Mozilla Under Fire For Firefox AI 'Bloat' That Blows Up CPU and Drains Battery (neowin.net)
- Reference: 0178653168
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/08/12/1159248/mozilla-under-fire-for-firefox-ai-bloat-that-blows-up-cpu-and-drains-battery
- Source link: https://www.neowin.net/news/mozilla-under-fire-for-firefox-ai-bloat-that-blows-up-cpu-and-drains-battery/
> Firefox 141 rolled out a shiny new AI-powered smart tab grouping feature (it tries to auto-organize your tabs using a local model), but it turns out the local "Inference" process that powers it is acting like an energy-sucking monster. Users are [2]reporting massive CPU spikes and battery drain and calling the feature "garbage" that's ruining their browsing experience.
[1] https://slashdot.org/~darwinmac
[2] https://www.neowin.net/news/mozilla-under-fire-for-firefox-ai-bloat-that-blows-up-cpu-and-drains-battery/
Apparently, it's too much to ask for (Score:4, Interesting)
All I want is a mainstream-supported fast, simple, clean browser with an efficient rendering engine. That's it. I don't want an AI "helper". This isn't an Iron Man movie where I'm Tony Fucking Stark talking to JARVIS. And if I wanted an AI to talk to, it wouldn't be a component in my goddam browser .
Build a web portal for that shit and otherwise leave us be.
Re: (Score:1)
> All I want is a mainstream-supported fast, simple, clean browser with an efficient rendering engine. That's it. I don't want an AI "helper". This isn't an Iron Man movie where I'm Tony Fucking Stark talking to JARVIS. And if I wanted an AI to talk to, it wouldn't be a component in my goddam browser .
> Build a web portal for that shit and otherwise leave us be.
YOU'LL TAKE AI EVERYTHING AND YOU'LL LIKE IT!
Or at least, that appears to be the stance of every single god damned company involved in producing tech. I don't really understand it because I have yet to hear a single user say they want more AI in everything, yet that seems to be the only thing any of these companies are interested in producing, more AI, more places, more invasive, more intrusive. Why? Because fuck you, serfs. Do as you're told and feed the AI.
Re: (Score:1)
> All I want is a mainstream-supported fast, simple, clean browser with an efficient rendering engine. That's it. I don't want an AI "helper". This isn't an Iron Man movie where I'm Tony Fucking Stark talking to JARVIS. And if I wanted an AI to talk to, it wouldn't be a component in my goddam browser .
> Build a web portal for that shit and otherwise leave us be.
You might as well ask them to throw in blackjack and hookers too. They don't do fast, simple, or clean anymore.
Re: (Score:2)
Firefox was supposed to be a platform that you extended with add-ons if you wanted to do fancy shit.
Instead they are forcing fancy shit on us by putting it directly into the browser.
If this kind of functionality must be included for some reason, it should at least be an add-on which can be conveniently disabled.
How to turn it off (Score:2)
Open a firefox tab and type "about:config" in the address bar.
Then find these two settings and set them to false:
browser.tabs.groups.enabled
browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled
(I haven't tried this yet, just found these instructions online).
Re: (Score:2)
I installed LibreWolf yesterday and it's *amazing*. I hadn't even heard of it until yesterday and it's faster and cleaner than both Safari (on MacOS) and Firefox. Firefox plugins still work (which is great because I love TreeStyle Tabs and the YouTube plugins), and it comes with UBlock Origin by default. Seriously, I think it'll fit your bill.
Tony Stark (Score:1)
> Iron Man movie where I'm Tony Fucking Stark talking to JARVIS
Odd, I though his middle name was Edward. Must've missed the reboot where they changed it. I'll admit the new middle name has a bit more flare to it. "Edward" seems so early-20th-century. The new middle name has a timeless exitement to it.
AI in every door knob (Score:2, Interesting)
Patrick Winston, one of the fathers of classical AI, was known for famously, and derisively, predicting that we would have a microprocessor in every door knob, thanks to the microelectronics revolution. Thankfully, he was mostly wrong as even IoT didn't get quite that far. But it sure feels like AI is going in that direction.
Ferchrissakes, why do we need an AI to autogroup our browser tabs? I mean, WTF?
Re: (Score:2)
Uhm, there are doorknobs with microprocessors and NFC these days that validates that a physical key is allowed to turn the lock so Winston's prediction isn't that far off to be entirely realized.
Re: AI in every door knob (Score:2)
Most people (including us techies) are lazy, and most people do not suffer from variable degrees of OCD as us terchies do, hence the need of autogrouping tabs.
Either by TNNs, hidden Markov Models, crowdsourcing or any other thechnique
Re: (Score:2)
> Patrick Winston, one of the fathers of classical AI, was known for famously, and derisively, predicting that we would have a microprocessor in every door knob, thanks to the microelectronics revolution. Thankfully, he was mostly wrong
He was not necessarily wrong. We are still headed there. The only question is whether industrialized society will survive long enough to reach that point.
It's not everywhere yet... (Score:2)
I have v141, but I don't see this on Linux (Kbuntu). The article doesn't say it, but I'm wondering if this is an MS platform problem only. A person in the article said they didn't see it on Mac either.
