unfuck your browser, november edition

pseudo-ongoing series (as much as anything I do has continuity) under the tag “hack the planet.” The inaugural post can be read here:

Mozilla added some LLM bullshit to name tab groups (I hate it here), and Firefox users are noticing CPU and power usage spikes caused by a background process called Inference.

Firefox users, type about:config into your address bar. Search for the browser.ml.chat.enabled key, and set that to false:

If yours says true then double-click it until it reads false.

Doing that turns off the AI chatbot features in Firefox, but also the stupid new LLM tab-naming feature that’s rolling out.

A satisfied comment from my tumblr:

Google has announced that YouTube will be using their Gemini AI to upgrade every video below 1080p to that level.

Instructions on opting out are here.

“Google just flipped a dangerous switch on October 10th, 2025 and 99% of Gmail users have no idea. Google’s Gemini AI now scans, reads, and analyzes every email you receive including attachments, financial docs, and private messages. This feature was enabled automatically.”

Instructions to turn this bullshit off here.

Read the instructions under the images; they’ll help you find both places you need to toggle off.

If you use Windows, an AI apocalypse is coming to your doorstep. Thankfully, there might be a way to avoid it. Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 has an extended end date of January 13, 2032. “…no OneDrive, Copilot AI, or all of the other useless crapware cluttering up the Start menu? AND patches/support through 2032??” Sounds too good to be true.

Article with deets here.

Disclosure: this was a tl;dr for me, cuz I’ve got a mac, but I felt like I really needed to share it out.

I have now had multiple people ask me if this rumor is true, so lemme tell you what I’ve found.

First of all, if you haven’t heard the rumor: there’s a story going around that Google Drive has started using AI to find "inappropriate" and "problematic" content, then deleting it.

There was a semi-viral report that someone lost access to their entire Google Drive. Tumblr user moonshinemagpie said,

“Their terms of service say they take down stuff like content related to terrorism and trafficking, but this Google Sheet was literally a list of movies I'd watched this year and books I'd read. Google actually took away access to every single file of fiction writing I'd made on that account.”

Not many other reports have come out with this same problem. So far, people haven’t found Gemini embedded in Google Drive like it has in Gmail above, or with Youtube.

Do you have to bail today on Google Drive? Probably not. Odds are very low your docs are gonna get deleted randomly. There haven’t been reports of sweeping purges. Moonshinemagpie had a business account, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she was put into a beta test without her consent, and got hit with a bug. That’s pure speculation on my part, but that kinda shit happens all the time.

But in the next few months, you should think about how you’re gonna get off Google Drive. Start testing options so you have a plan. Google has already rolled out AI to youtube and gmail. It’s coming to gdrive, and it’s a matter of months at this point. Look at #2 and #3 of this list.

With gmail, there are toggles that presumably stop Gemini from scanning your every word. But let me ask you this: do you really believe these assholes? And do you want to roll the dice with your most important documents?

“There is no cloud. That’s just someone else’s computer” is something to always remember. Your documents are being hosted on Google’s server. It’s Google’s computer. It’s Microsoft’s computer. It’s Apple’s computer. You’re just renting space there. And you know how shitty landlords are about irl space? You can’t imagine how shitty these landlords are about to get.

Alright folks, on that happy fucking note, that’s it for now! If this was useful or you like my writing, you can throw me a tip on ye olde ko-fi.

If you don’t have any extra bucks, liking this article goes a long way. Seriously, one click is all it takes—one click, one kill. And of course: