burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de
on 10 Aug 21:33
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I also see an extensions.ml.enable. Anyone with actual knowledge of the source code know what those are doing?
mesamunefire@piefed.social
on 10 Aug 14:59
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I hate how many of these you have to do on any new installation of Firefox.
Unpigged@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 10 Aug 15:08
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A space for vanilla ff experience extension, sort of like sanemacs?
burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de
on 10 Aug 21:31
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That’s basically what librewolf, waterfox, and a whole bunch of others are. In the same way manjaro and endeavor etc. are opinionated arch installs with spackling, those browsers are opinionated settings-already-selected versions of firefox.
Unpigged@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 11 Aug 08:13
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Just what I needed, ty
brucethemoose@lemmy.world
on 10 Aug 04:10
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The pathological need to find something to use LLMs for is so bizzare.
It’s like the opposite of classic ML, relatively tiny special purpose models trained for something critical, out of desperation, because it just can’t be done well conventionally.
But this:
AI-enhanced tab groups. Powered by a local AI model, these groups identify related tabs and suggest names for them. There is even a “Suggest more tabs for group” button that users can click to get recommendations.
Take out the word AI.
Enhanced tab groups. Powered by a local algorithm, these groups identify related tabs and suggest names for them. There is even a “Suggest more tabs for group” button that users can click to get recommendations.
If this feature took, say, a gigabyte of RAM and a bunch of CPU, it would be laughed out. But somehow it ships because it has the word AI in it? That makes no sense.
I am a massive local LLM advocate. I like “generative” ML, within reason and ethics. But this is just stupid.
DaddleDew@lemmy.world
on 10 Aug 04:15
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When I’m browsing around with multiple tabs open, the last thing I want is something to start moving them around and messing my flow up. This is a solution looking for a problem.
The pathological need to find something to use LLMs for is so bizzare.
Venture capital dumped so much money into the tech without understanding the full scope of what it was capable of. Now they’re so in so deep that they desperately NEED to find something profitable it can do, otherwise they’ll lose the farm.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world
on 10 Aug 07:31
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Firefox has little financial motivation for this, though?
Other than getting “AI” investor money, if that’s the plan… But otherwise it just feels like they’re following a meme.
WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
on 10 Aug 10:15
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It makes a lot more sense when you realize that the Mozilla corporation is a for profit run by the same techno-fascist aggrandizing bait-and-switch narcissists as the rest of SV.
I’ve been saying it for years, but I will never donate to Firefox until it is freed from the shackles of a for profit corporation that can use your donation for any profit motive it sees fit; not even related to Firefox.
I don’t care. It’s a corrosive force that causes them to pay for over priced CEO’s and integrate services that nobody cares about into Firefox (like pocket) or that runs against their principles (container VPN’s exclusive to Mozillas for-profit VPN).
IIRC, you can't even donate to Firefox. You can only donate to Mozilla. It seems pretty clear to me why they set it up that way....
a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 10 Aug 11:03
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90% of their cash flow comes from google to be the default search engine - they are probably trying to open up alternative routes of funding to reduce the risk, since it’s not guaranteed that the money will keep coming due to the current lawsuit.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world
on 10 Aug 15:05
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Right, I sympathize with that.
…But also it’s ridiculous. Like why should including a feature with “AI” in it get them VC money? Even if that’s kinda reality?
TBH they should just become a contributor to llama.cpp and market that somehow.
acosmichippo@lemmy.world
on 10 Aug 07:10
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even without AI, to me tab groups are already feature creep bloat in browsers. do people really put that much effort into organizing tabs?
JackbyDev@programming.dev
on 10 Aug 07:12
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No, but I think the idea of a second layer of organization to tabs is a wonderful idea. Maybe not a gig of RAM to sort them, sure.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world
on 10 Aug 07:27
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FF already has tab groups. Right click on one.
JackbyDev@programming.dev
on 10 Aug 16:57
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I like the tab groups. I use them often at work to group an issue with related tabs and my attempts at solving it. Also makes it easier to pause work on one problem and work on something else because I have the tabs grouper and know exactly where to go back.
And nobody should stop you installing an extension that provides tab groups. I agree with the other commentator that some features can be left to extensions and don’t need to be part of the core web browser, though.
True, but I’m not sure that an extension would have the necessary access to manipulate the browser like that. I don’t think it should. A malicious extension could do horrible things.
I’m not sure that an extension would have the necessary access to manipulate the browser like that.
I don’t know if they still do but they used to have. That, however, is something to discuss with the genius decision makers at Mozilla who decide to break extension APIs every couple of years. Firefox on Android still hasn’t recovered from last time.
Yes, especially at work. Different tasks, different tab groups. Once the task is done, the group dies. Really useful when working on multiple tasks at “the same time”.
Pair that with multi account containers and temporary containers and it’s a godsend tool for web dev.
Now does that need AI in any capacity? Absolutely not! I’m more upset that they’re even considering such thing because ir sounds utterly useless. A browser should do the browser thing and get out of my way.
I started using tab groups when they released vertical tabs.
RecursiveParadox@lemmy.world
on 10 Aug 08:55
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For work at any given point I have 17-20 tabs open. It’s totally useful for me to sort them into tabs to cut out the “noise” when I’m doing research.
cley_faye@lemmy.world
on 10 Aug 11:10
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It is to some people. My approach though, when I happen to have multiple “work group” to organize, is just to use my OS ability to have multiple windows. No need for any extra bloat, the feature is already there, and it works as I’m used to.
But apparently, using the tools already available to you is not a common skill these days :(
acosmichippo@lemmy.world
on 10 Aug 16:31
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But apparently, using the tools already available to you is not a common skill these days :(
So, are you not understanding that other people work differently, or are you just not using that skill?
Besides offering different approaches for different preferences, there are clear benefits to the extra level of organization. As an additional exercise, try to picture someone using multiple windows and tab groups.
Not everyone operates on the basic level. Hell, why even have tabs? The OS can manage multiple windows, and you can use multiple desktops to achieve the same result without that bloat.
You probably look at tabs as something inherently transient. In my tab group powered workflow a lot of tabs are persistent between browser restarts and stay open at all times. To try to formalize it, there is a set of core tabs that are permanently open, and there are transient tabs are opened and closed from those core tabs. Before tab groups I used “Tree Style Tab” extension but I like tab groups more. It’s especially cool tab groups are integrated well with containers so that you can have for example I2P tab group tied to I2P container configured to use I2P proxy port to automatically browse all tabs opened within group through your I2P proxy port.
It’s like the opposite of classic ML, relatively tiny special purpose models trained for something critical, out of desperation, because it just can’t be done well conventionally.
Here i disagree. ML is using high dimensional statistics. There exist many problems, which are by their nature problems of high dimensional statistics.
If you have for an example an engineering problem, it can make sense to use an ML approach, to find patterns in the relationship between input conditions and output results. Based on this patterns you have an idea, where you need to focus in the physical theory for understanding and optimizing it.
Another example for “generative AI” i have seen is creating models of hearts. So by feeding it the MRI scans of hundreds of real hearts, millions of models for probable heart shapes can be created and the interaction with medical equipment can be studied on them. This isn’t a “desperate” approach. It is a smart approach.
The recognition of the pattern is done by the machine learning. That is the core concept of machine learning.
For the interpretation you need to use your domain knowledge. Machine learning together with knowledge in the domain analyzed can be a very powerful combination.
Another example in research i have heard about recently, is detection of brain tumors before they occur. MRIs are analyzed of people who later developed brain tumors to see if patterns can be detected in the people who developed the tumors that are absent in the people who didn’t develop tumors. This knowledge of a correlation between certain patterns and later tumor development could help specialists to further their understanding of how tumors develop as they can analyze these specific patterns.
What we see with ChatGPT and other LLMs is kind of doing the opposite by detaching the algorithm from any specific knowledge. Subsequently the algorithm can make predictions on anything and they are worth nothing.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world
on 10 Aug 15:09
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Fair point. Not on the semantics per se, but on taking the best approach, 100%.
a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 10 Aug 10:59
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Another local LLM guy here, i fully agree with you - this is probably just a move to acquire capital in the case that the google-cashflow stops.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
on 10 Aug 04:15
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Is that what the FUCK has been happening? I’ve been having tabs just BLOW Up in ram and CPU usage
Same here … all I do is read most of the time … I’m only interested in reading about 2,000 words which shouldn’t take any data … yet Firefox will struggle under the weight of advertising, adblock, scripts, background links, preloading and all kinds of stupidity that I will not and refuse to use.
pycorax@sh.itjust.works
on 10 Aug 05:03
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Instead of capitalising on Google pissing off power users with its crusade against adblockers, why the hell is Mozilla fucking up so hard here? Seriously, which chain of command green lit all of this and didn’t even think this would be remotely an issue?
Sadly this is nothing new for Mozilla. It’s easier to count the decisions they’ve made that aren’t terrible than the ones that are. Their history is a long series of fuckups occasionally punctuated by a decent decision.
Because of this, I’ve always had ‘mixed feelings’ (to put it mildly) towards Mozilla, and sometimes I really struggle not to hate them. They’re (yet) not Google or Microsoft and that’s cool, but besides that, I also cannot think of more than a handful of good decisions against a ton of pretty awful ones, so right now I’ve settled for ‘a necessary evil’, which is pretty sad considering their potential.
not_IO@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 10 Aug 06:47
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it might have been Laura Chambers, who is CEO since early 2024.
It has been less than a week since the new interim CEO took over the reigns from long-time Mozilla CEO Mitchell Baker. Today news broke that Mozilla is changing its product strategy going forward.
