user812

What does that question mean?

Thanks for your comment.

Some/Many HN commentators love what one could call the collective helplessness associated with authoritarian scientism and materialism - the idea that we are thrown into a ruthless and cold universe where life has emerged out of random and no easy solutions exist but instead only costly manipulation of small particles like genes and other molecules may safe us, but only in a distant future that we will probably never reach. Only persons of authority associated with the institutions in power may guide us to the holy land.

Due to that philosophy there are many comments discrediting possible solutions.

Iphone SE users aren't a small pool of users.

The decision by Apple is either based solely on making more money short-term/mid-term while ignoring a part of their customer base, or waiting for the right entry point with introduing a new bigger full screen but overall smaller model.

Many things Apple did in the early days weren't making sense from a market standpoint, like giving away software for free. At least that's what MS would have told you at that time.

That's why it's hard even for Apple to really price in the economic long-term cost of not supporting high-income and higly influental niche groups - there isn't only monocausality to consider when calculating ROI.

Until Mozilla is free from Google et al., all "problems" related to blocking ads are merely theoretical.

Thanks for the explanation.

I don't blame or rate Mozilla, I was just trying to explain why they are unable to move, due to their ties to Google.

I don't think it's a good or bad thing, but it's the reality.

Mozilla is probably trying it's best under this conditions.

Besides that, solving technical problems is possible if there is the will to do it.

Who is this "we" you are talking about?

It's not like the web/society consists of one collectivist "blob" that speaks in unison.

What would Google do if Mozilla blocks all ads browser wide by default? (Which they can't do adhoc because it is probably explitically forbidden in their contract with Google)

The answer will give you a clue about the question who is the product.

Irregardless of semantics, Mozilla is entirely dependent on the privacy invading ad system.

Everyone knows that default settings matter, as around 80% of users never change much in their browsers, and it is this majority user base which forms the foundation for the contracts between browser makers and search engines.

Everything is a product when you define product as "that which is produced", which is the coherent and 'materialized' output of human activity.

I will probably start using or at least trying it again when they publish version 1. For now, it's just not remotely comparable to Firefox et al. when it comes to customization, control and stability.

It's basically a chrome copy plus future abilities (for now). So Chrome is a better choice until now for me.

The fundamental question is who decides. Ideally the browser is the product, but not the user. For that, the browser needs to solve the question of the flow of money.

Using Firefox makes you the product, because Mozilla monetizes you with selling you to Google. That is not a browser that "puts you first" or promotes the "open culture of the internet".

Giving people the ability to chose whether they want to participate in the monetization makes Brave more of a browser that puts "you first".

Besides that, Mozilla is basically a company, and their non-profit organization is basically a fig leaf. Even if you don't agree with this assumption, the browser is as commercialiced as any other project, as proven by Pocket, Google search partnership and Amazon affiliate links.

The Brave browser also doesn't claim this is "what the internet is about". On the contrary, the default settings in Brave make the Web essentially non-commercial and ad-free.

Finally and philosophically, there is no collective "we" you talk about, only users who are free to chose from a variety of browsers and products.

Other than that, there is definitely some form of irony in the fact that the people on brave.com wear a cap with a corporate logo, but are implied as being free from corporate influence. The message would be more consistent if there were no logo on the cap, and one could argue this implies that Brave is at best a transition towards a better state.

Interesting. I'm not really into physics, so it's helpful to learn about the mainstream position. I know I use sloppy wording.

I still agree with Tesla that empty space can't have any properties though. Things that don't appear logical, probably aren't.

It was "disproven" based upon a different philosophy.

You can't disprove a philosophy though, you can only try to understand different philosophical models next to each other.

The Einsteinian philosophy represents materialism and a world without meaning. It was problematic right from the start when mental gymnastics was needed to explain how energy can move through nothing, or how nothing (space) can have properties.

Funny that you mention experimental evidence, as most of physics is basically theoretical nowadays. (That's why it's called theoretical physics, dark matter included)

No, it is fundamentally wrong in itself, because it went into the wrong direction 100 or so years ago, when physicists ignored the aether model.

100 or so years ago physics went into the wrong direction, ignoring people like Tesla who argued for the aether model.

Indeed.

Physics is wrong on many fundamental levels, but everytime physicists find fundamental errors, they propose another entirely theoretical layer of complexity, with the "benfit" that no one is able to practically refute it.

The media is no longer reporting things. You can't make money with reporting. The media is actively creating narratives, and one of the narratives that people are fed nowadays is that women are victims.

Men and women are pitted against each other.

Due to the way the media has evolved people consume their own biases and most often just read the headlines.

I would have never thought to see it play out in real life when I read it. It is absolutely frightening.

