Yet another reason to stop using Chrome: Gemini is coming right into the browser, including the address bar ("Omni bar") by default. These features are computationally expensive at scale, privacy-destroying, and just plain annoying.
https://blog.google/products/chrome/chrome-reimagined-with-ai/
@eruwero Us software developers need to eat. Free software doesn't bring enough for us all.
@lettosprey @mttaggart you can monetize free (as in freedom, not price) software too though. You could charge for the software itself or for support or make it easy for people to donate. But I agree it's not easy because big tech can offer things for free since the make the money with surveillance, not software.
@Vivaldi is also free as in free beer, so what's the financial incentive other than being able to sneak in surveillance software to sell data and/or push ads without consent?
@eruwero
I am very pro-FOSS; but I do not like the "it has to be FOSS!" mindset many have. The important bits is that the software follows open standards, and that you can trust it.
Vivaldi dragging Temu in broke my trust.
The difference between Vivaldi free and Firefox / Librewolf-free is that Vivaldi owns the code, and all the work they put into it belong to them, while Firefox/Librewolf, anyone can take the source, and make it their product (as long as changes are contributed back)
The latter is a tricky thing to build a business on.
Now, if everyone that could, decided to put €)10+ a month towards FOSS projects, the world would be quite different.
Free software saves me a LOT of money, so I put some of that back into sponsoring. I was even going to give some to Vivaldi, but, well, Temu got in the way.
@mttaggart @Vivaldi
@lettosprey
I get your point. I don't really trust it if it's not free software, there are just too many ways it can go wrong, even if the developers seem trustworthy right now.
Regarding the difference between Vivaldi and Firefox/Librewolf: This is also a trust issue though, right? If a company/non-profit/large community supports something there are more reasons to trust it and one could build a business around that trust IMO. The code could still respect users freedom
@lettosprey
I wanted to give an example of how free software can also make money and looked at the mozilla corporation (not that that's a perfect model or anything), but of the $653 million in revenue (2023) $555 million come from google. That's crazy. This surveillance crap needs to be stopped.
@lettosprey
anyway the positive thing is that there can be better alternatives like Librewolf because Firefox is (apart from trademark stuff) free software. If Vivaldi were too and they do stuff like the Temu bookmarks you mentioned no one would have to take that crap and they could instead make their own version without it. This #enshittification no one wants seems to be the only real reason for nonfree software
@mttaggart i was of the same opinion until they forced temu bookmarks on me.
Now, it is librewolf.
@eruwero
@mttaggart
Have they speculated at all how long they'll be able to do that?
I guess it really depends on how much this impacts Chromium.
@Vivaldi
Given that "A"I is killing off the web I do wonder how much longer the browser will exist?
@catsalad Ugggggh.
Well Vivaldi has a mobile version and it's very good.
@mttaggart @catsalad ...yet.
If they find some avenue to squeeze AI nonsense in there they will. Think "enhanced auto-translation of (web-)apps" or some crap like that. Or better, "AI analysis" to "help you navigating" (i.e. scraping behaviour data) and better integrate all Android apps into some universal, always-on AI assistant. They'll eventually figure out something awful.
@mttaggart The friends of mine who care about invasive anti-privacy and not burning the planet down have already switched to Firefox, or some other non-Chromium-based browser. (Too bad there aren't many, and the ones that are, are basically Firefox forks.)
Unfortunately, I also have friends who are like "NBD, it's not like I'M doing anything worth invading." Or better yet a useless snarky answer like "I use a Chromebook, so I guess I'd better install Windows on it lol!"
We're in the worst timeline.
@derek fwiw, firefox on desktop also has ai features and they're enabled by default. dunno if you meant mobile exclusively
@derek aaaand they're coming to mobile:
https://www.engadget.com/ai/firefox-provides-ai-page-summaries-if-you-shake-your-iphone-145837557.html
@xyhhx @derek @mttaggart Firefox finally adds tab group and vertical tabs, but of course they have to pair it with AI chatbots and summaries. Makes me feel vindicated in my Vivaldi usage and recommendations. It’s wild how the “features” that attract users nowadays are the deliberate lack of a feature
@mttaggart "AI that keeps you safer"
lol
Here's how to disable all the Chrome AI stuff.
https://www.askvg.com/how-to-enable-disable-all-new-ai-features-in-google-chrome/
@mttaggart
Yet another reason to stop using Chrome: Gemini is coming right into the browser, including the address bar ("Omni bar") by default. These features are computationally expensive at scale, privacy-destroying, and just plain annoying.
Artificial Idiot in chrome, agree, google is becoming more of an untenable pain in the ass every day.
Taggart
Tim Chaffee
Neil Craig
VegOS
Maxi 12x 💉
eruwero
Lett Osprey 
🍉 
ZeStig 
MostlyTato
mav 
Simon Zerafa
Cat 🐈🥗 (D.Burch) 
Natanox 🇺🇦🇵🇸
Emily Love 🏳️⚧️
Owl Eyes
2xfo
Just Bob
Vince (biometrically enrolled)
derek
xyhhx 🔻
Phillip 
Hubert Figuière
Jason 🍸🫧
titaniumbiscuit
Artem R 🇺🇦
Seldon
RalfMaximus
drdr6262
Steve Frenzel
W. Latif Ayubi 🏴☠️
www-gem
Adam Coté
mastodonphan HAS MOVED
Daniel Jonsson