The organization plans to focus on bringing “trustworthy AI into Firefox” and to scale back some of its other products and services.
She used to work for McKinsey according to her Wikipedia
which explains a lot if you ask me.
absquatulate@lemmy.world
on 10 Aug 07:11
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Even if they wanted to bank on the adblocker thing I imagine they can’t because they have to stay in Google’s good graces. Like 90% of their revenue was google money, and has been for years now.
At this point I’d honestly even pay for a privacy focused mozilla browser that is clean of all this crap, just to keep them afloat, but fat chance of that happening.
At this point I’d honestly even pay for a privacy focused mozilla browser that is clean of all this crap, just to keep them afloat, but fat chance of that happening.
As much as I’d love for something like that I don’t think it’s even remotely possible. I don’t think enough people are willing enough to pay for a browser that respects them, heck the amount of people who remain on Chrome shows that people aren’t even willing to take a small step to stop using a browser that’s actively working against their interests. I’d love to be proven wrong though.
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
on 10 Aug 09:52
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This. It costs hundreds of millions per year to develop a web renderer. The security expertise required in particular is immense.
People have made clear they will not pay for browsers. At the same time, Mozilla doesn’t want to hoover up mountains of personally identifiable information like Google and MS do.
People hate Mozilla for doing what they can to make money, and they also hate the idea of paying.
I understand the frustration, but I genuinely don’t know what the community expects.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t agree with or see sense in every Mozilla decision, but people act like they’re satan incarnate and it’s just ridiculous.
pycorax@sh.itjust.works
on 10 Aug 10:36
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Honestly if that is it, it is understandable. This AI nonsense, however, is plainly a waste of money and resources, Mozilla’s and their users’.
They just want free shit. They claim they would love to pay but look at the percentage of donations things like VLC get, they won’t pay.
Google likely spends over a billion dollars a year developing Chrome and everyone likes to talk about how AI might upset web search forgetting that what is where Mozilla’s money comes from.
Developing from scratch yes, but several decent open source renderers exist. I’d love to see someone grab Servo and polish it to a fully usable state (I think it’s something like 75% of the way there).
The issue also isn’t Mozilla trying to make money, it’s Mozilla trying to make money in the stupidest way possible, or even worse actively wasting money like with this AI slop. There’s also the issue of what Mozilla is spending on. It came out a little while back how much their executives are making and it’s completely ridiculous. They could afford multiple full time devs with just the money the CEO makes for making the worst decisions imaginable.
The company is doomed with this kind of leadership
funkyfarmington@lemmy.world
on 10 Aug 05:12
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Hmm, I bet Librewolf doesn’t have that…
vala@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 10 Aug 06:07
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Keep firing
nathan@piefed.alphapuggle.dev
on 10 Aug 06:14
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Holy fucking shit. I swear to God, I had to download chromium because running Jupiter lab in browser ate through 22gb of ram and got my shit OOM killed. If this is what's causing it I stg. I'm not even using vanilla Firefox, but the Zen fork got tebased on v141 right before this happened
nathan@piefed.alphapuggle.dev
on 10 Aug 07:10
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Julyterlab has been pinned for multiple versions now and the issue only started happening on the latest Firefox update. Still works fine in chromium
RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz
on 10 Aug 06:33
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Now, several users have taken to the Firefox subreddit to complain about high CPU usage when using the feature, as well as express their disappointment in Mozilla for adding AI to the browser.
I don’t think it even downloads the model if you never enable or use it.
ObviouslyNotBanana@piefed.world
on 10 Aug 06:48
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I love that people get upset that their CPU is using its resources when they're using it.
Reminds me of how some people get upset when their OS uses up all their RAM, no matter how much they have. It’s like they want their PC to be sluggish and unresponsive. Unused RAM is wasted RAM.
Buckshot@programming.dev
on 10 Aug 09:44
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Did a project several years where the customrr required that the server we delivered specifically for the project never use more than 50% CPU or RAM. No requirements about how fast it actually performs its intended function, just that it can only utilise half the available resources while doing it.
Yeah, we have that with our customers sometimes. To me, an app should either be running full whack - maxing out bandwidth on CPU, disk, memory or network - or completely idle. Chuntering along at 2% is a bug. For the ones that put ‘monitoring tools’ that raise errors when we reach 100% on something, we set a Linux CGroup to throttle the offending resource. Takes longer, obviously, but not worth arguing with their network deployment teams 🤷 .
bold_atlas@lemmy.world
on 10 Aug 12:01
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That RAM is mint condition collectors edition RAM. We’re just storing it there temporarily.
Probably a bleed-over from the embedded side. Spent a lot of years working embedded control systems for NASA and DoD - bare metal systems, often interrupt driven - and it was common to have 50% margin requirements. They know those systems will grow over time, and they often have lifespans measured in decades.
That would make sense, i hadn’t put that together but they had a lot of embedded control systems. This was water treatment but entirely separate from the control systems but i can see them having that a standard requirement
So was it a government (state or federal) water treatment plant? If so, I can tell you how it happened. The government contracting agencies have boilerplate text they’re supposed to add to contracts to make sure salient requirements get flowed. They’re supposed to delete or tailor anything that doesn’t make sense, but the contracts people aren’t usually very technical. We had requirements flowed to us about password management and account monitoring, but no one logs into a rocket engine or a torpedo. When we’d point it out, they’d say “oops, we should have deleted that.”
Not in the US, our water infrastructure was sold off in 90s but that makes sense. Was probably something similar
They held us to it though so they overpaid for hardware beyond their needs and we forced the software to run slower
Dreaming_Novaling@lemmy.zip
on 10 Aug 13:59
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Actually, I’m kinda sad that my laptop doesn’t get close to maxing my RAM cause I specifically bought another stick to make it 16GB. This was back when I was using Windows but now I’m bloat-free on Fedoora. I need to get into gaming on my laptop instead now lol.
mannycalavera@feddit.uk
on 10 Aug 11:47
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I want my cou to be idle all the time! Damn it why did I spend so much on a CPU only for it to “do work”? FFS.
No, I haven’t used tab groups. At least not beyond an initial peek when they were introduced. They’re no replacement or useful addition to my vertical hierarchical tabs (Tree Style Tab extension).
You mean that annoying shit they do where I’m trying to move one tab and it puts it in a colored square with some bullshit?
Yeah there was NO WAY TO AVOID THAT. It straight up did that shit on its own. Like literally it almost magnetically attracted itself to the other tab to pull this shit. It effectively activates it for you this way whether you want it or not.
Man even Firefox is starting to shit the bed with their decision making.
I switched to FF after having enough of Chrome’s shenanigans. I don’t make changes easily, and I took the sacrifice of not being able to receive calls over Facebook (desktop browser, and some of my acquaintances wouldn’t leave FB), and I still preferred Firefox after that.
And now they want to turn it into another Chrome? I could still just use Chrome and have the lost functionality. I mean I won’t, but they will just lose users with that direction.
Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub
on 10 Aug 12:48
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Here I am using browsers like apps. Chrome is my facebook app. I do zero else with it lol.
but really, my solution works fine. Is another 200MB on your SSD really that big of a sacrifice? I have Firefox, Chrome(in a fucking container where it belongs) and Librewolf installed lol.
I have sort of the same three browsers on all my machines.
LibreWolf: to use
Firefox: it’s the default browser and feels like it should still be installed. And just a couple times a year some website has a strange issue in LibreWolf but will work in Firefox. Honestly I’d rather do it this way than start weakening LibreWolf’s settings to make outlier sites work.
Ungoogled Chromium: I’m sure it will come in handy some day.
Even though I’m aware Google would still have a lot of my data even if I deleted everything possible, one of the main reasons I swapped (apart from the manifest V3 controversy) was the privacy problem (yes, I know, I’m still using Facebook, regardless). I haven’t thought of the container aspect, though - thanks for that.
How do you think they will do that without any money?
It’s always “just do the browser” , ignoring the fact that everything you listed doesn’t matter at all to the general public who are likely using Chrome because it’s the default on their device.
Mozilla is trying to find revenue sources but people just complain about it.
The AI integration is clearly attempting to be a new search box.
It isn’t though. At the higher end the last ceo was making 7 million. That is roughly 12 enginees after compensation and everything else… It isn’t nothing but it’s less than 5 percent of the employees they laid off a year ago.
Increasing executive pay is a problem but it will barely move the needle.
I use vanilla FF, Floorp, LibreWolf, and Mullvad in the FF family (plus Vivaldi for Chromium) - I only use vanilla FF for anything that I want to use persistent logins and containers for, so it’s like an hour a day at most. I only installed the update 36 hours ago, do other than set bookmarks, I haven’t searched anything with FF to give it the opportunity to recommend anything.
In the settings, there’s 2 boxes you can un-check about recommendations. Seems pretty easy to disable this.
I like Floorp. it’s a FF fork by a Japanese dev team. Best I can compare it to is Vivaldi as far as customization (what Mozilla will allow).
However the updates for it have been coming less frequently over time so I’m not sure how that bodes for the long term.
But hey i’m currently building my own FF fork with fediverse integration, tree style/stacking tabs, and vim navigation sooooo look forward to that? /shameless self promotion.
SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org
on 10 Aug 11:16
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They are all out of date, updates just take longer to arrive including security patches. Just use base Firefox and configure it as needed.
Always the answer until it goes to complete shit. Folks will always suggest other forks, but in the same breath describe them as subpar compared to Firefox base. FF is still best, just tweak it a smidge, browse away.
LibreWolf seems pretty fast about it. The difference is only ever a matter of a few days for routine updates.
