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submitted 10 months ago by petsoi@discuss.tchncs.de to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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[-] tranxuanthang@lemm.ee 145 points 10 months ago

Hopefully I don't get many downvotes for this, but it isns't necessary to deny anything related to AI and bombard Mozilla for this. Sure, Copilot is a disaster, because it is a service and will call home to M$ and collect your data. But all of what Mozilla offers us is on-device AI, which is exceptional. I've been waiting so long for on-device AI-based webpage translation, so people don't need to rely on external services like Google or Bing to translate any more.

[-] SkyeStarfall 47 points 10 months ago

Yeah, Mozilla is doing good work, and AI is here to stay. It's all about making and using AI ethically.

[-] joojmachine@lemmy.ml 20 points 10 months ago

Same, their local translation tech is absolutely great! If they keep working "AI" features that are pretty much quality of life ML stuff I'm all in for it.

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[-] jeena@jemmy.jeena.net 116 points 10 months ago

We are approaching the use of AI in Firefox — which many, many of you have been asking about

Which one of you was it, who asked for AI in Firefox???

[-] joojmachine@lemmy.ml 67 points 10 months ago

It looks like they are riding the AI wave to bring more features that are just good, local ML-based, and I'm all in for it. Firefox Translation is a great recent example, it's good.

[-] marcie@lemmy.ml 38 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

AI actually can be very good at translating things locally while keeping tone and intent, and thats what mozilla mentions here. I'm fully down with AI powered local translation tools native to firefox, it'll put it way above the competition

Some LLMs are low enough in resource usage to do this on weak and older PCs

[-] cupcakezealot 21 points 10 months ago

when used to enhance accessibility? me. especially in this case where it's used for better alt text and descriptive text in pdfs, a tech that has long struggled with that.

[-] maeries@feddit.de 21 points 10 months ago

It's a useful technology. Would be stupid to ignore it

[-] VeryImportantUser@lemmy.world 13 points 10 months ago

Board of directors, I guess.

[-] ComradePedro@lemmy.ml 12 points 10 months ago
[-] walthervonstolzing@lemmy.ml 9 points 10 months ago

The chatbots, presumably.

[-] aBundleOfFerrets@sh.itjust.works 71 points 10 months ago

Can’t wait for vertical tabs

[-] Emtity_13@lemmy.sdf.org 14 points 10 months ago

Vertical slabs

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[-] Fizz@lemmy.nz 61 points 10 months ago

"At Mozilla, we work hard to make Firefox the best browser for you. That’s why we’re always focused on building a browser.."

You don't need to lie to us. We are just happy you are finally working on browser features.

I'm looking forward to reducing ui clutter and profile improvements.

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[-] nieceandtows@programming.dev 43 points 10 months ago

I only need Firefox to load pages faster than Chrome

[-] joojmachine@lemmy.ml 36 points 10 months ago

Good luck convincing people to switch to it based only on "it loads pages faster than Chrome" though. It's a good goal to have, but getting tunnel-visioned on it when their current speed in real world use is pretty comparable is definitely not a good long-term plan.

[-] NostraDavid@programming.dev 16 points 10 months ago

Soon, Firefox can block ads better than Chrome. Ads are annoying. I see Chrome losing at least a 5% of the market, if not more, to Firefox, just because they're going to break uBlock Origin, and Firefox isn't.

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[-] nieceandtows@programming.dev 9 points 10 months ago

I'm not talking about pulling more people. I'm talking about my issue as an existing and looooong term user of Firefox. I started using a very low end phone recently, and Firefox vs Chrome on it is night and day difference. I don't notice it on my galaxy phone, but on low end devices it's torturous.

[-] joojmachine@lemmy.ml 9 points 10 months ago

Oh, you mean FF for Android? Yeah, on that front it really needs a ton of work. On the desktop side things are pretty much fast to a point where in real world use the difference is minimal.

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[-] ouch@lemmy.world 28 points 10 months ago

Tab Grouping would be great if implented well.

[-] Twitches@lemm.ee 25 points 10 months ago
[-] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 20 points 10 months ago

Holy shit, it is. I'm really hoping that includes mobile, since it's the only thing keeping me using a Chromium browser

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[-] FIST_FILLET@lemmy.ml 25 points 10 months ago

kinda excited to see what their native vertical tabs will look like. i’ve been using sidebery for the past ~3 years and i’m extremely satisfied with it, i somehow doubt their native version will look as good

[-] MudMan@fedia.io 9 points 10 months ago

Same but for tab groups. I can't believe it took this long and every extension-based alternative is busted in some fundamental way.

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[-] 001@kbin.melroy.org 24 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I just want HDR video support

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[-] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 22 points 10 months ago

We are approaching the use of AI in Firefox — which many, many of you have been asking about — in the same way. We’re focused on giving you AI features that solve tangible problems, respect your privacy, and give you real choice.

