Episode 052 — with Jonathan Sampson, on Brave, Basic Attention Token and Browser Security

“It turns out we can maintain user privacy and still give advertisers what they need from tracking by using client side machine learning.”

Adam J Kerpelman

Published in

Zengineering Podcast

3 min readFeb 20, 2018

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What’s up Zengineers!!??

It’s that time again? What time you may ask? Time to get jiggy inside a high tech rabbit hole.

Our guest this week is Jonathan Sampson, programmer, world traveller, technologist, and Head of Developer Relations at Brave Browser. A new revolution of web based technology is upon us, and Jonathan is here to help us make sense of it, and discuss how the team behind Brave Browser is leading the way. Brave is a new web browser (like Google Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Apple Safari, or Mozilla Firefox) … The difference is, this browser is aiming to totally alter the internet landscape. Through security by design, privacy as a business model, and tight integrations with blockchain and crypto-currencies, Brave browser is working to re-imagine the internet in its original incantation. This new creation rides the incredible tidal wave of internet that we all know and love, but also, at times, fear and loathe.

In this episode, Jonathan walks us through the history of the internet and web browsers. We discuss Brave’s CEO, Brendan Eich, the prolific architect of the JavaScript programming language, and a founder and former CTO of the Mozilla Corporation. This story is compelling and important to the state of the modern web, modern software, and the entire planets intoxication with digital communication. Jonathan is fun and interesting, and our conversation with him is important to be having right now.

A major shift is coming as more people understand the depth to which technology assists, guides, and informs our everyday lives. Some aspects of these technologies are good, some are bad, and most can easily be put in both categories.

We dive deeply into web technologies, the digital advertising revolution, internet search, the history of web browsers, an intense appreciation of digital privacy, the future of technology, and digital crypto-currencies like Bitcoin and Basic Attention Token (a foundational component of what the Brave team is working on). We believe Brave Browser and its team are doing something that is both technologically innovative and deeply important for our digitized world. We hope you enjoy this conversation with Jonathan, an accomplished engineer and technology communicator.

As always, let us know what you like, or dislike on our website, rate and review Zengineering on iTunes, and support Zengineering on Patreon.

Cheers, Adam & Brian