For example, it looks like Firefox 141 with the AI stuff was released on July 22, a few weeks ago.
My LibreWolf install is 141.0.2 (edit: since updated)
My Firefox install is 141.0.3
That difference is worth it to me to know that various things I don’t want have been removed from the code entirely, and that I can keep a completely default install of Firefox and/or nuke and replace that install whenever necessary.
Edit to add: A few hours since posting, I checked for updates and now I’m on LibreWolf 141.0.3. :)
I wish Mozilla would just debloat the browser, focus on performance and making browsing a good experience. But unfortunately their revenue situation is bad. At this stage, they won’t even manage to survive through donations after annoying their main user base.
melroy@kbin.melroy.org
on 10 Aug 10:54
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They aren't doing anymore for years. I moved to forks of ff instead.
cley_faye@lemmy.world
on 10 Aug 11:08
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They haven’t needed donations for years. In the current situations donos are, at best, part of the CEO and top-brass bonus.
it’s even worse than that tho: donations are for the mozilla foundation which is doing all the nonsense everyone hates… firefox is the mozilla corporation, which is a distinct entity
How do you make browsling a good experience, other than performance?
I like the webpage translation it offers. I’d hate to lose it. Sync and tab sending is also very important to me, between desktop, mobile phone, and tablet.
I’m sure debloating would inevitably mean losing features that are required to catch the average internet user.
Well this is obviously personal to some degree, but for me it would be to fix bugs, don’t crash, dont make me restart after an update and lose my incognito tabs, focus on being w3c compliant, block ads, maybe allow blocking annoying cookie banners and maybe allow good keyboard navigation. I like some features other browsers have, such as integrated tor browsing - but since I am not a big fan of bloat, I’m not sure whether that should be handled outside of the browser
block ads, maybe allow blocking annoying cookie banners and maybe allow good keyboard navigation.
those are/could be browsing extensions. i don’t see why the browser should integrate ad blocking when it could just be an extension (that could be installed by default, like how librewolf has ublock origin installed by default).
Fair, I’m all in for de-bloating! The only problem with plugins is that it can become increasingly difficult to provide the same quality of testing and quality, because you can’t possibly test all combinations of enabled plugins - even if most don’t interfere with each other, it can easily break stuff
Yeah, a good browser should probably take an approach similar to Linux Mint.
It has to be easy to install and it has to work great for like 99.9% of normal uses without changing a single setting.
But, being free and open, if you are tech savvy then you can change and customize whatever you want. Sometimes it means I can lock down the privacy and data storage in my browser, and sometimes it means I can change the icon on my work computer’s “start” button to be a check engine light. It’s all just part of being able to use your computer the way you want to.
This is an UI issue. You could just show them a landing Page and ask them if they want this new feature, and then it installs the extension in the background, without explicitly ask the user to go to the extension page to install something by hand.
BurgerBaron@piefed.social
on 10 Aug 14:53
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Facebook Container comes to mind, they've done this before already.
haloduder@thelemmy.club
on 10 Aug 12:50
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Their revenue is fine. They just waste it on unnecessary bullshit.
They’re a business, after all. They don’t care about their products. They care about doing the least amount of work while making the most amount of money.
It’s not about keeping the lights on. It’s about living as luxurious a life as possible.
They care about doing the least amount of work while making the most amount of money.
I mean that’s what capitalism does in a nutshell. Lower costs and increase the price. It’s optimized for profit, not for the best product, unfortunately. The only thing that should keep it within lines is competition, but if the competition isn’t any better it won’t help
Yep, and it still works great. I even use LibreWolf on my work machine, and since it’s running Linux I need to use all the Microsoft 365 stuff, like attending meetings via Teams, in my web browser. I just let it persist and share some site data to make things run smoothly. (which is a compromise, yeah)
The only real issue I had was when I installed the flatpak version, and it was the flatpak permissions screwing with me. Most of the time though I have been using the version from their repo.
cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone
on 10 Aug 11:06
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ppl complaining on the internet about something you can literally turn off with one about:config line never change internet
The point is you shouldnt have to turn it off, its a web browser, we want to browse the web, not be subject to whatever shite Mozilla want to force into it. Features like this should be optional plugins you have to download.
cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone
on 10 Aug 12:00
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why shouldn't you have the option to turn things off? try turning off the ai features in chrome.
For the same reason that “send me your advertising” ticky-boxes on website sign-ups should not be ticked by default: because the “feature” is detrimental to many (if not most) users and you have to spot the control before you can disable it. Worse, in this case many ignorant users won’t make the connection between this misfeature and the fact that their laptop is suddenly burning through its battery in double-time—they’ll just assume Firefox is now broken.
UltraMagnus0001@lemmy.world
on 10 Aug 12:03
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On my pixel 6 pro it takes a few seconds before I can start typing in the browser.
Dreaming_Novaling@lemmy.zip
on 10 Aug 13:56
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If you’re a little less afraid of stuff breaking, use IronFox, it’s been configured for privacy and security. If you don’t want websites to break as much use Fennec.
mechoman444@lemmy.world
on 10 Aug 12:15
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Firefox has always been resource heavy. Try having multiple streams open at the same time… The browser just takes a shit.
If you want something much lighter and more stable waterfox is the way to go.
raldone01@lemmy.world
on 10 Aug 12:22
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I just wish one could donate to firefox development specifically. Then they could rid it of all the advertisement and tracking stuff.
calcopiritus@lemmy.world
on 10 Aug 13:27
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Non profits do have corporate leeches too. The executives at Mozilla have executive salaries. That is, hundreds of thousands, or millions.
They don’t work out of the goodness of their hearts. And Mozilla has to find a way to earn the income to pay their bloated salaries.
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 10 Aug 23:08
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Why would an organisation choose to over spend on executive salaries?
Obviously, it’s because thats what it costs to get people with the right skills.
haloduder@thelemmy.club
on 10 Aug 14:17
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Profit can be distorted based on how much employees are being paid.
They’re a “non-profit,” but their CEO makes millions of dollars per year. I’d say that’s a profit.
Believing otherwise is just falling for rhetoric that exists to take advantage of our naivete so people richer than us can be even richer.
Many of you will disagree with this (because you’re greedy consumerists), but their employees also typically don’t need to be paid nearly as much as they are. Their employees are also working to maximize profit, albeit from a different, less-effective angle.
Money brings out the worst in people. I don’t really value the input of people going to bat for the businessmen taking their money. Too often I see useful idiots proud to be ripped off and getting angry whenever someone points it out. It’s really the norm at this point, which is sad.
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 10 Aug 23:11
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Calling whatever you like “profit” cant really be rebutted, it’s subjective semantics.
Yes CEOs are paid lots of money. Why would mozilla choose to over pay staff?
Are you really asking why would the people at the top of an organization choose to overpay themselves?
dantheclamman@lemmy.world
on 10 Aug 14:22
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Mozilla is a bizarre Matryoshka doll with a for profit company inside of the nonprofit. If anything, I believe this structure is responsible for Mozilla’s problems
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 10 Aug 23:09
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So the profit from the for-profit is passed up to the non-profit.
This is a really common organisational structure and not bizarre.
There’s loads of worthy criticisms to make of mozilla but this is not one of them.
People underestimate the cost of building a fucking browser
The browser is built. I don’t want to see them have a gigantic development staff because further updates are just as likely to enshitify as to improve something.
Some random dude promising to "donate from time to time" is not a valid business model.
A lot of people donating, while not spending that money on dumb projects, and worse exectutives is a valid business model. Mozilla just doesn't want to do that, because they care more about their executives than they care about Firefox.
BurgerBaron@piefed.social
on 10 Aug 12:39
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I just want a web browser that's not based in the USA.
BurgerBaron@piefed.social
on 10 Aug 14:43
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I mean truly independent of USA code base. Everything is still relying on upstream Chromium or Firefox with superficial tweaks and gimmicks. The maintainers of LibreWolf and Fennec which are what I'm using are more like game mod devs.
If ecosia+qwant actually forked from either and broke compatibility going their own path I'd consider them non USA. I know those two are working together on a search indexer and I'm very excited about that coming to fruition because that's more what I'm talking about and eager to support.
I realise what a mammoth challenge this is :( Probably needs EU funding like the search indexer.
Fr, that was my daily driver for a while back in the day
defaultwizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 10 Aug 22:33
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It’s still a way out but Ladybird might be the alternative going forward. However, they’ve stated that it’s only going to support linux/mac with a windows version in the “eventually” column which makes it kinda hard to sell to people.
BurgerBaron@piefed.social
on 10 Aug 22:42
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American non-profit open source browser from scratch is certainly better, still not it.
Even though I'll probably switch :p I follow their youtube channel. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough and all that.
JuxtaposedJaguar@lemmy.ml
on 11 Aug 02:33
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It’s actually a smart move. Linux users are the most receptive audience, and the most likely to support its development.
It’s also an example of a smaller company trying fight a mega Corp with infinite money, gained via unethical means.
People are shitting on Firefox while ignoring what they are up against.
I have no solution for their funding issue, what are they supposed to do? Charge for the browser or ads? There’s literally no other alternative and I don’t know what the solution is.
What I do know is that once FF dies and chrome fully owns the web we are well and truly fucked.
It’s really annoying when it’s pushed in our faces everywhere. For getting a quick image of something you specify, or help with some boilerplate text it can be pretty neat.
bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works
on 10 Aug 16:12
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Yep. Make the normies depend on the shitty Ai and kill the real internet. Makes me so fucking mad.
Mozilla has used the most powerful cheat code in history: infinite money for free.
