Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does "jeetcoded" mean?
A racist play on vibecoding with the popular ethnic slur "pajeet." Thus the cowering behind a fresh account.
Thanks, but now I wish I hadn't asked. :(
I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
361–370 of 782 posts
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#362Earlier quoted context omitted.
The existence of the features doesn’t bother me. It’s the constant nagging about them. I can’t use a google product without being harassed to the point of not being able to work by offers to “help me write” or whatever. Having the feature on a menu somewhere would be fine. The problem is the confluence of new features now becoming possible, and companies no longer building software for their users but as vehicles to…
I just finished listening to the first episode of "Acquired" on Google and it ended with Google pushing Google Plus into everything in an effort to compete with Facebook in social networking. It really hampered all their other offerings. https://www.acquired.fm Acquired podcast does long (2 4-hour episodes on Google) episodes on various companies, mostly tech but recently Trader Joe's
Do they talk about Trader Joe’s illegal union busting and attempts to get the national labor relations board disbanded ?
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#363Earlier quoted context omitted.
The existence of the features doesn’t bother me. It’s the constant nagging about them. I can’t use a google product without being harassed to the point of not being able to work by offers to “help me write” or whatever. Having the feature on a menu somewhere would be fine. The problem is the confluence of new features now becoming possible, and companies no longer building software for their users but as vehicles to…
> no longer building software for their users but as vehicles to push some agenda All companies push an agenda all the time, and their agenda always is: market dominance, profitability, monopoly and rent extraction, rinse and repeat into other markets, power maximization for their owners and executives. The freak stampede of all these tech giants to shove AI down everybody's throat just shows that they perceive the t…
1. AI is generating a lot of buzz
2. AI could be the next technology revolution
3. If we get on the AI bandwagon now we're getting in on the ground floor
4. If we don't get on the AI bandwagon now we risk being left behind
5. Now that we've invested into AI we need to make sure we're seeing return on our investment
6. Our users don't seem to understand what AI could possibly do so we should remind them so that they use the feature
7. Our users aren't opting in to the features we're offering so we should opt them in automatically
Like any other 'big, unproven bet' everyone is rushing in. See also: 'stories' making their way into everything (Instagram, Facebook, Telegram, etc.), vertical short-form videos (TikTok, Reels, Shorts, etc). The difference here is that the companies put literally tens or hundreds of billions of dollars into it so, for many, if AI fails and the money is wasted it could be an existential threat for entire departments or companies. nvidia is such a huge percentage of the entire US economy that if the AI accelerator market collapses it's going to wipe out something like ten percent of GDP.
So yeah, I get why companies are doing this; it's an actual 'slippery slope' that they fell into where they don't see any way out but to keep going and hope that it works out for them somehow, for some reason.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#364Does anyone want AI in anything? I can see the value of navigating to an LLM and asking specific questions, but generally speaking I don't want that just running / waiting on my machine as I open a variety of applications. It's a huge waste of resources and for most normal people is an edge case.
The existence of the features doesn’t bother me. It’s the constant nagging about them. I can’t use a google product without being harassed to the point of not being able to work by offers to “help me write” or whatever. Having the feature on a menu somewhere would be fine. The problem is the confluence of new features now becoming possible, and companies no longer building software for their users but as vehicles to…
It's a problem in the software industry today that is bigger than AI, probably the greatest controversy in software marketing.
Part of the model of products like Adobe's Creative Suite [1] is that they are always adding new features -- and if you want people to keep renewing their subscription you want them to know about new features so they feel like they are getting more out of their product.
Trouble is using a product like that is like walking out of the Moscone Center and getting harassed by mentally ill people and addicts or like creating an account in Tumblr and getting five solicitations for pig butchering and NFT scams in DM in the first week -- you boot up the product, spend 20 seconds looking at the splash screen, then you have to clear five dialog boxes that you might not have time to deal with right now. Sometimes I open up a product because I have to do a task I have to do but don't really want to do and feeling a lot of stress and I just don't need to deal with any bullshit when I am under the gun.
I've seen Adobe trying gentler methods to point out new features in Lightroom, such as a filter that can automatically weed out photos where people have their eyes closed. It takes a lot of UX work to do that though.
Personally I'd like it a lot better if the nagging started after I finished a task, if I was feeling satisfied with the product and now relieved that the task is over that's a moment when I'd be receptive to learning more about the product.
[1] And also a lot of "free" software, it's not just money-grubbing, but the model of always rolling updates.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#365Earlier quoted context omitted.
And will that work permanently, or will I have to hunt down another setting in another month when they stuff it into another workflow I don't want it in?
Every time I update Google Photos on Android, it asks me "Photos backup is turned off! Turn it on? [so you use up your 15 GB included storage and buy more for a subscription fee?]".
My iPhone has a permanent red badge counter trying to get me to upgrade to iCloud. I've moved the settings icon so I don't see it normally, but it is nagging. There's other dark patterns used by Apple to try and increase their income by "asking" me to pay more.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#366Earlier quoted context omitted.
Had to scroll way too far to find a comment like this. Unfortunately HN famously doesn’t understand what the average consumer wants. The Dropbox comment comes to mind.
I hadn't read comments about Dropbox and products/features until maybe a week or two ago and somehow don't know the reference despite having spent most of the last 20 years in tech. I presume the story is along the lines of "someone declined to invest in Dropbox and lost out" but what do I need to google to get the actual context? I don't need a full rehash here. Edit: or is it "Dropbox is adding features nobody want…
The Dropbox thing is exactly what I was thinking of when I was writing my original comment.
Here is the reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
The basic summary is that a HN commenter suggested Dropbox was redundant because you could do some convoluted setup that 0.1% of the world would understand and 0.001% would actually want to use (and yes, that’s still a few hundred thousand people) and overall that aged poorly.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#367Firefox is dead. You need an insurmountable amount of configuration to even make it bearable and there is non-user respecting settings and telemetry everywhere. Ads, too. It's not something you can recommend, every site is broken and Mozilla rather likes to spend it's money on [1] discouraging human translators and [2] giving people free coffee on "Browser Raves" in Berlin instead. It's a shadow of its former self. […
> every site is broken If a site is broken, it's likely due to blocking of trackers. In the URL bar, click on the shield icon and disable the slider "Enhanced Tracking Protection". But yeah, that can be annoying. Google is an advertising company. I don't understand choosing to use their browser if you can avoid it.
Mozilla is an advertising company too. In terms of breakage, Im talking about more fundamental things like missing APIs and wrong rendering.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#368I think "nobody i know" and nobody are different things. Mozilla wants more firefox users. there are "AI browsers" and ai integrated browsing is becoming more and more the norm. Mozilla is doing the right thing here, the features are there but unobtrusive. But down the road, I fully expect Mozilla to do whatever they have to do to remain in the game. Their small market share is hurting the entire internet, they can't…
You didn't even read 6 sentences into TFA. 52/52 of the closed-beta testers of this feature want it removed.
how is 52 users representative??
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#369The #1 thing I want from Firefox is for it to keep existing in the long term, as a hedge against Google's monopoly. Burning capital on hardware-intensive AI features to get FF from 1% market share to 2% market share would endanger that, no matter how useful the features might be.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#370I want a browser to prioritize speed, standards, stability and security.
All other features should come via add-ons.
Plus, if I want an AI in my browser I don't want it locked to Mozilla's AI.