Forks of Firefox like LibreWolf and Floorp are about to become more popular.

  • Imnecomrade [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    7·
    1 day ago

    https://www.theverge.com/tech/845216/mozilla-ceo-anthony-enzor-demeo

    At some point, though, Enzor-DeMeo will have to tend to Mozilla’s own business. “I do think we need revenue diversification away from Google,” he says, “but I don’t necessarily believe we need revenue diversification away from the browser.” It seems he thinks a combination of subscription revenue, advertising, and maybe a few search and AI placement deals can get that done. He’s also bullish that things like built-in VPN and a privacy service called Monitor can get more people to pay for their browser. He says he could begin to block ad blockers in Firefox and estimates that’d bring in another $150 million, but he doesn’t want to do that. It feels off-mission.

    I don’t trust this CEO will not block ad blockers some day.

  • hello_hello [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    9·
    1 day ago

    like LibreWolf and Floorp are about to become more popular.

    neon-fell-for-it-evangelion

    These are not “forks” they are third-party reskins of Mozilla’s product. They’re the equivalent of downloading third party windows ISOs and then claiming that you’re not really using Windows or that you’re getting the last laugh. Don’t use firefox “forks” just use Firefox and turn on the policy templates yourself (because that’s what they’re doing at the end of the day). Also, are you really trusting a small ring of either 1-3 people to make sure the most crucial program on your computer and in your life works properly?

    Stop using Firefox “forks” they are not “forks” they are third-party mods. You will not escape

    There is no “fork” of the web browser, it’s a software scheme designed to be nigh irreplaceable by anyone who is not a multi-billion dollar capitalist. Ladybird? More like Cloudflare’s next hottest investment as they diversify their business portfolio. Servo? Mozilla cuts their funding and they’re years and years away from getting where we are right now. Webkit? Tell anyone not using safari to wait a few seconds for webpages to load, or the endless trove of legacy plugins built up from decades to be discarded.

    The solution of course, is to reject over complicated web standards and create a base featureset, but with people’s lives being dictated by capitalist owned infrastructure that can change and morph instantly at the behest of its owners, there is no solution under capitalism.

  • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    30·
    2 days ago

    Mozilla has been controlled opposition for a long time. Sadly, we’re stuck with Firefox forks like Librewolf and Zen until a viable non-Chrome non-Firefox web browser comes along.

      • gayspacemarxist [comrade/them, she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
        3·
        1 day ago

        Yay I’m glad you’re giving it a spin!

        Gemini may not be the answer per se, but I think it’s not realistic for anyone to make a new web browser at this point. At least not without extremely deep pockets or being able to use somebody else’s extremely deep pockets. Looking at you servo.

        The the Web standard is just way too huge, and even servo’s method of breaking the browser down into a bunch of libraries just spreads the massive complexity around, it doesn’t really make it smaller.

        The idea that somehow a sufficiently motivated open source community can just make a web browser is wishful thinking imo. Maybe Gemini is too limited, but it’s an interesting experiment of a particular line that you could draw. And even at this minimal level of complexity, it’s not trivial to write a Gemini browser. You can make really, really trivial clients, which is cool, but actually building up the whole browser interface is still a relatively challenging task.

        • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.netEnglish
          1·
          19 hours ago

          I’m not too tech savvy so you’ll have to excuse me, but something I’ve been thinking… The impossibility of making new web browsers from scratch that can follow the huuuuge Web standard is basically because people expect to be able to do “more or less everything” right in their browsers nowadays, right? So maybe the “solution” here is to have more of a culture around doing things offline, torrenting instead of streaming, and then when doing things over the Internet, just having more specialized programs (and protocols?) instead of having an Everything Program for the Everything Protocol.

      • Inui [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        2·
        1 day ago

        I feel very confused looking at the documents on how to access content. Can you give an example of what you would enter into Geopard to access one of its search engines or something like that? Your comment is the first I’ve heard of this and I’m interested.

        • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.netEnglish
          1·
          24 hours ago

          After installing and launching Geopard, I just clicked on the address bar at the top of the window, typed in my search query, and hit enter, just like I would on Firefox or Chrome or any other modern browser. Geopard’s default search engine is called TLGS (“Totally Legit” Gemini Search).

          • Inui [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
            2·
            24 hours ago

            Oh shoot, I did that and was getting a socket connection error, so thought I was doing something wrong. Must be an issue on my end then.

  • aanes_appreciator [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    25·
    2 days ago

    for context, the new CEO has been general manager of firefox for a couple of years now, and was all-in on the AI shit then too.