Google cannot let Mozilla go under or they would become an actual monopolist, triggering a lot of laws that would force them to diversifying/selling the browser.
They don’t want any of that headache so they’re pumping Mozilla full of money, making sure that they can always operate as “the other browser engine”.
The issue is that Mozilla’s management seems to be completely incapable of doing anything interesting. Instead of ensuring that Firefox is the lightest, most optimised browser on the market while also being packed full of features (or at least full-fledged add-ons, not this crap they have), they do… mostly nothing.
Their last major update was “vertical tabs”, something that Chromium-based browsers had for around a decade.
Their previous major update was integrating Pocket…
Meanwhile, PWAs still barely work, add-ons are still dependent on the website being loaded instead of working on the browser level, the whole thing still feels bulky.
Mozilla management needs to be replaced and then we might see some movement on the market.
DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 10 Aug 14:13
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You’re forgetting the fact that laws are currently only being triggered if said company slanders dear leader.
If Google kisses ass you best believe they would completely allow them to be a monopoly and would ignore any laws being violated
Hinging their entire future on the bet that their country gets an easily manipulated dictator, when said dictator is 80 years old already, would be extremely short-sighted from Google.
They could stop paying their CEO so much and hire a few more devs, refocus their identity on privacy and performance (their offline ai translation is actually really useful), and actually give people the sense that their donations will be well spent.
I have no solution for their funding issue, what are they supposed to do?
Stop updating their browser every 5 minutes. Software that already works fine does not need continuious updates that will sooner or later subtract value.
Literally no one on this green earth asked for this shit. In fact, we’ve been pretty direct about how much we don’t want it.
It’s exhausting.
bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works
on 10 Aug 16:11
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Well, stupid people want it and they do use it when its shoved in their face. Like how samsung updated and BLATANTLY made their peice of shit AI button TAKE OVER THR POWER BUTTON so when you try to turn off your phone little old granny gets confused that an ai agent pops up and starts recording you. Absolutely infuriating and I wish torture on whoever implemented that shit.
somethingsomethingidk@lemmy.world
on 10 Aug 17:05
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Holy shit I had no idea until I read your comment. I thought “surely they will have respected all of my opt outs”. I guess this is my last samsung phone lol
It was. I’m struggling to find anything that was an actual improvement in the UI. Most of the changes were trivial and change for change’s sake; but some were awful, and none are clearly better.
JuxtaposedJaguar@lemmy.ml
on 11 Aug 02:20
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The kinds of people who want that switched to Google Chrome years ago. Only people who care more about software freedom than convenience are still using Firefox today.
Bixby was not llm based, originally, and sometimes updates will rewrite a user’s custom settings. For instance, I had a galaxy on which I made pushing the power button three times turn on the flashlight. An update occurred that overrode that setting by deleting it and turned on five presses to call 911. I ended up accidently calling 911 at 3am (accompanied by a blasting alarm sound) trying not to wake someone by turning on the light.
Mozilla has stopped working on developing and improving their products, and is now entirely focused on adding trendy terms and garbage, to feed money to their C*Os.
They in the last year or so added built in vertical tabs , much better hardware support for decoding video on Linux, continue to support manifest v2 and high quality ad blocking. Have increased performance and memory usage.
In the last 7 years performance is night and day different as is multiple process performance and switched away from unmaintainable old broken addon system.
They also created one of the premiere programming languages which is making in roads in the Linux kernel.
glog78@digitalcourage.social
on 10 Aug 21:33
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@michaelmrose@swordgeek I 100% agree that Mozilla is important but it's also clear that currently their is not enough business to keep Mozilla going. I don't blame them for trying to make a Business , i blame them for not following their former values. You can make a business and still mostly follow values ( look for example to GOG ). And what i don't like the most is the change from opt in to opt out. Every new feature most users don't want. You can argue that they know this and make it harder and harder to turn off those new "features" . The last time it was hidden in a sub menu in the settings ( switching off sending data to their ad service ) now it's hidden in about:config. I guess next time you need 3rd party patches and compile the browser yourself to switch a "feature" off.
All right, but apart from the vertical tabs, better video decoding, support for manifest v2, high quality adblocking, increased performance, and the useful programming language, what has Mozilla ever done for us?
I messed with a few browsers (Librefox and others), but ended up on Waterfox because it’s just Firefox…without much extra shit. It’s faster, lighter, and runs all of the Firefox extensions I love.
massivemeatballs@lemmy.world
on 10 Aug 16:06
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I’ll keep using LibreWolf as my main browser while keeping an eye on Ladybird with my fingers crossed.
MithranArkanere@lemmy.world
on 10 Aug 16:17
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Firefox does run better when you disable all “ml.chat” settings.
According to the article, this is mainly for grouping tabs with a suggested name. Talk about backwards. Use AI to process the top websites on the Internet and create groups and/or logic to group them by keywords (cluster analysis), then save the small data structure in Firefox so it can group most websites instantly, using kilobytes of ram in the process; don’t try to do this on everyone’s device ffs.
Besides the heat and battery problem, this also means that the GUI is going to be non-deterministic, suggesting groups differently day-to-day based on the slight differences of input and the whims of the LLM. Burn it with fire.
Oh, so that’s what the fuck it was. I was wondering why my tabs were getting grouped without any logic or reason. Impressive ability to make everything actively worse
ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk
on 10 Aug 20:11
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It does seem bizarre and woefully inefficient to run this process on-the-fly locally.
Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de
on 10 Aug 21:39
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I don’t think the centralised approach works either. If you bake that grouping metadata of individual popular pages into Firefox you have an issue with keeping it current if page content changes. And you have a difficult trade-off between covering enough pages vs not blowing up the size too much. And the approach can’t work for deep web pages, e.g. anything people can only see when logged in.
Ignoring all that: The groupings you could pre-process would be static and determined over some assumed average user behaviour, not an actual cluster of a specific users themes. You take some hardcore Warhammer 40k fan, and all his tabs on minis and painting techniques and rulebooks and fan media, and apply the static grouping then it all goes into “Warhammer”. However if you ran it locally it might come up with “Painting” “Figures” “Rules” “Fanart” or whatever. It would produce a more fine grained clustering for someone who is deep into a specific niche interest, and a more coarse grained one otherwise.
So I think fundamentally it’s correct to cluster locally and dynamically for a usable result. They need to make it opt-in, and efficient enough. Or better yet they could just abandon the idea because it’s ultimately not that much use compared to the required inference cost.
Why would they bury the option… are they being paid to include this AI feature or something…?
flop_leash_973@lemmy.world
on 10 Aug 16:59
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Without having much knowledge of AI models beyond surface level stuff I read, but a good understanding on how computers work it seems fairly predictable to me that running an AI model in the browser session locally would be CPU intensive. As such you would think as a developer you would start with adding the feature as off by default, so users that want it can turn it on and you can get some real world metrics on how bad that hit is going to be before bending the entire user base over the AI kitchen table so to speak.
So both doing it for something as trivial as tab grouping and making it something you have to go into about:config to disable seems really stupid.
TBH despite I don’t like this specific idea, nor use Firefox directly, I do like the usage of local inference vs sending your data to thirdparty to do AI.
They just needed to do it OPT IN, not OPT OUT.
ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk
on 10 Aug 20:13
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Firefox really does seem to have lost the plot… they don’t seem to go five minutes without slamming their dick in another drawer. It starts to look like they’re in to it.
If AI mustt exist it should be in places where the general public cannot access nor interact with it
Tywele@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 11 Aug 10:07
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Do you have to enable the feature first? Because I’m on v141 and I don’t see this feature. Complaining about a useless and draining feature that you yourself enabled is a special kind of stupid tbh.
threaded - newest
about:config
in your address bar
My hero
Awe shucks
I too like corn.
Indeed it is a maligned but wonderful and versatile staple food
You only disable the chat. Overall setting seems to be
browser.ml.enable.Thanks!
I also see an extensions.ml.enable. Anyone with actual knowledge of the source code know what those are doing?
I hate how many of these you have to do on any new installation of Firefox.
A space for vanilla ff experience extension, sort of like sanemacs?
That’s basically what librewolf, waterfox, and a whole bunch of others are. In the same way manjaro and endeavor etc. are opinionated arch installs with spackling, those browsers are opinionated settings-already-selected versions of firefox.
Just what I needed, ty
The pathological need to find something to use LLMs for is so bizzare.
It’s like the opposite of classic ML, relatively tiny special purpose models trained for something critical, out of desperation, because it just can’t be done well conventionally.
But this:
Take out the word AI.
If this feature took, say, a gigabyte of RAM and a bunch of CPU, it would be laughed out. But somehow it ships because it has the word AI in it? That makes no sense.
I am a massive local LLM advocate. I like “generative” ML, within reason and ethics. But this is just stupid.
When I’m browsing around with multiple tabs open, the last thing I want is something to start moving them around and messing my flow up. This is a solution looking for a problem.
Yup
Auto naming functionality is neat in some cases, like the AI chat UI itself
Tab groups don’t hit those points at all
Venture capital dumped so much money into the tech without understanding the full scope of what it was capable of. Now they’re so in so deep that they desperately NEED to find something profitable it can do, otherwise they’ll lose the farm.
Firefox has little financial motivation for this, though?
Other than getting “AI” investor money, if that’s the plan… But otherwise it just feels like they’re following a meme.
It makes a lot more sense when you realize that the Mozilla corporation is a for profit run by the same techno-fascist aggrandizing bait-and-switch narcissists as the rest of SV.
I’ve been saying it for years, but I will never donate to Firefox until it is freed from the shackles of a for profit corporation that can use your donation for any profit motive it sees fit; not even related to Firefox.
