people used chrome?
I only used Chrome on my old phone, and since I have switched away from it with the new phone.
No sensible adblocker is the point that killed Chrome for me.
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.
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”
What was the GDP for fucking Columbia in 1997?
($127.4 billion for those interested)
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
- Lawful Option: Add
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
Uninstall and use another browser. Easy peasy.
Well your first mistake was using Chrome in 2026
same i abandoned as soon as they said they were going to slow the browser/computer down for people using private mode. oh and it has no adblock that is good as ublock origin.
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?
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.
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.
Well yes, the warning messages will disappear as those are often shown or not shown based on user agent.
But will the actual streaming issues go away is the big question.
Teams on the web for example, worked fine in Firefox even though it warned the user it didn’t work in anything but Chrome.
I have not encountered streaming issues that could not be resolved by user agent so far.
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.
I also use Vivaldi, and I don’t care about the bloat.
I bought the entire computer, I’m going to use the entire computer.
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.
The problem with brave is that the CEO is a very bad person, the company also give me sketchy vibes with the crypto stuff they push
Well, sure.
But even then still better than Chrome.
Your first mistake was voluntarily using any Google software, especially chrome.
But what if it was open source???
Chromium is. Chrome is not
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.
It’s so rare that changelogs are published to actually educate the end user about what an update will do.
This reminds me - One of the games I play did an update called “Nothing update” and it just simply said “Nothing was updated, no need to investigate”.
Sounds a lot like “Herobrine removed”
That update sounds very sus…
Come to the world of open source.
Where changelogs are detailed and informative, and software updates actually make the software better.
And if changelogs aren’t detailes enough, you read the commits
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.
It is, on my opinion. Lemmers should know Google not a good faith actor.
“I never thought AI would eat my face”
-Person who installed the browser from the AI Face Eater company
Seriously. Chrome is the single worst mainstream browser on the market today, bar none.
Absolutely any choice would be better than Google Chrome.
Edge… Opera… Internet explorer…
Its all chromium anyway.
I’m gonna go on a limb here and say that Internet Explorer isn’t chromium based.
Yeah true; but Internet explorer isn’t supported ever since Edge (back when it was an actual browser and not just a skin of chromium) came out
I actually thought Edge was kinda cool when it first came out with its own engine. Another player in the game, I thought.
Now? How dull.
EdgeHTML was a genuine improvement over the old IE engine, but even MS couldn’t compete against Google in the end.
Internet Explorer is still used by the Windows OS quite frequently. So depending on your definition of “supported” it still kind of is. Plus the internet hasn’t changed all that much, so most websites will work with any web browser regardless of age.
Fun fact, if you’re a .NET developer, you can actually still use IE. The browser control on winforms is just IE. Those old .NET framework versions will never die so neither will IE.
Internet explorer isn’t, but Edge is chromium based.
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.
It’s our thankless task to try to educate and convince our less savvy friends.
Sadly, in my experience, it’s useless. They usually think you’re the weird one. Especially nowadays in the “AI” era. Whenever I talk negatively about it I get weird looks. People love their corpo slop.
I keep thinking back to to the tweens when crypto miners would infect computers. IMO same strategy. Why buy the compute (Data Centers) when you can crowdsource it?
Stop using Chrome
Without asking
When has Google ever asked anybody before updating Chrome?
or notifying*.
*Except for the
-
Announcement video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56b9uHAcHYc
-
Blog post: https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/ai-mode-chrome/
-
Developer documentation: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/ai/built-in
-
And product page: https://gemini.google/overview/gemini-in-chrome/
-
Just stop updates.
But danger
For real
Just stop using corpo software.
