Web Browsers/Web Servers: Bots' Havoc, Vivaldi, and Mozilla's Latest Suicide Note (Slop)

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Nov 14, 2025,
updated Nov 15, 2025

• Herman Martinus ☛ Messing with bots

  As outlined in my previous two posts: scrapers are, inadvertently, DDoSing public websites. I've received a number of emails from people running small web services and blogs seeking advice on how to protect themselves.

  This post isn't about that. This post is about fighting back.

• [Old] Herman Martinus ☛ Aggressive bots ruined my weekend

  The next two kinds of scraper are more insidious. The malicious scrapers are bots that systematically scrape and re-scrape websites, sometimes every few minutes, looking for vulnerabilities such as misconfigured Wordpress instances, or .env and .aws files, among other things, accidentally left lying around.

  It's more dangerous than ever to self-host, since simple mistakes in configurations will likely be found and exploited. In the last 24 hours I've blocked close to 2 million malicious requests across several hundred blogs.

  What's wild is that these scrapers rotate through thousands of IP addresses during their scrapes, which leads me to suspect that the requests are being tunnelled through apps on mobile devices, since the ASNs tend to be cellular networks. I'm still speculating here, but I think app developers have found another way to monetise their apps by offering them for free, and selling tunnel access to scrapers.

• Chromium

  • Linuxiac ☛ Vivaldi Browser 7.7 Arrives With Unified Start Page and Smarter Tab Syncing

    The new synced-tabs experience allows users to open complete tab structures—including full windows, Tab Stacks, and Workspaces—from any desktop device. Instead of a flat list, Vivaldi now preserves each tab’s hierarchy, making it easier to resume work when switching between machines.

• Mozilla

  • The Register UK ☛ Firefox adds AI Window, users want AI wall to keep it out [Ed: Mozilla's suicide note]

    Mozilla is apparently a lot more excited about adding AI features to Firefox than its community. The org has decided that AI deserves its own new environment in the browser, a move its fans met with withering criticism.

  • Jérôme Marin ☛ How Firefox is trying to ride the AI wave

    Launched in 2004, Firefox now finds itself at a crossroads. The non-profit Mozilla Foundation can take comfort in keeping the roughly $500 million Google pays it annually. But the browser continues to lose market share: just 2.2%, according to StatCounter estimates. This is far from the 32% peak reached in November 2009, when Firefox shook Microsoft’s near-monopoly with Internet Explorer.

  • Mozilla ☛ Introducing AI, the Firefox way: A look at what we’re working on and how you can help shape it

    We recently shared how we are approaching AI in Firefox — with user choice and openness as our guiding principles. That’s because we believe AI should be built like the internet —  open, accessible, and driven by choice — so that users and the developers helping to build it can use it as they wish, help shape it and truly benefit from it.

  • Mozilla ☛ The writer behind ‘Diary of a Sad Black Woman’ on making space for feelings online [Ed: What does this have to do with Firefox?]

    Here at Mozilla, we are the first to admit the internet isn’t perfect, but we know the internet is pretty darn magical. The internet opens up doors and opportunities, allows for human connection, and lets everyone find where they belong — their corners of the internet. We all have an internet story worth sharing. In My Corner Of The Internet, we talk with people about the online spaces they can’t get enough of, the sites and forums that shaped them, and how they would design their own corner of the web.

Update

More on the abominable tactics of Mozilla:

• Firefox is Getting a New Hey Hi (AI) Browsing Mode

  Mozilla is ebullient on the benefits Hey Hi (AI) can bring to users of the Firefox web browser, and already offers (as you may have been bugged by callouts to) a sidebar for interacting with chatbots, Hey Hi (AI) summaries, and AI-powered tab grouping. Now it’s going further, adding a new, dedicated “AI Window” mode to Firefox. Firefox Hey Hi (AI) Window is described by Mozilla as “a new, intelligent and user-controlled space we’re building in Firefox that lets you chat with an Hey Hi (AI) assistant and get help while you browse, all on your terms.”

Also here:

• Mozilla Unveils Plans for New 'AI Window' Browsing Mode in Firefox, Opens Signups

  Planned browsing mode will let users chat with an Hey Hi (AI) assistant while surfing the web.

See: Mozilla Handed Over Control Over Firefox to Microsoft, Now Firefox is Preloaded With Microsoft Spyware and It's Proprietary

A few more:

• Mozilla is building 'AI windows' in Firefox and giving full control to you

  It’s an odd strategy given that most of Mozilla’s rivals have rushed to incorporate AI directly in their browsers, like Edge and Copilot, Google Chrome and Gemini, or Brave and its Leo AI services. Allowing users to choose their AI seems reasonable, but it’s also a little strange how slowly Mozilla is deploying this capability given the breakneck speed at which AI is being rolled out elsewhere. Mozilla didn’t give a timetable on when these AI windows would be completed.

• How to Disable All the Hey Hi (AI) Features in Firefox Web Browser

  Firefox introduced Hey Hi (AI) chatbot, Hey Hi (AI) powered link preview, and search images with Surveillance Giant Google Lens etc Hey Hi (AI) powered features in the past releases.

• I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

  Illustration showing Firefox’s three modes/windows: normal, “Window AI” and private window. Image: Mozilla. It’s safe to say that the people who volunteered to “shape” the initiative want it dead and buried. Of the 52 responses at the time of writing, *all* rejected the idea and asked Mozilla to stop shoving AI features into Firefox.