Brave Browser 1.0 is now available
After more than four years of development, Brave 1.0 has been released by Brave Software to the public after the release of Brave Beta 1.0 in 2018.
The new and first final version of the Chromium-based web browser -- the same core that Google Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi and the new Microsoft Edge browser as well as hundreds of other browsers use -- can now be downloaded for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and the mobile operating systems Android and iOS.
A lot has changed since our first review of Brave in 2016; the browser has matured and the general idea behind it -- to disrupt online advertising through the creation of a privacy-focused cryptocurrency-based alternative -- started to take form only recently.
One of the core ideas of Brave is to create a revenue system for the Web that benefits publishers, users, and the company alike. Brave features native ad-blocking functionality and fingerprinting protections which improve page loading performance and battery life.
Tip: check out our guide on speeding up the Brave browser further.
Benchmarks, provided by Brave, suggest that it "saves an average of 27 seconds per page load against Chrome on macOS and 22 seconds per page against Firefox", and that the browser "uses 58% less data than Chrome to load those same pages". Brave furthermore uses less memory than Chrome or Firefox according tot he company improving memory use by "40% over Chrome and 47% over Firefox".
Brave created a new "blockchain-based advertising model that reforms the current system with privacy by design and 70 percent revenue share to users in the form of Basic Attention Tokens (BAT)". Users may opt-in to view ads to earn BAT which they may convert into digital assets and fiat currencies, or use to support their favorite publishers, content creators, and companies.
According to Brave Software, "ad matching happens directly" on user devices which means that data is not sent to anyone.
Brave supports several interesting features. Apart from standard functionality such as data synchronization, Chrome extensions support, or support for light and dark themes, it does support features such as built-in Tor network functionality (which means that you may use it to access onion sites), support for web torrents, or integration of IPFS (Interplanetary Filesystem).
Brave blocks advertisement by default and provides control over the behavior in the main user interface and settings.
In the main UI, users may disable ad-blocking for a site or change blocking related options, e.g. to enable script blocking or disable HTTPS upgrades.
Brave users who join Brave Rewards join the Ads program automatically as well which may show them privacy-preserving ads in exchange for BAT currency. Users who don't want to join Ads may disable the functionality on the internal brave://rewards page.
Closing Words
Brave Software revealed that the browser has about 8.7 million monthly active users currently; it would need a lot more to really disrupt online advertising. The release of Brave 1.0 is a milestone for the company and may accelerate growth further.
Now You: Have you tried Brave? What is your take on the browser and idea?
Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.
When will you put an end to the mess in the comments?
Ghacks comments have been broken for too long. What article did you see this comment on? Reply below. If we get to 20 different articles we should all stop using the site in protest.
I posted this on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/] so please reply if you see it on a different article.
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Article Title: Reddit enforces user activity tracking on site to push advertising revenue
Article URL: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
No surprises here. This is just the beginning really. I cannot see a valid reason as to why anyone would continue to use the platform anymore when there are enough alternatives fill that void.
I’m not sure if there is a point in commenting given that comments seem to appear under random posts now, but I’ll try… this comment is for https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
My temporary “solution”, if you can call it that, is to use a VPN (Mullvad in my case) to sign up for and access Reddit via a European connection. I’m doing that with pretty much everything now, at least until the rest of the world catches up with GDPR. I don’t think GDPR is a magical privacy solution but it’s at least a first step.