I was just recently shopping around for services that provided unlimited, anonymized (read: not “you-[service]@masked”) options. Surprisingly, none exist for $0 besides the nearly un-discussed Ironvest free plan (maybe it’s not available for new accounts now).

This other option is great, provided they manage to stick around for long enough! I was wondering if an instance of Addy powered by donations was around

Instance registration requirements check out.

“Whenever he launched a new product”

Why would they agree to this regardless?

A great demonstration of why to never give anybody an email address

I remember when GPT2 was “too dangerous to release” back in 2019. Funny how Sam Altman released it anyway.

It’s always really cool to see something that can be hosted from your phone, including presumably an old one that’s been in a drawer for years until now. Especially because hosting through Tor has some little conveniences out of the box, like “how do I access this anywhere that has the Internet” or “how do I keep from registering or exposing my IP address”.

I’ll admit it probably needs an audit before I take it too seriously, but so far so good.

They’ve been itching for more releases to push more AI updates for a while. I wish I was exaggerating. Here’s three examples of AI features being tacked onto bugfix releases:

• https://www.firefox.com/firefox/152.0.4/releasenotes/
• https://www.firefox.com/firefox/152.0.6/releasenotes/
• https://www.firefox.com/firefox/153.0.3/releasenotes/

(For those who don’t know, bugfix releases only change the final part of the version number and are meant to fix bugs, while feature updates are meant for larger releases and tend to introduce them.)

Mozilla: “if you don’t want our AI, just choose not to use it”

Mozilla: “not like that”

Safari has uBlock Origin Lite.

iOS also has Brave, which apparently [created the adblock engine](It’s FOSS itsfoss.com › news › firefox-ships-brave-adblock-engine Firefox Has Quietly Integrated Brave’s Adblock Engine) Mozilla borrowed (and weakened)

iOS also has an independently developed browser with true uBlock Origin support. It doesn’t have official App Store support, but Mozilla could lobby for it.

Funny how the PR is all “it’s your choice,” but the actual Privacy Policy for Smart Window says external activity gets uploaded to third-party servers.

Smart Window infers information about you based on your interactions with the assistant and your Firefox browsing activity, including websites you have visited. This may include activity outside of Smart Window (such as in classic windows), but it does not include activity in Private Windows.

Of course all this data gets sent to a company that doesn’t really respect privacy at all .

Maybe the author should have written their article with a different truism: The straw that broke the camel’s back. Mozilla keeps on disrespecting their users and chasing mirages of profit.

(Not that the phrase “throw the baby out with the bathwater” is even very good here - the author assumes Firefox is good, because Firefox is Not Google, and fails to expound on any positive qualities of the browser besides some implicit ethical value. And given Mozilla’s recent behavior, it is lacking in that department.)

This is a bad article. Embarassingly bad at points.

The author claims Firefox is good because of only one reason: inherent moral value to be Not Google.

Firefox is our last best hope for browser engine diversity and competition.

But when Mozilla returned to Twitter - basically tweeting out an apology - the author suddenly forgot to hold Firefox to that single standard, and created an excuse for why they had to ditch the moral high ground to pursue user growth:

I’m sure the reason Firefox is on X is because they’re hoping to reach out to new users… they desperately need to reach out wherever they can.

• If Firefox’s only claim to fame is to be Not Big Tech, it has to not follow in the footsteps and align itself with Big Tech.
• And if Firefox eventually makes itself ethically indistinguishable (or worse!) than the corporate alternatives, then it loses its reason to claim even moral value.

Here are some other thoughts.

The latest [complaint] was a post from a prolific blogger who has switched to Vivaldi because Firefox is now on X. He is somehow able to reconcile this with the fact that Vivaldi is also on X…

Probably because Vivaldi doesn’t spend a ton of its time and money marketing itself as an alternative to big platforms. Maybe because Vivaldi realized talk is cheap and put it into action by hosting their own Mastodon server. Maybe because when Mozilla went back to Twitter, they did it with their strange apology.

the over thinkers on Hacker News come up with convoluted reasons to hate on Firefox every time the subject arises. It makes me wonder if it’s a bot campaign by Google

“Everyone I disagree with is bots” is the lowest point of this whole post.

you desperately need to help [Firefox].

The author of this post must not know that it Mozilla has rigged the game in favor of Google: you cannot “help” Firefox with a donation. That money only goes to the Foundation, which is currently spending their time lobbying against antitrust legislation. Only their corporate partners (read: Google) can give money to Firefox.

I maintain that AI features should have been an optional extension, not a mandatory baked-in feature that could have been accomplished with one.

Especially because Mozilla isn’t just devoting developer time to it, they have been pushing whole feature updates to these “optional” components inside bugfix releases

Remote improvements will be toggled OFF by default, if you deliberately opted out of studies in Settings prior to Firefox version 148.

It’s worth double-checking if you happen to be digging through privacy settings anyway… Nice that you can now disable everything on one screen, before enabling Remote Improvements in the advanced one

This is a very funny graphic to have in the middle of the article

To add to the confusion, Remote Improvements used to require extra data collection, and you may have inadvertently been opted out of it.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/remote-improvements

deleted by creator

Flock CEO Garrett Langley found this out the hard way.

In the screenshot: “Searched the web with Exa”

Hey, I’ve heard of that company!

I’ve been saying for over a year now that AI is going to kill free search engines.

I’m sure you have an interesting explanation for how Google would be okay with Mozilla doing this, despite the ways Mozilla has bent over to appease Google the rest of the time…

I don’t buy the “new normal” thought-terminating cliche nor the implication that Google and the other AI corporations didn’t just internationally enshittify their own search, while selling a product in the early stages of the exact same thing (see also: Exa).

There’s also “service disruption” right beneath it in your screenshot, and as of this moment, Scheduled Maintenance is done but the disruption remains.