Isn’t the “for-profit” Mozilla Corporation owned by the “non-profit” Mozilla Foundation though?
I don’t care. It’s a corrosive force that causes them to pay for over priced CEO’s and integrate services that nobody cares about into Firefox (like pocket) or that runs against their principles (container VPN’s exclusive to Mozillas for-profit VPN).
IIRC, you can't even donate to Firefox. You can only donate to Mozilla. It seems pretty clear to me why they set it up that way....
90% of their cash flow comes from google to be the default search engine - they are probably trying to open up alternative routes of funding to reduce the risk, since it’s not guaranteed that the money will keep coming due to the current lawsuit.
Right, I sympathize with that.
…But also it’s ridiculous. Like why should including a feature with “AI” in it get them VC money? Even if that’s kinda reality?
TBH they should just become a contributor to llama.cpp and market that somehow.
even without AI, to me tab groups are already feature creep bloat in browsers. do people really put that much effort into organizing tabs?
No, but I think the idea of a second layer of organization to tabs is a wonderful idea. Maybe not a gig of RAM to sort them, sure.
FF already has tab groups. Right click on one.
Yeah, they were added somewhat recently, I know.
I like the tab groups. I use them often at work to group an issue with related tabs and my attempts at solving it. Also makes it easier to pause work on one problem and work on something else because I have the tabs grouper and know exactly where to go back.
And nobody should stop you installing an extension that provides tab groups. I agree with the other commentator that some features can be left to extensions and don’t need to be part of the core web browser, though.
True, but I’m not sure that an extension would have the necessary access to manipulate the browser like that. I don’t think it should. A malicious extension could do horrible things.
I don’t know if they still do but they used to have. That, however, is something to discuss with the genius decision makers at Mozilla who decide to break extension APIs every couple of years. Firefox on Android still hasn’t recovered from last time.
Yes, especially at work. Different tasks, different tab groups. Once the task is done, the group dies. Really useful when working on multiple tasks at “the same time”.
Pair that with multi account containers and temporary containers and it’s a godsend tool for web dev.
Now does that need AI in any capacity? Absolutely not! I’m more upset that they’re even considering such thing because ir sounds utterly useless. A browser should do the browser thing and get out of my way.
I started using tab groups when they released vertical tabs.
For work at any given point I have 17-20 tabs open. It’s totally useful for me to sort them into tabs to cut out the “noise” when I’m doing research.
It is to some people. My approach though, when I happen to have multiple “work group” to organize, is just to use my OS ability to have multiple windows. No need for any extra bloat, the feature is already there, and it works as I’m used to.
But apparently, using the tools already available to you is not a common skill these days :(
yes, that’s exactly what i was getting at.
So, are you not understanding that other people work differently, or are you just not using that skill?
Besides offering different approaches for different preferences, there are clear benefits to the extra level of organization. As an additional exercise, try to picture someone using multiple windows and tab groups.
Not everyone operates on the basic level. Hell, why even have tabs? The OS can manage multiple windows, and you can use multiple desktops to achieve the same result without that bloat.
The very first five words of my message was that this was useful to some people.
You probably look at tabs as something inherently transient. In my tab group powered workflow a lot of tabs are persistent between browser restarts and stay open at all times. To try to formalize it, there is a set of core tabs that are permanently open, and there are transient tabs are opened and closed from those core tabs. Before tab groups I used “Tree Style Tab” extension but I like tab groups more. It’s especially cool tab groups are integrated well with containers so that you can have for example I2P tab group tied to I2P container configured to use I2P proxy port to automatically browse all tabs opened within group through your I2P proxy port.
I agree with you on almost everything.
Here i disagree. ML is using high dimensional statistics. There exist many problems, which are by their nature problems of high dimensional statistics.
If you have for an example an engineering problem, it can make sense to use an ML approach, to find patterns in the relationship between input conditions and output results. Based on this patterns you have an idea, where you need to focus in the physical theory for understanding and optimizing it.
Another example for “generative AI” i have seen is creating models of hearts. So by feeding it the MRI scans of hundreds of real hearts, millions of models for probable heart shapes can be created and the interaction with medical equipment can be studied on them. This isn’t a “desperate” approach. It is a smart approach.
How do you tell what the patterns are, or how to interpret them?
The recognition of the pattern is done by the machine learning. That is the core concept of machine learning.
For the interpretation you need to use your domain knowledge. Machine learning together with knowledge in the domain analyzed can be a very powerful combination.
Another example in research i have heard about recently, is detection of brain tumors before they occur. MRIs are analyzed of people who later developed brain tumors to see if patterns can be detected in the people who developed the tumors that are absent in the people who didn’t develop tumors. This knowledge of a correlation between certain patterns and later tumor development could help specialists to further their understanding of how tumors develop as they can analyze these specific patterns.
What we see with ChatGPT and other LLMs is kind of doing the opposite by detaching the algorithm from any specific knowledge. Subsequently the algorithm can make predictions on anything and they are worth nothing.
Fair point. Not on the semantics per se, but on taking the best approach, 100%.
Another local LLM guy here, i fully agree with you - this is probably just a move to acquire capital in the case that the google-cashflow stops.
Is that what the FUCK has been happening? I’ve been having tabs just BLOW Up in ram and CPU usage
Same here … all I do is read most of the time … I’m only interested in reading about 2,000 words which shouldn’t take any data … yet Firefox will struggle under the weight of advertising, adblock, scripts, background links, preloading and all kinds of stupidity that I will not and refuse to use.
This doesn’t trigger unless you enable and use it afaik
Waterfox and/or Librewolf FTW
Switched to Librewolf yesterday and yep it's exactly like Firefox, but without the bad stuff.
I just checked my Librewolf settings:
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/f675a063-b217-4046-a47a-e6e0800c2a60.png">
This stuff is ml chat is off by default.
Come to LibreWolf, the waters fine!
It really is! Just needs an Android fork and it’ll be on all my devices.
use ironfox for android, it’s the continuation of Mull
I’ll check that out!
Mull has stopped develop? 🥺
Try IronFox on android.
Am a wolf (that uses LW), can confirm
Instead of capitalising on Google pissing off power users with its crusade against adblockers, why the hell is Mozilla fucking up so hard here? Seriously, which chain of command green lit all of this and didn’t even think this would be remotely an issue?
Sadly this is nothing new for Mozilla. It’s easier to count the decisions they’ve made that aren’t terrible than the ones that are. Their history is a long series of fuckups occasionally punctuated by a decent decision.
Because of this, I’ve always had ‘mixed feelings’ (to put it mildly) towards Mozilla, and sometimes I really struggle not to hate them. They’re (yet) not Google or Microsoft and that’s cool, but besides that, I also cannot think of more than a handful of good decisions against a ton of pretty awful ones, so right now I’ve settled for ‘a necessary evil’, which is pretty sad considering their potential.
it might have been Laura Chambers, who is CEO since early 2024.
Breaking: Mozilla changes strategy, focuses on Firefox and AI
She used to work for McKinsey according to her Wikipedia which explains a lot if you ask me.
Even if they wanted to bank on the adblocker thing I imagine they can’t because they have to stay in Google’s good graces. Like 90% of their revenue was google money, and has been for years now.
At this point I’d honestly even pay for a privacy focused mozilla browser that is clean of all this crap, just to keep them afloat, but fat chance of that happening.
As much as I’d love for something like that I don’t think it’s even remotely possible. I don’t think enough people are willing enough to pay for a browser that respects them, heck the amount of people who remain on Chrome shows that people aren’t even willing to take a small step to stop using a browser that’s actively working against their interests. I’d love to be proven wrong though.
This. It costs hundreds of millions per year to develop a web renderer. The security expertise required in particular is immense.
People have made clear they will not pay for browsers. At the same time, Mozilla doesn’t want to hoover up mountains of personally identifiable information like Google and MS do.
People hate Mozilla for doing what they can to make money, and they also hate the idea of paying.
I understand the frustration, but I genuinely don’t know what the community expects.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t agree with or see sense in every Mozilla decision, but people act like they’re satan incarnate and it’s just ridiculous.
Honestly if that is it, it is understandable. This AI nonsense, however, is plainly a waste of money and resources, Mozilla’s and their users’.
The community are idiots.
They just want free shit. They claim they would love to pay but look at the percentage of donations things like VLC get, they won’t pay.
Google likely spends over a billion dollars a year developing Chrome and everyone likes to talk about how AI might upset web search forgetting that what is where Mozilla’s money comes from.
Developing from scratch yes, but several decent open source renderers exist. I’d love to see someone grab Servo and polish it to a fully usable state (I think it’s something like 75% of the way there).
The issue also isn’t Mozilla trying to make money, it’s Mozilla trying to make money in the stupidest way possible, or even worse actively wasting money like with this AI slop. There’s also the issue of what Mozilla is spending on. It came out a little while back how much their executives are making and it’s completely ridiculous. They could afford multiple full time devs with just the money the CEO makes for making the worst decisions imaginable.
The company is doomed with this kind of leadership
Hmm, I bet Librewolf doesn’t have that…
Keep firing
Holy fucking shit. I swear to God, I had to download chromium because running Jupiter lab in browser ate through 22gb of ram and got my shit OOM killed. If this is what's causing it I stg. I'm not even using vanilla Firefox, but the Zen fork got tebased on v141 right before this happened
Sounds kind a jupyter lab issue
Julyterlab has been pinned for multiple versions now and the issue only started happening on the latest Firefox update. Still works fine in chromium
I don’t think it even downloads the model if you never enable or use it.
