I work at Brave as "Senior Privacy Researcher and Director of Privacy". I responded to many of these same accusations when they were made Friday, that time on Reddit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/privacytoolsIO/comments/nvz9tl/brav...

For anyone interested in this blog post here, the full conference paper version is here: https://www.peteresnyder.com/static/papers/easylist-sigmetri...

Just a note on this (I'm the lead author on the paper author), the blocking rate has to do with the reduction in JS usage when you install popular blocking extensions.

So its not that extensions block SVG directly, its that AdBlock Plus and Ghostery block a bunch of libraries, and those libraries use the SVG methods to finger print (and do other stuff)

Paper author here. The blocking % referenced, and discussed in more detail in the paper, is the % of times a feature is used when someone visits the page, but ISNT used when you visit the page with AdBlock Plus and Ghostery installed.

In other words, its how often these popular blocking extensions prevent the JS APIs from firing.

Its not blocking SVG, its blocking (mostly fingerprinting) JS libraries from running SVG JS methods

Aha, thank you for the clarification. That's a lot less worrying.

I'm single, gay, in Chicago, just hit my thirties, one very good relationship, a few shorter / smaller ones. I'm not great at dating, and I'm in a field that isn't exactly drenched in outgoing gay guys (academic computer science), but here are somethings that have been working well for me:

* Cooking. Not only is it a practical thing you can offer in a relationship, but its also a great way to meet someone. Invite three friends over for dinner, tell them to each bring a someone you don't know. Everyone meets a bunch of new people that likely aren't creeps (since they're at least a friend's friend), you can share something you're learning with them, and even if no one there is gay, they might know someone else who is.

* Join a club. Volunteering is a great thing for this, and volunteering in something you care about. In Chicago (where I live) we have a gay community center called the Center on Halsted. They know that lots of the people volunteering are doing so to meet friends / romantic partners / etc. So there are lots and lots of volunteer opportunities for lots of interests (safe sex promotion, working with the elderly, working with gay homeless youth, etc.)

* Work less. On one hand I know where you're coming from when you say there are too many demands on your time. But on the other hand, what you're also saying is that "all the demands on your time you're accepting are more important than your romantic life." Straight up refuse to work two nights a week and join a gay running club, find a meet up or two that you're sincerely interested in and can become a regular at, etc.

* Get more comfortable saying no. This was the hardest thing for me. I was crazy lonely for a long time, and so whenever I went on a date, I felt like saying "thanks, but I don't feel a connection" was tantamount to saying "thanks, but I'd rather be alone forever." And since I felt I couldn't say no to someone once I started dating them, I didn't say yes to anyone either (since one date felt like it "implied" 100). Surprisingly, feeling less anxious, feeling more comfortable saying no, made it a whole lot easier to say "yes" and try out lots of new possible relationships.

* Therapy? This has been huge for me, not for any particular trauma or issue, but just in a million small ways. I just saw below you saying something like "being gay sucks, especially if you want a monogamous relationship". I'm of course (totally possibly wrongly) reading myself into your comment, so take this with a mega grain of salt, but that sounds like the result of some inner struggle / insecurity stuff, maybe around sexuality. I had that attitude for a long time at least, and thats were it was coming from for me.

Anyway, shit, just wrote a book by accident. Shoot me a message if you wanna talk more man. Guess reading your comment reminded me of myself a lot…

Actually I was commenting on the only gay people I've met. They just want a fuck-buddy and I don't want to lower myself to that.

I think the strongest case for including it in the browser is that the browser is supposed to represent the interests of the user, not the website author.

I'd bet just about anything (though am open to being proved wrong) that when users learn about the pervasiveness of tracking on the internet, they don't like it. Some even take the step of installing add-ons. But since most people don't understand the situation, Mozilla is saying "our goal is to do whats best for the common case user, and even if the user doesn't understand the situation exactly, we don't think they want to be tracked".

And I say, good on them!