Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Support Brendan Eich: Use Brave
For all of you who, like me, stopped using Firefox because of the company’s shameful “woke” treatment of Brendan Eich, feel free to join me in using the Brave web browser. Mr. Eich is the founder/president of that company, and the browser is pretty fast. They are also partnered with search engine DuckDuckGo rather than Google, another plus.
Published in General
Brave is the most privacy-focused browser out there. I use it a lot.
Its basis is Chromium, the open-source foundation for Chrome (without all the spying-on-you bits), so for most purposes it will function like Chrome.
Have they improved the UI? I last tried to use it a couple of years ago and was not impressed at all.
I use and have for years. I like it…it has its quirks but is usable and cuts down on the tracking. I recommend trying it if you haven’t…
I switched a few months ago and it seems to be working fine. I was looking at the ad block button and see that there’s a way to send a tip to a site. When on Ricochet, it says that the site hasn’t been verified so tips won’t be paid to it until it is. It wouldn’t be much money but it might be worth the effort. @max?
Having bookmarks open in a sidebar is non-negotiable. When I typed “sidebar” into Brave help, it didn’t even recognize the question.
When I read the OP I installed Brave and am using it now.
I’ve been using Brave for about a year, and DuckDuckGo for several years. I’m pleased with both, with one exception.
I read somewhere that if you do a Google search for “american inventors,” only Black inventors show up. I tried it in Google, and sure enough, no White faces. (It’s very noticeable if you click on the “Images” link at the top of the search.) I then tried it in DDG and got the same results. So I guess DDG is better on privacy, but it seems to get it’s woke results via Google. I was/am disappointed.
I have been using it for years. Originally, they promised a tips system but I thought they gave up on that. How do you get tips to work?
That was something I really disliked before too. I loathe the trend of hiding tools away. I USE that stuff, and it pisses me off that devs think they should hide it for strictly aesthetic reasons.
The only caveat I would raise here is that the code base is Google’s, and there is no reason to expect Google to suddenly respect your privacy rather than undermine it by any means necessary,
I use Brave for most things. For one thing, there are many sites that are so ad-cluttered that they aren’t even readable on other browser, but look fine on Brave.
It is quite different from a couple of years ago.
Remember, Chromium is not Chrome.
I was having trouble staying logged into my personal blog. After a conversation with tech support at WordPress, I discovered that the issue was Safari blocking “tracking” my activity on the Web. Once I re-enabled that, I was again able to stay logged into my own blog, including the ability to write posts from the front-end without having to go to the back end to write and comment on my own posts.
I used Firefox and then Pale Moon solely to get the actual old-time menu bar across the top, and it makes me absolutely angry that it is not simply an alternative for all browsers. But Pale Moon has been crashing or locking up so much lately- obviously to just milk data, etc., that I finally got sick of it and decided to suffer. I am mildly accustomed now to the Amazon Fire browser, so I choke and go with things.
I still refuse to carry my cell phone around every place other than a car trip, or use it for things other than, you know, phone calls and texts.
I click on the triangle in the upper right corner and it brings up the rewards summary. Here’s a screenshot.
The early version was based on Electron, then they rewrote it using Chromium. The early versions were pretty buggy but it’s gotten a lot better over the years.
Brave has a simple Shields Up/Down toggle, you can set Shields Down for a site you trust (like your personal blog) while still preventing other less trustworthy sites from tracking you.
Since we’re on the subject of browsers, can the computer types tell me why I should or should not be using Opera? I switched to it after the Eich dustup and haven’t had any complaints, but don’t know exactly who I’m supporting or who I’m letting collect my data, or any other background machinations I don’t wish to be a party to.
Thanks for any insights!
I use it for work all the time. All of my online dictionaries are bookmarked in Brave.
The one thing I don’t like is the right-to-left way the customization menus open. Oh, another thing: they recently added another layer of menus, which means I now have to do seven clicks to get to some settings (I keep the sound muted except when viewing videos). I know it sounds like a first-world problem, but I really think layers of menus or folders shouldn’t be more than three deep . . .
I think Opera was sold to a Chinese company a few years ago. Maybe it has changed hands again; I haven’t heard.
I tried it and got regular results. Perhaps DDG sensed your white privilege . . .
Yes! This has been a known thing for thirty years, but every generation has to relearn the basics.
One of the first things I did when I was a nuclear engineering consultant was to perform a control room design review for a commercial nuclear power plant. On the team were four human factors engineers, and I learned an awful lot of stuff from them about how to design controls and indications (and later physical plant equipment) such that the likelihood of human error was minimized. The same went for procedures.
Although people use software without procedures, some of the interfaces in both productivity software and games leave a lot to be desired. This is the big reason I still use Word and Excel 2003. The dropdown menus are small, logically grouped, and can be customized to not use icons. The modern versions use The Ribbon, which I despise. Here’s my blank piece of paper in Word (sorry the picture is a little fuzzy):
Now here’s a picture of The Ribbon:
It takes up a lot of space, it’s cluttered, not well organized, and a huge distraction when I’m trying to write. I know it’s a matter of personal preference, but many users have begged Microsoft to have a classic menu option. Uh uh. You will use the ribbon and you will love it – just like socialism . . .
I use Brave on my Android devices, now that Chrome doesn’t allow me to prevent news from hate media sites from appearing on the main page. But I don’t use it very much on my Windows computers because Chromium no longer provides or allows a way to block all autoplay of video. (Note that word all. Blocking autoplay on sites that Chromium will allow me to block is not good enough.)
I use Scrivener for most of my writing now. Lets me focus on the work, organize drafts and notes, fork draft versions, keep track of complicated projects.
Perhaps so. I just tried it again, both through Brave (with DDG as the default search engine) and directly from the DDG web site. Still getting getting lists of non-White inventors.
I’ll have to check it out if I ever lose my Office 2003 disk . . .
Using DDG for American inventors this is the first result I get:
Alexander Graham Bell
John Moses Browning
Willis Carter
Samuel Colt
Henry Ford
Robert Fulton
Charles Goodyear
Cyrus McCormick
Samuel F.B. Morse
Dr. Jonas Salk
Eli Whitney