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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

#121

Post by ranger_danger »

dotcoma wrote: post #73
jimbob45 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the alternatives? Only a massively moneyed corp has the resources to fight vulns at acceptable rates. Firefox doesn’t count because they’re being funded by Google.

In the short term, Helium (if, like me, you can’t live without Chrome’s bookmarks). In the medium term, perhaps Ladybird. In the long term, we’re all dead.

I think they were looking for browsers that aren't based on Chromium or Gecko, which, for something still regularly updated and works with most websites, I think webkit is the only real alternative.

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

#122

Post by onemoresoop »

MaKey wrote: post #88
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…

For me the most important extension is uBlock Origin. It's worth switching to Firefox for this alone.

Without your ublock origin browsing the net is quite horrible these days

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

#123

Post by farfatched »

pu_pe wrote: post #33
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…

Some parts of the anti-AI movement are becoming so unhinged that now any use of compute is considered an environmental threat. This degrowth mentality needs to die.

If it's emissions they worry about, then it's anything emitting.

Are they against washing machines too? Or are they just grandfathered in?

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

#124

Post by frereubu »

dwedge wrote: post #72
elashri wrote: post #40

[flagged]

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...

... that recently added a setting which allows you to entirely disable any AI enhancements? https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-ai-controls#w_b... I mean Mozilla / Firefox aren't perfect but it's a hell of a lot better than Chrome and this comment does feel a bit like the perfect being the enemy of the good.

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

#125

Post by vrganj »

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.

Firefox is open source :)

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

#126

Post by handoflixue »

salviati wrote: post #54
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.

Your word might be of petabytes of traffic. Some people have slow lines. Some people have metered Internet subscriptions. Not everyone has access to the same infrastructure you have.

Okay, but that's still not an environmental disaster.

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

#129

Post by handoflixue »

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.

Amazing how many people missed the "environmental disaster" part of this post and are talking about personal inconvenience.

Sorry folks, your low bandwidth situation is not, in fact, a climate change emergency.

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

#130

Post by Cthulhu_ »

echoangle wrote: post #106
qsera wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, and both Windows and MacOS have features to put things side by side... but they're not very intuitive and may require multiple inputs to achieve what the browser(s) do with one or two presses. On MacOS you have to long-press the "maximize" button, for example. I forgot that was a thing before reading this actually, but then I use the third-party tool Rectangle for window management.
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