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Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

thatprivacyguy.com

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Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#101

Post by simianwords »

Sorry but the whole climate angle on this is extremely stupid and needs to be challenged. I have noticed this new phenomenon of people using climate as a trump card to oppose any thing they don’t like.

The thing about these kind of arguments is that any economic activity or any sort of action involves some load on climate. The magnitudes are important.

In this case: a single hamburger does the same amount of emissions as 50 such downloads. What’s really the point of this kind of virtue signalling?

Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#102

Post by sigmoid10 »

One upside to this is that it doesn't use Gemma and instead uses Gemini. So at least for Gemini Nano (apparently called XS internally by Google) it means that the weights are now de facto open and you no longer need a current Android phone to get the latest and best model in this class. This also makes it the only open American frontier-level model right now.

Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#103

Post by mft_ »

flanked-evergl wrote: post #19

This is a bit disingenuous. If you install Chrome, you install Chrome and all it's parts. They don't ask your consent for individual parts because that would be absurd. If you don't want Chrome and all its parts, don't use it.

If I install Chrome, I expect it to take a few hundred MBs and then only take up additional space in a controlled and transparent manner - for its cache, for example. For me, secretly adding 4GB after installation is a bit too much.

If you're okay with 4GB being added, where would you draw a line? What if it downloaded a 40GB file? 400GB?

Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#104

Post by dwedge »

ranger_danger wrote: post #80
dwedge wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh is this the browser by that company that are funded half a billion dollars a year by Google and want to become an advertising company[1] and wants their browser to become a modern AI browser[2]? [1] https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/10/mozillas-ceo-doubles-down-o... [2] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/leadership/mozillas-next...

Please feel free to suggest a better alternative.

Not being able to suggest an alternative for Chrome doesn't imply that Firefox is a good alternative.

On GrapheneOS they recommend Vanadium - a more secure Chromium fork - and specifically recommend against Firefox, but that's on mobile.

Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#105

Post by ekianjo »

perks_12 wrote: post #42
TheServitor wrote: post #23

Framing 4GB of data moving in a world of petabytes of traffic as a specific environmental disaster is kind of a stretch, regardless of whether we want the model.

The next Netflix breakout show will burn this planet to the grounds :)

Netflix does not store 4gb on your drive...

Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#106

Post by echoangle »

qsera wrote: post #90
lmf4lol wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am using Firefox for years now. It's such a splendid experience. I can recommend the following extensions: - Youtube Enhancer - DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials - Cookie Auto Decline (a MUST for Europeans) - Slop Evader - No Gender (a MUST for Germans) Its a totally different browsing experience than what most people have. I recently watched my kiddo looking something up with Edge on her laptop. I had to interfere and…

Firefox added split view where you can look at two (or more) webpages side by side. This is a lifesaver when you have to fill up a form looking up stuff from another page!

Isn’t this kind of the job of the OS windowing system? It’s maybe slightly nicer to share the window chrome for two tabs but it’s not like looking at two browser tabs in parallel was impossible before.

Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#107

Post by bakugo »

ekianjo wrote: post #95
lmf4lol wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am using Firefox for years now. It's such a splendid experience. I can recommend the following extensions: - Youtube Enhancer - DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials - Cookie Auto Decline (a MUST for Europeans) - Slop Evader - No Gender (a MUST for Germans) Its a totally different browsing experience than what most people have. I recently watched my kiddo looking something up with Edge on her laptop. I had to interfere and…

Extensions are a vector for vulnerabilities and malware though. Its happened many times already.

Computers are a vector for vulnerabilities and malware. We must all stop using them.

Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#108

Post by StingyJelly »

dwedge wrote: post #77
StingyJelly wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brave origin on linux looks pretty solid now. Now I'm using that and Librewolf.

I will never use Brave after the debacle where they injected content into sites downloaded over HTTPS to pretend people were promoting their crypto token and adding a "donate" button on the page.

That made me avoid it for a long time but there hasn't been more concerning behavior since, so some point, we can move on.

Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#109

Post by hacker_homie »

Sharlin wrote: post #50
hacker_homie wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because ladybird isn’t alpha yet, and Firefox is a mess.

What mess? I only ever used Chrome as my main browser for a short while when Firefox had become rather bloaty and had slow JS, and Chrome was small and nimble. But that was something like fifteen years ago. Firefox works, is plenty fast these days, and only eats most of my RAM compared to Chrome which takes all of it, and serves me a web devoid of almost all ads and most trackers.

From a funding standpoint there’s no future to Firefox. They will get brought Mozilla foundation is an investment fund now. Firefox it dead weight.
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