Mozilla under fire for Firefox AI "bloat" that blows up CPU and drains battery
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You only disable the chat. Overall setting seems to be
browser.ml.enable.I also see an extensions.ml.enable. Anyone with actual knowledge of the source code know what those are doing?
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They in the last year or so added built in vertical tabs , much better hardware support for decoding video on Linux, continue to support manifest v2 and high quality ad blocking. Have increased performance and memory usage.
In the last 7 years performance is night and day different as is multiple process performance and switched away from unmaintainable old broken addon system.
They also created one of the premiere programming languages which is making in roads in the Linux kernel.
@michaelmrose @swordgeek I 100% agree that Mozilla is important but it's also clear that currently their is not enough business to keep Mozilla going. I don't blame them for trying to make a Business , i blame them for not following their former values. You can make a business and still mostly follow values ( look for example to GOG ).
And for what i don't like is the change from opt in to opt out. Every new feature most users don't want and they know this and make it harder and harder to turn off. The last time it was hidden in a sub menu in the settings ( switching off sending data to their ad service ) now it's hidden in config:about.
I guess next time you need 3rd party patches and compile the browser yourself to switch a "feature" off. -
According to the article, this is mainly for grouping tabs with a suggested name. Talk about backwards. Use AI to process the top websites on the Internet and create groups and/or logic to group them by keywords (cluster analysis), then save the small data structure in Firefox so it can group most websites instantly, using kilobytes of ram in the process; don't try to do this on everyone's device ffs.
Besides the heat and battery problem, this also means that the GUI is going to be non-deterministic, suggesting groups differently day-to-day based on the slight differences of input and the whims of the LLM. Burn it with fire.
I don't think the centralised approach works either. If you bake that grouping metadata of individual popular pages into Firefox you have an issue with keeping it current if page content changes. And you have a difficult trade-off between covering enough pages vs not blowing up the size too much. And the approach can't work for deep web pages, e.g. anything people can only see when logged in.
Ignoring all that: The groupings you could pre-process would be static and determined over some assumed average user behaviour, not an actual cluster of a specific users themes. You take some hardcore Warhammer 40k fan, and all his tabs on minis and painting techniques and rulebooks and fan media, and apply the static grouping then it all goes into "Warhammer". However if you ran it locally it might come up with "Painting" "Figures" "Rules" "Fanart" or whatever. It would produce a more fine grained clustering for someone who is deep into a specific niche interest, and a more coarse grained one otherwise.
So I think fundamentally it's correct to cluster locally and dynamically for a usable result. They need to make it opt-in, and efficient enough. Or better yet they could just abandon the idea because it's ultimately not that much use compared to the required inference cost.
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I just want a web browser that's not based in the USA.
It's still a way out but Ladybird might be the alternative going forward. However, they've stated that it's only going to support linux/mac with a windows version in the "eventually" column which makes it kinda hard to sell to people.
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It's still a way out but Ladybird might be the alternative going forward. However, they've stated that it's only going to support linux/mac with a windows version in the "eventually" column which makes it kinda hard to sell to people.
American non-profit open source browser from scratch is certainly better, still not it.
Even though I'll probably switch
I follow their youtube channel. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough and all that. -
Non profits do have corporate leeches too. The executives at Mozilla have executive salaries. That is, hundreds of thousands, or millions.
They don't work out of the goodness of their hearts. And Mozilla has to find a way to earn the income to pay their bloated salaries.
Why would an organisation choose to over spend on executive salaries?
Obviously, it's because thats what it costs to get people with the right skills.
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Mozilla is a bizarre Matryoshka doll with a for profit company inside of the nonprofit. If anything, I believe this structure is responsible for Mozilla's problems
So the profit from the for-profit is passed up to the non-profit.
This is a really common organisational structure and not bizarre.
There's loads of worthy criticisms to make of mozilla but this is not one of them.
