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

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

#131

Post by mft_ »

tomtomtom777 wrote: post #87
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…

Can you explain what the "No Gender" extension is about and why it is a must?

I'd like to know too. I struggled to understand the description of the extension - is it an anti-woke thing, or some sort of modern approach to German removing the traditional (i.e. non-political) genderisation of some words, or both, or something else?

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

#132

Post by PatronBernard »

pu_pe wrote: post #116
wartywhoa23 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should I reminder you what unlimited growth means and how it ends up in biology? Society/technology is no exception.

No need for unlimited growth, just normal sustainable progress like the one that allows you and me to communicate here after centuries of technological progress.

Ah yes, sustainable progress, like we're doing now?

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

#133

Post by anthk »

StingyJelly wrote: post #32
sevenzero wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What browsers would you recommend? I use Brave but it's still Chromium under the hood. It's the only one that I never had trouble with adblock though. Also lets me play youtube on mobile when my screen is locked.

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

Brave it's spyware, keep going with Librewolf. You can disable some fingerprinting support for WebGL -but- you need UBo for sure (and JShelter).

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

#134

Post by [deleted] »

PatronBernard wrote: post #27
jve wrote: post #24

> At Chrome's scale, the climate bill for one model push, paid in atmospheric CO2 by the entire planet, is between six thousand and sixty thousand tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions, depending on how many devices receive the push. Environmental analysis for operations? Not a fan of thinking in such terms. > For users on capped mobile data plans, particularly in regions where smartphone-as-only-internet is dominant (m…

> Environmental analysis for operations? Not a fan of thinking in such terms. Why not? It's about 60 000 London - New York City flights by the way ( https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2019/... ). And what's the benefit again?

[deleted]

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

#137

Post by bakugo »

Jleagle wrote: post #56
tthu1 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a lot of traffic to you? 2.5 million downloads of 4 GB are 10 PB of traffic. I think there are be a lot more than 2.5 million Chrome users in the world.

You only download it when some JS requests it for the first time, most people will never have it.

I suspect it's not that simple. Last week I noticed I already had it downloaded on one of my devices, even though I'm sure the number of websites already using this API is miniscule.

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

#139

Post by anthk »

hacker_homie wrote: post #37
dotcoma wrote: post #10

Why use a browser from Google or Microsoft in 2026? Why in the world?

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

Firefox has a complete UBo unlike the Chrom* corporateware turd which is just Microsoft 2.0 from Google. Chrome instead of IE, and propietary JS code for Google services such as Youtube -deliberately made slower in Firefox- as the new Active X shoved down your throat in order to keep a monopoly.

With Librewolf I can get proper WebGL, full UBo -with the AI blocklist too to avoid all the slop- and Bypass Paywall Clean from Giflic or whatever was called. Yeah, eh, y local newspaper won't mainly get adverts' money but the rest of local company ads show up well even with UBo/BPC, so they get some money after all.

On RAM usage, Librewolf it's far lighter on the long term and it doesn't ping back as Firefox, and many times less than Chrom* based browsers where, I repeat, Chrome based browsers don't allow UBo any more even if installed from their Github repo enforcing some about:flags variables related to legacy extension support.

The web today without UBo it's unmanageable. Popus, more than the ones from 2003, malware disguised as ads even on mainstream, safe sites, and all of these running zillions of cookies and trackers converting your -otherwise perfectly usable- old amd64 Celeron machine with 2GB of RAM into some crawling Pentium III with 256MB of RAM. With LibreWolf and UBo I could even test Yandex Maps with Prypiat and the like and InstantStreetView too. No slowdowns, no OpenGL >= 3.3/Vulkan video card required, and no need to own a 8GB machine.

HN developers there without UBo if they depend on the web for documentation they are bit screwed if they use Chrom* based browsers, sorry. Half of the resources for their machines coudn't be used, you know for IDE's, compilers, virtual machines/containers and whatnot. And, yes, I know about ZRAM under GNU/Linux, and just imagine how many tasks would anyone accomplish with a ZRAM compressed chunk (~1/3 of the physical RAM), a light desktop environment as Lumina/LXQT and a non-Chrom* browser blocking all pests. Up to 3X more tasks in the same machine. No need to waste money on upgrades, and compilng cycles are cut down for the good.

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

#140

Post by tdeck »

hacker_homie wrote: post #109
Sharlin wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This isn't particularly relevant to whether you should use it right now though. If there's a restaurant I like but it might go out of business in a year I don't stop eating there today.
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