The speed at which firefox has been enshittified is as impressive as it is sad.
…and we’ll all suffer as climate change increases. None of this shit is worth frying for.
Dont worry the US and Israel are starting WW3 as we speak we will all be dead before then any way
Donald Trump is the most environmentalist president ever. With oil prices as they are, can you imagine how much less oil we’re burning?
lol no. We still burn the same amount only now the robber baron oil execs get paid triple.
Poor people get priced out of driving. If you can’t afford gas money you may not take a trip over the weekend
Nah, it’s just imperialist billiards, big vs little.
It’s all part of “the great game” the west has been playing against Russia in the middle east for over a century… The middle east is where America does it’s proxy wars.
World wars are only a risk if a white western European country is attacked. Horrendous how those in power see the world, isn’t it?
So like Ukraine?
Awfully presumptuous of you to think Ukraine counts as white.
thier revenue entirely dependent on google, you can see why, they got lazy and dint spend time developing thier browser.
Relevant section:
Smart Window uses ‘memories’, things Mozilla says “…it learns from your activity” to inform its responses.
You can delete memories individually, and you can set any given chat session to not use/store them.
Fine so far.
The problem? My memory list isn’t populated with things Smart Window learned since I enabled it. Oh no.
It has activity going back months. We’re talking searches and website interactions from long before I enabled this. features.
Firefox just handed that history to the AI models to plough from, without telling me upfront.
I found this the creepiest aspect of Smart Window.
Mozilla says this was a flub; it will refine the onboarding around Smart Window to limit memory formation to post-opt-in activity only. That’s obviously the right fix.
Because sharing a user’s prior browsing history with third-party AI models, silently, on feature activation, without any headset? Yeah, a bit icky – but that’s the price of testing features that are finished, I guess.
I’m willing to give them a pass since this was a development build and while someone probably should’ve thought of it, it’s the kind of bug that can happen. If this was the public release it would be a lot more outrageous.
Finding out about this gives me some extra questions, though.
- Was this data summarized on enabling this window, or before?
- Did it use an existing model, or re-use one that someone may have already downloaded for a different feature?
- Is this activity going anywhere else, like Mozilla’s recent “privacy-preserving” advertising?
- When this does release, what will the default be?
There’s also an option to bring your own LLM, with fields for model name, endpoint, and API token available for entry when the manual option is enabled. However, the page itself warns local models may not work correctly.
It looks like there’s an option for people to self-host too. You won’t have to send your history to someone else’s computer.
If it’s anything like how they handled the AI sidebar, this option is going to get hidden before it hits production.
It would be really cool if they didn’t do that this time.
Hey, I’m not excited about more stuff getting added into an already overflowing Firefox (why not an extension?!), but if they must promote AI choice, I’m with you: actually allow user choice.
(Based on how Mozilla has added two unrequested search engines while ignoring a request to add StartPage, the “choice” thing seems to boil down to backroom deals.)
F*** I really dont want to change away from Firefox. Pleas be good Firefox. Please! Don’t F this up.
Librewolf is exactly the same browser with all the security features dialed to 11 and all the AI removed.
unfortunately forks depend on FF, and chrome to survive.
Its too late, bro. You gotta break it off and start mingling with the forks.
waterfox a better balance between firefox & LibreWolf
I remember having ff and then switching to chrome because it was better, and then switching back to ff because it was better. I’m ok leaving ff again.
Ai in browsers is stupid
Do yourself a favour and use LibreWolf or WaterFox instead.
Or just keep using Firefox and don’t use the entirely optional and opt-in features you don’t need. The same as always.
I’m completely flabbergasted why people get their panties in a twist over
- completely local features that happen to be backed by machine learning models (the translation feature is a huge privacy win over sending your text to Google translate)
- opt-in LLM integration that nobody forces you to use
Floorp is also good since it has PWAs
But it has a DuMb NaMe so I don’t like it 😡
I used to enjoy AI a lot, and I still think the technology is really cool, but lately I’m beginning to despise it. It spreads and nestles itself into every corner of our life, and it rots whatever it touches, be it the humans that rely on it or the projects in which it’s used. I see so many open source projects that are tainted with it, it’s almost impossible to avoid it. It’s sad. The generations that will grow up with AI will be fucked.
The generations that will grow up with AI will be fucked.
Eh. That’s something every single generation before us in at least the past 150 years has been saying about other new society-changing stuff. They’ll be fine, society just changes.
Generations that will grow up with social media will be fucked.
Generations that will grow up with internet will be fucked.
Generations that will grow up with video games will be fucked.
