Firefox 148 Now Available With The New AI Controls, AI Kill Switches
- Reference: 0180850956
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/02/24/0054207/firefox-148-now-available-with-the-new-ai-controls-ai-kill-switches
- Source link:
> Among the AI features that can be toggled individually are around translations, image alt text in the Firefox PDF viewer, tab group suggestions, key points in link previews, and AI chatbot providers in the sidebar. Firefox 148 also brings Firefox for Android, support for the Trusted Types API, CSS shape() function support, Sanitizer API support, WebGPU enhancements, and a variety of other changes.
Developer chances can be found at [2]developer.mozilla.org . Binaries are available from [3]ftp.mozilla.org .
[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Firefox-148
[2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Releases/148
[3] https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/148.0/linux-x86_64/en-US/
ok (Score:1)
> Developer chances can be found at developer.mozilla.org.
There's a chance Slashdot "editors" are incompetent and don't deserve employment in this job market, and that chance is 100%.
Re: (Score:2)
> Imagine having the ability to post anonymously in 2026? It can only lead to real people getting pissed off and trolled.
That's 100% why they allow anonymous posting. They turned it off and found out that ad impressions decreased because of the lack of pissed off posting, so they turned it back on.
Re: (Score:2)
They turned off anonymous posting because it was non stop nazi ascii artwork.
Re: (Score:2)
> They turned off anonymous posting because it was non stop nazi ascii artwork.
I did not speak to why they turned it off, I spoke to why they turned it on again.
Maybe you missed it when they actually disabled all anonymous posts by any users, logged in or not? It was glorious. Most anon posts are trolling by far.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course anon is for trolling.
It's part of /. DNA, n'est pas?
Except for silvergun wasting pixels on novella sized posts that put you to sleep by the 3rd paragraph and Nazee Asci Art, anon is a quirky and valuable part of /. imho. Also good for posting after using mod points. I'm still in favour of it.
Re: (Score:2)
> Except for silvergun wasting pixels on novella sized posts
Most of those are AI-generated, ostensibly not by him, but by whoever keeps advertising their "fridae" site.
Re: (Score:2)
I miss Slashdot troll culture, but but most of the trolls already moved on and the people remaining on Slashdot are just tired of the whole tech industry and use Slashdot as a bunker away from the madness on the rest of the internet. Slashdot has COBOL syndrome now and is on managed decline.
Operating system level (Score:1)
Every operating system should come with a global AI kill switch that requires apps to not show AI features, alerts, dialogs, nor run any AI at service or application level.
Re: (Score:2)
It's called the hosts file. Mind you, you need to put quite some entries into it.
Re: Operating system level (Score:2)
Does Windows 10 onwards still respect the hosts file? Genuine question, because IIRC modification of it triggers windows defender to freak out
Re: (Score:2)
> Does Windows 10 onwards still respect the hosts file? Genuine question, because IIRC modification of it triggers windows defender to freak out
I think it does - even Windows 11 seems to do it.
But Windows Defender freaks out because modifying the hosts file is a super common way for malware to do hijackings as well as being persistent - they could hook Google.com so it reinstalls when you visit Google. Just like another way is to redirect your DNS settings.
Of course, it's a lot more complex nowadays since man
Re: (Score:2)
How does the hosts file prevent a bundled LLM from executing within a program? (it doesn't)
The browser wars are heating up again. (Score:2)
Mozilla basically created their own competitor with Servo, and Ladybird is also getting a lot of sponsorship. Then there is the whole ecosystem of Firefox derivatives like Zen, Waterfox, Seamonkey and Pale Moon. The whole battle for "human-based" browsing vs "ai-assisted" browsing is also causing a rift in the internet's culture. Then there are vertical tabs that is causing people to browse more websites at once since it makes "tab hoarding" easier. Mozilla still has an opportunity to make a comeback but it
Re: (Score:2)
> The whole battle for "human-based" browsing vs "ai-assisted" browsing is also causing (additional diversity) in the internet's culture.
FTFY
Feature request for new button (Score:2)
"Kill with Fire"
Well, there is a positive way to consider this. (Score:4, Insightful)
Firefox appears to have gotten some dev money from the "AI" war chest, which, if the kill switch indeed kills this anti-feature is, I guess, acceptable.
We replaced the google search box successfully, we'll survive the "AI" box as well.
Re: (Score:3)
Mozilla held a survey asking what shiny "AI" functions people wanted. The vast majority wanted it gone. This is the zillionth case of integrating unwanted things into the browser that should really be in add-ons. I guess the kill switch was the best option they were willing to provide.
Re: Well, there is a positive way to consider this (Score:2)
I voted against it as well.
Sadly, a community that donates small amounts isn't as attractive as big cash dumps, and most of the ff community isn't donating all that often.
Re: (Score:2)
Mozilla seems to be obsessed with getting new users in with gimmicks like AI. Stuff that is far from ready or reliable. What the current users want doesn't seem to be of much concern to them.
Or maybe they have just given up on the basics. Compatibility when the browser landscape is basically a Chromium monoculture is hard. Speed is just hard full stop, and while to be fair they have made some good progress, they still have some issues.
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
Firefox does built in local translations of pages. That's an "AI feature" and it's avoiding you having to use google translate or other systems that end up sending the data "to the cloud" (in other words, sending you private data to other people's servers where they can do whatever they want with it).
I don't see how local, relatively low energy, private, reasonably effective translation of a page is an "anti-feature".
Re: (Score:2)
Example: it's an anti-feature if I don't want bloat and want proper high end translations by a much larger model instead. I.e. google translate, or chatGPT.
Re: (Score:2)
That's the feature I always switch off.
Re: (Score:2)
For those that want in-browser translation, it's no problem to have this as an available option. However, that doesn't mean it must be integrated into the browser, distributed to all, and enabled by default. What is the argument against having it be an add-on?
Or maybe the "translate this page" feature could be as it had been before integrating a local AI translation feature - fork that out to an external service - but provide configuration for the "translate this page" akin to the search engine config, alon
Re: (Score:2)
> Firefox does built in local translations of pages. That's an "AI feature" and it's avoiding you having to use google translate or other systems that end up sending the data "to the cloud" (in other words, sending you private data to other people's servers where they can do whatever they want with it).
> I don't see how local, relatively low energy, private, reasonably effective translation of a page is an "anti-feature".
But do you trust that Firefox is not sending the data to a third party to train the AI?
Re: (Score:2)
I would have been happier if the AI slop had been disabled by default, but at least I can turn it all off with a single control. Hopefully I can take Mozilla's word that it is all well and truly disabled.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I use use Librewolf. They also remove all the Firefox telemetry that always keeps getting enabled. It's crazy that we now need a privacy aware version of Firefox.