Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by godelski » Tue, Feb 24, 2026, 8:05 AM UTC

SapporoChris wrote: post #30

[flagged]

  > This is like a restaurant that releases a new feature that they will no longer defecate in your food.

Thank god, at least there's one restaurant not serving literal shit.

You're analogy works but you can't forget that there other restaurants. That the other restaurant not only aren't making promises to not defecate in your for but they're actively advertising how much shit they can shove in a sandwich. Even the bread is made of shit!

So thank fucking god. At least there's one place where I don't have to eat shit. The bar is so fucking low it doesn't matter if they spit in it or you find the chef's ball hairs, at least it isn't shit.

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

#112

Post by godelski » Tue, Feb 24, 2026, 8:08 AM UTC

ddxv wrote: post #102

Where are the AI features in Firefox? Looking around right now the only one I see is right click tab -> Summarize page (NEW). I googled a bit and see they have some grouping of tabs feature I've never used/seen (or want). The only other maybe AI feature I remember seeing is the odd left hand bar that is there on fresh installs and I usually remove to declutter. Are those the features this kill switch removes or was t…

There's also a side window you can open that can connect to a chatbot. There's translation (on device). Also semantic history search.

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

#113

Post by PunchyHamster » Tue, Feb 24, 2026, 8:08 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #47

snowhale wrote: post #42

[dead]

Thing is, there's a large (or at least certainly vocal) contingent of users (and mostly techies, to boot) that view "AI" as the Devil, and transformer models as the original sin, and they want to refuse to partake, wholesale. This feature seems to be a nod to people with this worldview. EDIT: See e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47133786 liking AI features to defecating on your food. It's not a technical obj…

More like excuse to add more of the features. "See, we gave you kill switch"

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

#114

Post by Kuinox » Tue, Feb 24, 2026, 8:08 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #104

Kuinox wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet translation was the main application for applied language machine learning.

When would've thought that to solve natural language translation, one would first need to solve... natural language. All those arguments about agents and hallucinations kind of distracted people from noticing we've accodentally built a universal translator .

It's been at least 10 years that google translate had hallucinations. Some translation simply change depending of a ponctuation mark. But peoples complain only now that they heard about AI.

Of course it's not perfect, but I agree that we didn't had a machine translation as good before.

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

#115

Post by mrklol » Tue, Feb 24, 2026, 8:08 AM UTC

ddxv wrote: post #102

Where are the AI features in Firefox? Looking around right now the only one I see is right click tab -> Summarize page (NEW). I googled a bit and see they have some grouping of tabs feature I've never used/seen (or want). The only other maybe AI feature I remember seeing is the odd left hand bar that is there on fresh installs and I usually remove to declutter. Are those the features this kill switch removes or was t…

Firefox mentions the following ones:

"- Translations, which help you browse the web in your preferred language.

- Alt text in PDFs, which add accessibility descriptions to images in PDF pages.

- AI-enhanced tab grouping, which suggests related tabs and group names.

- Link previews, which show key points before you open a link.

- AI chatbot in the sidebar, which lets you use your chosen chatbot as you browse, including options like Anthropic Claude, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini and Le Chat Mistral."

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

#116

Post by krige » Tue, Feb 24, 2026, 8:09 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #104

Kuinox wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet translation was the main application for applied language machine learning.

When would've thought that to solve natural language translation, one would first need to solve... natural language. All those arguments about agents and hallucinations kind of distracted people from noticing we've accodentally built a universal translator .

As someone both exposed to this new wave of LLM style translation in various media, and someone who has background in translation, no we didn't.

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

#117

Post by PunchyHamster » Tue, Feb 24, 2026, 8:10 AM UTC

godelski wrote: post #84

Firefox does what some people want, people complain. Firefox does what other people want, people complain. Firefox does what both people want, people complain. I'm sorry, but we'll never get corporations to do what we want if we don't throw them the smallest bone when we get our way. You need positive reinforcement too, not just negative. If it's all negative they just stop caring and you get companies lot Google who…

> So what, we're just going to hand the keys of the kingdom to the guys selling artisian turd sandwiches because what, there isn't enough mayo on your ham sandwich? Because you don't like ham?

Firefox is the artisan turd sandwich. They are burning dev time on features barely anyone asked, while bleeding market share for last decade

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

#118

Post by gpvos » Tue, Feb 24, 2026, 8:10 AM UTC

ddxv wrote: post #102

Where are the AI features in Firefox? Looking around right now the only one I see is right click tab -> Summarize page (NEW). I googled a bit and see they have some grouping of tabs feature I've never used/seen (or want). The only other maybe AI feature I remember seeing is the odd left hand bar that is there on fresh installs and I usually remove to declutter. Are those the features this kill switch removes or was t…

Page translation is mentioned in TFA. It appears in the address bar on pages detected to be in a foreign language, and is also in the main hamburger menu.

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

#119

Post by PunchyHamster » Tue, Feb 24, 2026, 8:11 AM UTC

zargon wrote: post #23

aquir wrote: 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?

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.

Mozilla did plant the tree 20 years ago, then decided few years after to abandon it

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

#120

Post by LiamPowell » Tue, Feb 24, 2026, 8:11 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #71

LiamPowell wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would absolutely love to hear your reasoning that leads to type systems being considered a "restriction of end-user computing freedoms". For those that don't know what trusted types are: Simply put, it splits the string type in to unsanitised_string_from_user and safe_escaped_string where unsafe strings can not be used in function parameters that only take a safe string That's heavily simplifying of course, but it'…

Skimming the API docs on MDN, it makes sure the site vendor gets to run filtering code over anything you'd want to inject via e.g. user script or console, securing it with CSP. I expect this to make user scripts work as well as they do on Chrome now. If there's a workaround, I'd love to hear about it.

Worst case you just run your userscript before any policies are created, but in most cases it's not going to impact userscripts.