Get rid of graying unless hover and infinite scrolling

Yes! See here for the grayscale change:
https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/different-browsers-different-views-on-frontpage?replies=5#post-3726901

And the theme won’t scroll if there are footer widgets active. You can either remove them, or override the infinite_scroll_has_footer_widgets function (located in inc/jetpack.php) in a child theme, such that it always returns false:

infinite_scroll_has_footer_widgets() {
   return false;
}

Adding the above to your child theme’s functions.php file should do it.