Don’t give money to the death star and yes, your data is money
I didn’t think that AI would be a big brother in reality.
It installed it two years ago but nobody noticed because all the privacy nerds use different browsers
Just the other day I uninstalled Chrome & gave “Enshittification” as the reason when prompted. Not that I’d been using it since turning to Firefox a few years ago and Waterfox more recently.
I wonder when Brave’s local blockchain update will drop
Google doesn’t need to scrape the web they just need chrome to send them the das you are already scrapping for them. Stop using Chrome.
Removed by mod
Well your first mistake was using Chrome in 2026
Second Mistake was using Windows in 2026
id say this is the first mistake really
Icon checks out
I hate that I still have to use Chrome because it can do some streaming stuff better than Firefox (and even Chromium for some reason). I only use it to connect to one KVM.
Do the streaming issues resolve themselves ✨magically✨ when faking the user agent to be Chrome for those streaming sites, e.g. using Firefox and a user agent add-on?
Many do, yes. Any time I get an error message like “You’re not using a supported browser” that message vanishes after adjusting the user agent.
Well yes, the warning messages will disappear as those are often shown or not shown based on user agent.
But will the actual streaming issues go away is the big question.
Teams on the web for example, worked fine in Firefox even though it warned the user it didn’t work in anything but Chrome.
I have not encountered streaming issues that could not be resolved by user agent so far.
That’s the neat part - all always do!
My issues were with h265/HEVC support, proprietary stuff like media codecs can sometimes be a pain. I no longer have that need so I’m a happy fox.
Pretty sure Firefox added support for HEVC a while back, but it relies on the system to provide the decoder (Which you’ll usually have to pay extra for)
Firefox also supports MKV files now, which is nice.
Not in this case. It’s an open source project. They usually don’t do this shit.
Tell them to get their shit together and support open-source browsers, or more accurately just browser standards in general.
For when I need Chrome, I use Vivaldi. Its probably over bloated for what I need, but it works.
When I need to use Chrome, I just use the Chrome Mask extension in Firefox to change my user agent. I haven’t had a site that actually failed to work on the Gecko engine instead of Chromium. It’s just lazy devs checking your user agent to see if you’re using Chromium, and then throwing a fit if you’re not.
Chrome Mask even has a built in site reporter, because broken sites don’t actually conform to modern web interoperability requirements. If it fails to work on Gecko, there’s a good chance that it will also fail to work on other platforms (like Apple’s WebKit) as well. And the reports go to the team that develops Firefox, so they can figure out why the site is refusing to work on Gecko.
Vivaldi is a great Chromium browser. I’m more of a Firefox/Librewolf on my personal machines, but my work’s software has a few features that only work with Chromium extensions so I had to use it. Was my preferred alternative to all others, while bloated it was highly controllable and didn’t focus on unnecessary features like Brave or others. My work recently banned any browser that isn’t Chrome/Edge/Firefox though, so I guess I’m back to Firefox and will ignore the features I can’t use
I also use Vivaldi, and I don’t care about the bloat.
I bought the entire computer, I’m going to use the entire computer.
Try Brave for this use-case. I find that it works well for all kinds of streaming.
And while it’s no Firefox or Librewolf, it’s still a lot better than Chrome.
The problem with brave is that the CEO is a very bad person, the company also give me sketchy vibes with the crypto stuff they push
Well, sure.
But even then still better than Chrome.
same i abandoned as soon as they said they were going to slow the browser/computer down for people using private mode. oh and it has no adblock that is good as ublock origin.
I remember chrome, its the new Internet Explorer i believe.
Omg but it’s ok because we called it 🌼⭐ federated learning ✨💮 so we only steal the data that is profitable to us while legally no PII leaves your device 🚀 weeeee!
I found out this doesn’t apply to celeron laptop from 2016 with 4 GB ram so all good.
Local AI js API checks pc specs before downloading - cos it wouldn’t work anyway 😁
Your first mistake was voluntarily using any Google software, especially chrome.
