Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

manualdousuario.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 245 posts

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#121

Post by jasonjayr »

dheatov wrote: post #86
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, all they really have to do is add an off switch for AI features so they’re not taking up space in the UI and aren’t consuming any extra resources. This toggle should also hide aggressive AI promotions in places like launch screens. That alone would be enough to make most with a distaste for AI happy. It doesn’t have to be binary, but no, it gets shoved down everybody’s throat whether it’s wanted or not,…

They shouldn't and they won't. That will introduce a new metric -- %user disabling AI, and it will definitely be non-zero, which threatens the "everyone loves AI" narrative, which is the only thing thats floating all the tech-related valuation right now.

They will interpret that metric as "they don't love AI YET,so lets throw more at them so they can see how wonderful it is" .....

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#122

Post by manvillej »

smokel wrote: post #6

The number of weekly downloads has simply been increasing over time, due to growing popularity. Calling each new high "record-breaking" is a bit meaningless. Unix timestamp counter breaks record after writing this comment.

I feel this every time the stock market hits a new “all time high”

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#123

Post by micromacrofoot »

this is temporary marketing towards a direction that they may change their mind on in the future, which would likely anger people who downloaded it because of this preference

not a call I'd make early on, a preference to disable AI features like Firefox added is maybe a more reasonable call

all we know today is that AI is being used in annoying ways, this won't be forever

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#124

Post by robrain »

tempfile wrote: post #110
robrain wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Libre’s announcement (linked in the article): “This is the highest number of downloads in the first week of any LibreOffice release!”

I don't understand this comment. You don't seem to be disagreeing with OP?

There is a specific record being claimed.

They're not just saying the absolute downloads are going up, as the OP suggests.

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#125

Post by fsckboy »

manvillej wrote: post #122
smokel wrote: post #6

The number of weekly downloads has simply been increasing over time, due to growing popularity. Calling each new high "record-breaking" is a bit meaningless. Unix timestamp counter breaks record after writing this comment.

I feel this every time the stock market hits a new “all time high”

the stock market goes up and down daily, but with a functioning economy it will overall be up. from a distance you are right, something that keeps going up keeps achieving new highs.

but, if you follow the market on a daily basis, you will be paying attention to the market swooning for periods of time, maybe with a small recovery and then another swoon. New "all time highs" do provide convenient notifications that the economy has now grown from before. Without new highs, your investments are treading water.

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#126

Post by Rebelgecko »

smokel wrote: post #6

The number of weekly downloads has simply been increasing over time, due to growing popularity. Calling each new high "record-breaking" is a bit meaningless. Unix timestamp counter breaks record after writing this comment.

Isn't it also a dep of some AI tools? Or maybe they use their own binary

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#127

Post by cosmic_cheese »

bee_rider wrote: post #106
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, all they really have to do is add an off switch for AI features so they’re not taking up space in the UI and aren’t consuming any extra resources. This toggle should also hide aggressive AI promotions in places like launch screens. That alone would be enough to make most with a distaste for AI happy. It doesn’t have to be binary, but no, it gets shoved down everybody’s throat whether it’s wanted or not,…

Although, some services have started labeling their old natural language processing functionality “AI,” and released additional “AI” features, so an off switch isn’t always possible. The options seem to be to lose previously existing functionality or gain current anti-features. In their defense “AI” is a pretty nebulous concept. Really what I want is a “give me 2020 software” toggle. But if we’re wishing, a 2010 togg…

> Really what I want is a “give me 2020 software” toggle. But if we’re wishing, a 2010 toggle would also probably be nice…

No kidding. It feels like by some time around 2015 the majority of the commercial software development world gave up entirely on trying to improve value for users. Given the choice, there’s only a handful of software that I wouldn’t prefer the 2010-2015 version of.

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#128

Post by chacha102 »

gadrev wrote: post #74
jrflo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the tried and true headline method of "event 2 happened after event 1", implying a causal effect between the two, despite no evidence of such effect existing. Technically the headline is correct, in the same way that "Canada Tariffs $20b in US Goods After Amazon Plane Crash" is also correct.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

The only reason I know this is the West Wing. I guess some TV applies in the real world too...

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#129

Post by crote »

matthewmc3 wrote: post #32
hn_submit wrote: post #22

Companies are totally blind to the fact that A.I. is a complete turn-off to many customers. Not having / using A.I. may even become a unique selling point in the future.

Conversely, a no-AI ethos is one that will very likely need to be walked back at some point in the future for tech products. AI isn't going anywhere, so finding ways to use it constructively with your product is going to be a far better long term strategy. For now while it's new and scary and there's a lack of regulation and governance and ethical considerations - I can see why an anti-AI stance is popular, but it's…

The internet has been around for quite a while now, and is absolutely critical for a lot of applications. Most people would never give up the internet.

Yet there are still many applications without explicit mandatory internet tie-ins like cloud sync. In fact, "stores data locally" and "won't disappear with zero notice" are valuable features to many people!

Just because AI is a no-brainer must-have for some apps doesn't mean it is a required feature for all apps - let alone one shoved in your face every few minutes.

Post reply on HN