Generations that will grow up with computers will be fucked.
Generations that will grow up with morning-after pills will be fucked.
…
…
Looks around at how fucked the world is Maybe they were right?
Probably more like, generations growing up with unchecked capitalism will be slowly fucked over time to the point where you won’t recognise life in several generations.
What about Cambridge Analytica, the mental health impacts, the addiction, … we’re still learning the social impact of social media — especially capitalistic social media. To pretend we aren’t is just plain ignorant, no? You can’t say people are fine when you don’t even know how they’ve been affected.
I’m not saying everything is lovely and we are at the peak of civilization. I’m saying that every form of progress comes with challenges and downsides, and this saying of “Next generation will be fucked” is a cognitive bias every generation has had for a pretty long time.
They also have positive sides.
I don’t know if I expressed myself that poorly (I was pretty tired after all), but I did not mean at all that there are no downsides to any of these. I meant that despite these sayings, every generation so far has ended up as fine as the previous ones.
I’m saying that every form of progress comes with challenges and downsides, and this saying of “Next generation will be fucked” is a cognitive bias every generation has had for a pretty long time.
Change is not necessarily progress.
I’m not talking about change, I’m talking about progress. Progress is not necessarily positive.
Generations that will grow up with morning-after pills will be fucked
I mean…
Best reply
And at least the first two were right.
Social media without limit has caused a whole slew of issues that are still being studied. And, while the early days of the internet were great, ever since at least the late 2010s, it’s been largely downhill.
Yeah, sorry but I have to disagree with you pretty hard there. Generations that grew up with social media, internet, video games, … they are fucked. We’ve been watching the fuckening for a long time now. Saying that they haven’t been fucked is reminiscent of my grandparents saying ADHD and Anxiety aren’t real.
Are they really more fucked than generations who didn’t have access to social media, internet, and video games? It seems to me that you are biased by the negative effects these had, and ignoring the positive ones.
Saying that they haven’t been fucked is reminiscent of my grandparents saying ADHD and Anxiety aren’t real.
How is that in any way comparable? I’m not saying the downsides of social media, internet, video games are not real, I’m saying “People growing up with X will be fucked” is a saying that every generation has been saying, ignoring the positive impacts. This is a cognitive bias in the likes of the rosy retrospection.
I don’t think so. First off, all the examples mentioned were computers, social media, video games, … these are all still pretty darn novel in the grand scheme of things. We still don’t know what happens to a society that doesn’t need to contend with boredom because they have algorithmically optimized content feeds jacking up their prefrontal cortex at all times of day and night. We still don’t understand the full extent to which walled garden social media ecosystems can influence politics and cultural bias, detriment democratic processes, or empower individuals. We still aren’t taking privacy seriously as a society, having relied for hundreds of years on the fact that complete and total surveillance systems is infeasible for a government. It’s far too early to say whether anyone is or isn’t fucked by any of this, which is why I draw comparisons to grandmama saying “back in my day, the boy was just excited. He didn’t have ‘ADHD.’ He was fine.” It’s about ignorance when new information comes to light.
We have a lot of reason to believe there is some serious consequences to technology that unfortunately isn’t obvious from the get go. More unfortunately, we have a culture of not caring. Innovation first, policy second, right? Except that only works while policy can still catch up. We’ve been slow walking into a situation where, yeah, one of these generations is definitely getting fucked. Probably, though, it’s each generation getting a little more fucked as we continue having them.
I’m not ignoring the benefits. The benefits are part of how we justify not impeding the innovation process — it’s literally part of the problem. The root of the issue is that we ignore the consequences, pretend that’s just the way things are, and think in weird metaphors like “the market will self correct” and “the market is never wrong.” If the future generations aren’t fucked, it’ll be because they solved the problems that were created here. It won’t be “they weren’t fucked because they were never fucked.” No, they were fucked. Hopefully they figure it out.
Funny you say that. In ways not everyone (obviously) sees, each generation was right about that.
No. Each generation was fucked in their own way, regardless of the two edges of the progress that they grew up with.
So sad for Firefox. I try to keep using since it’s the only solution free of Chromium, but I guess chromium will control everything only Safari will not be chromium.
Librefox, waterwolf, mullvad, fennec?
What is this, a cutlery drawer?
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Hopefully Ladybird will be prpduction ready at some point.
Ladybird is pretty much dead to me, firstly because the dev has some really bad right wing vibes (he said gender inclusive language is too political for his docs and retweeted a Nazi on Twitter). And secondly because the started using AI to move the code to Rust to make it more secure, which is insane if you know anything about AI or security.
