Brendan Eich (yeah, that guy) has a new tech start-up called “Brave”. Brave is a browser with a built-in ad blocker that replaces the ads you would normally see on a website with Brave’s own ads. It’s probably a shocker to nobody that the Brave site has not been bogged down by a rush to download and install this startling advance in Internet technology.
Brave’s logo is a lion, so of course I thought of this:
but this is also relevant:
Open thread.
Steeplejack (phone)
On the bus to (I hope) pick up my car where I had to leave it in the pre-blizzard last night. Fingers crossed. I parked off street, and hopefully the tow trucks weren’t prowling last night.
Schlemazel
Riffing on Apples theme I guess. Hey, we do what those other guys do but you have to buy your power cord from us at 10 times the price! Hey, you can just block ads or you can use our browser and only see ads we get paid for!
JPL
@Steeplejack (phone): How did you get home?
Lord Baldrick
Sounds like more of a Trojan Rabbit scenario.
MattF
But I’d guess that ‘Brave’ will make deals with the usual suspects (e.g., Google, Amazon, etc.)– and so the only difference is that there will be an additional intermediary mouth to feed in the food chain. Now, remind me: Why, exactly, would this be good thing?
C.V. Danes
How is this different from what Google is doing now with paid ads?
Mike J
@MattF:
In theory, they could more thoroughly vet the ads that run and make sure none of them serve malware, like Forbes website recently did.
I wouldn’t trust them to do it, and it’s easier and cheaper to just see no ads.
Schlemazel
@Steeplejack (phone):
good luck! They are pretty aggressive around here at towing. I understand that they have to be somewhat because the alternative would be impassible streets by the end of winter. But the process is very expensive & the city doesn’t even make the profit, that all goes to the tow operators – which I think is why they are so aggressive.
Let us know when you get back.
jeffreyw
I use adblocking addons in Firefox and Chrome, without apologies to anyone. Android has seen a dearth of adblockers because Google and the limitations of the OS itself. I have been using Adblock’s mobile browser with some success. It comes sans the convenience of Chrome’s cross platform settings for history, bookmarks,speech recognition, etc. I don’t really spend much time away from the desktop so I haven’t used it extensively but it does work. It has the same “allow some ads” settings as the desktop extensions but also allows you to opt out of even those.
BGinCHI
The only truly free market is a monopoly.
sigaba
Prop 8, Judy Garland and content monetization all in one post. Must be some sort of trifecta.
Roger Moore
@MattF:
I doubt that they’ll make deals with the usual suspects, who won’t want to have anything to do with them. Instead, the goal is for them to make their own ad network that competes with those other guys. Their claimed value is that they block both tracking ads- those really freaky ones that follow you around the web- and the most annoying kinds of ads, like the ones that cover up content on the page. Instead, you can either get the ads they serve, which they pinkie swear will be nicer than the ones they’re replacing, or you can pay a subscription to avoid ads completely.
What they notably do not promise, though, is not to track you themselves when your browser contacts them to get the ads they’re supposed to be serving to replace the ones they’ve blocked. They say you can audit their browser code because they’re open source, but that won’t do anything to prevent them from tracking you using their servers. No thank you. I’ll stick with Privacy Badger, which is produced by people I have confidence care about my privacy.
sigaba
Wait, so if Brave overlays it’s ads on, say Balloon Juice, does Brave pay Balloon Juice for impressions and conversions?
Mike J
By the way, Balloon-juice is still adding tracking code, even for users with the do not track flag. The site repair guy said he was going to turn off the plugin that adds it, but that was back in November.
Turning off that plugin would also fix the bug where naked links go into moderation. It’s not just invasive code, it’s poorly written invasive code.
Amir Khalid
What is this video player in the right hand column, that runs an excerpt from a Larry King interview and then something that looks like a political ad for Jesse Ventura? Some of us are on a bandwidth quota and might not care to see it used up by junk we didn’t choose to see. (Junk we did choose to see is of course another matter.)
NonyNony
@sigaba:
Supposedly:
(I’m assuming that “ad supplier” here means “original ad supplier” that Eich is replacing the ads from).
I don’t see how this works at all. It isn’t like Eich’s company will have a contract with the content provider whose ads they’re replacing, so how do they know who to cut the check to? Also what’s the going rate for an ad impression these days? And what percentage of that goes to the content publisher vs. the ad supplier? How much does the ad supplier lose by not serving the ad that they were going to serve but instead taking a 15% cut of Eich’s ad? And also – who guarantees all of this given that nobody has signed any contracts with anyone?
All of this seems really half-baked so far and so I assume that there’s more to this story than what is being presented.
Gin & Tonic
Since this says “open thread”, the continuing downward pressure on the price of crude is affecting winter vacation plans. The head of Russia’s central bank has canceled her trip to Davos as the ruble continues to plummet, now at 85 to the dollar.