    I do think Firefox has done some good shit since his appointment, such as holding steadfast on Manifest V2 (which protects ad blockers), mobile web extensions (Which I use to the web without ads on my android!) and rolling out improvements to the UI/UX.

    However, Firefox is well behind on API adoption which leaves it looking a bit crap when you’re trying to access modern web apps like Photopea only to be told “oh yeah lol this feature isnt supported”. AI slop is gonna slow this adoption further if not managed!

  • bigpharmasutra [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    30·
    2 days ago

    Don’t use bare bones Firefox people. Use a fork with all the dumb bullshit stripped out like Arkenfox, Betterfox, or Librewolf.

    I refuse to use a product named Floorp on principle. I’m sorry, I have to draw the line somewhere with these stupid fucking naming conventions. Floorp, Ploopy, Dorfy, just fuck off already.

  • Kefla [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    29·
    2 days ago

    Holy fuck FUCK OFF I am so fucking sick of this shit and every single goddamn moron who supports AI

    I can’t fucking stand it

    If you defend AI you’re dead to me, I don’t want anything to do with you, I’m fucking DONE

    • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]@hexbear.netEnglish
      3·
      16 hours ago

      I do not want to chat with something that spits out perfect Power Paragraphs. I hoped to never see a Power Paragraph again once I left high school. I do not want A and B and C reasons embedded into everything. I do not want a hyper-normative averaged-out response that is always being tweaked to be more sanitized and more habit-forming.

      I do not want something with limitless encyclopedic knowledge to talk to. I do not think that increases my humanity. If I wanted to look something up in an encyclopedia I would do just that. I do not think that more data is automatically better.

      I do not want something that I can substitute for in-person social contacts. I do not want something that responds consistently with cloying adulation. I do not want assistance from digital programming to sound at all like a human. I do not want an AI boyfriend/girlfriend. I was not impressed or excited by Cleverbot, I was too repulsed by the premise of Her to watch it, and I have no interest in any media about falling in love or even having a human conversation with a personality that runs on a computer processor.

      I do not want more and more extensive hardware just to keep up with a living standard. I do not want to need exponentially more computing power to filter through exponentially larger mounds of content just to get the same quality search results from 10 years ago. I do not want to give more and more of my attention away to freshly-minted trillion-dollar oligopolies. I do not want to require a limitlessly increasing amount of electrical power to go about my life. I do not want to generate billions of data points. I do not want to be subsumed into a sea of data. I do not want to aggressively burn through the planet’s limited fossil fuel reserves, accelerating habitat loss and climate change, to take a long shot at some millenarian techno-utopia.

    • JustSo [she/her, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      3·
      1 day ago

      If you defend AI you’re dead to me, I don’t want anything to do with you, I’m fucking DONE

      Same. I’ve had to go super low contact with one of the last communities I didn’t need to be anon with over their fucking AI waifu drivel talk and smug “this is as bad as AI will ever be, it can only progress from here” bullshit. Stupid fucks apparently don’t even have enough domain specific knowledge in ANYTHING to verify that LLMs are just stochastic text extruders.

      “CHECK THIS CHATLOG OUT SEE! IT HAS A THEORY OF MIND!! IT HAS A WORLD MODEL” FUCK YOUUUUUU COME BACK TO ME WHEN YOU UNDERSTAND THE HALTING PROBLEM.

    • EatPotatoes [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      6·
      2 days ago

      The fastest way to kill AI now is to use it for free. Just feed it total nonsense. I know that sounds terrible for the planet but these psychopaths are going to run it anyway.

      • Kefla [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        44·
        2 days ago

        Maybe I would use it if it had any fucking utility to begin with! I feel like I’m going completely insane because over like 3 years half the planet has decided that their entire lives now revolve around spinning tops. Everything has to have a spinning top integrated into it. Why do you hate spinning tops so much? Spinning tops are the future! Ok grandma ignore the spinning tops, we’ll all be here spinning them without you whenever you decide to wise up and get on the spinning top train. By the way we’ve committed to setting fire to every tree on Earth because they’re in the way of all the space we could be using for spinning tops. Also the ocean has GOT to go because that’s a lot of surface area that is underwater and not occupied by spinning tops. My son is 3 years old and has never known a world in which we don’t worship spinning tops. He spends at least three hours every day spinning in place in order to be more like God. We’re so proud of him! We can’t wait to see the spinning future he and his peers create!