We’re looking at how we can use local, on-device AI models — i.e., more private — to enhance your browsing experience further. One feature we’re starting with next quarter is AI-generated alt-text for images inserted into PDFs, which makes it more accessible to visually impaired users and people with learning disabilities.

NO! I don't want AI in my Firefox. If Mozilla really adds AI, I will consider switching my main browser since Firefox 1 came out.

[-] MudMan@fedia.io 52 points 10 months ago

AI generated alt-text running locally is actually a fantastic accessibility feature. It's reliable, it provides a service, it can absolutely be deployed securely.

It's fine to be critical of technology, it's not fine to become as irrational about it as the tech bros trying to make a buck.

[-] zerakith@lemmy.ml 13 points 10 months ago

Not irrational to be concerned for a number of reasons. Even if local and secure AI image processing and LLMs add fairly significant processing costs to a simple task like this. It means higher requirements for the browser, higher energy use and therefore emissions (noting here that AI has blown Microsoft's climate mitigation plan our of the water even with some accounting tricks).

Additionally, you have to think about the long term changes to behaviours this will generate. A handy tool for when people forget to produce proper accessible documents suddenly becomes the default way of making accessible documents. Consider two situations: a culture that promotes and enforces content providers to consider different types of consumer and how they will experience the content; they know that unless they spend the 1% extra time making it accessibile for all it will exclude certain people. Now compare that to a situation where AI is pitched as an easy way not to think about the peoples experiences: the AI will sort it. Those two situations imply very different outcomes: in one there is care and thought about difference and diversity and in another there isn't. Disabled people are an after thought. Within those two different scenarios there's also massively different energy and emissions requirements because its making every user perform AI to get some alt text rather than generate it at source.

Finally, it worth explaining about Alt texts a bit and how people use them because its not just text descriptions of an image (which AI could indeed likely produce). Alt texts should be used to summarise the salient aspects of the image the author wants a reader to take away for it in a conscise way and sometimes that message might be slightly different for Alt Text users. AI can't do this because it should be about the message the content creator wants to send and ensuring it's accessible. As ever with these tech fixes for accessibility the lived experience of people with those needs isn't actually present. Its an assumed need rather than what they are asking for.

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[-] iiGxC@slrpnk.net 23 points 10 months ago

Just use librewolf or something, or if they incorporate ai, I'd be surprised if an ai-free fork doesn't pop up quickly

[-] tuxec@infosec.pub 7 points 10 months ago

+1 for LibreWolf. I've been using it for ~2 years and it's better than Firefox from a privacy perspective. Development is active, so updates are being pushed regularly. As for vertical tabs, you can easily achieve it with Tree Style Tabs. I strongly recommend it.

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[-] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 7 points 10 months ago

I've looked at alternative forks of Firefox before, but there were two problems for me: a) most are not up to date or slow to update, and b) hard to trust my browser to any community or other company. You see, I actually trust Mozilla, specifically Firefox and Thunderbird. At least the AI is local only, but it would add another attack vector and bloat for no reason to me. We'll see if it can be disabled.

[-] iiGxC@slrpnk.net 13 points 10 months ago

Librewolf is quick to update, it's just a hardened fork of firefox

[-] FalseMyrmidon@kbin.run 21 points 10 months ago

I think that sounds like a cool use case. If it runs locally what's not to like?

[-] MrSoup@lemmy.zip 12 points 10 months ago

Plus I think there will be a way to disable it (like with local translation we have rn).

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[-] wisha@lemmy.ml 11 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Are you aware that Firefox Translate uses AI models[1] to translate text and it’s already included in current versions of Firefox?

[1]: not a completion/instruction LLM, but still very much a “language” model

[-] tranxuanthang@lemm.ee 11 points 10 months ago

I don’t want AI in my Firefox. If Mozilla really adds AI, I will consider switching my main browser

Don't know why you anti-AI so much. An on-device AI is absolutely fine to me, and it's not like Mozilla will force you to use it. Remember the world is not about only you but also people having disabilities.

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[-] Fleppensteijn@feddit.nl 18 points 10 months ago

More streamlined menus that reduce visual clutter and prioritize top user actions so you can get to the important things quicker.

So make things even harder to find? A classic menu bar is not clutter!

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[-] Dirk@lemmy.ml 17 points 10 months ago
[-] derpgon@programming.dev 12 points 10 months ago

Finally, the only two features I've been missing - tab groups and profiles. With all the modern internet browser stones, we'll be unstoppable!

[-] solrize@lemmy.world 9 points 10 months ago

JMINS (just make it not suck). Fix the existing brokeness before adding more useless stuff. E.g. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1749612 open for 2+ years and marked "enhancement" even though it's a bug that makes the feature unusable a lot of the time.

[-] the_doktor@lemmy.zip 29 points 10 months ago

How is displaying a password in a certain font "broken" when you can easily copy/paste it? People who rally against Firefox sure do point to ridiculous, non-existent "problems" as an excuse to keep using laughable Chromium/derivatives.

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this post was submitted on 31 May 2024
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