Mozilla seized an opportunity to bring trustworthy AI into Firefox
Therefore, as part of the changes today, we will be bringing together Pocket, Content, and the AI/ML teams supporting content with the Firefox Organization
This is from the Mozilla release. The second quote does say "Firefox Organization" and not "Firefox", but it seems clear they are planning on integrating AI into Firefox.
But, I've reread @NotSteve_'s comment and they were saying the funding earned from AI could be put into Firefox, not AI itself. NotSteve wasn't claiming that putting AI into Firefox would bring in more funding, only that AI could be a separate source of revenue. So my question is moot.
Privacy aside, in my experience over a long time Brave load up and response time is significantly faster than Firefox. And Brave renders the windowing geometry and toolbars correctly on Linux, while Firefox does not. I also do not consider Mozilla free speech friendly or privacy friendly because of this:
"We need more than deplatforming"
There is no question that social media played a role in the siege and take-over of the US Capitol on January 6."
There was no 'siege' or 'takeover' of the capitol. Nobody stormed the place with guns or weapons. That is a fantasy tale. This choice of politically charged words turns the reality of the event into a fictional lie. This is all political theater. It's a patent lie. Those who are going along with this lie to promote censorship are a wart on a worm's rump.
A few FBI agents and FBI-paid provocateurs smashed some stuff and made some noise, then the clowns on Capitol hill who organized for and gave the orders for the FBI to do this, called it an "insurrection." So Mozilla is promoting censorship and deplatforming based on a fake insurrection. Just. Like. The. Nazis. And. Communists. did during WWII to crack down on Jews, Gypsies, and non-Catholic Christians.
Kinda disappointing how much of the community just takes a giant 💩 on Mozilla whatever it does these days. Funding open source is super crazy hard folks. Notice that the really successful well funded projects are fueled by megacorps?
Offering constructive criticism is great but if you don’t have better ideas around how to fund an open browser without selling your soul to GOOG or MSFT then perhaps your energy might be better spent elsewhere.
Mozilla downsizes as it refocuses on Firefox and AI drops multiple products and layoff 60 so that its current budget can accomodate the stratospheric compensation of its new CEO.
I recall there being at least one content blocker that worked by heuristics instead of rulesets. Cannot remember the name, but it was clearly not as effective as conventional ones, because not all ads look the same and usually people want to block the invisible trackers as well.
I dunno, having a free, open model made by a trusted company would be nice. I like initiatives like Mozilla Voice, this could be something similar. Probably not great if it’s replacing focus on the other things though.
100% agreed. I just hope whatever this AI they are thinking isnt about what info I should consume. What the AI think is good doesnt mean its the only info I should consume.
Specifically, Mozilla plans to scale back its investment in a number of products, including its VPN, Relay and, somewhat remarkably, its Online Footprint Scrubber
IMO these were their best products. 🙁
Going forward, the company said in an internal memo, Mozilla will focus on bringing “trustworthy AI into Firefox.” To do so, it will bring together the teams that work on Pocket, Content and AI/Ml.
I would assume they’re taking a hard look at revenue figures. I currently do use their VPN, but my impression is that it isn’t much more than a repackaging of Mullvad VPN. No idea about the other products. Is their Relay and Scrubber offering more outstanding?
I mean that’s pretty standard for a McKinsey ghoul:
Step 1: go to an ivy league college, get a business degree
Step 2: work for McKinsey for a few years as an associate
Step 3: get a job at a McKinsey client leapfrogging everyone else into management/c-suite
Step 4: hire McKinsey to bring their arrogant children into your org and screw things up
Everything about her subsequent career has been going from one upper management/c-suite role in a tech company to another. This is not the resume of a person who should be running a nonprofit that controls the most important open source project on the internet. But beyond that just look at what she’s done in her one month at Mozilla:
Massive round of layoffs
"Focus on {buzzword}" where {buzzword} in this case is AI
For once I see legitimate criticism about Mozilla without the Lunduke part. And the worst part is that just like Emily, Laura will be protected from all scrutiny just because she is a woman. It will not matter that she is a capitalist from McKinsey, or that she will eat away at developers’ salaries and walk away happily with no consequences. Maybe we will see again, just like Emily, beach photos with arrogance and insults?
