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Firefox 149 adds built-in free VPN with 50GB monthly data (www.omgubuntu.co.uk)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Firefox’s free VPN will offer 50 gigabytes of monthly data, which is pretty generous for a browser-based VPN. A Mozilla account is required to make use of it, which isn’t a hardship (they’re free), but is a point of friction some may wish to know upfront.

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[–] 64 points 7 months ago (12 children)

Usable addition, and the fact that it is only in-browser is actually a merit in some cases. Firefox gets a lot of hate but is way more privacy centric out of the box compared to Chrome. AI is only opt-in and you can literally customize the entire browser using about:config. Mozilla also maintains the only real competing web engine (not considering Apple's locked in ecosystem) and they are the reason browsers are open source these days.

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  • [–] 45 points 7 months ago (11 children)

    AI is only opt-in

    Not to take anything away from your overall point, which I completely agree with, but this may be a bit of a stretch. All of the "AI" buttons and features are - to my knowledge - on by default. They have made it a lot easier to change that to "off by default now and in the future", which is very welcome, but "only opt-in" is, again, a bit of a stretch.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Well, yes. In so far as they’ve added a new opt in button, and it would be silly to assume every user wants it off now. Instead, users that previously installed get a “turn off AI here” button when the update happens.

    I’d say that’s a good trade off.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    They added dangerous bullshit that nobody wanted with no good ability to turn it off, and then, year or so later, added a switch to turn it off.
    Most of the Firefox users don't want for llm to read web pages for them and group their tabs based on whatever bullshit rules it hallucinated this day. People go to Google and Microslop for this treatment.

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago*

    I definitely wouldn’t call “local llm features” dangerous.

    Edit: I suppose the tab grouping may not be local? Their docs don’t really specify one way or another. So I could be wrong in that one. The rest is definitely local, minus the “you have to sign in with an llm account” sidebar chat thing.

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  • [–] -2 points 7 months ago (7 children)

    It's not on by default.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    It was on my computer, on, until well after they implemented it, they allowed an opt out.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Weird. I was just setting up three Linux laptops and was asked if I wanted to turn these features on every time.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (2 children)

    I am still on windows, I want to make the switch but my main computer broke, the cursor and the keyboard stopped working despite not being connected to the internet for years. And my backup computer the C drive is almost completely full which I have no fucking idea how that happened as I have barely done anything on this piece of shit. So I'm afraid if I try to download Linux I will end up with no computer that works. I am not a tech guy obviously.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    You could try connecting an external keyboard/mouse to your main computer.

    As for the backup one - how much space do you have left? You'd need between 4 and 6 GB to download a Linux ISO and around 2 MB for Rufus with which you'd build a bootable "live USB".

    If you don't have even that much, grab WinDirStat to check what exactly is taking up so much space - maybe you can remove some of it.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    Thanks for the help, I did buy an external keyboard and mouse despite not knowing if that works without authorizing it. Someone else told me I could take apart the back and sometimes the wire comes loose. The old one should have a lot of memory the thing is a beast.

    The backup one however the c Drive is like 90 some percent full and keeps sending me messages about clearing up space but I've already done everything I can. I have no idea what is even on the C drive. I barely saved anything, 95% of my music is that my old one, and documents and whatever that's all I save.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    It absolutely, positively is on by default. Moreover, it's actually quite hard to completely turn off. Even their new fancy switches are sus, but for the longest time you needed to go to about:config and switch like ten different weirdly named parameters to turn everything off.

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