My current hope is in servo, because they have much more capable maintainers and the project seems to make some good progress. Also they have daily builds on their website for every operating system, so you can already try it out easily (but don’t expect everything to work right now, they still need some time).
I did not know about the AI stuff. However, I do think that the “inclusion” controversy is way overblown. Why in the world would you need to have “gender inclusive language” in the docs for a browser engine?
That ladybird gender thing is such a load of crap. I find it hard to even believe that people are genuinely passionate about it. Every time ladybird is mentioned, someone brings up the ‘extreme views’ based on this. But it is the biggest load of nothing you are ever likely to see.
For anyone who doesn’t know, here’s what happened:
- The build documentation for this unreleased pre-beta software used the pronoun ‘he’.
- Someone suggested that they change it to be more inclusive.
- The author didn’t think it was important enough to change, so left it.
- More requests and pressure came to change the pronoun.
- The pronoun was then changed, and the author apologised.
To me, that’s a minor error of judgement, with no lasting harm caused to anyone at all. But yet somehow this is constantly used as a reason to avoid ladybird.
How can I take this seriously? Is this some kind of organised anti-competition propaganda campaign? We’re talking about a free and open source project of a highly technical nature, and somehow people are upset that the word ‘he’ existed temporarily in a work-in-progress document with a target audience of essentially zero people. The people making this project are not political leaders or public figures with media training. They are focused on the technical side of things. Yeah, the pronoun was a mistake, but it pretty much the smallest mistake you could possibly make in this context. It not like they are donating to right-wing orgs, or publicly denouncing anyone, or promoting hate. I see far worse than what they did on a daily basis from all sorts of people - including right here in lemmy. And in terms of ladybird, I have not heard of any kind of misstep ever since this instant - which was a very long time ago now. It is honestly bizarre that people have clung onto this incident. I’m honestly not sure I believe that the backlash is entirely organic. It’s just too disproportionate.
[edit] Let me just follow this by saying that I do think there are other good reasons to be upset with this same ladybird dev. I just don’t think the ‘he’ in the docs thing is anything at all.
Could it be posibble the authors first language is gendered, because this sounds like something I would say in Lithuanian like when I talk about computers I use he because the word has a male gender.
He’s swedish
For anyone who doesn’t know, here’s what happened:
except you forgot to mention some fucking crucial steps, like harshly calling it as politics and sending everyone to a warmer climate, and locking the issue to prevent further discussion
Or we could ask the question in the opposite direction - why would you use language which excluded anybody who doesn’t identify as male from the documentation for an open-source project, to the point where when someone offers to update the language for you your response is to rant about “personal politics” and write a contribution policy which forbids the use of gender-neutral language?
Can you provide an example of this non-inclusive language? I honestly can’t even come up with an example for web browser documentation that would refer to any gender at all.
“In case of browser crash, the male, white, cis user should submit a bug report”
If the user is female, a report should be submitted by her closest male relative.
To prevent this, remove `anon` from the `wheel` group and he will no longer be able to run `/bin/su`.
As opposed to
To prevent this, remove `anon` from the `wheel` group and they will no longer be able to run `/bin/su`.
https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/pull/6814/commits/beb448fc248f1cbd82a4c68ddf72687203d4d51e
That’s the example linked to from the thread which started the controversy off: https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/pull/6814
[Tunas1337]
It’s a minor nitpick, but I think it’s important; assuming the user and/or developer of the operating system is male isn’t exactly the best.
[awesomekling]
This project is not an appropriate arena to advertise your personal politics
I don’t know the actual thing that happened but I’m assuming “the user [something] <his/him/he> [something]”
Whether or not the inclusion controversy is “overblown” (it’s not; single word change would have made more people feel welcome, but Kling decided to put his for down) Kling has down himself to be Nazi adjacent.
https://hyperborea.org/reviews/software/ladybird-inclusivity/
Apparently Kling was against using “they” instead of “he”. While I do agree that it’s wrong and gender neutral terms should be used, I wouldn’t “cancel” the guy over it. Afaik they are using gender neutral terms now.
The other stuff about Kling mentioned at the bottom of your link is worrying though. It’s a shame a project as important and necessary as Ladybird was created by a person like him :(
Good thing it’s an open source project so it doesn’t really matter at all what you think of someone working on it imo
I won’t use < insert FOSS Project > because of political vibes.
I see this shit almost everyday. Absolute npc behaviour.
NPC behavior is not having any sense of morality and the backbone to take a stand, but I get it, it’s far more comfortable to just put your head in the sand and consume
Consume what exactly in this context?