Terrible times for Mozilla. AI obsession is just extra damage.
Comparing brave and base Firefox is unfair IMO. Brave is security hardened out of the box, where as Firefox is a general purpose browser and has telemetry in the form of crash reports and the like (which can be turned off). It can be hardend well through arkenfox, or using a fork like Librewolf. Comparing Firefox and chrome is better imho.
Firefox has many built-in anti fingerprinting flags (such as letterboxing, RFP, font limiting, and many more} which when combined with ublock origin are unbeatable. A baked-in content blocker like that of braves loses because it isn’t extensible. This website compares on only default settings which aren’t representative of the extent each browser can be taken but useful nonetheless: privacytests.org
A baked-in content blocker like that of braves loses because it isn’t extensible.
In what way? I use(d) Firefox since the very first Firebird days, and Netscape Navigator before it, and I’m practically married to uBO (don’t tell my wife!). That said, Brave’s ‘shields’ blocker is just skinned uBO with some tweaks. It can add custom cosmetic filtering rules, additional adblock format filter lists, disable or enable JS (globally or per-site) and has built in fingerprint resistance. Aside from the differing UI, I genuinely can’t think of anything overtly missing as such.
I’m stated that because I know baked in features must wait for browser updates to get fixes (not talking about block list updates but the core itself). I also was basing it off a comment I read (can’t find sadly) on the limitations of implementing a ublock-style blocklist into brave. And thirdly, I have seen no mention of anything like ublock’s blocking modes (block 3rd party scripts/frames). Can you quickly select an element to block in brave?
I might have considered using brave as a 2ndary browser if it werent for the ceo’s politics (spending thousands to support anti-lgbt legislation) which I feel are antithetical to privacy.
And thirdly, I have seen no mention of anything like ublock’s blocking modes (block 3rd party scripts/frames). Can you quickly select an element to block in brave?
You can enter as many custom filter rules as you like, with adblock syntax support. You can select an element to block, yes.
Despite the URL name, it shows bare browse Brave and Firefox+ublock compare at blocking 3rd party ads/trackers. It looks like this was updated November of last year.
Brave isn’t represented anywhere on the graph? Unless I’ve misunderstood you. That’s a comparison of Firefox with various ad blockers, and uBO with and without CNAME unclocking enabled. Brave also uncloaks CNAMEs, so that’s one place they are equal. Chromium based browsers do lack some abilities compared to Firefox, however. I have daily driven Firefox since the first day, but Brave and Blink/Chromium based browsers are undeniably faster at rendering (unfortunately).
Yes of course. I hadn’t slept when I replied, how embarrassing to miss that. You can enable CNAME uncloaking in Brave, which I suspect draws them to a parallel. It would be interesting to see the test repeated with the setting enabled. Since one has to (or had to) enable it in uBO also, it would only be fair to compare apples to apples. As I said, the blocker in Brave is based on uBO anyway. To be clear, and as I’ve said before, I’ve daily driven Firefox since the beginning and run uBO in medium mode. I’m not shilling for Brave here, simply pointing out that the differences are small (much of the code is shared with uBO) and it does certainly render faster.
I do understand that you aren’t shilling brave. Ublock medium mode is great and I think worth the effort. I wish Firefox had some of the native features present in chromium browsers (mostly quality of life features like native force dark mode on web contents). But I love the extent that Firefox can be taken to reduce not just fingerprinting, but also avenues of attack.
You can force Firefox to display dark mode in web content (even with privacy tweaks enabled to resist fingerprinting or tracking), by setting the two following hidden prefs in your user.js:
<span style="color:#323232;">// PREF: enable a Dark theme for browser and webpage content
</span><span style="color:#323232;">// [TEST] https://9to5mac.com/
</span><span style="color:#323232;">user_pref("ui.systemUsesDarkTheme", 1); // HIDDEN
</span><span style="color:#323232;">user_pref("browser.in-content.dark-mode", true); // HIDDEN
</span>
Add comment