Avid AmoebaFirefox 148 introduces the promised AI kill switch for people who aren't into LLMs
XLE
dougsadly I’ll likely support them through any shitty decisions they make as they are the only viable non-chromium alternative these days.
I get they’re chasing the buck and trying to stay relevant, but uhhhh… if they could be less Steve Buscemi-teen about it, that’d be great.
I strongly believe that the EU should fund Mozilla, or a fork of Firefox.
Gecko is the only viable competitor to Blink/WebKit, and it is needed
UlrichGovts around the world should be funding all sorts of FOSS projects. I know they do to some degree but not much. It benefits the whole world and only hurts big tech.
Rob T FireflyThat prospect becomes less and less likely the more government is bought and paid for by Big Tech.
SigntistThis is what people don’t understand. Those in power, whether they’re part of the government, a wealthy CEO, or a religious leader, will do what benefits themselves if they think they can get away with it. We keep talking about powerful organizations and what they could do to benefit everyone, but fail to realize that powerful people don’t want to benefit everyone.
They only do what benefits everyone if they feel like they can’t get away with just doing what benefits themselves. It’s our responsibility to make sure they don’t think they can get away with it, and clearly strongly-worded letters and quippy signs held outside their offices for an afternoon or two isn’t enough to do that.
Engywook
douglasg14bFirefox is just the browser, Mozilla is the organization constantly wasting money on features Firefox’s users are actively hostile to in a bid to tempt away people already using Chrome. Not the OP, but I’d be down to donate to Firefox’s development directly, but I wouldn’t want to make a donation to Mozilla hoping it would go toward Firefox, only to find out they took my money to build some new LLM integration that nobody asked for, only to sit unused for years before being quietly shuttered in favor of the new tech buzzword of the day.
Maybe funding components would be better than funding mozilla. Eg: 2 engineers for Gecko
This is probably common knowledge to you and many others, but it bears repeating: You cannot donate to fund the development of Mozilla Firefox.
Google can, unfortunately.
I’m pretty sure you can donate to Mozilla, are you saying that donations to Mozilla don’t accomplish what we might want? I only know a little about how much Mozilla sucks so I’m ready to learn more.
There are two interlinked Mozillas: the Mozilla Foundation is what you can donate to, but the Mozilla Corporation is what develops Firefox. No matter how much you donate, that money cannot (or will not) be transferred to Firefox development.
Mozilla’s recent history includes privacy flub after financial management misstep, so here’s a few links in no particular order of severity or chronology:
- https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/02/nearly-a-year-later-mozilla-is-still-promoting-onerep/
- https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/05/mozilla-foundation-lays-off-30-staff-drops-advocacy-division/
- https://smoshed.substack.com/p/ublock-origin-lite-maker-ends-firefox
- https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/02/07/crypto-wallet-security-layer-webacy-raises-4m
- https://mastodon.social/@stevetex/113162099798398758
Each of these are a little rabbit hole on their own.
Reminder that Krebs is an asshole who responds to criticism by doxxing the accounts of other security researchers.
I recommend Waterfox
They have to not fill their browser with AI slop features.
Last time I tried Waterfox some sites like Twitch that actively block usage on old browsers, refused to work because the latest Waterfox release was based on a Firefox like 20+ builds behind.
I have used it for twitch for years without issue. I also have ublock origin with twitch adblock.
Well you clearly haven’t used the standard available download (non-beta/nightly release) consistently through last year. Waterfox was using ESR 128 since October 2024, kept that base until finally upgrading to ESR 140 last August. So that’s nearly a year of its base being out of date. So the user agent reported that number… sites really don’t like that since they’re looking at that for support.
https://www.waterfox.com/releases/6.5.0/ https://www.waterfox.com/releases/6.6.0/
Twitch only supports the last TWO versions of Firefox officially and will actively block logging in from older versions. So while you might be able to watch Twitch, if you aren’t already logged in, you won’t be able to login.
https://help.twitch.tv/s/article/supported-browsers?language=en_US
There are thousands of posts about it online for Waterfox other forks.
It was outdated, but only for a couple months. Firefox ESR is built to last about a year, and it was maintained with security patches up-to-date alongside Firefox Production versions 129, 130, 131, 132… all the way to 139. Only then did ESR 140 come out.
But if Twitch only supports the two most recent Firefox production versions, I guess ESR wouldn’t cut it after FF 131 came out.
ElectricAirshipLadybird browser looks promising!
The_DecryptorThe ladybird devs are currently in the process of switching language again from Swift to Rust, using LLMs.
Yup. Don’t use or support Ladybird, especially since it’s made by anti-inclusivity “keep your ‘political’ gender-neutral pronouns out of our READMEs” nerdbros.
On the other hand, Servo is coming along nicely.
github.com/LadybirdBrowser/…/CONTRIBUTING.md
Use gender-neutral pronouns, except when referring to a specific person.
?
That line is actually part of a very interesting change to the document.
https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/commit/627dcb90bdd23ccfa2ae210d55b474ab4a844db0
I watched this unfold as it happened. It kind of left a bad taste in my mouth after that.
Yeah ofc they are chasing the buck.
It’s either they find alternatives revenue streams or we no longer have Firefox as a viable alternative anymore.
Browsers development is crazy engineering heavy, and this, expensive.