Also you self righteous people still didn’t tell me why you won’t use the browser expect for vibes so I don’t really feel bad for “consuming”
Also you self righteous people still didn’t tell me why you won’t use the browser expect for vibes so I don’t really feel bad for “consuming”
and like flies to shit the conservative comes out of the wood works right on queue to bitch about politics.
Yea I just don’t get it for open source software, like you aren’t supporting their agenda by using the free fucking software
why don’t you just use chromium? it is open source, you can fork it!
True lmao xD
Man I sure do love identity politics and having software and tech in general be somehow associated with political movements. I don’t give fuck about this shit.
Everything is political
And FOSS is explicitly political. It’s open-source free software. What do you think it is? It doesn’t exist in a vacuum
I tried out the servo alpha on android and it is surprisingly usable for something so early in development
Seems like the goal of Servo is to be used for embedded applications rather than as a full fledged browser. Is the idea that someone else will build a full browser on top of servo?
Ladybird is gonna be awesome, you are overblowing things, it’s an open source project chill out. Also sevro is not currently really being designed as a desktop web browser. Its a web engine for light weight embedded applications. Ladybird is currently the only in development webbrowser that is primarily designed with desktop main browser use as its intended use.
And I know you aren’t a fan but in the next 5 years pretty much every piece of software you touch will have code from an LLM in it, so get over it or stop using software.
I don’t think it’s overblowing things at all when I look at these tweets: https://nitter.net/awesomekling/status/1966456391146606806 https://nitter.net/awesomekling/status/1971287738268909576
That dev seems to be a real piece of shit.
I’m glad Kirk got necked and it’s sad he supports him, but that doesn’t change the fact ladybird is an exciting open source project that I can’t wait to try out.
see how much opinions can differ: I am not glad about anyone getting murdered (neither am I sad about this particular one), but I think that people propagating hate and intolerance should focus on therapy, not open source.
Looking at those tweets I would say it is way overblown. People act like it’s the end of the world if there is a slight disagreement.
If you think rejecting hate speech is overblown, you might be part of the problem. It’s not a “slight disagreement” when people question the fundamental right to live of another group.
I don’t see any hate speech and I tried looking for anyone questioning another groups right to live. Is the group thing connected to Charlie Kirk?
I did see some blog posts from David Heinemeier Hansson that could be seen as controversial, but that’s just it, controversial, people have different opinions on topics.
This whole ”controversy” surrounding Ladybird is such a nothing burger, people are just looking for an excuse to be offended. Is everyone you disagree with either right wing or nazis?
Ladybird is being rewritten in Rust by AI for no reason whatsoever. Browsers should be secure, and vibe coding prevents security.
Currently I am hopeful for Servo. Its development is not as far along, but it seems way saner. It bans AI contribution, and it’s intended to be very performant.
Seeing AI invade open source is sad. AI slop contributions. AI integration that no one asked for.
For now Firefox derivatives are fine (I use LibreWolf), but many of those derivatives don’t work on macOS because it “fails to verify that this executable is actually executable” (what does that actually mean?????????).
I had hopes for Ladybird Browser but now it’s being vibe coded (rewritten in rust by ai for no reason whatsoever), and it’s not ready yet anyway. Now I’m hopeful for Servo engine. It’s in development but at some point it will be ready, and it bans slop contributions.
For now Firefox derivatives are fine (I use LibreWolf), but many of those derivatives don’t work on macOS because it “fails to verify that this executable is actually executable” (what does that actually mean???)
Not sure if this is what you’re experiencing, but it’s a common thing. Happens to me too, I have to run a command after I update from Homebrew.
LibreWolf FAQ: why is LibreWolf marked as broken?
It is possible that Apple Silicon users see their recently downloaded LibreWolf flagged as broken or unsafe by the OS.
This happens because we do not notarize the macOS version of the browser: we don’t have a paid Apple Developer license and we don’t want to support this signing mechanism that is put behind a paywall without providing significant gains.
You can remove the quarantine attribute from the Application using this command:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/LibreWolf.app
Much like Adobe‘s Acrobat which I also have to use for work. At least from what I can tell when it suddenly summarizes a PDF. There‘s no way in hell that happens locally. But the fact that it seemingly automatically processes potentially sensitive data from customers didn‘t even do as little as raising eyebrows when I brought it up.
I use Firefox as a PDF reader at work. it’s better than Adobe Reader or Chrome, and it’s good enough, so I haven’t bothered finding something else.
I deal with secure information sometimes, in PDF form. I haven’t even considered that this information might not remain local.
