Herb’s Blog, Herbdate 23791 – 1233
If you’re not reading this on https://thehapswithherb.com/ or from that site on the WordPress Reader, you may be reading an unauthorized copy.
Greetings One and All,
I hope this post finds you in the best of health and happiness. Yes, I found one of my posts “scraped” and posted elsewhere but since the person left the “Continue Reading” link as is and it comes right back here, plus they left a pingback, I’m not real upset about it. I don’t generally reblog other people’s stuff and if I see a post on someone’s site is a reblog I frequently just keep on clicking. There have been exceptions, of course, but not a lot. I visit your blog to read what you have to say. I suppose I should be flattered that my joke about the Human Cannonballs met with such resounding success. Besides, I have always been told that you can’t copyright jokes (I found an article here that makes it sound like this may not be a flat-out truth, however). I don’t know how true that is, but I guess it doesn’t matter too much since most of my jokes are just so old they sound new. Although, I do often rewrite and beef them up with my own ideas and characters to try and provide something that could likely be considered more than just vintage, but unique and original. I don’t know that I care too much if someone lifts my jokes. Especially if they link back to me. Anyway,
Here’s the haps:
I have been trying out the Brave browser, available here, to see what I think. I tried it a couple of times before, once for a very short time well over a year ago, then some months ago, and this last time I installed it was August 9, 2024, so a little over seven months now. I’ve liked it better each time. It imported all my stuff from Chrome, including settings, passwords, favorites, and the favorites bar, without a hitch. Most modern browsers, with the exception of Firefox, are based on the Chromium model. Even Microsft’s Edge browser, which was an abysmal disaster in the beginning, has, much to its improvement, switched to a Chromium base. Chromium is an ongoing open-source project created by Google but which can be built upon by anyone. Brave has come a long way since I first tried it and is generally pretty useful. It blocks tracking and third-party cookies and most ads. This automatically makes it load pages significantly faster. I’m not against ads, exactly, but they get to be intrusive and follow you around wherever you go. That doesn’t really happen with Brave. Even on YouTube, the only ads you get are the ones that are a recorded part of the video itself by the YouTube sensation you are watching who has gotten themselves an actual sponsor. Since I installed it I have these statistics:
And I don’t even use it exclusively. They do block a little too much when it comes to some business transactions I do and I have to open Chrome or Edge for those but the normal stuff, including banking, is fine in Brave.
I tried the Duck Duck Go browser and while Duck Duck Go is a pretty good search engine, the browser, for me, left a lot to be desired. I’ve used Firefox on and off over the years and it works okay. I also tried Opera and Vivaldi but just couldn’t get into either of them at all. They had some bells and whistles that might be nice or useful to some people, just not me.
I have been using the Brave search engine and even though it’s not quite as efficient as Google it also doesn’t filter your results to the left the way The Google does. Plus, you can easily switch between search engines or change the default if you’d rather. It took me a bit to sort through the settings and get it to work the way I wanted it to but that’s true with any computer program.
Now, I have encountered a handful of websites that will post a popup that says something to the effect of, “We notice you have ad-blocking software enabled. Please disable it as the advertising helps pay for the site.” To which I say, “Meh. That’s your lookout, isn’t it? Your background, your banner, your sidebar are all plastered with useless ads and all I want to do is look at this one article.” If they have a paywall I just skip them entirely, anyway. I have read where Google’s Chrome browser is not allowing people to use ad-blocking software and YouTube won’t let you continue on their site if you are using it but I have not encountered any problems while using Brave. Of course, my surfing of the internet is pretty vanilla so I haven’t flexed the browser’s muscles too much.
I like comments and try to respond to them all if I can: