Mozilla under fire for Firefox AI "bloat" that blows up CPU and drains battery
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Did a project several years where the customrr required that the server we delivered specifically for the project never use more than 50% CPU or RAM. No requirements about how fast it actually performs its intended function, just that it can only utilise half the available resources while doing it.
My software does that anyway because I can't be arsed with multithreading or a 64 bit version
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This. It costs hundreds of millions per year to develop a web renderer. The security expertise required in particular is immense.
People have made clear they will not pay for browsers. At the same time, Mozilla doesn't want to hoover up mountains of personally identifiable information like Google and MS do.
People hate Mozilla for doing what they can to make money, and they also hate the idea of paying.
I understand the frustration, but I genuinely don't know what the community expects.
Don't get me wrong, I don't agree with or see sense in every Mozilla decision, but people act like they're satan incarnate and it's just ridiculous.
Honestly if that is it, it is understandable. This AI nonsense, however, is plainly a waste of money and resources, Mozilla's and their users'.
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I don’t think it ever downloads any models. It’s just a a webview for the external chat interface, no?
That's the sidebar thing
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You can just ..turn it off tho.
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I wish Mozilla would just debloat the browser, focus on performance and making browsing a good experience. But unfortunately their revenue situation is bad. At this stage, they won't even manage to survive through donations after annoying their main user base.
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Which fork should I be using? I am already using IronFox on Android and I'm loving it. What about Linux? What's your favourite?
I love Zen.
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Which fork should I be using? I am already using IronFox on Android and I'm loving it. What about Linux? What's your favourite?
I can only answer that last question with Waterfox, as I've been using it for something like a decade.
My other browser is Vivaldi because of the tab stacking feature makes organising, uh, ...stuff... easier...
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I wish Mozilla would just debloat the browser, focus on performance and making browsing a good experience. But unfortunately their revenue situation is bad. At this stage, they won't even manage to survive through donations after annoying their main user base.
They aren't doing anymore for years. I moved to forks of ff instead.
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Which fork should I be using? I am already using IronFox on Android and I'm loving it. What about Linux? What's your favourite?
Waterfox on mobile and floorp on desktop.
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That's the sidebar thing
I realised that about a minute after I posted, so I deleted my commented right away
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I realised that about a minute after I posted, so I deleted my commented right away
Ah, it was still visible to me. Now it shows it's removed. My bad
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The pathological need to find something to use LLMs for is so bizzare.
It’s like the opposite of classic ML, relatively tiny special purpose models trained for something critical, out of desperation, because it just can’t be done well conventionally.
But this:
AI-enhanced tab groups. Powered by a local AI model, these groups identify related tabs and suggest names for them. There is even a "Suggest more tabs for group" button that users can click to get recommendations.
Take out the word AI.
Enhanced tab groups. Powered by a local algorithm, these groups identify related tabs and suggest names for them. There is even a "Suggest more tabs for group" button that users can click to get recommendations.
If this feature took, say, a gigabyte of RAM and a bunch of CPU, it would be laughed out. But somehow it ships because it has the word AI in it? That makes no sense.
I am a massive local LLM advocate. I like “generative” ML, within reason and ethics. But this is just stupid.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Another local LLM guy here, i fully agree with you - this is probably just a move to acquire capital in the case that the google-cashflow stops.
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Firefox has little financial motivation for this, though?
Other than getting "AI" investor money, if that's the plan... But otherwise it just feels like they're following a meme.
90% of their cash flow comes from google to be the default search engine - they are probably trying to open up alternative routes of funding to reduce the risk, since it's not guaranteed that the money will keep coming due to the current lawsuit.
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This post did not contain any content.wrote last edited by [email protected]
ppl complaining on the internet about something you can literally turn off with one about:config line never change internet
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I wish Mozilla would just debloat the browser, focus on performance and making browsing a good experience. But unfortunately their revenue situation is bad. At this stage, they won't even manage to survive through donations after annoying their main user base.
They haven't needed donations for years. In the current situations donos are, at best, part of the CEO and top-brass bonus.
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I wish Mozilla would just debloat the browser, focus on performance and making browsing a good experience. But unfortunately their revenue situation is bad. At this stage, they won't even manage to survive through donations after annoying their main user base.
wrote last edited by [email protected]How do you make browsling a good experience, other than performance?
I like the webpage translation it offers. I'd hate to lose it. Sync and tab sending is also very important to me, between desktop, mobile phone, and tablet.
I'm sure debloating would inevitably mean losing features that are required to catch the average internet user.
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Did a project several years where the customrr required that the server we delivered specifically for the project never use more than 50% CPU or RAM. No requirements about how fast it actually performs its intended function, just that it can only utilise half the available resources while doing it.
Yeah, we have that with our customers sometimes. To me, an app should either be running full whack - maxing out bandwidth on CPU, disk, memory or network - or completely idle. Chuntering along at 2% is a bug. For the ones that put 'monitoring tools' that raise errors when we reach 100% on something, we set a Linux CGroup to throttle the offending resource. Takes longer, obviously, but not worth arguing with their network deployment teams
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even without AI, to me tab groups are already feature creep bloat in browsers. do people really put that much effort into organizing tabs?
It is to some people. My approach though, when I happen to have multiple "work group" to organize, is just to use my OS ability to have multiple windows. No need for any extra bloat, the feature is already there, and it works as I'm used to.
But apparently, using the tools already available to you is not a common skill these days
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They haven't needed donations for years. In the current situations donos are, at best, part of the CEO and top-brass bonus.
it’s even worse than that tho: donations are for the mozilla foundation which is doing all the nonsense everyone hates… firefox is the mozilla corporation, which is a distinct entity
IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO DONATE TO FIREFOX
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You can just ..turn it off tho.
It should not be on by default and you should not have to go into about:config to turn it off.