Sumatra is the notepad++ of pdf readers (minus the state sponsored hackers https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/hijacked-incident-info-update/)
I’ve been using it for ages whenever I need to open PDFs on Windows. Though nowadays browsers handle them too. And I avoid Windows.
It is genuinely excellent software.
Looks interesting! I can’t see it in their docs, can it display the font type and size of a selected text? I’ve been using PDF-XChange Viewer mostly for that feature. (Lol I just noticed it has been discontinued since 2018 😬)
I use KDE’s PDF reader Okular
No way in hell? My understanding is that an NPU could perform that type of processing locally. I welcome info & correction!
(I know other types of local ai processors could too, but there’s little chance Acrobat would be geared to look for them - even GPUs - unlike NPUs.)
Now if we switch to talking about policy instead of capability, I don’t think Adobe would miss a chance to be evil. So yeah they’re probably stealing all the data they possibly can.
few computers have an embedded NPU
True! More all the time, unfortunately. (Unfortunately because we’re paying for tech we don’t want.)
Also doesn’t negate my argument. He said no way in hell, yet… not only is there a way but it’s already out there.
oh I mostly agree, but forgot to include the quote. I wanted to say, all that AI processing probably does not happen locally
There’s a master “kill switch” for all AI features in Firefox now. I suggest everyone who’s concerned about this kind of thing just go and turn it off, and then we need never bother each other over this again.
It’s still opt out, not opt in because on first install that LLM garbage is enabled by default. The kill switch should’ve been for people that chose to try LLM garbage and found it lacking; needing an easy way to disable it all.
I won’t stop complaining until Firefox makes their LLM nonsense opt-in, letting a user choose at first boot if they want that shit or not. That would be the most ethical and user respecting way to handle their LLM shit.
LLM bullshit should have been an extension
Exactly, it should never be bundled into software without explicit user consent.
Ehh, it’s all local models. I don’t really see the harm in that. It’s just new features like any other.
It’s still a problem because users are opted in, as I’ve mentioned in many replies…If users don’t push back, we get situations like Microsoft and their insane LLM shit being shoved in all their software/services/OS. It’s the same “normalize and numb” tactics used by corporations to make end users more compliant to their forced integration of features in software, that aren’t the best or helpful to that end user. It’s not okay, nor is this an ordinary new feature. LLMs are being used to do a lot of disgusting things in the world by the ultra-wealthy and techbros wanting to control/influence the masses.
Or pick a Firefox fork that doesn’t have the AI bullshit. Libre Wolf is great for people who take security very seriously,l. I hear Water Fox is a much closer equivalent to Firefox without AI, and also has a focus on privacy. I’ve also been using Iron Fox on my android with basically no issues.
With Mozilla’s current track record I don’t trust them to not fuck with the AI “killswitch”.
The only thing stopping me from switching is the unreliability of updates to uBlock on forked versions of Firefox.
I’ve been using Waterfox for months and not had a single issue with ublock origin or any other extension.
Good to know! The last time I looked into it was early last year, good to know it works good for you.
“When it comes to privacy, defaults matter.”
- Mozilla
Why not remove the AI and offer them as a separate extension? That way you’re happy, and everybody else doesn’t have crap shoved down their throats.
My master AI killswitch was just to switch to Waterfox.
Till those options are turned off by the browser updating like has already happened with some people.
You should see how AI is being deployed in warfare. Plausible deniability is about to go through the roof.
Back in the day, you get out jail free card was on a scale of “the devil made me do it” to “I was following orders”, now we get “It was AI”
You should see how AI is being deployed in warfare. Plausible deniability is about to go through the roof.
https://www.newsweek.com/ai-chooses-nuclear-option-in-95-of-war-simulations-11589197
you know what? I think we should all start dropping nuclear bobs so we can become desensitized to nuclear warfare the same way we have become desensitized to genocides and pedophilia.
No thanks.
Waterfox. Librewolf. Zen. Floorp.
They’re all good options in their own ways. Just pick one and go
Have you seen the better browsing experience? It’s on Zen. It’s literally on Librewolf. It’s on Floorp without ads. It’s literally on Waterfox. You can probably find it on Ironfox. Dude it’s on Ladybird. It’s a Servo original. It’s on GNOME Web. You can browse on GNOME Web. You can go to GNOME Web and browse it. Epiphany has it for you. </joke>
What’s the original of this copypasta?
Edit: nvm, found it!
Floorp (which I use) does not distinguish itself from Firefox with regards to AI features, so if those features existing is a problem for you it’s not an option either.
They can’t help themselves.
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Exactly what I thought when I got to that bit of the article.
What could go wrong.
