Mozilla under fire for Firefox AI "bloat" that blows up CPU and drains battery
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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.
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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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.
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.
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You can just ..turn it off tho.
In
about:config. Not very obvious or user-friendly tbh. -
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 like Floorp. it's a FF fork by a Japanese dev team. Best I can compare it to is Vivaldi as far as customization (what Mozilla will allow).
However the updates for it have been coming less frequently over time so I'm not sure how that bodes for the long term.
But hey i'm currently building my own FF fork with fediverse integration, tree style/stacking tabs, and vim navigation sooooo look forward to that? /shameless self promotion.
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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?
You probably look at tabs as something inherently transient. In my tab group powered workflow a lot of tabs are persistent between browser restarts and stay open at all times. To try to formalize it, there is a set of core tabs that are permanently open, and there are transient tabs are opened and closed from those core tabs. Before tab groups I used "Tree Style Tab" extension but I like tab groups more. It's especially cool tab groups are integrated well with containers so that you can have for example I2P tab group tied to I2P container configured to use I2P proxy port to automatically browse all tabs opened within group through your I2P proxy port.
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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?
They are all out of date, updates just take longer to arrive including security patches. Just use base Firefox and configure it as needed.
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It wasn't for me
browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled = falseI haven't used it and it is enabled in
about:configfor me. -
In
about:config. Not very obvious or user-friendly tbh.Not to mention that constantly having to turn off crap is still awful UX
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It makes a lot more sense when you realize that the Mozilla corporation is a for profit run by the same techno-fascist aggrandizing bait-and-switch narcissists as the rest of SV.
I've been saying it for years, but I will never donate to Firefox until it is freed from the shackles of a for profit corporation that can use your donation for any profit motive it sees fit; not even related to Firefox.
Isn't the "for-profit" Mozilla Corporation owned by the "non-profit" Mozilla Foundation though?
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I haven't used it and it is enabled in
about:configfor me.Have you used the tab groups?
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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've been using LibreWolf for a while and it works pretty well
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ppl complaining on the internet about something you can literally turn off with one about:config line never change internet
The point is you shouldnt have to turn it off, its a web browser, we want to browse the web, not be subject to whatever shite Mozilla want to force into it. Features like this should be optional plugins you have to download.
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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.
Well this is obviously personal to some degree, but for me it would be to fix bugs, don't crash, dont make me restart after an update and lose my incognito tabs, focus on being w3c compliant, block ads, maybe allow blocking annoying cookie banners and maybe allow good keyboard navigation. I like some features other browsers have, such as integrated tor browsing - but since I am not a big fan of bloat, I'm not sure whether that should be handled outside of the browser
