Maybe I just love downvotes, but the Firefox AI sidebar is incredibly useful and I make use of it nearly every day.

Good for you. The point is that a lot of Firefox users actively didn't want these sorts of features enabled and pushed on them. That was clear and obvious to anyone paying attention to general reactions to unsolicited AI helper tools, going back decades. For Mozilla to turn this on without any respect for those users’ preferences was a huge mistake that they keep making over and over again.

More specifically: they chose Firebox because it doesn't have those kind of features. If the just wanted a (sorta-kinda) open-source browser filled with all the latest hype features they would've simply used Chromium.

Using Firefox is a political choice. People use it because it's one of the few remaining traditional browsers which isn't a tentacle of Big Tech. Chasing the competition and adding the stuff your users are actively trying to avoid isn't going to work.

> If the just wanted a (sorta-kinda) open-source browser filled with all the latest hype features they would've simply used Chromium.

I don't mind features existing, especially if I can switch them off if I don't want them. I definitely mind Chrom(ium|e).

I don't see how the existence of the Firefox AI sidebar gives Google effective control over web specs.

The main reason for using Firefox is because they support Manifest v2 / Ad-Blockers.

This increases security while also harming Google's business model. Win-Win.

While I agree most LLM use is counterproductive, they're pretty useful in scenarios where you can quickly verify their outputs.

Absolutely. An LLM can propose a strategy and point you to similar cases. It can point out flaws in your writing, or find risks you're missing.

You think the AI boys are going to let the administration keep this up for long?

Sadly yes. Sam Altman wants online ID face scanning technology just like the administration does.

To make it clearer: He's one of the founders of the company that thrives in this sort of system, World (FKA Worldcoin). People were sort of making fun of the whole company and the dystopian premise a handful of years back... But here we are. Their latest "manifesto" was posted earlier this week, called The Simple Plan.

https://world.org/blog/foundational-topics/thesimpleplan

> 1. Build a private proof of human

> 2. Launch and bootstrap the network through token ownership

> 3. Reach critical scale and initial utility

> 4. Scale further through utility and decentralize

> 5. Reach global scale and help ensure AGI benefits every human

I'd say might not have a say in this. Who knows might be that was Elon pulling the ladder after successful IPO.

Eh, not any different than the performative encryption restrictions from decades past.

But those were very easy to sidestep: proxy/vpn, download java with US encryption, and move on. That is very different with this.

How do you "easy" VPN into the US in 1995? The whole consumer VPN industry didn't exist back then.

Yeah, I was never a consumer. Let's say tunneling/proxies then.

"download java" in 1993 wasn't a thing.

I remember the encryption export mostly from when Java came up; everything had saying that you cannot download specific packages outside the US. We did anyway. Before there were others but Java was biting us the most.

A lot of users are subsidized (if you're in doubt, consider the wealth of free users).

It's a shotgun approach to answering questions. If it's terse it might only mention 1 of 10 facts it could provide, and that might not be the one you're looking for. So they just say a fuck ton of words and are more likely to meet the needs of everyone asking your question. If they miss it you'll prompt it again and they have to perform a second pass of inference, which costs them more money.

I'm being careful with it, but I haven't had Fable reject requests to "harden" my code or "find issues" in auth-related modules, which you could use on someone else's code to find vulnerabilities.

If you’re on SF I can sell you 16GB Pi 5s for $280. I’ve got a few on hand (new in box).

It turns out the most dangerous thing is competition.

Margin compression is terrifying