5 ms·

I think "nobody i know" and nobody are different things. Mozilla wants more firefox users. there are "AI browsers" and ai integrated browsing is becoming more a

I think "nobody i know" and nobody are different things. Mozilla wants more firefox users. there are "AI browsers" and ai integrated browsing is becoming more and more the norm. Mozilla is doing the right thing here, the features are there but unobtrusive. But down the road, I fully expect Mozilla to do whatever they have to do to remain in the game. Their small market share is hurting the entire internet, they can't afford to become a browser for retro-techo-luddites or something.

isodev 1y ago
> "AI browsers" and ai integrated browsing is becoming more and more the norm Not really, outside influencers looking to capture the next hot thing (like Mozilla) and tech-bros, there is no living soul on this planet that wants or is trying to normalise AI browsers.
- jajuuka 1y ago
  Another example of "nobody I know" and not nobody.
  - isodev 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - jajuuka 1y ago
      I'm not a techbro and I want this. I know other people who aren't techbros who want it as well. So what makes your anecdotal evidence any stronger than mine? Maybe you and the author shouldn't be speaking for everyone.
    - orbital-decay 1y ago
      >It also echoes sentiments expressed in any other medium or social you check. That tells more about your socials than anything else. I personally know plenty of non-technical folks using ChatGPT (because it's the only buzzword they know) to augment their browsing in an awkward manner. They want utility, they don't give a damn about anyone's sentiments.
- orbital-decay 1y ago
  That's a ridiculous hyperbole. Translation and search alone are examples of wildly successful applications of generative AI that a lot of people actually want because it makes the experience qualitatively better. This is pretty evident if you look at normal people shifting to ChatGPT and other AI-powered search from the engines like Google. Recent AI mode in Google is a desperate attempt to stay relevant.
  - isodev 1y ago
    No, they’re examples of misuse of LLMs - “sometimes correct” is not a replacement for a search engine or a translator. Remember, Google search used to actually find you things before they shifted to replacing results with “somewhat random but reads plausible” AI summaries.
    - orbital-decay 1y ago
      Are we even living in the same universe?? In mine, Claude and Gemini Pro outperform classic machine translators by orders of magnitude, that's not an exaggeration. I can finally rely on correct machine translation when reading articles in languages I don't speak and when talking to people in their native language. They still miss some nuance in the informal talk, but I can be reasonably sure it adapts the cultural context pretty well, and tolerate the rest. >replacing results with “somewhat random but reads plausible” AI summaries I'm talking about actual deep (re)search that cites the sources, not simple summaries. For example I'm considering a KTM 890 Adventure R as my next motorcycle but the reliability and TCO are worrying. I've prompted and launched an agent to recursively scan YouTube travel videos, or rather the transcriptions, to look for actual issues with this bike, without all that KTM marketing bullshit and paid reviews, and provide me with timecodes. And it did, finding a ton of extremely non-obvious non-English channels in the process (Russian, Afrikaans, Spanish etc), scanning dozens of hours of videos, and providing timecodes for me to verify. That saved me insane amount of time. Normal people actually pay money for this, I'm pretty surprised to see this in the wild but it's true. Reducing this to "techbros and influencers" is pure wishful thinking.
      - 1y ago
- notepad0x90 1y ago
  I myself can see using that some day. I was dismissive of AI-assisted search results, now I'm back to using google search most of the time over duckduckgo, because of quality. I don't want to be forced to abandon firefox down the road. Every feature they add,from pocket,vpns, to this, is optional. Just don't use it. Let firefox get more marketshare. It's the only Google alternative.
roncesvalles 1y ago
You didn't even read 6 sentences into TFA. 52/52 of the closed-beta testers of this feature want it removed.
- clueless 1y ago
  how is 52 users representative??
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - rng-concern 1y ago
    If they are purely random, it's damning. Flip a coin until you get heads 52 times in a row.
    - everfree 1y ago
      I can't imagine a quality random sample could come from 52 users who self-selected to participate in a browser beta, then self-selected to post about it in a thread on the Mozilla Connect forum. The reactions to Firefox's AI features likely range from moderately positive to extremely negative. People who feel moderately about something don't usually bother posting. It doesn't matter how many people feel that way.
  - burnte 1y ago
    It was 52 OF 52, 100% of them. That's what makes it significant. Literally not a single dissenting voice. is 52 definitive? No, but that early it's unusual that 100% said no.
    - dwedge 1y ago
      I'm fairly sure the 52 are comments to their announcement and not beta testers. There may be some overlap but not enough data to say 100%
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
moffkalast 1y ago
Mozilla really just needs to do three things: allow adblocking, have feature parity with Chrome, and render HTML correctly. Currently they've at least got one of the three.
- stingraycharles 1y ago
  doesn’t 3 imply 2? aren’t people just affectively asking for “something like chrome but with ad blocking”? what I’m most concerned about is that pretty much all browsers except safari and firefox use Chromium’s rendering engine. for me that alone is a reason for firefox to have to exist.
  - timeinput 1y ago
    If you have ublock enabled 3 does not imply 2. I strongly suspect that 3 does not imply 2 generally, but I don't know enough to put any weight behind that statement. It's a regular occurrence that I visit a page with firefox either on android, or desktop linux, and a basically default ublock origin that fails to render. I generally then try the page in an incognito tab, and then try the page in chrome and it loads, and displays properly. I'm also maybe moving the goal posts from "have feature parity with Chrome, and render HTML correctly" to "I never have to use vanilla chrome, because vanilla firefox just works". There are cases where sites claim DRM issues with firefox which I can kind of understand, but there are other sites that just refuse to work with vanilla firefox that work with chrome. I of course can't really point to any examples, because they're not sites I regularly visit, but they definitely exist.
- notepad0x90 1y ago
  They also need to integrate with windows/enterprise setups better, that's one of the main reasons people use chrome based browsers.
  - moffkalast 1y ago
    You'd think so, you'd really fucking think so, but Firefox is genuinely by far the slowest on Linux. On Windows it's closest to Chrome.

