this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2024
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Firefox

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[–] [email protected] 95 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Orbit currently uses a version of Mistral LLM (Mistral 7B) that is locally hosted on Mozilla’s Google Cloud Platform instance.

Hmm.

>locally hosted

>Google Cloud

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

[–] SzethFriendOfNimi 41 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Sounds like they’re running their own LLM instance on googles cloud infrastructure vs using something like OpenAI via API.

As web dev parlance it makes sense but for marketing it is definitely confusing and they should do better.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Yeah, we "self-host" our app at AWS at work, which means we configure everything ourselves. I "self-host" a VPS at Hetzner for personal projects, and my actual data is actually self-hosted on a machine on my LAN.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

It’s a thing.

Remember how the cloud is someone else’s server? Now you can buy it (or lease) and bring it home, and it becomes only sorta someone else’s.

Amazon and Azure offer their own on-prem products.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (17 children)

"Locally hosted" means it's running on the local host. In this case, that would mean on the same computer running Firefox.

Calling something that is only accessible over the internet "locally hosted" is outrageous doublespeak.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

It just started and already have buzzwords floating around

[–] themeatbridge 41 points 1 week ago (6 children)

I don't want that. I want full control and absolute privacy. I do not want your AI reading my emails. Look at that summary, it's as long as the whole email, and you're not going to be able to trust that it picked up on the most important part of the email. This is not efficiency, this is novelty.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Then don't install the extension?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

So do you actually draw the line at Mozilla never building stuff like this into their browser, or is that a line you would be willing to cross too?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

“AI you can trust” …

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I won't trust the AI Mozilla uses until they show us the source data. Not the source code that consumes a massive binary blob; the stuff that generated the binary blob they are using.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Not far enough. I won't trust it until I can build it myself and self-host it. Then if they provide reproducible builds and hashes of the currently running build, I can decide whether it's better to use their hosted version or my own.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

But but but … they said…

[–] Carighan 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Well, you can just... not install the extension then?

[–] themeatbridge 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I won't. But my concern is that Mozilla is heading in the wrong direction lately, and I have used Firefox for a very long time.

[–] Carighan 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

We always told them we want things to be optional, and now this is an extension so I dunno. Seems they're listening?

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 week ago (1 children)

https://orbitbymozilla.com/terms

4. Content

A. Content You Share

By using the Services, you represent that you will only share material (including Inputs) that you own and/or have the legal right to share and sublicense to others, including without limitation, content and data contained in any web-page shared through the Services to generate Outputs. When you submit your own content through the Services, you continue to own the rights to that content. You grant Mozilla a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable license to use, copy, modify, adapt, sub-license, prepare derivative works from, distribute, perform, and display the Inputs for the purpose of operating the Services.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Thanks for the link to the privacy policy. You notice, at the bottom, it has links to both "About Mozilla" and "About FakeSpot"?

When you run the Orbit extension, it connects to two domains with every request:

  1. orbitbymozilla.com
  2. prod.orbit-ml-front-api.fakespot.prod.webservices.mozgcp.net

There's FakeSpot again.

And FakeSpot has a terrible privacy policy that allows sale of private data directly to advertisers.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

Yeah, that's a no-go. I probably wasn't going to use it anyway, but if it had a decent privacy policy, I might at least try it.

But no, not happening.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I sent in a support ticket asking them to save Firefox and stop all this AI bullshit

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm sure their support appreciates that a lot.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Yeah, there is a lot they can do about it.

Email their CEOs or some shit instead.

[–] thawed_caveman 14 points 1 week ago

"Yeah sorry boss, i didn't actually read the email, instead i had an AI summarize it for me and it got a key detail wrong. Anyway what's a couple thousand dollars in lost sales right"

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

why are they promoting web-based mail when their email solution is thunderbird?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Thunderbird is more a community project that's outside of Mozilla's jurisdiction at this point

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (11 children)

Thunderbird is built by a for-profit subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, it just isn’t the Mozilla Corporation.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

Well that's disappointing.

Just add it onto the pile of all the other stupid stuff Mozilla is doing I guess.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Not available on mobile, which is sad. I consume 99% of my internet via mobile devices.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

If you install it from a file, everything else seems to work except dragging it around.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I find it kind of suspicious that the extension (the fake spot one to) are proprietary.

[–] Draconic_NEO 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It is but it's also natural for them, they're slowly transitioning to a closed source company like all the other big tech companies. The hope is that we don't notice, or that those of us who do notice are a small minority who can be stomped out or discredited by those who don't notice or are in their pocket.

Reddit too used to be open source, they're not anymore. This shit does happen, regardless of what anyone says.

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