bUt ThErE’s A kiLL SwItCh!
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”
Most pointed questions you type will start a Google search1. This loads a regular search results page, and sees Firefox’s AI chatbot shift to a sidebar on the right. The AI reads the top results (including any AI overview), and produces a response based on them.
AI reads AI reading AI reading AI reading AI reading…
Exactly what I thought when I got to that bit of the article.
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
Ai in browsers is stupid
Companies at every layer are competing, from the OS, to the browser, to the website so you can experience triple the spam.
Soon your OS will get into a never ending loop with the browser and the website.
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
Or further favourable: Konform Browser.
Tor Browser and Mullvad Browser also worthy mentions.
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?
deleted by creator
What is this, a cutlery drawer?
Hopefully Ladybird will be production ready at some point.
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.
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).
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?
I tried out the servo alpha on android and it is surprisingly usable for something so early in development
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.
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”
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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]”
“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.
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
🤢 🤮
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.
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.
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.
I use KDE’s PDF reader Okular
Sumatra is the notepad++ of pdf readers (minus the state sponsored hackers https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/hijacked-incident-info-update/)
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’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.
If your company has an enterprise/privacy agreement with Adobe, it might be considered addressed, similar to the millions of companies using Microsoft 365 and Sharepoint.
If, OTOH, it’s a “free” feature of Adobe, it could be eating your company’s data without constraints.
If the latter, let us know your company’s name so that we can avoid it.
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?
Setting fire to the oil fields, cutting out the middle men. That’s American efficiency.
lol no. We still burn the same amount only now the robber baron oil execs get paid triple.
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 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.)
The problem with Firefox doing AI is theyre one foot out always. The features they add are always undercooked compared to the rest of the market. This looks really shit and useless in its current state like a worse version of perplexity browser.
All AI is undercooked: Errors are baked into LLMs and there is no viable solution to prevent the mistakes and outright bullshit they produce other than to assume it fucked up and pay an actual expert manually check literally everything it does.
Errors are baked in but I don’t agree with the “no viable solution” part. One research team actually was able to identify the “neurons” responsible for hallucinations and adjust the contribution to negligible amounts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ONwQzauqkc (Linking a youtuber instead of the actual study because he summarizes it pretty well and the research itself is not geared for laypersons.)
If this was implemented industry wide would it completely solve the problem? I don’t know, but I do know it would be a massive improvement.
I remain deeply skeptical.
Either way, it uses a ridiculous amount of power and comes at great environmental cost.
Fuck me, you and people in general jump to conclusions so easily. My post was meant to educate, to shore up knowledge. To help out.
In no way was I saying “AI is good and the tech bros are right about it.” 🤦♂️
I never took what you wrote to mean that, but I am deeply skeptical that they can successfully elminiate hallucinations to the point that “AI” can be trusted to given correct results.
Why bring up power and environmental cost? What did that have to do with anything?
Also if you’ll re-read what I wrote I used careful language to indicate I didn’t think this method would completely eliminate errors. Nevermind bridge the gap to “trusted.” (🤮 I will never trust AI.)
(Yeah I know the YouTuber used a sensational title; in their defense they kind of have to in order to get clicks. imho blame the algorithm and people’s reinforcement of that algorithm.)
Why wouldn’t I? It’s pretty fucking important! Why would you take exception to that? I also think it’s weird you assumed what conclusion I was jumping to.
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.
And it breaks sooo many sites.
Waterfox, is Firefox that just works.I tried Librewolf for a while and found it to be a bit too much for me when all I really want is Firefox without AI. The privacy options are probably great but not for me.
Just installed waterfox. First impression is that I am super happy to be bock to the previous Firefox theme - it takes less space and looks nicer in my opinion. Seems promising. Thanks for the recommendation! :)
The latest Firefox release added a button that does exactly what you want. Turns off AI everywhere.
Yeah, I returned to FireFox after the latest release because of the kill switch. Still I’m uncomfortable with using software that’s full of stuff that I hate, even if it’s disabled. This is not really rational I guess, just me being weird.
Yeah Librewolf does go really fucking hard on security/privacy to the detriment of functionality, but the are upfront with that so you shouldn’t be going in completely blind. I think Water Fox is a nice happy medium for users that don’t want to fuck around with technical stuff.
It might be easier to soften Librewolf than harden Firefox, but fair point.
If you’re a relatively normal user and you still want to use LibreWolf, I would recommend:
- disable fingerprinting
- not clearing history on exit
Most of this is easy to find, especially thanks to the LibreWolf menu
Yeah it’s all just in the GUI to enable and disable what you don’t want.
I don’t get what people are complaining about with LibreWolf being “too hard”. Like it’s 1 minute clicking through menus and you’re done. 5 minutes if you need to read and search things up real quick.
But LibreWolf, ublock installed by default, and then set up containers. Just pure bliss.
For us, sure. For the average Joe who doesn’t know about the side effects of fingerprinting, not so much.
It broke youtube for me yesterday and mind you I’m a web developer and I didn’t know what broke it exactly to turn it on/off.
It fixed it self today though.
That was almost certainly YouTube breaking itself. They do a lot of public A-B testing without notifying the user of anything, even if it could break functionality.
The chances of Librewolf breaking, and updating in 24 hours is basically zero. Especially if you’re on Windows since it doesn’t update itself, you have to choose to install the separate updater application when you install Librewolf, otherwise it just doesn’t update.
https://codeberg.org/librewolf/librewolf-winupdater
https://librewolf.net/docs/faq/
How often do you update LibreWolf?
LibreWolf is always based on the latest version of Firefox. Updates usually come within three days from each upstream stable release, at times even the same day. Unless problems arise, we always try to release often and in a timely manner.
It should however be noted that LibreWolf does not have auto-update capabilities, and therefore it relies on package managers or users to apply them.
Yeah I agree it was probably a/b testing since I use ublock origin as well so I’m use to this kind of stuff.
But the point I’m trying to make that I didn’t know at that time librewolf would have settings turned on that could break some websites.
To be fair, YouTube is a giant piece of shit. On mobile, IronFox and Firefox are terrible with it, but switching to Chrome and everything loads instantly.
We all know Google is purposely slowing down non-chrome browsers.
Maybe, but if you want Librewolf but less extreme, that’s what Waterfox is for. May as well just install that and avoid the 5 minute search. And this is coming from a long time Librewolf user.
I just enable canvas on sites that need it.
Thats the only part of RFP that I find problematic.
It only breaks sites because RFP is on by default and some greedy sites dont like RFP. You can just turn it off and use a good user agent mask (if you care about fingerprinting)
Wait, it does? I’ve not had site issues with either.
It can cause issues with default settings on the occasional site.
Since I had it on hand, here's a screenshot of what I encountered when playing Jackbox with friends. All images would look like this.
unfortunately forks depend on FF, and chrome to survive.
Its too late, bro. You gotta break it off and start mingling with the forks.
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.
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!
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
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.
“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.
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.
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.