I love that people get upset that their CPU is using its resources when they're using it.
Reminds me of how some people get upset when their OS uses up all their RAM, no matter how much they have. It’s like they want their PC to be sluggish and unresponsive. Unused RAM is wasted RAM.
Did a project several years where the customrr required that the server we delivered specifically for the project never use more than 50% CPU or RAM. No requirements about how fast it actually performs its intended function, just that it can only utilise half the available resources while doing it.
My software does that anyway because I can’t be arsed with multithreading or a 64 bit version
Yeah, we have that with our customers sometimes. To me, an app should either be running full whack - maxing out bandwidth on CPU, disk, memory or network - or completely idle. Chuntering along at 2% is a bug. For the ones that put ‘monitoring tools’ that raise errors when we reach 100% on something, we set a Linux CGroup to throttle the offending resource. Takes longer, obviously, but not worth arguing with their network deployment teams 🤷 .
That RAM is mint condition collectors edition RAM. We’re just storing it there temporarily.
Don’t you dare fucking touch it.
Probably a bleed-over from the embedded side. Spent a lot of years working embedded control systems for NASA and DoD - bare metal systems, often interrupt driven - and it was common to have 50% margin requirements. They know those systems will grow over time, and they often have lifespans measured in decades.
That would make sense, i hadn’t put that together but they had a lot of embedded control systems. This was water treatment but entirely separate from the control systems but i can see them having that a standard requirement
So was it a government (state or federal) water treatment plant? If so, I can tell you how it happened. The government contracting agencies have boilerplate text they’re supposed to add to contracts to make sure salient requirements get flowed. They’re supposed to delete or tailor anything that doesn’t make sense, but the contracts people aren’t usually very technical. We had requirements flowed to us about password management and account monitoring, but no one logs into a rocket engine or a torpedo. When we’d point it out, they’d say “oops, we should have deleted that.”
Not in the US, our water infrastructure was sold off in 90s but that makes sense. Was probably something similar They held us to it though so they overpaid for hardware beyond their needs and we forced the software to run slower
Actually, I’m kinda sad that my laptop doesn’t get close to maxing my RAM cause I specifically bought another stick to make it 16GB. This was back when I was using Windows but now I’m bloat-free on Fedoora. I need to get into gaming on my laptop instead now lol.
I want my cou to be idle all the time! Damn it why did I spend so much on a CPU only for it to “do work”? FFS.
Why don’t they download more CPU? Are they stupid?
“I’ve noticed that my CPU, GPU, and power usage goes up when I run games. Valve needs to fix this ASAP! Steam is literally unusable!”
Isn’t this enabled by default? And don’t you have to manually edit the config settings in the browser to disable it?
It wasn’t for me
browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled = falseI haven’t used it and it is enabled in
about:configfor me.Have you used the tab groups?
No, I haven’t used tab groups. At least not beyond an initial peek when they were introduced. They’re no replacement or useful addition to my vertical hierarchical tabs (Tree Style Tab extension).
You mean that annoying shit they do where I’m trying to move one tab and it puts it in a colored square with some bullshit?
Yeah there was NO WAY TO AVOID THAT. It straight up did that shit on its own. Like literally it almost magnetically attracted itself to the other tab to pull this shit. It effectively activates it for you this way whether you want it or not.
Man even Firefox is starting to shit the bed with their decision making.
.
First thing I did when some hey we added AI… was to right-click and disable it.
That’ll stop 'em ;)
Mozilla does it again, adding useless crap.
Make a stable, privacy respecting, robust browser with a powerful extension environment? No let’s try do do chrome 2
Mozilla could solve all of it’s issuesby just removing all of the executives
I switched to FF after having enough of Chrome’s shenanigans. I don’t make changes easily, and I took the sacrifice of not being able to receive calls over Facebook (desktop browser, and some of my acquaintances wouldn’t leave FB), and I still preferred Firefox after that.
And now they want to turn it into another Chrome? I could still just use Chrome and have the lost functionality. I mean I won’t, but they will just lose users with that direction.
Here I am using browsers like apps. Chrome is my facebook app. I do zero else with it lol.
but really, my solution works fine. Is another 200MB on your SSD really that big of a sacrifice? I have Firefox, Chrome(in a fucking container where it belongs) and Librewolf installed lol.
I have sort of the same three browsers on all my machines.
LibreWolf: to use
Firefox: it’s the default browser and feels like it should still be installed. And just a couple times a year some website has a strange issue in LibreWolf but will work in Firefox. Honestly I’d rather do it this way than start weakening LibreWolf’s settings to make outlier sites work.
Ungoogled Chromium: I’m sure it will come in handy some day.
Even though I’m aware Google would still have a lot of my data even if I deleted everything possible, one of the main reasons I swapped (apart from the manifest V3 controversy) was the privacy problem (yes, I know, I’m still using Facebook, regardless). I haven’t thought of the container aspect, though - thanks for that.
How do you think they will do that without any money?
It’s always “just do the browser” , ignoring the fact that everything you listed doesn’t matter at all to the general public who are likely using Chrome because it’s the default on their device.
Mozilla is trying to find revenue sources but people just complain about it.
The AI integration is clearly attempting to be a new search box.
Look at the executives pay of Mozilla, there is a lot of money there to start with.
It isn’t though. At the higher end the last ceo was making 7 million. That is roughly 12 enginees after compensation and everything else… It isn’t nothing but it’s less than 5 percent of the employees they laid off a year ago.
Increasing executive pay is a problem but it will barely move the needle.
For what it’s worth, I would have no issue payibgif I knew that money didn’t go in the pockets of a few executives :)
It’s definitely an issue with the culture among tech companies.
They’re all regurgitating each other’s shit, so whenever a bad idea gets passed around, they all jump on board.
Every ignorant, fearing for their bonus CEO: "If we dont do that, we'll get left behind!"
Feh! Feh I say!
I just use Librewolf so its removed by default.
Which fork should I be using? I am already using IronFox on Android and I’m loving it. What about Linux? What’s your favourite?
I have zen and librewolf on linux and waterfox on android.
Firefox-ESR.
I use vanilla FF, Floorp, LibreWolf, and Mullvad in the FF family (plus Vivaldi for Chromium) - I only use vanilla FF for anything that I want to use persistent logins and containers for, so it’s like an hour a day at most. I only installed the update 36 hours ago, do other than set bookmarks, I haven’t searched anything with FF to give it the opportunity to recommend anything.
In the settings, there’s 2 boxes you can un-check about recommendations. Seems pretty easy to disable this.
I love Zen.
Zen user here also. Awesome project. Beautiful and useful browsing experience.
I can only answer that last question with Waterfox, as I’ve been using it for something like a decade.
My other browser is Vivaldi because of the tab stacking feature makes organising, uh, …stuff… easier…
Waterfox on mobile and floorp on desktop.
I like Floorp. it’s a FF fork by a Japanese dev team. Best I can compare it to is Vivaldi as far as customization (what Mozilla will allow).
However the updates for it have been coming less frequently over time so I’m not sure how that bodes for the long term.
But hey i’m currently building my own FF fork with fediverse integration, tree style/stacking tabs, and vim navigation sooooo look forward to that? /shameless self promotion.
They are all out of date, updates just take longer to arrive including security patches. Just use base Firefox and configure it as needed.
Always the answer until it goes to complete shit. Folks will always suggest other forks, but in the same breath describe them as subpar compared to Firefox base. FF is still best, just tweak it a smidge, browse away.
LibreWolf seems pretty fast about it. The difference is only ever a matter of a few days for routine updates.
For example, it looks like Firefox 141 with the AI stuff was released on July 22, a few weeks ago.
My LibreWolf install is 141.0.2 (edit: since updated) My Firefox install is 141.0.3
That difference is worth it to me to know that various things I don’t want have been removed from the code entirely, and that I can keep a completely default install of Firefox and/or nuke and replace that install whenever necessary.
Edit to add: A few hours since posting, I checked for updates and now I’m on LibreWolf 141.0.3. :)
This is always the answer I go back to with Firefox. I just don’t see a benefit to switching (yet) to another version of Firefox.
I’ve been using LibreWolf for a while and it works pretty well
I am using LibreWolf. It’s probably the best fork out there.
Librewolf, with the Cascade CSS theme. I used to use Zen Browser but honestly I don’t really like vertical tabs that much.
You can just …turn it off tho.
It should not be on by default and you should not have to go into about:config to turn it off.
It was not enabled by default for me.
In
about:config. Not very obvious or user-friendly tbh.Not to mention that constantly having to turn off crap is still awful UX
You can literally do it through the menu. Go to settings, hit labs or search “ai” and untick it
I wish Mozilla would just debloat the browser, focus on performance and making browsing a good experience. But unfortunately their revenue situation is bad. At this stage, they won’t even manage to survive through donations after annoying their main user base.
They aren't doing anymore for years. I moved to forks of ff instead.
They haven’t needed donations for years. In the current situations donos are, at best, part of the CEO and top-brass bonus.
it’s even worse than that tho: donations are for the mozilla foundation which is doing all the nonsense everyone hates… firefox is the mozilla corporation, which is a distinct entity
IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO DONATE TO FIREFOX
could be, I can’t judge that. do you have any source for that info or is it based on an assumption?
Their public, reviewed 2023 financial statement and their official documents about administration salaries and bonus.
How do you make browsling a good experience, other than performance?
I like the webpage translation it offers. I’d hate to lose it. Sync and tab sending is also very important to me, between desktop, mobile phone, and tablet.
I’m sure debloating would inevitably mean losing features that are required to catch the average internet user.
