Readit News100kW laser is nothing to joke about, but seems a good application for anti drone tasks. Fiber lasers are pretty snazzy.
https://eos-aus.com/defence/high-energy-laser-weapon/apollo/
They are implicitly the same thing.
You can't exclude children without first verifying _everyone_ and from there excluding people who match age < approved. This is basic logic.
If you were a cynical person you could imagine this is actually politicians wanting to bring in an ID law and using "think of the children" as the social justification for it.
If you're a conspiracy theorist you'd wonder why Apple and Google have now added the ability to upload and link your passport and other real id into their respective app wallets. How long before your phones browser is digitally signing all your social media posts with your ID...
My personal feeling on it is just "meh." My productivity with my laptop hasn't changed. I'm not a huge fan but it's not a deal breaker. I still find it better than Windows 11 for the most part, and Linux has other issues as a daily driver for me.
IMHO Apple needs a "tick" release where they only polish and fix bugs and usability issues with an almost total feature freeze. I've heard they may be doing that.
My partner doesn't like it, and outside of excel she is not a technical person.
> The problem is not AI. The problem is that Mozilla keeps jumping on fads instead of focusing on their browser core
How is this not laughable?
Now we're seeing a similar thing. Everyone is talking about fucking LLMs. What, do you think FF is going to start shipping a 100GB browser? Even Llama-8B is >15GB. That would be ridiculous!
No, what FF is doing is implementing features like Translate (an ALREADY opt-in feature[0]) and semantic search. Seriously, go to their Labs tab! They let you opt in to try a feature to semantically search your browser history. That's not an LLM, that's a vector embedding model! What are they going to do next? Semantic search of a webpage? Regex search?! Even in their announcement the other day they mention the iOS "shake to summarize" and that's not even an AI they're shipping it's just a shortcut to Apple Intelligence. The only other thing they've announced is what already exists, a shortcut to use your chatbot of choice. That's not AI in the browser it is literally a split window.
| Mozilla is not going to train its own giant LLM anytime soon.[1]
> having a faint through about removing adblock support
They said literally the opposite[1]
| 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.
Literally the opposite of what you're suggestion.
Sorry, people just want to hate on Firefox.
Look, if anyone wants to be a power user there's nothing Firefox is doing from stopping them from using a fork like Mullvad or Waterfox. Those are going to keep all these AI features out. So what do we privacy maximalists care? The forks give us exactly what we want.
Meanwhile we're just attacking the last line of defense against Google (Chromium) taking over the internet? How fucking stupid are we? We're eating our cake and what, complaining that the baker's hands aren't made of gold? It's just laughable at how much we love shooting ourselves in the foot here. We've been playing this same stupid fucking game for years and watching Chrome take more and more market share. Let FF be the browser for the masses and use a fucking fork if you care about true Scottsmen. It takes literally no technical skill to click download on a different webpage. Seriously, this is so fucking dumb.
I'm just going to link this from further down the main post. The two toots summarize it well[2]
[0] You literally have to download the translation models!
[1] https://www.theverge.com/tech/845216/mozilla-ceo-anthony-enz... (https://archive.is/20251217170357/https://www.theverge.com/t...)
[2] https://mastodon.social/@nical@mastodon.gamedev.place/115741...
The thing is most of the forks are still using some/all of the on device ML models, they're just not advertising them as AI. From Waterfoxs announcement of "Not using AI*"
>The asterisk acknowledges that “AI” has become a catch-all term. Machine learning tools like local translation engines (Bergamot) are valuable and transparent. Large language models, in their current black-box form, are neither.
https://www.waterfox.com/blog/no-ai-here-response-to-mozilla...
Zen:
> Based on Firefox, Zen also inherit its translation features
I personally agree with these complaints. I think most people who intentionaly install Firefox agree with them. Despite all it's attempts otherwise, Firefox was and still is mostly used by "power users" and we're pretty much the only ones left that intentionally install the browser. Mozilla being the only working alternative to Alphabet domainance over the web doesn't change the validity of these issues. The real issue here is that Mozilla wants to be HUGE instead of just being a browser for humans.
I'd been a Firefox user since K-meleon (with a gap decade when Opera was actually a real browser and innovating). But for me the breaking point wasn't all this ad-tech stuff or the signalling of AI. It was when Mozilla showed they no longer cared about their core userbase and wanted to chase after demographics that didn't care about browsers at all; when they made the security theater Add-ons signing portal in version 37 and made it so one could not edit or install such things without Mozilla's central and continued approval (also, baking in 3 year expiring add-on certs making FF trial-ware). These days, for me, it's just a fallback for my bank. I use a Firefox fork for my main browsers which is much more Firefox than Firefox.
This really isn't the case. Firefox has almost 200 million users, yet sub 10% of them have uBlock Origin installed:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...
Less than half have any extensions installed (with extensions include language packs):
https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/usage-behavior
The users who talk about Firefox online are not the average user.
First they're a cypto/addtech company, which is a type of company I wouldn't trust to run my browser. And this has resulted in them doing things in the past like:
Blocking ads and replacing them with their own ad networks ads: https://archive.is/W0k4j
Their rewards crypto was opt-in for creators. Making it look like creators were openly asking for donations in Braves crypto currency without their consent. They had to change this due to complaints: https://brave.com/blog/rewards-update/
Inserting their own affiliate links: https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/8/21283769/brave-browser-aff...
Installing a non-free VPN without user consent: https://www.xda-developers.com/brave-browser-installs-vpn-wi...
They criticise the effectiveness of ad block testing websites, and urge people to use and trust privacytests.org instead. They fail to mention the conflict of interest in that privacytests is run by a Brave employee. https://brave.com/blog/adblocker-testing-websites-harm-users...
New CEO says they've run the numbers and decided to not kill adblockers, leading to people asking why exactly they were running those numbers (if it was an actual ideological commitment, the numbers wouldn't matter).
> Mozilla says they'll add a killswitch for all AI features (so that the tiny but vocal anti-AI minority will be happy), and people blame them for not having it as an enable-switch.
Yes, opt-in vs opt-out is kinda an important distinction. And you're assuming that opposition is a "tiny but vocal", which - especially among people bothering to use firefox - seems unfounded. Which brings use neatly to,
> Whatever they do, they simply cannot win. I'm personally starting to suspect the main issue with Mozilla is its users.
Well, yes. If you build a userbase out of power users and folks who care about privacy and control... then you have a userbase of power users and folks who care about privacy and control. If Mozilla said up front that they were only interested in money and don't care about users, then fair enough, but don't go trumpeting how you fight for the user and then act surprised when the user holds you to that.
Is that their core user base, or just the vocal user base online? Only 5-10% of their user base have UBO installed (FF has almost 200 million users, extension store reports ~10 million UBO installs).
Firefox isn't LibreWolf, it's user base are just average people, not much different than that of Chrome, Safari, or Edge.
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