But what if it was open source???
Chromium is. Chrome is not
Software updates have gotten so fucked up in general these days.
It’s so rare that changelogs are published to actually educate the end user about what an update will do. Most of the time it’s just “Bug fixes and feature updates” with no further detail. What bugs? What features? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Then you update (or, more likely, you left auto-update on) because they guilt you into thinking that you’ll immediately fall victim to a zero-day vulnerability if you don’t. And suddenly everything just gets slightly worse and worse.
It should be more accepted to follow the mentality of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” with software, precluding the need to install new updates unless something stops working or there is a vulnerability to patch. On my phone at least, I have auto updates turned off and will generally let audience consensus determine if it’s something I want. But it’s still a coin toss if I decide to take an update, because no one bothers to tell you what they really do anymore.
Come to the world of open source.
Where changelogs are detailed and informative, and software updates actually make the software better.
And if changelogs aren’t detailes enough, you read the commits
Fun fact: when releasing apps on Google Play, you are basically forced to give a proper summary about what the update contains and Google threatens your developer account if you fail to do so. If you want some sour chuckles, check the “what’s new” of YouTube or Google Play itself.
And then they give you a very short character limit in which to do so, thus leading to a lot of summarized patch notes due to those limits.
It’s so rare that changelogs are published to actually educate the end user about what an update will do.
This reminds me - One of the games I play did an update called “Nothing update” and it just simply said “Nothing was updated, no need to investigate”.
Sounds a lot like “Herobrine removed”
That update sounds very sus…
A while back, I was actually okay with MS being semi forcible about Windows Update.
Most people overestimate their antivirus, and don’t realize that frequent updates are generally the most important way of keeping their system safe. And, to avoid turning computers into zombies for botnets, to keep the whole internet safe. Windows is the world’s most popular OS - it’s good for the world to keep systems secure.
And then MS had the gall to betray that responsibility of only shipping critical security patches by forceful methods. They started forcing people to Windows 11, pushing Edge back in as their browser, pushing popups and Start menu changes, and so on. For a thousand reasons, Windows Update has more notoriety in common with malware than the malware it’s meant to protect you from.
Yup, exactly. The concept of forced updates is fine, as long as it is handled properly. The issue is that Microsoft has not handled it properly.
I have to admit, I started laughing when it tried to update me to Win 11, I finally threw up my hands and said “Fuck it, why not!” said yes, and it did not work. 😄 It still kept asking though. Hilarious.
I installed Bazzite this year.
I’m 1.5 years into Bazzite now, and to be clear I end up using degrees of not-my-devices for a lot of my time on coprutor these days (so, not pushing this distro that hard over that time, in other words).
But it’s been great, also run it on a small number of super cheap second hand laptops for various things and have had really good experiences.
There’s a few caveats but overall Bazzite is accessible and robust.
I googled a definition of a word today. it took me two minutes to get chrome to not use the “AI mode” search when searching via the address bar
tomorrow I’m switching to Firefox at work. after I spend an hour trying to figure out how to remove the copilot overlay from Excel, anyways
You can ask the Duck Duck Go AI Assistant instead 🤣
When it comes to disabling AI in Google searches, you have two choices:
- Lawful Option: Add
-aito the end of your search, ie, “define asinine -ai” - Chaotic Option Add profanity to your search, ie, “what the fuck does asinine mean”
this wasn’t the AI preview/response thing at the top of a regular Google search result. they brought me into a new “AI mode” chatbot window completely separate from google search
I’m still not sure how I got it to fuck off. it kept doing it for simple searches, but would do a regular search if the search keys had enough words
What was the GDP for fucking Columbia in 1997?
($127.4 billion for those interested)
- Lawful Option: Add
OperaGX has been nice to me so far
opera is not nice to you, its an awful company and does not respect your privacy or data at all.
look at a firefox fork like waterfox if you want a browser that will be nice to you