Well this is obviously personal to some degree, but for me it would be to fix bugs, don’t crash, dont make me restart after an update and lose my incognito tabs, focus on being w3c compliant, block ads, maybe allow blocking annoying cookie banners and maybe allow good keyboard navigation. I like some features other browsers have, such as integrated tor browsing - but since I am not a big fan of bloat, I’m not sure whether that should be handled outside of the browser
those are/could be browsing extensions. i don’t see why the browser should integrate ad blocking when it could just be an extension (that could be installed by default, like how librewolf has ublock origin installed by default).
Fair, I’m all in for de-bloating! The only problem with plugins is that it can become increasingly difficult to provide the same quality of testing and quality, because you can’t possibly test all combinations of enabled plugins - even if most don’t interfere with each other, it can easily break stuff
Why not add this features as browser extension?
If a browser only aims at tech savvy people, practically no one will end up using it.
Yeah, a good browser should probably take an approach similar to Linux Mint.
It has to be easy to install and it has to work great for like 99.9% of normal uses without changing a single setting.
But, being free and open, if you are tech savvy then you can change and customize whatever you want. Sometimes it means I can lock down the privacy and data storage in my browser, and sometimes it means I can change the icon on my work computer’s “start” button to be a check engine light. It’s all just part of being able to use your computer the way you want to.
This is an UI issue. You could just show them a landing Page and ask them if they want this new feature, and then it installs the extension in the background, without explicitly ask the user to go to the extension page to install something by hand.
Facebook Container comes to mind, they've done this before already.
Their revenue is fine. They just waste it on unnecessary bullshit.
They’re a business, after all. They don’t care about their products. They care about doing the least amount of work while making the most amount of money.
It’s not about keeping the lights on. It’s about living as luxurious a life as possible.
I mean that’s what capitalism does in a nutshell. Lower costs and increase the price. It’s optimized for profit, not for the best product, unfortunately. The only thing that should keep it within lines is competition, but if the competition isn’t any better it won’t help
.
That’s basically what LibreWolf does.
Yep, and it still works great. I even use LibreWolf on my work machine, and since it’s running Linux I need to use all the Microsoft 365 stuff, like attending meetings via Teams, in my web browser. I just let it persist and share some site data to make things run smoothly. (which is a compromise, yeah)
The only real issue I had was when I installed the flatpak version, and it was the flatpak permissions screwing with me. Most of the time though I have been using the version from their repo.
ppl complaining on the internet about something you can literally turn off with one about:config line never change internet
The point is you shouldnt have to turn it off, its a web browser, we want to browse the web, not be subject to whatever shite Mozilla want to force into it. Features like this should be optional plugins you have to download.
why shouldn't you have the option to turn things off? try turning off the ai features in chrome.
The problem is that it’s opt-out and not opt-in, and it should be opt-in.
why should it be opt in when it literally takes a second to disable?
For the same reason that “send me your advertising” ticky-boxes on website sign-ups should not be ticked by default: because the “feature” is detrimental to many (if not most) users and you have to spot the control before you can disable it. Worse, in this case many ignorant users won’t make the connection between this misfeature and the fact that their laptop is suddenly burning through its battery in double-time—they’ll just assume Firefox is now broken.
On my pixel 6 pro it takes a few seconds before I can start typing in the browser.
If you’re a little less afraid of stuff breaking, use IronFox, it’s been configured for privacy and security. If you don’t want websites to break as much use Fennec.
Firefox has always been resource heavy. Try having multiple streams open at the same time… The browser just takes a shit.
If you want something much lighter and more stable waterfox is the way to go.
I just wish one could donate to firefox development specifically. Then they could rid it of all the advertisement and tracking stuff.
Bless your heart.
They will do whatever they believe will maximize profit.
I thought mozilla was a non profit?
Non-profit isn’t the same as not-for-profit
Take American Red Cross
They make bank on blood donations. Also, they take in way more than they put out.
This smells like BS.
Is mozilla non-profit, not-for-profit, or for-profit?
You dont really know do you.
“I dont like mozilla so ill just assume they must be profiteering assholes somehow”
“Its the vibe of the thing”
I only use Firefox. I’ve only used Firefox since 2000.
They, by their own statements, are a 501( C )3, which is a non-profit, not a not-for-profit.
Sit down.
The red cross fucking sucks too
I couldn’t agree more
Non profits do have corporate leeches too. The executives at Mozilla have executive salaries. That is, hundreds of thousands, or millions.
They don’t work out of the goodness of their hearts. And Mozilla has to find a way to earn the income to pay their bloated salaries.
Why would an organisation choose to over spend on executive salaries?
Obviously, it’s because thats what it costs to get people with the right skills.
Profit can be distorted based on how much employees are being paid.
They’re a “non-profit,” but their CEO makes millions of dollars per year. I’d say that’s a profit.
Believing otherwise is just falling for rhetoric that exists to take advantage of our naivete so people richer than us can be even richer.
Many of you will disagree with this (because you’re greedy consumerists), but their employees also typically don’t need to be paid nearly as much as they are. Their employees are also working to maximize profit, albeit from a different, less-effective angle.
Money brings out the worst in people. I don’t really value the input of people going to bat for the businessmen taking their money. Too often I see useful idiots proud to be ripped off and getting angry whenever someone points it out. It’s really the norm at this point, which is sad.
Calling whatever you like “profit” cant really be rebutted, it’s subjective semantics.
Yes CEOs are paid lots of money. Why would mozilla choose to over pay staff?
Are you really asking why would the people at the top of an organization choose to overpay themselves?
Mozilla is a bizarre Matryoshka doll with a for profit company inside of the nonprofit. If anything, I believe this structure is responsible for Mozilla’s problems
So the profit from the for-profit is passed up to the non-profit.
This is a really common organisational structure and not bizarre.
There’s loads of worthy criticisms to make of mozilla but this is not one of them.
Sure, whereupon the CEO alone can receive an 8 figure compensation package. That is not at all an issue to the viability of a non-profit.
That is disingenuous.
People underestimate the cost of building a fucking browser, it’s not the equivalent of maintaining a array sort app on fucking github.
Some random dude promising to “donate from time to time” is not a valid business model.
I wish they’d strip down and just focus on the browser, but fund it HOW? Ads? Subscription?
The reason a lot of companies are doing AI shit is essentially RD shooting in the dark, hoping something will pan out.
You have to do this if you are a tech company and want to survive in the future.
It’s fun to meme on ai and but that shit is coming and pretending it doesn’t exist or has no value simply isn’t true.
So I ask everyone again, what business model exists for a software company to make money without ads or charging a monthly subscription.
Patreon $1 a month?
Bless your heart.
If you disagree, I’ll donate $20 a month to you to do it better.
en.wikipedia.org/…/Business_models_for_open-sourc…
Speaking of WIkipedia, wikimediafoundation.org/…/financial-reports/
The browser is built. I don’t want to see them have a gigantic development staff because further updates are just as likely to enshitify as to improve something.
A lot of people donating, while not spending that money on dumb projects, and worse exectutives is a valid business model. Mozilla just doesn't want to do that, because they care more about their executives than they care about Firefox.
I just want a web browser that's not based in the USA.
USA checking in here.
Yes, please!
ecosia and qwant are german and french respectively :3
Those are search engines though, not web browsers.
on android theyre browsers :3
I mean truly independent of USA code base. Everything is still relying on upstream Chromium or Firefox with superficial tweaks and gimmicks. The maintainers of LibreWolf and Fennec which are what I'm using are more like game mod devs.
If ecosia+qwant actually forked from either and broke compatibility going their own path I'd consider them non USA. I know those two are working together on a search indexer and I'm very excited about that coming to fruition because that's more what I'm talking about and eager to support.
I realise what a mammoth challenge this is :( Probably needs EU funding like the search indexer.
Ecosia on Android is based on Chromium. Qwant on Android is based on: Firefox for Android, which uses the GeckoView engine.
Otherwise they are just search engines.
RIP the old Opera before they went Chromium.
Fr, that was my daily driver for a while back in the day
It’s still a way out but Ladybird might be the alternative going forward. However, they’ve stated that it’s only going to support linux/mac with a windows version in the “eventually” column which makes it kinda hard to sell to people.
American non-profit open source browser from scratch is certainly better, still not it.
Even though I'll probably switch :p I follow their youtube channel. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough and all that.
It’s actually a smart move. Linux users are the most receptive audience, and the most likely to support its development.
Firefox is a good example of “either you die a hero or live long enoigh to see yourself become the villian”
So is RHEL.
It’s also an example of a smaller company trying fight a mega Corp with infinite money, gained via unethical means.
People are shitting on Firefox while ignoring what they are up against.
I have no solution for their funding issue, what are they supposed to do? Charge for the browser or ads? There’s literally no other alternative and I don’t know what the solution is.
What I do know is that once FF dies and chrome fully owns the web we are well and truly fucked.
Honesty it might already be too late.
How does adding AI help their funding?
Are we pretending that lots and lots of people aren’t incredibly horny for AI right now?
Actual users hate AI. Shareholders love it. It’s a bubble and the business world is trying to force it everywhere they can to create a dependency.
Correction: power users, such as the type on Lemmy, trend towards hating ai. That is by no means “all users” by any stretch of the term.
Exactly.
People seem to think “if I don’t do X, that means nobody does X”
Nah, they’ve done studies and most people find it fucking annoying, worse, and don’t want to pay any extra for it.
The whole thing is an obvious supply side economics push.
It’s really annoying when it’s pushed in our faces everywhere. For getting a quick image of something you specify, or help with some boilerplate text it can be pretty neat.
