brave-core VS chromium

Unrelated but about Brave and interesting to me: I recently found myself having a large upstream project that I need to maintain some custom patches for, and there's a need for deeper customizations and I worry that my rudimentary system of applying .patch files will turn into an unmaintainable nightmare of merge conflicts after every rebase. I was thinking about possible solutions, and it occurred to me that Brave being Chromium-based must have this same challenge but an order of magnitude more difficult, so I looked for their code to see how they solved this issue.

It's pretty interesting! They do basically the same thing for core Chromium, applying a (big) set of patches[1].

Incidentally, I'd be interested to hear any ideas/approaches to this problem. I'm guessing if there was something clearly better, Brave would be doing it, but it seems like there should be a better way even if I can't think of one.

[1] https://github.com/brave/brave-core/tree/master/patches

https://github.com/brave/brave-core/pull/13737

(Incidentally, that PR number is not quite elite. :)

I disagree that it's lip service Brave has a ton of engine level privacy patches https://github.com/brave/brave-core/tree/master/patches

To my understanding you can't match it with just js extensions.

Only firefox on the highest security mode comes close I think?

Or ungoogled chromium? (brave has most of their patches IIRC)

Are there other options that have this number of patches?

Chromium is not 100% Google's forever and always, though they do currently lead the way, and with the most used/backed fork.

https://github.com/brave/brave-core/pull/19476

They have much more changes than just compile flags. Here's the repo where they maintain their patch set: https://github.com/brave/brave-core/tree/master/patches

Brave Private Ads toggle controls just Push Notification ads at this time. So, if you are still seeing Push Notification ads, that would be incorrect. However, it's normal to still see New Tab Page image ads, and/or other ad formats. We are introducing a new UI that helps you better toggle on/off specific ad units, and removing the "Brave Private Ads" toggle that can be confusing: https://github.com/brave/brave-core/pull/18938

Yes, being fixed. Github at https://github.com/brave/brave-core/pull/18922

One of the unexpected use of shadow DOMs for me was a document generated for image resource URLs [1], because the HTML standard apparently specifies the exact DOM structure of the generated document except for the `` element [2].

[1] https://github.com/chromium/chromium/blob/f02ca73/third_part...

[2] https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/document-lifecycle.ht...

Recently my favorite open source mouse gestures extension SmartUp Gestures was taken over by some shady entity (with github no longer being updated of course).

I opened Chrome ticket that they should ask to re-enable extension when ownership changes. They just closed the ticket replying with this link:

https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/main/extens...

:(

Hmm. It looks like files with the .lnk or .pif file extension can only be downloaded on a user gesture: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/39841e54180...

So it can't be done silently. Although, I do wish the type was marked "DANGEROUS" a la dll files.

On Linux, Chromium uses setuid or user namespaces to restrict the access of sandboxed components and seccomp-bpf to reduce the kernel attack surface.

Check out the Chromium docs on this topic: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/HEAD/docs/l...

You can also disable JIT in Firefox by setting javascript.options.baselinejit to false in about:config, although you won't get CET.

[1] https://github.com/chromium/chromium/blob/12c232c43ce7324d30...

Chromium targets iOS already: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/main/docs/i...

For the sake of completeness, I've traced the evolution of the notice over time:

From 2008-07-26: "Going incognito doesn't affect the behavior of other people, servers, or software. Be wary of: / • Websites that collect or share information about you / • Internet service providers or employers that track the pages you visit / • Malicious software that tracks your keystrokes in exchange for free smileys / • Surveillance by secret agents / • People standing behind you" (https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/09911bf300f...)

From 2013-12-07: "Going incognito doesn't affect the behavior of other people, servers, software, or people standing behind you." (https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/c5e36c57178...)

From 2013-12-13: "However, you aren't invisible. Going incognito doesn't hide your browsing from your employer, your internet service provider, or the websites you visit." (https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/70821506825...)

From 2014-02-27: "However, you aren't invisible. Going incognito doesn't hide your browsing from your employer, your internet service provider, governments and other sophisticated attackers, or the websites you visit." (https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/ab54bd65701...)

From 2014-04-29: "Going incognito doesn't hide your browsing from your employer, your internet service provider, or the websites you visit." (https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/eb09a62ef40...)

From 2016-01-15: "However, you aren't invisible. Going incognito doesn’t hide your browsing from your employer, your internet service provider, or the websites you visit." (https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/b7dac1a6a79...)

From 2017-02-27: "Your activity might still be visible to: / • Websites you visit / • Your employer / • Your internet service provider" (https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/cfe102adddc...)

From 2017-03-29: "Your activity might still be visible to: / • Websites you visit / • Your employer or school / • Your internet service provider" (https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/7ca3ccf74e8...)

(Note that some of these were behind a feature flag for a few months.) Also, it looks like they've been intending to modify the new-tab page text for Incognito windows for some time, as part of the "Revamped Incognito NTP" project. You can view the modified text with 'chromium --enable-features=IncognitoNtpRevamp':

From 2021-08-13: "What Incognito doesn't do / Incognito does not make you invisible online: / • Sites know when you visit them / • Employers or schools can track browsing activity / • Internet service providers may monitor web traffic" (https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/e6ae57ba385...)

From 2022-01-25: "What Incognito doesn't do / Incognito does not make you invisible online: / • Sites and the services they use can see visits / • Employers or schools can track browsing activity / • Internet service providers can monitor web traffic" (https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/8b349f6c984...)

Blink can now be compiled for iOS, but without JIT or WASM:

https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/main/docs/i...

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=141170...

I think its weird that Vercel has this limit. There is no practical reason I can think of for having such a limit on URL characters that is so small. Chrome suggests a 2MB limit[0] for example. The platform itself doesn't have one, and Firefox I believe if memory serves (I can't find the source for this claim atm) is 1 MB effectively, and I don't think Safari is any lower than that either (and may well be more inline with Chrome on this, at 2 MB)

[0]: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/docs...