George Orwell - A Final Warning (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXm5hklbBsA)

People who excel in the relevant abilities should be in charge of corporations and institutions.

Reducing people to gender is sexist, and reducing them to ethnics is racist.

It's not my fault that the meaning of words has been turned upside down by popular culture.

Thanks.

The fact that my comment got deleted will make me stop contributing in such a controversial way, as I respect the house rules.

But it leaves a bad aftertaste, even though the strong moderation on this site undoubtly keeps everything civil.

I think provocative theses are necessary, in line with the Socratic method, and even though my original comment wasn't directly aimed at the arguments in the article, the entire point of a provocative viewpoint is to question the entire narrative of something on a fundamental level.

Note that I quoted someone else. This is not my thoughts.

I am not interested in what should or shouldn't be, first and foremost. I am interested, sociologically, in understanding. I am interested to see what can happen with women in positions of power, embedded within a specific culture that tells them they are victims. I am equally interested in the corruption of men within positions of power.

Interestingly, women are expected to act in a certain way nowadays thanks to feminism. Culture says: "Women, you need to have a place in this corporations, independent of your abilities."

I think women should be free to act, independent of gender. Feminist culture reduces women to their gender, and associates it with helplessness. This attracts women who have been hurt by men, and unconsciously use it to fight back against men on an institutional/organizational level.

So I am not arguing for women to be constrained, I am argueing for a distorted view of women not to be used as a political weapon against men, which is what feminism is. Ideally women wouldn't be pushed into positions of power based on their gender, but based on their abilities.

Brave has multiple layers to actually help content-creators. It is beyond me how anyone can frame it in the opposite direction.

Layer 1: Blocking everything that is not helpful for the user (i.e. being a browser that is a user-agent first and foremost), thus doing essentially the same as content-blocking extensions or other content-blocking browsers (Opera mini, UC)

In this way, there is nothing to be outraged about, since this is a reaction to a complete lack of respect for human dignity and the state of the web on the side of the publishers. The only thing that is parasitic are the ad-networks that pray on vulnerable people. It is easy to overlook that for years browsers have ignored the user so that many gullible people nowadays think that this is how things are supposed to be, but just like ad-tech, users can lobby against the state of things with chosing their software.

Layer 2: Allowing privacy-friendly ads, as opt-in, to help publishers get money and get free from the parasitic ad-networks at the same time

Layer 3: A future-proof patreon like payment network to help publishers survive the ad-backlash, and connect readers and publishers on a new, voluntary, respectful level while also being privacy-friendly.

Honestly I can't see how anything of this is problematic for anyone, except for Brave's rivals (Google, Facebook, Criteo, etc.)

I don't havy any connection to Brave.

I just see the potential, and want Brave to succeed.

> "What happens to the small sites that don't track users, but display some ads to keep the servers running? Hope that they get "rewarded with BAT's accordingly to the users attention" ?"

What happens to them nowadays, now that most users block ads? They struggle, and they will continue struggling. Brave won't change any of that.

PS: I guess I should ask Brave to hire me for PR

At least go to brave.com and read the FAQ. The tracking is anonymized.

Of course Brave is removing the competition within their own product, that's how it usually works in a free market.

Edit: Sorry for not following the rules

Well, after all it's called user-agent, not publisher-agent ;)

The copyright reform doesn't affect user agents.

Besides, it isn't even in effect yet.

Brave does not monetize content. Everything that is monetized goes to the wallets of publishers, minus a fee.

Publishers don't "sell their inventory", since everything a website puts up on the web is essentially free. Consequently there isn't a licence involved, in contrast to your movie example. The publishers chose Google as their middle-man to make money with ads.

Valid question. Their definition of privacy doesn't go so far, and I assume if they would really want to create an ecosystem where this kind of data is protected they would need to create their own search enginge. Because google is still what the majority of people expect.

"Not the one you're responding to, but to say his/her reasoning isn't "legitimate" is a bit rich when the GP (me) was about ethics."

I agree, I overlooked that.

It is fundamentally impossible to know whether we live in a "simulation". The concept itself is a notion connected to contemporary culture based on certain technical knowledge, and thus the definition of what a simulation is isn't absolute, but rather subjective.

It follows that not much objective can come from this biased root assumptions.

In many ways physics is theoretical nowadays. You can look through the list of theories in theoretical physics and realize that it is all a giant construct. Physicists can spend their entire careers with illusions, which is ironic as physics supposedely is about reality.

At the end of his career, Albert Einstein said:

"I think it's entirely possible that physics can't be based upon the field concept, i.e. consistent structures. In this case not a single part of my cloud-castle remains, including the theory of gravitation and all the rest of modern physics."