Yep. Make the normies depend on the shitty Ai and kill the real internet. Makes me so fucking mad.
People are complaining about unnecessary bloat. That has nothing to do with them being the underdog.
I could not disagree more.
Mozilla has used the most powerful cheat code in history: infinite money for free.
Google cannot let Mozilla go under or they would become an actual monopolist, triggering a lot of laws that would force them to diversifying/selling the browser.
They don’t want any of that headache so they’re pumping Mozilla full of money, making sure that they can always operate as “the other browser engine”.
The issue is that Mozilla’s management seems to be completely incapable of doing anything interesting. Instead of ensuring that Firefox is the lightest, most optimised browser on the market while also being packed full of features (or at least full-fledged add-ons, not this crap they have), they do… mostly nothing.
Their last major update was “vertical tabs”, something that Chromium-based browsers had for around a decade.
Their previous major update was integrating Pocket…
Meanwhile, PWAs still barely work, add-ons are still dependent on the website being loaded instead of working on the browser level, the whole thing still feels bulky.
Mozilla management needs to be replaced and then we might see some movement on the market.
You’re forgetting the fact that laws are currently only being triggered if said company slanders dear leader.
If Google kisses ass you best believe they would completely allow them to be a monopoly and would ignore any laws being violated
That’s a fairly new development. And it might not last, depending on how the cheating goes next year.
So a more risk averse company might not test the waters just yet.
Hinging their entire future on the bet that their country gets an easily manipulated dictator, when said dictator is 80 years old already, would be extremely short-sighted from Google.
Mark my words: It will be Vance, not Trump who gets to be the first King of America.
The future is bleak.
I don’t know if Vance has a strong enough following. Trump is effectively worshipped by MAGAts, not sure Vance is capable of taking over like that.
Basically, Firefox only crushes a handful of elderly cats while everyone else crushes kittens by the shipload.
They could stop paying their CEO so much and hire a few more devs, refocus their identity on privacy and performance (their offline ai translation is actually really useful), and actually give people the sense that their donations will be well spent.
Stop updating their browser every 5 minutes. Software that already works fine does not need continuious updates that will sooner or later subtract value.
They could try asking for donations, while getting rid of the massive drains on their budget.
Yeah I don’t like ai stuff. And I certainly don’t need AI to group my tabs. I can do that myself just fine.
Pffft, next you’ll say you want to wipe your own ass.
Only after the thirsty bidet is finished with it. I’ve got her gushing at this point.
Literally no one on this green earth asked for this shit. In fact, we’ve been pretty direct about how much we don’t want it.
It’s exhausting.
Well, stupid people want it and they do use it when its shoved in their face. Like how samsung updated and BLATANTLY made their peice of shit AI button TAKE OVER THR POWER BUTTON so when you try to turn off your phone little old granny gets confused that an ai agent pops up and starts recording you. Absolutely infuriating and I wish torture on whoever implemented that shit.
Holy shit I had no idea until I read your comment. I thought “surely they will have respected all of my opt outs”. I guess this is my last samsung phone lol
You can rebind it
Was that part of OneUI 7? I’m so glad I never installed that downgrade.
Pretty sure this goes back to the second to last Note. It’s been a thing for years now
Power button became the bixby or google assistant button. It’s annoying as hell
It’s not their AI (Bixby). It’s Gemini. But yes.
It was. I’m struggling to find anything that was an actual improvement in the UI. Most of the changes were trivial and change for change’s sake; but some were awful, and none are clearly better.
The kinds of people who want that switched to Google Chrome years ago. Only people who care more about software freedom than convenience are still using Firefox today.
It’s not a new updated it’s been that way for years.
Bixby was not llm based, originally, and sometimes updates will rewrite a user’s custom settings. For instance, I had a galaxy on which I made pushing the power button three times turn on the flashlight. An update occurred that overrode that setting by deleting it and turned on five presses to call 911. I ended up accidently calling 911 at 3am (accompanied by a blasting alarm sound) trying not to wake someone by turning on the light.
This is why I use the version of Firefox that does not update.
Maybe check out LibreWolf. It’s Firefox except with good defaults. Otherwise, it’s exactly the same
Mozilla has stopped working on developing and improving their products, and is now entirely focused on adding trendy terms and garbage, to feed money to their C*Os.
They in the last year or so added built in vertical tabs , much better hardware support for decoding video on Linux, continue to support manifest v2 and high quality ad blocking. Have increased performance and memory usage.
In the last 7 years performance is night and day different as is multiple process performance and switched away from unmaintainable old broken addon system.
They also created one of the premiere programming languages which is making in roads in the Linux kernel.
@michaelmrose @swordgeek I 100% agree that Mozilla is important but it's also clear that currently their is not enough business to keep Mozilla going. I don't blame them for trying to make a Business , i blame them for not following their former values. You can make a business and still mostly follow values ( look for example to GOG ).
And what i don't like the most is the change from opt in to opt out. Every new feature most users don't want. You can argue that they know this and make it harder and harder to turn off those new "features" . The last time it was hidden in a sub menu in the settings ( switching off sending data to their ad service ) now it's hidden in about:config.
I guess next time you need 3rd party patches and compile the browser yourself to switch a "feature" off.
All right, but apart from the vertical tabs, better video decoding, support for manifest v2, high quality adblocking, increased performance, and the useful programming language, what has Mozilla ever done for us?
Just make it an official extension ffs…
I’m fine with them pulling a Pocket as long it dies in the end.
Waterfox has been pretty good lately
Very interesting. Did not know about this.
I messed with a few browsers (Librefox and others), but ended up on Waterfox because it’s just Firefox…without much extra shit. It’s faster, lighter, and runs all of the Firefox extensions I love.
I’ll keep using LibreWolf as my main browser while keeping an eye on Ladybird with my fingers crossed.
Firefox does run better when you disable all “ml.chat” settings.
According to the article, this is mainly for grouping tabs with a suggested name. Talk about backwards. Use AI to process the top websites on the Internet and create groups and/or logic to group them by keywords (cluster analysis), then save the small data structure in Firefox so it can group most websites instantly, using kilobytes of ram in the process; don’t try to do this on everyone’s device ffs.
Besides the heat and battery problem, this also means that the GUI is going to be non-deterministic, suggesting groups differently day-to-day based on the slight differences of input and the whims of the LLM. Burn it with fire.
Oh, so that’s what the fuck it was. I was wondering why my tabs were getting grouped without any logic or reason. Impressive ability to make everything actively worse
It does seem bizarre and woefully inefficient to run this process on-the-fly locally.
I don’t think the centralised approach works either. If you bake that grouping metadata of individual popular pages into Firefox you have an issue with keeping it current if page content changes. And you have a difficult trade-off between covering enough pages vs not blowing up the size too much. And the approach can’t work for deep web pages, e.g. anything people can only see when logged in.
Ignoring all that: The groupings you could pre-process would be static and determined over some assumed average user behaviour, not an actual cluster of a specific users themes. You take some hardcore Warhammer 40k fan, and all his tabs on minis and painting techniques and rulebooks and fan media, and apply the static grouping then it all goes into “Warhammer”. However if you ran it locally it might come up with “Painting” “Figures” “Rules” “Fanart” or whatever. It would produce a more fine grained clustering for someone who is deep into a specific niche interest, and a more coarse grained one otherwise.
So I think fundamentally it’s correct to cluster locally and dynamically for a usable result. They need to make it opt-in, and efficient enough. Or better yet they could just abandon the idea because it’s ultimately not that much use compared to the required inference cost.
At least they offer a fix for it:
Head to about:config in a new tab, accept the risk warning, and use the search bar to find the controls.
To kill the AI chatbot feature, search for browser.ml.chat.enabled and set it to false.
To stop smart tab grouping, search for browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled and set it to false.
They offer a fix behind a bunch of barriers? Is it not in settings with an obvious on/off toggle for the thing?
Why would they bury the option… are they being paid to include this AI feature or something…?
Without having much knowledge of AI models beyond surface level stuff I read, but a good understanding on how computers work it seems fairly predictable to me that running an AI model in the browser session locally would be CPU intensive. As such you would think as a developer you would start with adding the feature as off by default, so users that want it can turn it on and you can get some real world metrics on how bad that hit is going to be before bending the entire user base over the AI kitchen table so to speak.
So both doing it for something as trivial as tab grouping and making it something you have to go into
about:configto disable seems really stupid.TBH despite I don’t like this specific idea, nor use Firefox directly, I do like the usage of local inference vs sending your data to thirdparty to do AI.
They just needed to do it OPT IN, not OPT OUT.
Firefox really does seem to have lost the plot… they don’t seem to go five minutes without slamming their dick in another drawer. It starts to look like they’re in to it.
I never trusted them. Who would ever set up a nonprofit owned by a for profit company if not to decieve people?
I do appreciate the Open Sourced GECKO engine, though. I like Waterfox.
It’s the other way around, the foundation owns the corporation.
Still feels like the corporation is the one making decisions though.
i think they may be referencing the fact that huge amounts of money have been given to them by google?
Awful Idea? Anal Intrusion? Actually Irrelevant?Activating Idiocy? Adding Incompetence?
Altogether Imbecilic
Arrived in the Idiocracy?
Abominable intelligence
Absent Intelligence
I was actually wondering why it felt like my Firefox was dying, possible could align with this.
If AI mustt exist it should be in places where the general public cannot access nor interact with it
Do you have to enable the feature first? Because I’m on v141 and I don’t see this feature. Complaining about a useless and draining feature that you yourself enabled is a special kind of stupid tbh.
Why does Mozilla think we want AI integrated in your browsers ??