this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2026
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Technology

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[–] sturmblast@lemmy.world 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

These companies are all tone deaf

Its more than tone. They are just deaf dumb and stupid when it comes to what their users are saying.

[–] Kissaki@feddit.org 26 points 3 days ago

Chrome has added Auto Browse

sit down, lean back, and watch the internet scroll by /s

[–] teft@piefed.social 99 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Is one of those agents going to jerk off for you too? Who the fuck needs an agent to browse the web for them?

[–] ssladam@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago

It's trying to solve a problem created by SEO slop. "Find me the cheapest car rental".... That's actually hard to do now bc SEO grift. Rather than building a more honest system, you get "agents" to do the searching for you

[–] Zen_Shinobi@lemmy.world 33 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I see someone didn't use Ask Jeeves back then /s

[–] itsathursday@lemmy.world 22 points 4 days ago (1 children)

It didn’t make sense then, and it doesn’t make sense now. Keyword searches with an understanding of search syntax was always king.

[–] Chozo@fedia.io 12 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Keyword searches with an understanding of search syntax was always king.

Isn't that only because of the limitations of the available technology only being able to handle simple strings, though? Conversational computing has been a pipe dream since early sci-fi, where characters would talk to their computers as if they were human; George Jetson never spoke to Rosie in keyword queries.

I feel like keyword search syntax being "king" is more of a symptom, than an intentional choice.

[–] ainmosni@startrek.website 17 points 4 days ago (1 children)

You realise that the reason conversational computing is so popular in science fiction, is because it looks better on camera, right.

[–] timwa@lemmy.snowgoons.ro 14 points 4 days ago

This is a very good point - in books/dramas it helps the exposition to have a character you can relay half the plot details to. Similarly in radio dramas, every conversation between characters starts with saying each others names and a full recap of whatever the subject is... But nobody in the real world does or wants to talk like that.

Real people just say "hey, is that thing fixed yet?", not "hello Chris, you remember yesterday we were discussing the il problem with the Thing, and you proposed Cornfootling it; what happened?"

When I want Alexa to turn on the lights, I want to just say "Alexa, turn on the lights", not have a goddamned debate. And when I want to search for whatever the hell Cornfootling is, I just want to type "Cornfootling" and hit search.

[–] floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 3 days ago

I love software that acts without my consent or knowledge while atrophying my brain and wasting tremendous amounts of resources

[–] Rooty@lemmy.world 29 points 4 days ago (1 children)

"Let's give everyone an army of spambots! What could go wrong?"

I'm gonna start reading books again.

[–] innermachine@lemmy.world 9 points 3 days ago

I don't know if he joking or not but seriously I started reading again regularly like a year ish ago and I think my attention span getting better. Just not spending as much time scrolling bullshit is a big W along with practicing a longer attention span weather it's reading or something else. Go get a terry pratchet book !

[–] melfie@lemy.lol 11 points 3 days ago (1 children)

That does it, I’m never installing Chrome again. I haven’t in years anyway because it’s garbage spyware, but still.

[–] Pika@rekabu.ru 8 points 3 days ago

I haven't in years anyway

Exactly why they can pull off anything like that. People who still stay with Chrome are mostly those who'll eat it up anyway.

[–] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 32 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

This actually sounds interesting.

"Find all comments on lemmy that are wrong. Respond explaining how they are wrong."

That would save me a lot of work.

[–] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 days ago

Brilliant! You'll save us all a lot of work. Plus we will finally figure out which version of Linux is the correct one.

[–] ramble81@lemmy.zip 40 points 4 days ago

I loathe (couldn’t figure out a synonym more than that) the word agentic. It sums up everything bad and wrong about AI.

[–] tleb@lemmy.ca 38 points 4 days ago (1 children)

They want to push all this shit in browsers so that they can start automatically buying shit once they're selling ads

[–] chunes@lemmy.world 9 points 4 days ago

God, I hadn't thought of that. It's going to be like cancelling a cable subscription but worse.

