Announcement: New fully rebuilt Brave for Android boosts performance across the board compared to prior versions: 5% battery savings along with 3% of both data and CPU savings

Results from the experimental evaluation in this blogpost were produced by Dr. Matteo Varvello, performance researcher at Brave.



The new Brave app for Android (version 1.5.120) is now available for download on the Play Store and has been completely rebuilt over the past few months. The new release is based on the same Chromium code repository as our Brave desktop release, and will allow for easier implementations of features and fixes across desktop and mobile thanks to a unified codebase. For example, this unified codebase will enable support for extensions in Android in the future.



This new version is a seamless transition for Brave users as the user interface remains the same, but it does provide performance enhancements such as battery savings (5%), as well as CPU and data savings (3%), compared to the previous version (1.5.9). These savings are additional to the savings that Brave already realized when compared with major browser vendors (30%-50% bandwidth and battery reduction compared to Chrome, Firefox, and Opera) [1]. In addition, these savings make Brave for Android outperform DuckDuckGo, Vivaldi, and Firefox Preview as well, which were recently ranked as top-performing browsers by Greenspector [5].



Read the full post here: https://brave.com/rebuilt-brave-android/

Upcoming Guest AMA with Matthew Liu (Co-founder) & Nick Poulden (Senior Engineer) of Origin, the decentralized platform also powering the new Brave Swag Store (Apr. 16, 2020)

Welcome to the next installment in our series of BAT Community-run AMAs! Matthew Liu and Nick Poulden will be on r/BATProject on Thursday, April 16th, 2020, from 10:30-11:30 am Pacific Time to answer your questions and to discuss the future of blockchain-powered commerce, their new decentralized e-commerce platform, Dshop + more.

About Origin



Origin is powering commerce on the blockchain. The Origin Platform enables the creation of peer-to-peer marketplaces and e-commerce applications. Origin’s technology allows buyers and sellers of goods and services to transact on the distributed, open web. Using the Ethereum blockchain and Interplanetary File System (IPFS), participants can interact in a peer-to-peer fashion, allowing for the purchase of goods and services without traditional intermediaries imposing exorbitant fees and onerous terms. Learn more at originprotocol.com.



You can leave questions for the Origin team in the AMA announcement thread on Reddit, here:

Tip For A Cause: GetUsPPE enhances the safety of healthcare heroes on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic by supplying the protective gear (PPE) they need so they can keep caring for our loved ones. GetUsPPE is fully verified and set up to accept BAT donations. Tip BAT for a good cause today!

At #GetUsPPE, we believe healthcare workers should not have to fear for their own life because they do not have access to the protective equipment they need. With swift and decisive action from the Federal Government and strong community support, we can still get healthcare workers the equipment they need to fight COVID-19.



#GetUsPPE is a grassroots movement founded by physicians and medical researchers on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our team has grown to include engineers, scientists, programmers, and concerned citizens working around the clock to get them and their colleagues the equipment they need.

GetUsPPE is a participant in the Brave Ad Grants Program. The ad grant gives the organization advertising with Brave Ads at no cost, allowing it to engage with the many Brave users who’ve opted into seeing privacy-respecting ads and being rewarded for their attention. (Learn more about the Brave Ad Grants Program here: https://brave.com/giving-block-tor-project-grant-recipient/.)



GetUsPPE is fully verified and set up to accept BAT donations.



NOTE: GetUsPPE verified with Brave very recently so it may take your browser some time to reflect the changes. However, we can confirm that GetUsPPE is indeed fully verified and set up to accept BAT donations.



Here’s how to donate using the Brave browser:

Get Brave. (Download for free at https://brave.com/, or from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store on mobile.) Activate Brave Rewards and Ads via the triangular BAT logo on the right of the URL bar on mobile. Browse & earn BAT for seeing privacy-respecting ads. Tip BAT directly to https://twitter.com/getusppe on Twitter, or to https://getusppe.org/ Click-to-tweet about your donation & spread awareness for a good cause!

Interview: Luke Mulks (Brave, Director of BizDev) and Hashoshi discuss Brave, privacy, and new features coming in 2020!

Director of Business Development at Brave, Luke Mulks, joined Hashoshi to overview Brave Browser privacy features and what the company is doing to make Brave Ads, Brave Sync, and other features private AND useful at the same time. Sync V2 is coming along with the ability to exchange BAT (Basic attention token) for gift cards within the browser! There are a LOT of features coming in 2020 to watch out for.

Brave Creator Tip Drives: Calling all verified GitHub & Vimeo creators! Share your work and let the BAT community support you! (Week of April 6th-10th, 2020)

There were some really great shares this week including from a creator who has worked as a professional FX animator for Disney, Nickelodeon, YTV. Another creator came forward to share their documentary series called “This Lane Doesn’t Exist,” which is described as:

A series that creates a window into a new form of public art. Part performance, part public experiment, featured artists partner with their audiences to create engaging moments called social art.

