Jon von Tetzchner, CEO and founder of Vivaldi Technologies, refuses to integrate AI features in its browser and wants human engineers, not AI, to write its code.
If we ignore privacy and open-source considerations for a moment, Vivaldi has been one of my favorite browsers. They embraced vertical tabs, they offer customizability instead of forcing everyone into the same mold, and it doesn’t have all the anti-features (AI specifically) that some other browsers have.
I’m gonna give them a high five while continuing to use LibreWolf/IronFox.
Imagine that tomorrow Tetschner goes crazy and starts dating a Chinese spy. Or joins the Trumpist sect…
I think AI should be a choice, not something every browser has to push on its users. Everyone has their own preferences.
So just the way Firefox does it? Only local models, all configurable?
The recent controversy on House House makes me (only a little) worried that for the next century, most people will be hardline 100% never-AI, instead of just “Stop shoving it everywhere, stop copying artwork”. As people like Bernie have said, it’s an automation technology that can have nice effects should those use cases receive careful consideration. We just don’t often get that consideration.
I will never understand why the push to AI was so freaking AGGRESSIVE. Like, take it, shove it down your throat, avoidance of AI is BANNED, type of bullshit. It should speak for itself when it works.
Im never leaving zen, its been stable for a while now, was so ass when I started using it, now I never lose anything, forgot it used to be rough
Does the vimium plugin work on zen yet? That was the only pain point that was holding me back from switching last time I tried it.
I will always advocate ai for shit like this, just make it work yourself, debug it by using it. Make it show you it’s work, sometimes it’s a simple edit, have it avoid restructuring and use minimal code. Can easily be done for free. Ik it’s obviously preferred to have official support but for things like plugins, I just get to use them now instead of waiting for my issue to never be resolved.
Tetzchner says the company asked its users whether they wanted added AI features, and the response was “no.”
Revolutionary technique, asking if anyone wants a feature before you go all-in on it.
- Microsoft enters the chat
also, yall stop saying firefox sucks because all web browsers capable of the bloated standards are de facto corporate controlled
“Customers don’t want it” is surprisingly difficult to understand for a lot of companies nowadays. Vivaldi must be run by some sort of language genius.
It’s a private compnay, they don’t have to follow shareholders so it explains it
Methinks shareholders should somehow be concerned what end users want.
Shareholders want the line to go up, currently AI is a thing that makes that happen, long-term effects be damned.
you don’t want to be the one that missed out by not jumping on the train.
Somehow and for now
They are only concerned about money
Which is somehow related.
Yeah but they are usually not that smart, they only think in short term than long term
We have very prominent cases where this is true. But is it also true in general? Idk
Basically any public company right now?
onlythinkaboutnextquarter then thinkaboutnextquarter
step 3) profit?Not as related as they should be. Stock prices are based on belief, not on reality.
It’s really dumb but it holds true. I work for a company that profits tens of millions per year, and we’re owned by one guy. I’ve worked at places that are owned by hedge funds or giant corporations like GE and you can just tell the difference. Here I’ve been told that if the shop needs something, it’s basically a blank check. The owner gave everyone in the company a $3 raise last year, and we get a 10% bonus of your salary annually as a profit sharing initiative. Annual raises are good, wages are excellent, benefits are some of the best in the country and they do everything they can to keep them as a low cost. We just happen to manufacture things that nobody else in the country does.
Compared to other other more typical companies it’s really night and day. I used to get a 3% annual raise and a “I can’t get you more even though I want to”. And some of the shittiest health insurance imaginable. My coworker broke his foot and they wouldn’t wait on him until he saw a specialist like wtf he literally just needed a cast
“wants”
it’s chromium, it uses ai. i think this guy wants to do marketing
Build Vivaldi on top of Firefox rather than Chrome, and I’m in.
Just use Firefox. It doesn’t have any AI built into it as far as I’m aware.
Unfortunately, vanilla Firefox does have AI built-in, as well as a lot of other garbage. Librewolf is a fork that strips out all that junk, and it bundles in some cool security features as well.
But apparently Vivaldi is good, too.
Its got a whole panel that pops open when you click the button in upper left corner under the tabs.
Then you may not be aware that it is has integrated AI features.
based af. I’m installing Vivaldi right now, holy shit.
It’s Chromium based.
I’m uninstalling it right now!
Yeah, loved Vivaldi until it started randomly corrupting my profiles after not starting up correctly. Now I’m back on Firefox -_-
They’re right. Vivaldi is based
…on chromium
the superior browser engine sorry not sorry (i’ve had way too much trouble with everything gecko-based even though i want to support it, the technical issues make it nearly impossible)
AI is just a more destructive and environmentally catastrophic NFT.
I use AI on a daily basis and I don’t want AI in my browser. The desire to integrate AI into everything is not smart.
I’m not switching to Vivaldi, but it is refreshing to see someone say “I didn’t put X in the product because people don’t want X in the product.”
I’d use Vivaldi if it wasn’t chrorium and closed source, sadly it’s such a turn off
The UI layer is the only part that’s closed source. Vivaldi’s UI is also one of the main reasons people use it.
Yeah but de facto i still cannot see what they put in there
I, too, would use Vivaldi if it wasn’t Vivaldi.
Isn’t Vivaldi largely open source?
the devs like to pretend that it is and say how only a small part of it is proprietary, but it’s a deceptive PR stunt because they’re counting the whole chromium source into that statistic. if we don’t consider the chromium source they didn’t write, their own vivaldi code is largely proprietary.
regardless, a program consisting of 99.9% free code and 0.1% proprietary code is proprietary as a whole - you can’t audit, modify or redistribute copies of it as long as any non-free code is present.
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