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Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

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Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#51

Why wasn't this there from the get go? Many people dislike the AI spam; I do too. I use chrome-based browsers usually (I also hate how dependent I have become on Google; default firefox refuses to play audio on my linux system as they claim we need pulseaudio, chrome instead makes no such assumption and audio plays just fine, so one can go and figure out why mozilla acts worse than Google here - all the google-bribe…

> Why wasn't this there from the get go? Even better, why was the AI feature ever added in the first place?

Quite a few of the LLM features actually add value for a certain group of users. Automated image descriptions for the visually impaired, automatic translation, ... Running those on local models is a net benefit for quite a few people, but they get a bad rep because they're "AI" and the current trend of shoving AI everyplace and with no means of escape means that AI in general has a - well deserved - bad reputation.

Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#52
post #7

Firefox is the only holdout against the ad companies, and I'm counting Microsoft amongst those. It's a very good browser, independent with its own renderer, with decent ad blocking and decent performance. It continually amazes me how people use a Google product on their desktop, as if they don't send enough data to an ad company. Actually, I'm not sure why I type this, any rational arguments are definitely not winnin…

In theory you are not incorrect, but Google bribes Firefox and Google makes most money via ads. Mozilla gave up on firefox a long time ago. > It continually amazes me how people use a Google product on their desktop, as if they don't send enough data to an ad company. I'd love to have alternatives, but which ones are there? Firefox is not an alternative; audio does not work for me as I am pulseaudio free here. On chr…

Do you mean you disable pipewire-pulse? Why? Or does audio not work for you with pipewire-pulse? I've never had issues with firefox and pipewire-pulse on my system.

Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#53

Great, let's see how it works out. Firefox for Android has been killing it for me with the latest ux updates, I didn't expect major improvements there and was pleasantly surprised.

I don't see the appeal, it takes more "clicks" to do many actions and I had to disable the ridiculous new oversized "rectangle tab preview block" (whatever it's called).

Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#54
post #35

last time when I updated Firefox, the package manager began building ONNX Runtime from source, which my "minuscule" 16GB of RAM couldn't handle. I want that during install time, as I don't like the idea of rebuilding ONNX every time Firefox updates, period.

That is an issue with your OS. Your OS vendor should be precompiling everything for you.

Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#55

[flagged]

i intended to ask what the difference was between two browsers that are both beholden to a company whose express goal is to suck up personal data. so far ive gotten vitriol, AI, and downvotes. my actual question remains unanswered. if you'd like to answer the question that would be cool! but yeah if you dont want to answer , it'd probably be easier to say nothing than to tell me to die alone

Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory you are not incorrect, but Google bribes Firefox and Google makes most money via ads. Mozilla gave up on firefox a long time ago. > It continually amazes me how people use a Google product on their desktop, as if they don't send enough data to an ad company. I'd love to have alternatives, but which ones are there? Firefox is not an alternative; audio does not work for me as I am pulseaudio free here. On chr…

> Firefox is not an alternative; audio does not work for me. I could recompile it but compiling firefox is a pain in the ... Obviously I don't have any data backing me up here, but I'm going to guess that that isn't the main reason why so many people choose Chrome over Firefox.

[deleted]

Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#57
post #7

Firefox is the only holdout against the ad companies, and I'm counting Microsoft amongst those. It's a very good browser, independent with its own renderer, with decent ad blocking and decent performance. It continually amazes me how people use a Google product on their desktop, as if they don't send enough data to an ad company. Actually, I'm not sure why I type this, any rational arguments are definitely not winnin…

In theory you are not incorrect, but Google bribes Firefox and Google makes most money via ads. Mozilla gave up on firefox a long time ago. > It continually amazes me how people use a Google product on their desktop, as if they don't send enough data to an ad company. I'd love to have alternatives, but which ones are there? Firefox is not an alternative; audio does not work for me as I am pulseaudio free here. On chr…

Firefox has been my main browser lately, and in my experience it covers pretty much every latest spec: no issues with Web Audio, WebGL (as well as WebGPU, I think), CSS features, etc. There are some select cases where Chrome has deployed something and Firefox is lagging (Background Fetch, for example) but that affects me more as a developer than a user. I cannot remember a single time when I opened something and it didn’t work in Firefox.

Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#59
post #28
post #10

I don't know...at one point I got off Firefox because it was slow and I was never able to get back to it ever again. Maybe I should try now?

Do it. It's the only truly independent browser left. It's not perfect, but it works, and unlike Chrome you can have full ad blocking with uBlock Origin.

With Brave you can have ad blocking built into the browser itself and not have to depend on a third party developer.

Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#60

Ironically, I bet that a significant majority of the users that turn on the AI kill switch — which must have some kind of phone-home telematics attached — will also be users who have disabled Firefox metrics collection and so will not have their opinion counted. So, the most effective path here for y’all to be heard is not flipping the switch off yourself (do so anyways!) — anyone who cares at this stage has probably…

> will also be users who have disabled Firefox metrics collection and so will not have their opinion counted.

Gee. If only there was a way to collect users opinions on things. Welp.. guess we have to live with subtly spying on everything they do with our software.

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