The Internet of Garbage Things

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Mozilla's new fintech CEO has announced that the company will begin investing in AI and that Firefox will become an AI browser.

 

[Free]

Mozilla's new fintech CEO has announced that the company will begin investing in AI and that Firefox will become an AI browser.

Too many to choose from now!

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

A lot of what's frustrating about all these bullshit "AI" products is that they very clearly are not rooted in what customers want, they are rooted in what out of touch, rich investors want to give people. It seems like there has been a major paradigm shift in industry where they will do anything to appease investors and we customers can go fuck ourselves.

With so many of these things, it's very unclear what problem they are trying to solve. ...other than investors needing more money.

 

[Noodles]

A lot of what's frustrating about all these bullshit "AI" products is that they very clearly are not rooted in what customers want, they are rooted in what out of touch, rich investors want to give people. It seems like there has been a major paradigm shift in industry where they will do anything to appease investors and we customers can go fuck ourselves.

With so many of these things, it's very unclear what problem they are trying to solve. ...other than investors needing more money.

If ypu want to get real conspiratorial, they are tryinf to solve the "problem" of free flowing information. Make sure people get told what to think by the AI instead of looking things up themselves.

The reality is, in most cases, its trying to "solve" the problem of having to hire and pay employees and people.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

The reality is, in most cases, its trying to "solve" the problem of having to hire and pay employees and people.

Well yes.... that one I get. But many of the AI features in random products don't do that....

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

So if you haven't heard how the whole thing with Mozilla going AI-first is coming along, Mozilla originally tried arguing that its newly implemented and planned upcoming features were "optional" and even called them "opt-in" because you would be able to turn them off, even though that's the opposite of opt-in, and even though turning them off requires digging through power-user settings and finding a bunch of ambiguously-named flags to toggle.

When this didn't work, Mozilla tried to placate users by next promising that there would be an "AI kill switch" available so that users would more easily turn off all of the (still not opt-in) AI features all at once.

But it seems like Mozilla intends to make this a malicious compliance kind of thing. They posted a poll in Mastodon implying that the browser's machine translation feature - the kind of tech which has been around for years and years and which has nothing to do with the intrusive generative AI stuff that people are so upset about - still totally counts as an AI feature and would naturally be disabled by the anti-AI kill-switch too unless users were willing to compromise their anti-AI stance and ask for an exception - an insinuation they've been getting called out for (read up from this post, one of many reply threads resulting from Mozilla's poll).

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Zelda
@TheZeldaZone @mastodon.social

"Hello, We're Firefox, The Only Browser That Hasn't Hit Itself In The Dick With A Hammer. For years now, folks use us because of our un-hammered dick. Now, you may be wondering why today we've brought this hammer and pulled out our dick. Well I'm glad you asked--"

 

[Essence Lumin]

Mozilla, the only usable desktop browser without a chrome engine going to hell.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Well I am following the development of the Ladybird Browser right now, which is not ready yet but it's a great thing that it exists.

Ladybird started as a browser project of the Serenity OS project. Serenity OS is another retro looking desktop system written from scratch, Ladybird started as its browser subproject. Nowadays though Ladybird is an independent project with own funding.

Target platforms are at the moment unix like systems, so Linux, MacOS and so on. But who knows it might get ported later in the future to Windows as well.

The devs of Ladybird are using their own rendering engine written from scratch with no legacy code, and aim for an alpha release this summer.

So far the momentum is there, and it is gaining traction with 8 paid full time developers working on it aside the volunteers. Who knows where this is going to lead. One of the donators to the project is Github founder Chris Wanstrath, who donated $1.000.000 to it.

But it's nice to see that actually somebody is working on an alternative again.

Or as they put it on "Why we do need Ladybird":

The web is one of the most important inventions of the modern era, fueling the growth of the internet and changing the way many of us live, work, learn, and play. It’s a technical marvel both for what it enables us to do and the way it’s built - collaboratively and in the open. It wasn’t always this way, but today’s web is a testament to the power of open standards and open source.

In fact, it was open source, open standards, and healthy competition that pulled the web out of the dark days of the 2000s and into the innovative bonanza of the 2010s when Google Chrome, heavily influenced by Firefox, started gaining mainstream momentum.

Today, every major browser engine is open source, which is wonderful, but there’s still one issue: they’re all funded by Google’s advertising empire. Chrome, Edge, Brave, Arc, and Opera all use Google’s Chromium. Apple receives billions to make Google the default search engine in Safari, and Firefox has a similar deal where they receive hundreds of millions each year.

The web is too essential to have one primary source of funding, and too important to have that source of funding be advertising.

Many people say that it’s impossible to build a new browser and that you could never unseat Google Chrome. Well, you don’t have to unseat Google Chrome to make a difference - Firefox is proof of that. Firefox has never been the most popular browser, but it has majorly influenced every popular browser and made the web a better place.

As for whether you can build a new browser… it’s already happening.

That’s why I believe that Ladybird, a new browser written completely from scratch, and the Ladybird Browser Initiative, a nonprofit funded exclusively by donations whose sole purpose is the development of the Ladybird browser, can make a difference.

The world needs a browser that puts people first, contributes to open standards using a brand new engine, and is free from advertising’s influence.

Ladybird

Ladybird is a truly independent web browser, backed by a non-profit.

ladybird.org

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

Build failed with obscure ninja errors, I'll wait until they have a release.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

It's pre-alpha, so to be expected.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Oh yeah, Mozilla has completely lost it. Off the deep end.

Thread

#Mozilla has published what I can only call as an exercise of violence disguised as a website. What. The fuck. Is this. There is NO ONE at the wheel here.

I cannot believe this heel turn. Actually scratch that, I can totally believe it, it's just - so heartbreaking. It's like that scene from the Star Wars movie where Obi Wan has just diced up Anakin and starts crying about how Anakin was supposed to be the Chosen One, while Anakin is just twitching on the ground going "ARGLEBLARGLE I HATE YOUUUU". Anakin "Mozilla" Skywalker.

I switched to Librewolf when I started hearing suspicious things from Mozilla early last year, so I'm insulated for now from this turn of events, but man. Now I'm really waiting for that Ladybird browser to get through dev. There's another alternate engine called Servo in the works too.

 

[Free]

Oh yeah, Mozilla has completely lost it. Off the deep end.

Doing for AI what we did for the web

What, fool us into thinking it was a decentralized technology that would empower humanity? How well is that working out?

Also, some of that initializing screen you see when following the link...

THE FUTURE IS NOT AUTO-GENERATED.
THE FUTURE IS NOT PRE-APPROVED.
THE FUTURE REQUIRES CONSENT.

THE FUTURE IS EXPERIMENTAL SYNTH-MUSHROOM POP.

Well, that comes close. It certainly does feel like Mozilla is run by mushrooms.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Well, that comes close. It certainly does feel like Mozilla is run by mushrooms.

Or someone ON mushrooms.

 

[Spirits Rising]

Mozilla went off the deep end some time ago.

 

[Free]

Mozilla Adding 'Off' Switch to AI in Firefox

Flip the switch.

gizmodo.com

Better idea: provide a switch that removes the A.I. elements, so you don't have to waste disk space on them.

Even better idea: Provide A.I. and non-A.I. releases, and let us choose which one to download.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

Better idea, don't waste development resources on AI and do something like adding the USB HID API so I don't have to have Chrome installed to manage my keyboard?

 

[Casey Pelous]

Better idea, don't waste development resources on AI and do something like adding the USB HID API so I don't have to have Chrome installed to manage my keyboard?

AI=Dead sexy.

USB HID API=Dead.