Everytime my phone switches from dark to light mode and vice versa, the app won't switch too on the first launch. I have to close it and open it again. Hate it

TL;DR: As Mozilla moves to make Firefox an AI browser, people are looking at other options. Some people are rediscovering Waterfox, a browser that has been around for a decade from independent developer BrowserWorks. In this post, I interview the founder of Waterfox - Alex Kontos, and we discuss Waterfox’s history and look towards its future. We also talk about how Waterfox thinks about AI in the browser.

cross-posted from: https://jlai.lu/post/31844353

A month after releasing version 146, Mozilla has launched Firefox 147, the latest update to its popular open-source web browser, now available for download.

One of the most visible changes is the expansion of WebGPU support, which is now enabled by default on all macOS versions running on Apple Silicon. On Linux and Windows systems with supported AMD GPUs, Firefox now enables zero-copy playback for hardware-decoded video, reducing memory overhead and improving video playback efficiency.

Firefox 147 also improves desktop integration on Linux by adding support for the Freedesktop.org XDG Base Directory Specification, aligning Firefox’s configuration and data storage with established Linux desktop conventions.

I have just noticed a strange phenomena on the site formerly known as #twitter:

To check if an old account of mine is still active, I tried to open #x in @firefox Focus on iOS. This does not work at all - it redirects automatically and tries to open the page in Safari.

Has anyone seen this behavious before? Seems like the user agents triggers a redirect...

TL;DR: Mozilla has a new CEO and a new mission: transform Firefox into an AI browser. That has run into some snags, as Firefox users don’t seem that interested in AI. Mozilla is forging ahead, utilizing deceptive patterns (previously known as dark patterns) to nag and annoy people into enabling AI features. You can see this in the introduction of Link Previews, an extremely invasive anti-feature that exists solely to push AI into your experience.

@firefox so how many times am I going to have to tell #firefox I don't want sponsored shortcuts or reccomended stories before it actually stops doing that despite how many times I've gone into settings to disable those features (often times having to re-enable them just so I can disable them again)?

The vibecoding and AI integration approach is literally breaking your browser and its usability.

Edit: I figured it out. The problem wasn't permissions or Firefox itself, but my launcher. I'm using OLauncher, 'cause I rather like it's text-lookup interface, but as it doesn't make use of a traditional "home screen" Firefox won't allow me to create an entry there.

Apparently, it's a much-desired feature request

I think it may have been renamed to "Install" in previous versions, but neither appear anymore, and I don't see any permissions denied so I'm assuming that can't be it.

OpenAI says prompt injections will always be a risk for AI browsers with agentic capabilities, like Atlas. But the firm is beefing up its cybersecurity with an "LLM-based automated attacker."

We need to burst the AI bubble.

The Aritifial Intelligence boom has caused as much CO2 emissions in 2025 as New York City.

A new report shows that the AI-related water use now exceeds the entirety of global bottled-water demand.

Billionaires reap the profit and corporations benefit but our society is left to pay cost.

Let’s say NO to new AI datacenters, block gen AI and push for AI-free apps.
cc @firefox

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/dec/18/2025-ai-boom-huge-co2-emissions-use-water-research-finds #ai #climate #water #genai #datacenter #ClimateChange

TL;DR: The big tech AI company LLMs have gobbled up all of our data, but the damage they have done to open source and free culture communities are particularly insidious. By taking advantage of those who share freely, they destroy the bargain that made free software spread like wildfire.

The saga continues! A Firefox developer has taken to social media to note there will be some sort of "kill switch" to completely remove AI features in the wake of the news about more AI features coming along with the new CEO.