Well your first mistake was using Chrome in 2026
Second Mistake was using Windows in 2026
id say this is the first mistake really
I hate that I still have to use Chrome because it can do some streaming stuff better than Firefox (and even Chromium for some reason). I only use it to connect to one KVM.
Do the streaming issues resolve themselves ✨magically✨ when faking the user agent to be Chrome for those streaming sites, e.g. using Firefox and a user agent add-on?
Many do, yes. Any time I get an error message like "You're not using a supported browser" that message vanishes after adjusting the user agent.
My issues were with h265/HEVC support, proprietary stuff like media codecs can sometimes be a pain. I no longer have that need so I'm a happy fox.
Pretty sure Firefox added support for HEVC a while back, but it relies on the system to provide the decoder (Which you'll usually have to pay extra for)
Firefox also supports MKV files now, which is nice.
Not in this case. It's an open source project. They usually don't do this shit.
Tell them to get their shit together and support open-source browsers, or more accurately just browser standards in general.
For when I need Chrome, I use Vivaldi. Its probably over bloated for what I need, but it works.
Try Brave for this use-case. I find that it works well for all kinds of streaming.
And while it's no Firefox or Librewolf, it's still a lot better than Chrome.
A while back, I was actually okay with MS being semi forcible about Windows Update.
Most people overestimate their antivirus, and don’t realize that frequent updates are generally the most important way of keeping their system safe. And, to avoid turning computers into zombies for botnets, to keep the whole internet safe. Windows is the world’s most popular OS - it’s good for the world to keep systems secure.
And then MS had the gall to betray that responsibility of only shipping critical security patches by forceful methods. They started forcing people to Windows 11, pushing Edge back in as their browser, pushing popups and Start menu changes, and so on. For a thousand reasons, Windows Update has more notoriety in common with malware than the malware it’s meant to protect you from.
I have to admit, I started laughing when it tried to update me to Win 11, I finally threw up my hands and said "Fuck it, why not!" said yes, and it did not work. 😄 It still kept asking though. Hilarious.
I installed Bazzite this year.
Software updates have gotten so fucked up in general these days.
It's so rare that changelogs are published to actually educate the end user about what an update will do. Most of the time it's just "Bug fixes and feature updates" with no further detail. What bugs? What features? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Then you update (or, more likely, you left auto-update on) because they guilt you into thinking that you'll immediately fall victim to a zero-day vulnerability if you don't. And suddenly everything just gets slightly worse and worse.
It should be more accepted to follow the mentality of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" with software, precluding the need to install new updates unless something stops working or there is a vulnerability to patch. On my phone at least, I have auto updates turned off and will generally let audience consensus determine if it's something I want. But it's still a coin toss if I decide to take an update, because no one bothers to tell you what they really do anymore.
Fun fact: when releasing apps on Google Play, you are basically forced to give a proper summary about what the update contains and Google threatens your developer account if you fail to do so. If you want some sour chuckles, check the "what's new" of YouTube or Google Play itself.
I googled a definition of a word today. it took me two minutes to get chrome to not use the "AI mode" search when searching via the address bar
tomorrow I'm switching to Firefox at work. after I spend an hour trying to figure out how to remove the copilot overlay from Excel, anyways
When it comes to disabling AI in Google searches, you have two choices:
- Lawful Option: Add
-aito the end of your search, ie, "define asinine -ai" - Chaotic Option Add profanity to your search, ie, "what the fuck does asinine mean"
this wasn't the AI preview/response thing at the top of a regular Google search result. they brought me into a new "AI mode" chatbot window completely separate from google search
I'm still not sure how I got it to fuck off. it kept doing it for simple searches, but would do a regular search if the search keys had enough words
OperaGX has been nice to me so far
opera is not nice to you, its an awful company and does not respect your privacy or data at all.
look at a firefox fork like waterfox if you want a browser that will be nice to you
Just the other day I uninstalled Chrome & gave "Enshittification" as the reason when prompted. Not that I'd been using it since turning to Firefox a few years ago and Waterfox more recently.
Your first mistake was voluntarily using any Google software, especially chrome.
But what if it was open source???
Chromium is. Chrome is not
Everyone who still uses chrome after this insane breach of trust (if there was any before) should seriously think about why he enjoys corporate boot on his neck that much.
Most people don't know, aren't paying attention, and don't understand. It's our thankless task to try to educate and convince our less savvy friends.
Brave is better than Chrome. Definitely recommend.
It’s always funny seeing the recent Reddit migrants here. Brave did a massive astroturfing ad campaign on Reddit for a while, and it was hugely successful. After things reached a critical mass, the echo chamber took over and Reddit users naturally began pushing Brave’s marketing fluff to the top. Brave is wildly popular over on Reddit as a result.
But they never targeted Lemmy, and Lemmings were pretty quick to jump on the “Brave is run by a very problematic person, and has a problematic past” side of things. Lemmy also has a very vocal FOSS enthusiast crowd, because the idea of FOSS meshes very well with why people would land on Lemmy. So Lemmings tend to prefer Firefox forks instead.
But you can always tell when someone has recently migrated here from Reddit. Because they’ll post a comment praising Brave, expecting to get upvoted like they would on Reddit. And instead, they get buried in downvotes and “my specific fork of Firefox is better” comments.
And sure enough, OP’s account is less than a day old, so they’re most likely a recent Reddit migrant.
OP, to address your point, Brave is still a Chromium browser, and has all of the trappings that entails. It is also run by a dude with a problematic past, and the company as a whole has a problematic past too. You should consider switching to a Firefox fork instead, with uBlock Origins or AdNauseum (which is a uBO fork) as ad blockers. I personally suggest the WaterFox fork, though you’ll likely want to disable some of the more strict privacy protections (like wiping all of your data every time you close the app) because it can make daily use a bit of a chore otherwise. There is always a matter of give-and-take between convenience and privacy, and WaterFox tends to skew more towards privacy.
I think you're mixing up Waterfox with Librewolf. Librewolf by default deletes all your data after closing it, Waterfox doesn't.
It's actually for this reason that I use both for different purposes. I sign into accounts with Waterfox (using account containers and browser profiles so each account's data is self-contained and not shared between each other) and use a sandboxed installation of Librewolf with a few extensions like NoScript installed and letterboxing enabled for anything I don't sign into (i.e. news articles, web searches, etc.) so that the 50-odd domains running scripts on my local news station's website get way less of a fingerprint off me to use to target ads at me or sell my data to data brokers or the gestapo.
Hah, you’re 100% correct. I use WaterFox as my daily driver, and remembered all of the frustrations with persistent data deletion from initially trying Librewolf. I swear WaterFox came with those features by default, but I probably transposed the frustration from when I initially tried out Librewolf instead.
Leopards ate my face moment. Stop using that trash.
Leopards are those entities that openly boast about eating your face. It's not the case with Google. Your average non-IT-savy person knows almost nothing about their shenanigans
It's been very open among us Lemmers for years now. Posting here it could be all but assumed they knew about this bad behavior for a long time.
This is not a "leopards ate my face" situation.
"I never thought AI would eat my face"
-Person who installed the browser from the AI Face Eater company
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