FlipYrWhig
If we’re talking about website stuff, I’ll add that the ad spot at the top right cuts off the right side of every single ad. Like an ad for Nordstrom will say “Nordst.” Been like that since the redesign rolled out.
Gin & Tonic
@FlipYrWhig: It’s for your own good, comrade.
FlipYrWhig
@Gin & Tonic: Probably so.
gex
This reminds me of Goldman Sachs data centers near Wall Street which jump in between other buyers and the market, make their purchase first, then resell the stock to the rest of the group, essentially earning for themselves a transaction tax because they have the power to leech onto a transaction they really have nothing to do with.
ETA: So much “innovation” these days eschews the idea of adding value and is more about getting something for nothing.
Paul in KY
@Mike J: I want the thing fixed where I cannot click on page 2, etc. at bottom of page & proceed to page 2.
Steeplejack
Okay, I’m home safe and sound, the doughty Kia parked in the Rock Hudson spot (not quite Doris Day parking) on the street below. (Doris Day parking: In those ’50s rom-coms she would drive her own car in Manhattan and invariably roll up to an empty parking space right in front of the Chrysler Building or whatever skyscraper.)
Yesterday afternoon I told a former coworker that I’d help her take some stuff from storage to her new apartment. When I left my rooms in Threadkill Lane about 6:00 p.m., there was a tiny bit of snow falling—a very light dusting, as Elizabelle put it yesterday. I drove to the storage place, we loaded some boxes into the car and then—this was the fatal mistake, in hindsight—we went to have dinner at El Paso Café, a fairly good (for these parts) Tex-Mex restaurant. It started snowing for real while we were in there, and when we came out the traffic was horrible and the roads were treacherous.
I managed to avoid a lot of problems by taking side streets and avoiding traffic (and hills), and I got to within about half a mile of B.’s place, but in the end I had to get on Washington Boulevard (a major street), there was a hill we just could not get up, and other cars were slip-sliding all over the place. So I parked the car and we set out on foot, B. to her apartment and me back to Threadkill Lane.
@JPL:
I legged it home, about 1½ miles, almost all uphill. (Seriously. You don’t really notice elevation when you’re in a car, but you do on foot.) Thirty minutes in 25° cold on an inch of fluffy snow over black ice. And me with no hat and a light windbreaker. Good times. Fortunately, I am such a raging hot-body that I was sweating within five minutes and didn’t feel too cold. And there was no wind, praise be to Ceiling Cat. I passed a lot of abandoned cars and cars just sitting and spinning their wheels. After she got home B. texted me that a Metro bus had stalled further up Washington Boulevard and was blocking traffic in both directions. So we probably wouldn’t have made it to her place anyway.
I left the Kia parked in a slot off the street in front of a little row of shopfronts. I felt like there would be less of a chance of it being sideswiped by someone sliding down Washington Boulevard.
So of course by midmorning today the streets were almost ridiculously clear again. I rode the 1A to Ballston and caught the 2A to a stop right across the street from where my car was still parked. Huge sigh of relief. Celebrated by getting a sandwich to go at the Lost Dog Café a block down. Sammy’s Club: chicken breast, bacon, avocado and melted Brie on a toasted sub roll with pesto mayo, lettuce and tomato. Stopped at the liquor store on the way home to get a hogshead of Mount Gay rum, the last thing I needed before I batten the hatches for the blizzard. I did all my grocery shopping yesterday morning—which is what made it particularly galling to get caught in a snow snafu last night.
I might have been more alert to this looming problem if I had not been misled (my opinion) by both the Weather Channel and the TV weather on Tuesday night. Neither of them predicted snow for last night, and when I saw the light dusting I thought, Oh, this is just a mild precursor to the big stuff on Friday. I wish there was a way to go back and see what they actually said. I could be misremembering, but I think this caught them by surprise, even as local celebrity weatherman Topper Shutt has been having multiple snowgasms all week about the real blizzard this weekend. I’m kicking myself because I think that if B. and I had skipped dinner and gone straight to her place we would have avoided most of the problem. Oh, well, twenty-twenty hindsight.
I texted B. today that if the weather is clear tonight—and I mean I want to see empty radar over a hundred-mile radius—I might be convinced to bring her boxes to her place. Otherwise I’m hunkering down until Monday or Tuesday.
Steeplejack
@Schlemazel:
I wasn’t worried about snow-route towing; I was off the street in a legit parking spot. I was worried about the towing Nazis who enforce the draconion rules around here about “No overnight parking!,” etc., even when the weather is balmy. I have never seen such rapacious tow trucks as here in NoVa. I have seen a neighbor’s car get towed from the condo parking lot because his safety-inspection sticker was expired by a couple of days. I think the tow operators make deals with apartments and condo associations to troll their lots and give them a kickback on each tow. One of my old managers at Barnes & Noble got his car towed from the (gigantic) parking lot right in front of the store when he stayed overnight one time to do some extended inventory work. WTF.