One of the episodes in the series titled, “Beers Made by Walking,” features a botanist who leads a small but captivated audience through a local greenspace, pointing out various herbs good for beer-making and describing their flavor profiles, as well as a beer-artist who conceptualizes the beverage as “drinkable sculpture.”



Learn more about these creators and their works in the Tip Drive threads below. Pay it forward & send them a tip if you like what you see! 🙂

This Week in Sponsored Images

U.S. residents who browsed with Brave from April 1st to April 7th likely spotted beautiful Sponsored Images by Newegg in their Brave browser’s New Tab Page.

Newegg Inc. is the leading tech-focused e-retailer in North America, with a global reach into more than 80 countries in Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and the Middle East. Founded in 2001, the company offers its tens of millions of registered users a comprehensive selection of the latest consumer electronics, entertainment, smart home and gaming products. Newegg is consistently ranked as one of the best online shopping destinations, and the company regularly earns industry-leading customer service ratings. Newegg is headquartered in City of Industry, California, with North American distribution facilities located throughout the United States and Canada.



Past Sponsored Images campaigns included images BlockFi, Lokai, Crypto.com, eToro, and Western Digital. Keep your eyes peeled for upcoming Sponsored Images in a new tab near you!

Featured Creators (in Partnership with Everipedia)

Benjamin Cowen: YouTuber, nuclear physicist

Benjamin Cowen

His slogan: ~Understanding cryptocurrency with math you claimed you never needed to know~



Channel description:

You have just jumped into the cryptoverse, which provides high-quality cryptocurrency education to those who want to dive deeper into the metrics that are driving the market.



As an academic, I approach cryptocurrency from a practical perspective and use my science/engineering/programmatic background to package these metrics in an easily digestible way for the community. I try and keep a level head with my discussions and provide you information that is helpful to you as you research different coins.

Check out Ben’s YouTube channel & subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRvqjQPSeaWn-uEx-w0XOIg/featured



Read Everipedia’s entry on Ben: https://everipedia.org/wiki/lang_en/benjamin-cowen-youtuber

Andrew Schmelyun: YouTuber, full-stack web dev

Andrew Schmelyun

Channel description:

Hey, I’m Andrew Schmelyun. I’m a full-stack developer who works mostly in PHP and JavaScript. I enjoy making tutorials that help people learn and understand Laravel, Vue, PWAs, AR.js, React Native, and other web development tech. If you have any requests for a video, or have a question about one that I’ve posted, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter @aschmelyun.

Check out Andrew’s YouTube channel & subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/user/ASchmelyun/videos



Read Everipedia’s entry on Andrew: https://everipedia.org/wiki/lang_en/andrew-schmelyun

This was a great week for Brave Creators! Here are a few more newly verified Creators whose content may interest you:

Creators: Citizen X: “Got my channel verified as a Brave Creator! I encourage everyone to do this!”

Channel description:

Gaming since 199X. This channel will be filled with gaming content and computer science videos. Videos will vary from Gaming, Cyber Security, Interesting Technology and general computer science content.

Client Updates

Dev Channel v1.8.69

https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/tag/v1.8.69

Beta Channel v1.8.70

https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/tag/v1.8.70

Brave Team Tweets

This is a nice pull request 🙂 More than 500K verified publishers. BAT and Brave are gaining momentum. pic.twitter.com/Inp4iKctI9 — Sampson (@BraveSampson) April 7, 2020 Jon Sampson, Sr Developer Relations

Quite the honor for @brave to be mentioned in a @TheBabylonBee article! 😂🦁https://t.co/imORWQPPXY — Joel Reis (@codebycoffee) April 8, 2020 Joel Reis, Sr Software Engineer (iOS)

Good short piece on the data ownership debate.

If personal data are transactable goods, then their protection is no longer a fundamental right.

In @Slate now, by @RaviNa1k @hackylawyER @jonniepenn https://t.co/7J9T3WIMMS — Johnny Ryan (@johnnyryan) April 7, 2020 Dr. Johnny Ryan, Chief Policy & Industry Relations Officer

With 3 easy steps in @Brave, you can contribute @AttentionToken toward @getusppe and help get PPE to those on the frontlines that need it.



-Get @brave

-Earn @AttentionToken

-Pay it Forward to #GetUsPPE pic.twitter.com/KWvzkI1ODz — Luke Mulks | lukemulks.eth (@lukemulks) April 9, 2020 Luke Mulks, Director, Business Development

I just donated to @nokidhungry using the Brave Browser. Short explainer below. Lots of people struggling right now and @brave users can help. If you have BAT in your browser wallet, please consider donating to a good cause. pic.twitter.com/xV9p3jKFtm — Des Martin (@dessie_martin) March 29, 2020 Des Martin, Marketing Leader & Business Development

BAT/Brave in the News

Forbes: Billions Of Google Chrome Users Now Have Another Surprising Option

Google Chrome has dominated the internet browser market for the last decade with a staggering near-60% market share and users stretching into the billions.



