Plus, even if you can turn it off, the feature is still in the code, needing updates, etc., even if you don't ever use it. Literal bloat.

What's not changing though is that most of their focus will be on integrating AI which most people don't want.

I agree that AI chatbots are absolutely useless and have no place in a browser, but out of the three ML features in the screenshot, one is great for blind people, and another one is great for making the web more multilingual, so their usefulness is quite self-evident. Regarding ethics, at least for the last one it's using a local model, and was trained using open-source datasets.[1]

What makes so-called "AI" bad is not the amount of users that can benefit from it, but how useful it is to the people that do use the feature, which usually means having experts tailor machine learning unto a single purpose.

I personally use the translation feature at least once a week when looking at news article that are not in English, and now I'm using a lot to translate Japanese webpages to plan a holiday there, so I'm very happy that Mozilla has invested time abd collaborated with universities to make this feature, I wish other people were less flippant about it just because it has "AI" in its name.

[1] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2022/06/training-efficient-neural-network-models-for-firefox-translations/

HDR never, woo...

people (not calling you out specifically) keep suggesting Librewolf like it isn't driving around a city in a tank. it gets the job done, sure, but most people will not tolerate its faults. Suggest something more in-between like Waterfox at least.

Suggesting Librewolf is like asking people to browse the web via Tor. it works, sure, but the inconvenience will make most people give up on gecko-based browsers and give into Google/chrome via Brave or the million other chrome-in-sheep's-wool browsers.

Let's recommend viable alternatives: https://www.waterfox.com/

There is still NoScript, which is arguably much better than that, since it offers more granular control

I wrote myself a little plugin for firefox.

It runs nice, and I want to install it permanently. It does something I want.

Can I? No. Why? Because Firefox... Apparently I'm not adult enough to control my own browser. WTF.

I have to either get their developer build or become a developer with an account. WTF.

So I think, I don't want their developer build, I just want this plugin--- I make a mozilla plugin developer account- because apparently that's how I'm supposed to do it- I try to create the plugin upload

Can I? No. Why? Because they want my phone number before I can make a plugin just for myself. WTF.

So - I ask ChatGPT if there is any work around for this, can it search, I just want to run my own plugin, I don't want the developer build, I don't want the developer account, I just want to run my own plugin- ChatGPT says it can't help me because I'm not adhering to Firefox's EULA. WTF.

So I give up on the plugin - and today, I just happen to notice Mozilla silently turned on SYNC for my web history for that fucking Mozilla plugin developer account. So I guess I'm sending them everything I ever do on the web. WTF.

I go and try to find out what information they've stolen from me, can I find it? No. The have some link, to another link, to another link, to another link, which eventually ends up on some page where I can ask them to pretty please send me what information they stole. Why can I not see this without writing a letter! WTF.

WTF WTF WTF. I hate Mozilla.

Please let them burn in software hell.

/rant

When chrome came out, it was pretty much that. Super fast, very bare bones. But people loved it because of the speed and the simplicity.

Im curious how Orion will turn out. There is supposed to be an alpha for Linux coming out now this February.

I don't think the proliferation of bad press is anything other than a chronicle of the decline of Firefox.

I've been ride or die with Firefox since early, and I've never daily driven Chrome. But I've had to keep Chrome installed to look at the sites that don't play with FF. Little by little, FF get's worse, and most of the "worst" these days are features, not bugs. Though their are plenty of bugs. They certainly deserve praise for keeping faith with ublock. And I appreciate that they respect privacy more than Alphabet.

I want Mozilla to succeed. I just remember when Mozilla made the case with the quality of their software, rather than the quality of their ethics.

Agreed that it's not really AI, but forcing a thing that doesn't really do what is promised and uses a lot of energy to do it might might be something to be irritated about.

None of what is considered 'AI' is actually AI, it's just a rebrand of machine learning tech that has been around for a few years now (and is genuinely useful in certain circumstances). It's all 'AI', only the generative AI is worth getting mad about.