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Have I shilled for Brave yet?

I really like this browser. It’s built on Chrome, so it can use all Chrome’s extensions, and it’s got some great built-in features for blocking tracking cookies and so on.

But its real claim to fame is the Basic Attention Token, or BAT. It’s a crypto-currency that you earn by putting up with ads. You can decide how frequently you want to see ads, including not at all. The ads pop up unobtrusively in the bottom right of your screen. Some of them are even interesting (chess.com, which is exactly what you think it is, is a regular advertiser).

I don’t use this machine to browse much, so $3.72 is not too shabby for twelve days. I’ve got it on my phone, my laptop, my desktop and the Linux machine in my art room. The accounts aren’t linked (I could link them if I wanted) so each one is totting up separately. I haven’t totalled it or cashed any of it in, but I reckon I have a few bucks in there by now.

The second part of the equation is tipping creators with BAT. If you see a red triangle in the upper right corner of your address bar, or the lower right corner of a Tweet, you can tip that site with BAT. Not many in my daily reads have signed up for it, sadly.

And no, this site is not BAT-registered. I’d have a whole different relationship with this blog if I asked for money, and I don’t want that.

True fact: Uncle B came up with the basic idea twenty years ago. He called it “nergs” – each worth a few pennies, for tipping creators.

Heh. Turns out, I’ve blogged about this before.

Comments


Comment from RD
Time: January 12, 2021, 9:13 pm

I tried Brave yesterday. First thing I ran into is the password saver does not have a ‘master password’ so anyone using your computer has access to all your passwords. Double-plus un-good.


Comment from Anonymous
Time: January 12, 2021, 9:23 pm

Hm. I hadn’t considered that as a thing.


Comment from Mark Matis
Time: January 12, 2021, 9:50 pm

Best be careful with Brave. Its founder was “fired” by Mozilla because he donated to the campaign in California that claimed marriage should only be between one man and one woman.


Comment from Jasonius
Time: January 12, 2021, 10:46 pm

Funny you should mention…

I had just downloaded it today & have been poking and prodding at it during work breaks.
You can install LastPass extension, my current manager. I’m guessing Dashlane & others install just fine too.
I still haven’t pulled the trigger on switching.


Comment from Uncle Al
Time: January 13, 2021, 2:24 am

I gave Brave a try some time last year but it didn’t offer anything of sufficient value to make me switch from Opera. Opera’s published by the Norwegian company Opera Software and they seem not to have fallen in with the Silicon Gulch gang of evildoers. I’m quite happy with the browser on both notebook and fondleslab. Oh, yeah, Opera has a its own built-in freebie VPN.


Comment from dissent
Time: January 13, 2021, 4:41 am

Anybody know how to contact Misanthropic Humanitarian over at Ace of Spades – please drop me a note. I got swept up in a troll ban there a few weeks ago and I didn’t do a damn thing. Haven’t been able to post there since. My posts vanish whenever i do a screen refresh to follow the ONT.


Comment from dissent
Time: January 13, 2021, 4:51 am

Regarding Tucker Carlson’s report on Biden’s pick of Kristen Clarke for the DOJ’s Civil Right’s Division: Tucker quotes some stuff she said in the mid 90’s at Harvard. This stuff seems to be based on some pseudoscientific Afrocentrism that had been circulating prior to that. Took some digging but I found a link to a 1993 article debunking many of the Afrocentrists claims about melanin’s claimed superpowers. See here –
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/ajpa.1330360604

“Party of Science” – LOL

Hope I don’t spend too much time in the spam filter.


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: January 13, 2021, 7:44 am

I may be out of date but I have read that Opera is now Chinese owned, Uncle Al. I tried it for a while in since its transformation into a Chrome based browser, but found its VPN unreliable which, coupled with the change of ownership, put me off.

As an alternative, I’ve been using Epic, whose VPN does seem to work more reliably and is generally pretty good.


Comment from Uncle Al
Time: January 13, 2021, 1:00 pm

@Uncle Badger — You’re quite right about Opera’s ownership. I missed seeing that when it happened back in 2016. I do believe I’ll check out Brave and Epic now because I have a strong aversion to any tech from the CCP; I believe it is safest and not unreasonable to assume ALL Chinese tech is essentially a product of the CCP.


Comment from The Neon Madman
Time: January 13, 2021, 2:37 pm

Dissent:

Use the petmorons email address in the Saturday pet thread.


Comment from durnedyankee
Time: January 13, 2021, 4:11 pm

Are the Euros sure they want to stop Global Warming right now?

Are you folks having crappy weather? I know, England, American definition…crappy weather.


Comment from Anonymous
Time: January 13, 2021, 4:21 pm

Not too cold. Very wet. Sick of slopping around in the mud after wet chickens 🙁


Comment from BJM
Time: January 13, 2021, 6:59 pm

Unless you stop using smart phones, email, e-readers, tablets, etc. you’re kidding yourself, it doesn’t matter what browser, you use, surveillance/backdoors are baked in all the things.

We fell for the shiny toys, our bad.

After a few days of reading widely I’m convinced that this current propaganda is Kabuki. The left made a lot of promises they can’t keep. By summer their mob will be angrier than ever and blue cities will pay the cost.

I’m now of a persuasion to stand down, remain informed, be prudent by staying out of the flame wars and wait.

Oh and trust no one.


Comment from Durnedyankee
Time: January 13, 2021, 7:59 pm

@BJM – yep. They need a current rally point and this is it.

Once Trump is gone, they’ll be faced with demonizing his voters and blaming us for all the shit they promised but didn’t deliver, or face the ‘coalition’ of monsters they created.

Guess which they’ll pick.


Comment from BJM
Time: January 13, 2021, 11:19 pm

Didja see that GAB downloaded all of Trump’s tweets and invites him to join the platform.

BTW- Some of you may have seen “Designated Survivor” on the network, but doan have no stinking network TV, so just stumbled on it at Netflix. Interesting…in the beginning, it looked to be another anti-right screed but turned into a horse of another color. It gets a little West Wing precious at times and some episodes sorely needed tightening, but it has some pretty exciting action spy-thriller episodes and the writers were spot-on re predictions about the two parties. The cast is excellent…including Adan Canto (hubba-hubba). Cal Pen tries to redeem himself and almost succeeds. Feckless twat that he is.

Anyhoo…my point (and the series) is that we may have to mount a real third party and beat the snot out of both sides.


Comment from AliceH
Time: January 14, 2021, 12:33 am

Thanks for reminding me about brave. It was my default browser for a long time until a forced OS upgrade hosed it and essentially forced use of that company’s browser. You know who I mean.

Anyway, it works again so I can back away from the other guy knowing 100% of my business, limiting them to just 98% maybe.


Comment from dissent
Time: January 14, 2021, 12:34 am

@ NeonMadman : Thanks.

I sometimes wish I was more interwebs savvy, but not only has that ship long ago sailed, but the harbor silted up too.


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Time: February 25, 2021, 3:31 pm

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