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Profit can be distorted based on how much employees are being paid.
They're a "non-profit," but their CEO makes millions of dollars per year. I'd say that's a profit.
Believing otherwise is just falling for rhetoric that exists to take advantage of our naivete so people richer than us can be even richer.
Many of you will disagree with this (because you're greedy consumerists), but their employees also typically don't need to be paid nearly as much as they are. Their employees are also working to maximize profit, albeit from a different, less-effective angle.
Money brings out the worst in people. I don't really value the input of people going to bat for the businessmen taking their money. Too often I see useful idiots proud to be ripped off and getting angry whenever someone points it out. It's really the norm at this point, which is sad.
Calling whatever you like "profit" cant really be rebutted, it's subjective semantics.
Yes CEOs are paid lots of money. Why would mozilla choose to over pay staff?
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Non-profit isn't the same as not-for-profit
Take American Red Cross
They make bank on blood donations. Also, they take in way more than they put out.
This smells like BS.
Is mozilla non-profit, not-for-profit, or for-profit?
You dont really know do you.
"I dont like mozilla so ill just assume they must be profiteering assholes somehow"
"Its the vibe of the thing"
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Awful Idea? Anal Intrusion? Actually Irrelevant?Activating Idiocy? Adding Incompetence?
Altogether Imbecilic
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This smells like BS.
Is mozilla non-profit, not-for-profit, or for-profit?
You dont really know do you.
"I dont like mozilla so ill just assume they must be profiteering assholes somehow"
"Its the vibe of the thing"
I only use Firefox. I've only used Firefox since 2000.
They, by their own statements, are a 501( C )3, which is a non-profit, not a not-for-profit.
Sit down.
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But apparently, using the tools already available to you is not a common skill these days
So, are you not understanding that other people work differently, or are you just not using that skill?
Besides offering different approaches for different preferences, there are clear benefits to the extra level of organization. As an additional exercise, try to picture someone using multiple windows and tab groups.
Not everyone operates on the basic level. Hell, why even have tabs? The OS can manage multiple windows, and you can use multiple desktops to achieve the same result without that bloat.
So, are you not understanding that other people work differently, or are you just not using that skill?
The very first five words of my message was that this was useful to some people.
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Firefox really does seem to have lost the plot... they don't seem to go five minutes without slamming their dick in another drawer. It starts to look like they're in to it.
I never trusted them. Who would ever set up a nonprofit owned by a for profit company if not to decieve people?
I do appreciate the Open Sourced GECKO engine, though. I like Waterfox.
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If a browser only aims at tech savvy people, practically no one will end up using it.
wrote last edited by [email protected]This is an UI issue. You could just show them a landing Page and ask them if they want this new feature, and then it installs the extension in the background, without explicitly ask the user to go to the extension page to install something by hand.
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I never trusted them. Who would ever set up a nonprofit owned by a for profit company if not to decieve people?
I do appreciate the Open Sourced GECKO engine, though. I like Waterfox.
a nonprofit owned by a for profit company
It's the other way around, the foundation owns the corporation.
Still feels like the corporation is the one making decisions though.
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I was actually wondering why it felt like my Firefox was dying, possible could align with this.
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Altogether Imbecilic
Arrived in the Idiocracy?
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This post did not contain any content.wrote last edited by [email protected]
If AI mustt exist it should be in places where the general public cannot access nor interact with it
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Just make it an official extension ffs...
I'm fine with them pulling a Pocket as long it dies in the end.
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Well, stupid people want it and they do use it when its shoved in their face. Like how samsung updated and BLATANTLY made their peice of shit AI button TAKE OVER THR POWER BUTTON so when you try to turn off your phone little old granny gets confused that an ai agent pops up and starts recording you. Absolutely infuriating and I wish torture on whoever implemented that shit.
The kinds of people who want that switched to Google Chrome years ago. Only people who care more about software freedom than convenience are still using Firefox today.