isodev 1y ago

> "AI browsers" and ai integrated browsing is becoming more and more the norm Not really, outside influencers looking to capture the next hot thing (like Mozilla) and tech-bros, there is no living soul on this planet that wants or is trying to normalise AI browsers.

jajuuka 1y ago
Another example of "nobody I know" and not nobody.
- isodev 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - jajuuka 1y ago
    I'm not a techbro and I want this. I know other people who aren't techbros who want it as well. So what makes your anecdotal evidence any stronger than mine? Maybe you and the author shouldn't be speaking for everyone.
  - orbital-decay 1y ago
    >It also echoes sentiments expressed in any other medium or social you check. That tells more about your socials than anything else. I personally know plenty of non-technical folks using ChatGPT (because it's the only buzzword they know) to augment their browsing in an awkward manner. They want utility, they don't give a damn about anyone's sentiments.
orbital-decay 1y ago
That's a ridiculous hyperbole. Translation and search alone are examples of wildly successful applications of generative AI that a lot of people actually want because it makes the experience qualitatively better. This is pretty evident if you look at normal people shifting to ChatGPT and other AI-powered search from the engines like Google. Recent AI mode in Google is a desperate attempt to stay relevant.
- isodev 1y ago
  No, they’re examples of misuse of LLMs - “sometimes correct” is not a replacement for a search engine or a translator. Remember, Google search used to actually find you things before they shifted to replacing results with “somewhat random but reads plausible” AI summaries.
  - orbital-decay 1y ago
    Are we even living in the same universe?? In mine, Claude and Gemini Pro outperform classic machine translators by orders of magnitude, that's not an exaggeration. I can finally rely on correct machine translation when reading articles in languages I don't speak and when talking to people in their native language. They still miss some nuance in the informal talk, but I can be reasonably sure it adapts the cultural context pretty well, and tolerate the rest. >replacing results with “somewhat random but reads plausible” AI summaries I'm talking about actual deep (re)search that cites the sources, not simple summaries. For example I'm considering a KTM 890 Adventure R as my next motorcycle but the reliability and TCO are worrying. I've prompted and launched an agent to recursively scan YouTube travel videos, or rather the transcriptions, to look for actual issues with this bike, without all that KTM marketing bullshit and paid reviews, and provide me with timecodes. And it did, finding a ton of extremely non-obvious non-English channels in the process (Russian, Afrikaans, Spanish etc), scanning dozens of hours of videos, and providing timecodes for me to verify. That saved me insane amount of time. Normal people actually pay money for this, I'm pretty surprised to see this in the wild but it's true. Reducing this to "techbros and influencers" is pure wishful thinking.
    - 1y ago
notepad0x90 1y ago
I myself can see using that some day. I was dismissive of AI-assisted search results, now I'm back to using google search most of the time over duckduckgo, because of quality. I don't want to be forced to abandon firefox down the road. Every feature they add,from pocket,vpns, to this, is optional. Just don't use it. Let firefox get more marketshare. It's the only Google alternative.

roncesvalles 1y ago

You didn't even read 6 sentences into TFA. 52/52 of the closed-beta testers of this feature want it removed.

clueless 1y ago
how is 52 users representative??
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- rng-concern 1y ago
  If they are purely random, it's damning. Flip a coin until you get heads 52 times in a row.
  - everfree 1y ago
    I can't imagine a quality random sample could come from 52 users who self-selected to participate in a browser beta, then self-selected to post about it in a thread on the Mozilla Connect forum. The reactions to Firefox's AI features likely range from moderately positive to extremely negative. People who feel moderately about something don't usually bother posting. It doesn't matter how many people feel that way.
- burnte 1y ago
  It was 52 OF 52, 100% of them. That's what makes it significant. Literally not a single dissenting voice. is 52 definitive? No, but that early it's unusual that 100% said no.
  - dwedge 1y ago
    I'm fairly sure the 52 are comments to their announcement and not beta testers. There may be some overlap but not enough data to say 100%
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]

moffkalast 1y ago

Mozilla really just needs to do three things: allow adblocking, have feature parity with Chrome, and render HTML correctly. Currently they've at least got one of the three.

stingraycharles 1y ago
doesn’t 3 imply 2? aren’t people just affectively asking for “something like chrome but with ad blocking”? what I’m most concerned about is that pretty much all browsers except safari and firefox use Chromium’s rendering engine. for me that alone is a reason for firefox to have to exist.
- timeinput 1y ago
  If you have ublock enabled 3 does not imply 2. I strongly suspect that 3 does not imply 2 generally, but I don't know enough to put any weight behind that statement. It's a regular occurrence that I visit a page with firefox either on android, or desktop linux, and a basically default ublock origin that fails to render. I generally then try the page in an incognito tab, and then try the page in chrome and it loads, and displays properly. I'm also maybe moving the goal posts from "have feature parity with Chrome, and render HTML correctly" to "I never have to use vanilla chrome, because vanilla firefox just works". There are cases where sites claim DRM issues with firefox which I can kind of understand, but there are other sites that just refuse to work with vanilla firefox that work with chrome. I of course can't really point to any examples, because they're not sites I regularly visit, but they definitely exist.
notepad0x90 1y ago
They also need to integrate with windows/enterprise setups better, that's one of the main reasons people use chrome based browsers.
- moffkalast 1y ago
  You'd think so, you'd really fucking think so, but Firefox is genuinely by far the slowest on Linux. On Windows it's closest to Chrome.