I've been a Firefox user since the beginning. Before that, I was a Netscape Navigator user, starting with version 3. So it's been a while.

That's about to end.

With the Terms of Service changes from Mozilla whatever trust they had from me is gone. I will no longer be advocating for others to use Firefox and I'm going to stop using it.

If Firefox can detach itself from the Mozilla Foundation then I'll reconsider. Or if Mozilla decides to roll back their terms of service and have the leadership resign, I'll reconsider. But I seriously doubt that will happen.

And it's worse than the above: I'm going to start telling people to stay the hell away from Mozilla. I now consider it a toxic brand.

I hope the people at Mozilla get the message. You barely have any browser market share and those like me who have stuck with you for multiple decades are jumping ship.

@mozillaofficial

Nimm' @torproject / #TorBrowser, verdammt!

• Was ist so schwer daran???

https://mastodon.de/@atarifrosch/114081029434589413

Hackaday Links: February 9, 2025 - January 9 ended up being a very expensive day for a Culver City, California man af... - https://hackaday.com/2025/02/09/hackaday-links-february-9-2025/ #hackadaycolumns #termsofservice #hackadaylinks #northamerica #superscooper #continent #emergency #honeypot #amradio #geology #slider #europe #tarpit #drone #eula #fine #bot #llm #tos

New #disneyplus, #Hulu, and #espnplus #TOS allows for #advertisements even on ad-free paid plans! The fuck!? What's even the point then? Enshittification marches ever onward.

From the email:

We are clarifying that, as we continue to increase the breadth and depth of the content we make available to you, circumstances may require that certain titles and types of content include ads, even in our 'no ads' or 'ad free' subscription tiers.

[...] For prior and existing subscribers, [...] will be effective beginning on March 24, 2025, unless you acknowledge an in-app notice of these changes earlier.

For new subscribers, they're already in effect.

#DuckDuckGo is now offering free, #anonymized access to a number of fast #AI #chatbots that won't train in your data. You currently don't get all the premium models and features of paid services, but you do get access to privacy-promoting, anonymized versions of smaller models like GPT-4o mini from #OpenAI and open-source #MoE (mixture of experts) models like Mixstral 8x7B.

Of course, for truly sensitive or classified data you should never use online services at all. Anything online carries heightened risks of human error; deliberate malfeasance; corporate espionage; legal, illegal, or extra-legal warrants; and network wiretapping. I personally trust DuckDuckGo's no-logging policies and presume their anonymization techniques are sound, but those of us in #cybersecurity know the practical limitations of such measures.

For any situation where those measures are insufficient, you'll need to run your own instance of a suitable model on a local AI engine. However, that's not really the #threatmodel for the average user looking to get basic things done. Great use cases include finding quick answers that traditional search engines aren't good at, or performing common AI tasks like summarizing or improving textual information.

The AI service provides the typical user with essential AI capabilities for free. It also takes steps to prevent for-profit entities with privacy-damaging #TOS from training on your data at whim. DuckDuckGo's approach seems perfectly suited to these basic use cases.

I laud DuckDuckGo for their ongoing commitment to privacy, and for offering this valuable additional to the AI ecosystem.

https://duckduckgo.com/chat