the traditional legal definition of marriage, which does not prevent homosexual marriage contracts from being formed.

What thought policing is that? That your actions and behaviors have consequences?

You're not going to like it when you eat those words in the future. You will be hounded from society, because your actions and behaviors have consequences.

Just remember that you brought it on yourself when you used those very tactics on people who were perfectly happy to live and let live.

How is what the anti-same sexmarriage advocates want any better?

Point me to the public figure who has been fired for making a donation to a pro-gay marriage organization like Eich. False accusations to create a moral equivalence do not work because they are false.

But since you find it acceptable to fire people because they are personally against gay marriage, I hope you enjoy the future where people are in turn fired for being personally for gay marriage. "Your actions and behaviors have consequences", after all.

Good luck Brendan! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-24 00:13 · Score: 0

So, Brendan Eich gets finally his revenge against Mozilla. Good to see that he has not given up after he was humiliated by the mob which made him in the end resign from his CEO Mozilla job shortly after he was voted for becoming CEO.

Pretty sure that lots of people who do not agree what Mozilla has become will take the opportunity to switch to Brave to damage Mozilla Firefox. I do not think that Brave will be really successful, because the concept that the browser removes ads and adds his own one's instead sucks like hell, but it will still survive because of those earlier mentioned "protest voters".

Good luck Brendan and happily fighting Mozilla, these days a Chrome clone company and political correct nightmare. Good luck fighting Mozilla which betrayed advanced users for their plan to support Chrome users only by removing all features which are not 100% compatible with the most common lowest denominator.

Re:No thanks by ilsaloving · 2016-01-24 06:25 · Score: 1

No, my argument is that he wanted to strip citizens of their rights, for no other reason than that he doesn't like them.

I don't understand why this is so hard to understand. Arguing topics and policies among equal people is politics. Stripping people of their rights for no other reason than "because you can", is oppression.

I'm starting to believe that you're a psychopath or something. This issue isn't about "winning". It's about equal rights. If you don't believe all people deserve the same rights equally, then *everyone* loses.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
-- Martin Niemöller

He spent 7 years in a concentration camp because people like you think that oppression is a perfectly acceptable thing.

Re:No thanks by lgw · 2016-01-24 10:56 · Score: 1

No, my argument is that he wanted to strip citizens of their rights, for no other reason than that he doesn't like them

That's your opinion. Do you understand that other people may have other values, and thus form differing opinions? Can you at least entertain the concept that someone who disagrees with you isn't evil? Can you imagine, even hypothetically, that someone who takes the other side on this issue intends the best for the community, because by their values they are maximizing the good?

Being unable to understand where someone else is coming from, thinking that they can only be evil or stupid, is something I had enough from the religious right when growing up.

Your intolerance is exactly the same form as the religious whackos I knew when I was young. They too could not reason about moral questions, they could only say that anyone who disagreed was an evil sinner.

If you don't believe all people deserve the same rights equally, then *everyone* loses.

But what's a right? And what's merely a desire? And who decides? And on what basis? If your only basis is "I feel very strongly about this" then you cannot reason about it, and you are part of the problem.

Most people have some idea about what is good, and what is evil, and don't believe there is a right to be evil. But there's not much agreement on what those categories contain. Can you see that?

--
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.

Re:No thanks by ilsaloving · 2016-01-26 13:10 · Score: 1

That's your opinion.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but did he not give money to an advocacy group whose sole purpose was to take partnership rights, which are granted to all other citizens of the state, from gay people?

This is either factually correct, or factually incorrect. If I am wrong, then I take it back. But if that fact is true, then he provided a material contribution to a group that would be considered a hate group by pretty much every country in the world whose society isn't clouded by medieval religious doctrine.

It's depressing that you consider the idea that all people should be treated fairly (which is, ironically, enshrined in your bloody constitution), to be an extreme position, equivalent to religious whackjobs who think people should be put into concentration camps, or outright murdered, just for believing in a different imaginary friend than you.

You used the word "evil", not me. The concept of "evil" is essentially pointless, because when people use it it ends up boiling down to "someone or something that does the exact opposite of what I want". My own father believes that liberals are "evil" because they want to take his money in the form of taxes, and use it for things that don't directly benefit him, like schools and libraries.

All I can say is that if someone insists that it is their duty to ruin other people's lives for no other reason than that those other people exist, that person has massive empathy issues and I feel no sympathy whatsoever when the blowback bites them in the ass. Eich put himself into that category when he aided that group. No, he wasn't the one that stood before the legislature and pushed the bill. But he provided a material contribution to that effort. Trying to claim that he wasn't involved, is like saying that a person shouldn't be considered an accessory to murder because "all they did" was give the murderer the gun with the full knowledge beforehand that the murderer was going to shoot someone.

But according to your "logic", if I paid someone to murder my neighbour I shouldn't be held liable because I was only "exercising my right to express my values".

But what's a right?

Oh don't even go there. This isn't philosophy class.

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