Mnemosyne
For the musical fans, an article about the upcoming “Grease Live!. I’m happy to see that I am once again clairvoyant when it comes to this stuff — they will be incorporating a live audience to compensate for that weird hollowness that plagued “The Wiz” even though it was so good in most aspects.
(And, yes, there’s a “Hamilton” link, but the Hamimaniacs will need to read and suss it out for themselves.)
Steeplejack
@efgoldman:
Yeah, there are a couple of nasty hills down there. Fortunately for my brother—the bastard!—he is on vacation in Brazil for three weeks. The bastard.
Face
@Gin & Tonic: Funny how airline prices skyrocketed when gas when from ~$2 to $4+/gal in 2008. Now that gas is < $2/gal almost everywhere, airline prices have proportionately declined. Wait, hold on. No they haven't.
schrodinger's cat
@gex: Its called arbirtrage, and is likened to collecting pennies in the parking lot.
Shell
@Face: When gas topped 4 dollars a gallon , it was all Obama’s fault. Now that its tanking, how are wing nuts blaming Obama for this?
schrodinger's cat
@Steeplejack:
At least you were not barefoot.
schrodinger's cat
@Shell: Simple, the stock market is crashing because of oil prices, so the price of oil is too low, which as we know can be traced back to Obama’s deal with Iran.
* Do I pass the wingnut test?
Punchy
@schrodinger’s cat: The 2nd Amendy gives you the right to bare arms, not bare feet.
Schlemazel
@Shell:
wait, they are trying to blame the falling stock market partly on oil prices so soon enough it will be Obama’s fault
Steeplejack
@schrodinger’s cat:
I knew someone was going to snark about that. True, I was not barefoot, but I was wearing some pretty casual New Balance slip-ons. But “walking shoes,” so there was that. And I didn’t fall on my ass once.
schrodinger's cat
@Steeplejack: Did they have any insulation? I recommend L L Bean boots for walking uphill in the snow, next time.
peach flavored shampoo
Anyone else normally follow TPM? What gives over there? They’re moving on 26 hours since their last blog post. For a website that’s normally “up on it”, during a primary season, 26 hours between posts seems ridiculous.
slag
Watching this Vine with no sound shows the profound resemblance between Sarah Palin and Chicken Little: https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/status/689632785192095746.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mike J: In theory, but actually vetting the ads would cut into hookers and blow money, so no, not going to to happen.
slag
Moderation. Again. Seriously?
goblue72
@Shell: Because the dead cat bouncing the markets today is probably black. And as we all know, black cats drive Cadillacs they paid for with their Obamaphones.
Villago Delenda Est
@sigaba: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
whew!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
goblue72
This has all the odor of Pets.com.
Time to get out of the pool.
Steeplejack (phone)
@slag:
Naked link! FYWP no likey right now.
Steeplejack (phone)
@schrodinger’s cat:
Not to speak of. Oddly enough, I didn’t know I would be hiking when I left home.
catclub
@Shell:
They are blaming Obama for all the bad parts – US oil drillers going bankrupt and upsetting the bond market.
No mention of best small truck and car sales ever in 2015.
hamletta
@peach flavored shampoo: Might be an issue on your end. My RSS feeder has its last TPM post at 1 pm.
schrodinger's cat
@Steeplejack (phone): L L Bean is the footwear of choice for me in winter even when I go out to get groceries, but then I live in New England.
slag
@Steeplejack (phone): Thanks.
Though I really don’t get the problem with naked links. I see them as superior in several ways, particularly in that they’re more transparent to the user. I’m going to start a naked link revolution: Naked links don’t spam people, spammers do!
Steeplejack (phone)
@slag:
See above.
Peter
I feel like ‘people who care enough about intrusive ads enough to use a new browser to avoid them’ and ‘people who are willing to see any ads at all’ is a vein diagram with very little overlap.
Roger Moore
@Shell:
Now falling oil prices are a problem because they mean oil company stock is in trouble, drillers are out of work, and banks are worried about the loans they made to the oil companies. Obviously, this must be entirely Obama’s fault. It’s one of the Obama Rules:
1) If something bad happens, it’s Obama’s fault
2) If something good happens, it has nothing to do with Obama, even if it’s obviously the result of one of Obama’s programs
3) There’s a cloud behind every silver lining, and it’s Obama’s fault.
catclub
@slag: You could alsways paste in the link, delete the http: part
and then highlight and hit the link button.
like this http://www.fidererongses.com/#!Whitewashing-Corporate-Fraud-Boston-Fed-Edition/tffln/569445120cf2e94e3fb2f05c
haha on me – sent into moderation.