Re: (Score:2)
According to the release notes it's on a progressive rollout, so it may just have not got round to you yet.
[1]https://www.firefox.com/en-US/... [firefox.com]
[1] https://www.firefox.com/en-US/firefox/141.0/releasenotes/
Related stories, brought to you by AI (Score:2)
Or something even dumber...
> Exploding Pagers Injure Thousands Across Lebanon
> Trump Orders Treasury Secretary To Stop Minting Pennies
meanwhile, in FF-ESR land... (Score:2)
This "feature" will not be available until about june 2026. By then it will either be polished or be removed...
All advantages
Dropped (Score:2)
I stopped using Firefox after about the fourth time they shoehorned something in that nobody asked for and nobody used or liked. After two or three pointless UI changes that made it harder to get to the functions I use all the time, they added Pocket, a poorly implemented tab grouping feature, then dropped support for most of the extensions I use while installing extensions I didn't ask for.
Now I use Brave, which is Chrome with all the junk you don't want removed. The only thing I would change is the abilit
Re: (Score:2)
If it makes you feel any better, [1]Pocket is gone [mozilla.org].
Yes, the same Pocket they spent $20M on specifically to get more chances to collect user data.
[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/future-of-pocket
Last n-AI-l in the coffin. (Score:2)
Let's be honest. Firefox has been on a downward slope for a long, long time. For those few who were faithful to Firefox, those who chose it for configurability and relatively little bloat, adding AI to it, especially AI so detrimental to the user, is just the last nail in the coffin. Firefox won't be around for much longer, I'm afraid.
Re: (Score:2)
I used Firefox from version 0.9 or something all the way up until a couple of years ago, when I finally had enough. I think the remaining userbase are fairly determined to keep an alternative to Google alive though, since pretty much everything else is Chromium-based, and that is a noble goal. So I hope Mozilla somehow avoids driving Firefox into the ground, although they also seem quite determined.
Every time Firefox added new features (Score:3)
The most asked question is : "How to turn it off?"
Don't Firefox devs ever thought why is that?
Re: (Score:2)
That is why everyone is moving to Chrome, where AI is already built in.
Same procedure .. (Score:2)
When Firefox has a great new idea, people ask how to turn the shit of.
I found this answer by User "Brain-Fu ":
[1]https://news.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org]
And it made my day! All props to him!
[1] https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23767360&cid=65584694#
who would have thought? (Score:2)
Absolutely no one could have see this coming. How could it end up like this? Complete mystery.
Switch to LibreWolf (Score:2)
It's great. It's everything Firefox is supposed to be. It's free, they don't accept donations because they don't need funding. It comes with UBlock Origin, it works with Firefox extensions, it's fast, it's light. It'll even sync with your old Firefox stuff if that's what you want.
I heard about it yesterday, installed it, and now I'm all in, man. It's even better than Safari on my Mac. (The caveat is obviously that maybe after a day of use I don't know how broken it is, but I've got some hope that it will co
Mozilla has completely lost its way (Score:3)
Users: "We need a built-in ad-blocker to protect our privacy and security".
Mozilla: "Hey! We screwed up the address bar!"
Users: "We need a built-in Javascript blocker/enabler to protect our privacy and security."
Mozilla: "Look! Look! We changed the shape of the buttons! New icons!"
Users: "We need built-in anti-tracking a la Privacy Badger and Canvas Blocker to protect our privacy and security."
We're well past the point where we should be filing bug reports and submitting fixes or assisting Mozilla in any way. Mozilla needs to die. And while it may be difficult to find an organization/group to take Firefox away from them, it must be done . The first thing the new caretakers should do is start ripping out code -- there's over a decade of bloat and crap that needs to go. And the second thing is that the browser should have the features of the best extensions -- like NoScript -- built in.
Why is Mozilla self-sabotaging? (Score:2)
I think they need to urgently get rid of the clowns that pass for "leadership" there.
Another Mozilla misstep. (Score:1)
At this point, I'm surprised anyone is still using Firefox. Mozilla needs to die already for the good of computing.
Start removing features instead. (Score:2)
When was the last time a new browser feature made people happy? What was the last one people actually used? Let's roll back to that.
I think most people just want a browser that does its job fast and smooth, and doesn't sell your data. Anything else can be an extension.
You don't need 900 tabs (Score:1)
You don't need 900 open tabs and at the same time Mozilla should stop shooting themselves in the foot. They're almost beat by Samsung's browser in terms of market share. [1]https://gs.statcounter.com/bro... [statcounter.com]
[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
>> You don't need 900 open tabs
> ....who are we to tell how people should use their browser?
Because if you do something stupid, like making a browser capable of opening 900 tabs, then you have to do more stupid, like adding an AI feature to automagically organize all those tabs, which will only lead to even more problems. Its just one more level of enshittification.
Re: (Score:1)
Isn't Eich the guy in charge of Brave browser?
Re: (Score:2)
Just relabel bookmarks as tabs and there you go.
Its already treating them as bookmarks though.. I just wish mozilla would fix smaller things like giving a site storage size limit that actually worked and didn't just ignore it and also wouldn't churn disk as much for no reason at all.
I need more than 900 open tabs (Score:1)
I need 640K tabs open, that should be enough for anyone.