[–] Technus@lemmy.zip 15 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

You know what this is launching just in time for?

Tax season.

Cue* 10 million people getting audited because they let their browser file their taxes for them.

[–] slampisko@lemmy.world 10 points 4 days ago (2 children)
[–] nyan@lemmy.cafe 7 points 4 days ago

If they're auditing that many of them, there will be a queue, too.

[–] Technus@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 days ago

Yeah, I realized that as soon as I posted it.

[–] acosmichippo@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago (2 children)

lol as if the IRS is going to audit anyone now.

[–] phutatorius@lemmy.zip 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

They will if you're not a rich fascist.

[–] acosmichippo@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (2 children)

they just don't have enough people. maybe they would target rich democrats, but in general audits are going to go way down out of necessity.

They don't need people. They have agentic browsers. Lolol

[–] BanMe@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

Although one day even the fascists will realize there has to be income, no one's been collecting from the plebs, so they'll go back through... getting audited for multiple past years at once isn't fun, trust and believe. So be as honest as your AI will make you.

[–] Hule@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

Here's hoping they'll use the same model as their clients..

[–] cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 5 points 3 days ago (2 children)

save us vivaldi you're our only hope

[–] Pika@rekabu.ru 12 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Vivaldi is in big part closed source, so we literally don't know what it does behind the scenes

[–] cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 points 3 days ago (2 children)

closed source due to the small team but they're also incredibly open about both the company the advocacy for the internet

[–] RightEdofer@lemmy.ca 2 points 16 hours ago

They’re so open you can’t even see what they’re doing!

[–] nulluser@lemmy.world 12 points 3 days ago

closed source due to the small team

There are open source projects created and managed by a single developer. A "small team" is not a reason to be closed source.

[–] Hansae@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Nah, Firefox. Anything based on the blink engine is vulnerable to upstream fuckiness.

Ladybird is also getting there.

[–] cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Nah, Firefox. Anything based on the blink engine is vulnerable to upstream fuckiness.

so aren't firefox forks

and ladybird might be nice but the dev outed himself as a right wing bigot

[–] Hansae@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 days ago

Firefox forks are less vulnerable purely due to the fact that the main browser engine isnt being developed by a self interested advertising company. (See the recent manifest V3 and discontinuation of V2 shitshow for a example of googles stranglehold causing problems)

& when it comes to browser engines I'll set politics aside even if someone has views in very poor taste. The project overall is FOSS and thusly is being developed by hundreds of contributors, I've contributed a few bits and pieces for it even.

Having an additional standalone browser engine serves as insurance against Mozilla doing a stupid and a bulwark against Google dominance.

[–] nforminvasion@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Servo browser is the other big from the ground browser project. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servo_%28software%29

[–] WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 1 points 4 days ago (2 children)

In practice that looks like this: https://youtube.com/shorts/pjT0ubmENWk

It sure looks creepy when your browser suddenly starts doing all kinds of stuff.

[–] KeenFlame@feddit.nu 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

No percent truth was in that video

[–] WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

He did say it makes screenshots of everything and sends it to a cloud AI for processing. I believe that. It's also a good reason for not wanting it.

[–] KeenFlame@feddit.nu 1 points 3 days ago

But nobody that has a functioning product has to fake their demo. This is extremely disturbing behavior when it comes to AI hype influencers

[–] bluegreenpurplepink@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

In reality, it's going to screw so much stuff up and do so many things you don't want it to do, that you're going end up spending a lot of time just correcting all the mistakes it makes.

And when you're not fighting to stop it from doing more things you don't want it to do, you're going spend your time worrying about what it will do next that you're going have to fix.

And unless you pay for the most expensive phone and the most expensive tier of service, they'll probably dumb it down on purpose and your life is going be hard.

[–] phutatorius@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 days ago

Mistake prevention is far better than mistake correction.

I'll be disabling that shit as soon as I install.