Rivals to Google Chrome, including Apple’s Safari, Microsoft’s Edge (formerly known as Internet Explorer), and Mozilla’s Firefox have largely failed to convince users to switch—but browser choices are becoming more complex.



Users’ desire for greater security, better privacy, and an ill-defined need to “take back control” from the likes of Google and Microsoft has opened the door for alternatives—including blockchain-based privacy browser Brave, whose chief executive thinks Google “is going to be taken apart over coming years.”



“People have had a long time to acclimate to Chrome but users don’t like a lot of things about it,” said Brave’s CEO and former head of Mozilla, Brendan Eich. “They don’t like how it tracks you, they don’t like the anti-trust issues Google has become entangled in.”



Read the full text here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2020/04/09/billions-of-google-chrome-users-now-have-another-surprising-option/#2c8b693f48ee

Decrypt: Binance CEO says download Brave browser for your own privacy

The CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, has urged his 500,000 Twitter followers to download the Brave browser in order to stay private online.



In a tweet today, he said, “Sorry, Bitcoin isn’t free. (no, it’s not going to zero) Privacy is. You just have to install the brave browser. Protect yourself.”



Read the full text here: https://decrypt.co/25201/binance-ceo-says-download-brave-browser-for-your-own-privacy

News You Should Know

Slate: You Really Don’t Want to Sell Your Data

This article is part of Privacy in the Pandemic, a new series from Future Tense.



As countries play catch-up to ensure the safety of their citizens—with 2.5 billion people now in lockdown—policymakers are holding up data on the spread and proliferation of the virus as a linchpin of the response.



Telecommunications companies offer data on citizens’ movements to governments and promote unproven technologies that promise to “contact trace” the virus’s spread. Technology platforms like Facebook and Palantir are reportedly in talks to share your location data with the U.S. government and are actively working with the National Health Service in the U.K. Google is being asked to screen for COVID-19—in what may become the largest capture of health data by a private company in history. Civil liberties groups are urging the government to protect people’s data and make sure that surveillance tools considered acceptable in an emergency do not become permanent fixtures.



Read the full text here: https://slate.com/technology/2020/04/sell-your-own-data-bad-idea.html

Fastly: How COVID-19 is affecting internet performance

To understand how the internet is performing with the changes in internet use brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, we investigated two key metrics during February and March in some of the countries and states that were hit hardest by the virus: changes in the traffic volume served to those regions as a reflection of changes in internet use, and changes in download speed measured at our servers as a reflection of internet quality. In almost all regions, the largest increases in traffic volume occurred immediately after public policy announcements, such as school closures or stay-at-home orders. Similarly, the most dramatic decreases in download speed followed the official starts of those policies — presumably when populations made the shift to staying home.



Read the full text here: https://www.fastly.com/blog/how-covid-19-is-affecting-internet-performance

CNET: Zoom: Every security issue uncovered in the video chat app

As the coronavirus pandemic forced millions of people to stay home over the past month, Zoom suddenly became the video meeting service of choice: Daily meeting participants on the platform surged from 10 million in December to 200 million in March.



With that popularity came Zoom’s privacy risks extending rapidly to massive numbers of people. From built-in attention-tracking features to recent upticks in “Zoombombing” (in which uninvited attendees break into and disrupt meetings with hate-filled or pornographic content), Zoom’s security practices have been drawing more attention — along with at least three lawsuits against the company.



Read the full text here: https://www.cnet.com/news/zoom-every-security-issue-uncovered-in-the-video-chat-app/

DW: Coronavirus: When using the c-word gets you blacklisted

Some of the world’s biggest brands are refusing to put their ads next to content about the coronavirus pandemic. Despite seeing a huge increase in readership, news publishers say they’re losing millions of dollars.



Technology that allows firms to prevent their advertising from appearing on pornographic or fake news websites is also helping them to blacklist stories related to the coronavirus pandemic.



Thousands of advertisers have adopted the controversial marketing strategy in a double blow to the world’s most trusted newspapers and news websites, whose revenues are already in free fall because of the sudden, sharp decline in business activity.



The New York Times estimates that it will lose 10% of its digital revenues this year because brands are refusing to advertise on pages with coronavirus-related stories. In 2019, NYT achieved total digital revenues of $800 million. A watchdog for Britain’s national newspaper sector reports that, if the pandemic lasts another three months, publishers will have 50 million pounds ($62 million, €57 million) less to fund quality journalism at a time when reliable, timely information is critical. That represents nearly 30% of total digital revenue, according to Newsworks, the UK industry’s marketing body.



Read the full text here: https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-blacklisting-advertising-news-digital-covid-19/a-53056149

Roaring Fans

Thanks just got it, @BAT_Community @brave I don't plan to go back to other browsers. I want BAT/Brave to be successful🦁🙂 pic.twitter.com/xX82hcWQCj — Luis Nil (@LuisNil22) April 8, 2020

I love Brave. Kudos to its creator! 🏆 — Francis (@ScottKey_Aug79) April 7, 2020

From Reddit