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@aral This is so scary. We don't need AI anywhere near a browser.

@tchauhan Oh don’t worry, it’s Trustworthy AI™

@aral Ah so it should be fine then. Sorry, hadn't noticed that it was trustworthy.

@cryptix @aral Not in the form of AI-hyped feature bloat in my goddamn browser, no !

@aud @aral I use VR for work, I'm a someone, not "literally nobody", thank you.
Is it something i absolutely need to be functional? No, but i like using it for work, and i'm not alone, many people work with virtual displays in a virtual world. You don't need to like it, we don't care, but we are happy to have it.

I don't care for the "metaverse" however, but some do.

And I'm happy that FF integrate a LLM to translate webpages without sending anything to google, and I want it to work better.

@tshirtman@mas.to @aral@mastodon.ar.al do you think it’s possible I was talking in broad terms with minor exaggeration for impact as regards the misguided direction numerous tech companies have taken in the last few years, or that instead I scryed through the ether specifically to offend you by calling you “no one”? Also “I like using this thing that already exists” is different from “there is an existing demand”; there was not, as time has borne out, an existing demand for virtual 3D worlds that was so high that Mozilla needed to jump in. At any rate, normally I’d charge people to call them “nobody”.

I’d actually be quite happy for local translation, but I’m going to avoid congratulating them for a potentially genuinely good use case until it’s delivered in my device and proven to not send data back to Google or some other “partner”. Especially given where their funding comes from.

@kyhwana @aral @fincham Lynx

@vv221 @aral @fincham Well firefox has gone all AI/enshitification so firefox is out.
Apparently https://www.falkon.org/about/ is an option

@vv221 @aral @fincham ugh rip. W3M it is? https://w3m.sourceforge.net/
And no web browsing on android I guess.

Which would be a mere extension/browser patch.

Also isn't uMatrix abandoned since 2021?

@vv221@fediverse.dotslashplay.it There's nothing technically stopping the #Linux distributions from packaging #PaleMoon. This is shown by the fact that they have officially approved third-party redistributions for Debian/Ubuntu, for example.

It's the insistence of these distros to build the browser against #systemlibraries no matter what that is causing problems, and upstream doesn't want the official branding to be applied in such cases. They have explained why they do not want this: https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=23706

Regarding the #BSD incident... I do agree it was handled very terribly. I would however not completely count the BSDs as innocent of any wrongdoing here, as they've been offered the option to build without official branding and they just refused to do so. #FreeBSD which is not involved with the incident and had cordial communication (according to Tobin at least) just completely removed the browser from the ports even though they consulted the project and was told they can just remove the official branding and continue building the same way as before. It's just another Iceweasel incident which got blown out of proportion by both sides.

The main instigator (who is Tobin again) is no longer involved with the Pale Moon project whatsoever since for about a year or so now. The project seems to clearly want to put this unfortunate incident behind in the past, which is shown by them providing official binaries for FreeBSD (thanks to a Mac developer who also has a FreeBSD box to build with). It's now up to #OpenBSD whether to return the favor too by at least offering unbranded builds in their ports (and we can most likely expect Pale Moon to return the same too by offering an offical binary for OBSD as well, since I see plenty of devs wanting to contribute an official build for that platform).

@aral@mastodon.ar.al @fincham@cloudisland.nz

@vv221@fediverse.dotslashplay.it Also about wolfbeast/Moonchild, he started the #PaleMoon project all those years ago (hence the name of the browser!), so good luck waiting for him to bail out when he's literally the project owner and lead... ​:seija_coffee:​

@aral@mastodon.ar.al @fincham@cloudisland.nz

@vv221@fediverse.dotslashplay.it

Debian packaging implies un-vendoring of shipped libraries.

Clean packaging can not be done when all software comes with its own set of custom library builds.

"Debian packaging" for me refers to simply the packaging of software into a .deb, nothing more. And you can bundle the third-party libs as done by stevepusser there.

What is "clean"?

@alpha1beta @aral they already shipped AI-powered local translation in the browser, and it's very nice, no need to send the content of they webpage you are looking at to get it translated, it's not as good as google translate, sure, but it's sometimes good enough, and i hope it gets better.

Are there other good use cases? i don't know, maybe summaries when you don't have the time to read the whole page would be nice, or you want to know if the webpage answers a question? Hopefully more.

@alpha1beta @aral Maybe an AI could edit the style of the page, live, to remove items you don't want, but be a bit less austere than the current "reader mode", (which is awesome, but not always perfect).

Maybe an AI could tell you about suspicious things the web page you are looking at is trying to do, or if it looks like a scam/phishing page.

Dunno how much of that is actually possible, but that seems at least in the ballpark of current AI/LLM capabilities, and would be helpful.

@gme @aral well they are pretty bad at it, then.

@womble@infosec.exchange @aral@mastodon.ar.al Wonder where the money came from to pay their last CEO then?