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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

#241

Post by whywhywhywhy »

simianwords wrote: post #101

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 emission…

> In this case: a single hamburger does the same amount of emissions as 50 such downloads

Hamburger is usually held up as a grotesque example in climate talk and can't be consumed with a clear conscious so are downloads insanely worse than we thought or is a hamburger not even in the same realm of climate damage as usually claimed.

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

#242

Post by socalgal2 »

oriettaxx wrote: post #65
scorpioxy wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe consent is not an appropriate term. Perhaps an acknowledgement and a way to say "I don't want this" would be a more suitable approach. I feel like a flag to turn off LLMs is useful. Firefox added something like this in a recent release. I don't know how much they're downloading or how much they run it, nor would I be a good judge if it's necessary or not, but I don't want that functionality in my browser so tur…

the subject has been faced many years ago an super well applied in EU privacy regulations: Google knows it very well, and in super details and I have no doubt they will be fined for this despite all reduction of it thanks to their lobbying (and corruptions, too, in my super personal opinion): this fact well explain EU fines based on company's income.

why would they be fined for this? In fact a local LLM is exactly the opposite direction of a privacy concern. The local LLM gives an answer generated locally and never uploaded to a server.

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

#243

Post by expedition32 »

jeroenhd wrote: post #160
CalRobert wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea but when I mention Firefox my colleagues under 35 or so literally think I'm joking.

When Google stuffs AI into everything, people shrug. Can't expect anything else from big tech. When Firefox does it, it sparks outrage across the internet, with entire forums filled with people vowing to leave Firefox forever and switching to something like Waterfor or Ilp/Zorp/Floop instead. As a result, searching for experiences other people had with Firefox makes it sound like hell on earth, while people have litt…

Mozilla is nice enough to let you opt out.

I'm in my 40s I have no desire for this new technology unless we get the kind of AI from Japanese anime.

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

#244

Post by Numerlor »

anthk wrote: post #139
hacker_homie wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ublock origin works perfectly fine on Edge. With Firefox I've also had ram usage that was multiples of what I get with Edge, on both Linux and Windows

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

#245

Post by yazantapuz »

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, but they are grouped under one single tab, so for me at least is more easy to alt-tab to other app and return to the split view.

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

#247

Post by avazhi »

heavyset_go wrote: post #83
CalRobert wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea but when I mention Firefox my colleagues under 35 or so literally think I'm joking.

They've been consuming 15+ years of anti-Mozilla rants anytime it or Firefox are mentioned online. It's how you get things like "Browser monocultures are an issue, so don't use Chrome (Blink), use Brave (Chromium (Blink)) instead!" said in earnest.

I’ve been using Firefox for 20+ years and continue to do so, but let’s not pretend that Firefox hasn’t been an embarrassing shit show for most of the past 15.

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

#248

Post by socalgal2 »

paganel wrote: post #238
trvz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the article, it's not about that, but a mere 4GB of storage.

4GB of storage is not a “mere” thing, to the contrary.

It is in 2026. Average daily household usage is at ~25gig. That's average, so 50% are more than that

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

#249

Post by The_Rob »

nalekberov wrote: post #239
jeroenhd wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Google stuffs AI into everything, people shrug. Can't expect anything else from big tech. When Firefox does it, it sparks outrage across the internet, with entire forums filled with people vowing to leave Firefox forever and switching to something like Waterfor or Ilp/Zorp/Floop instead. As a result, searching for experiences other people had with Firefox makes it sound like hell on earth, while people have litt…

> When Google stuffs AI into everything, people shrug. Can't expect anything else from big tech. Because this is something expected from Google. Google has never committed to security, but Mozilla did. EDIT: I meant privacy, not security.

Google has invested significantly in security. I believe you are referring to privacy?

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

#250

Post by dickeeT »

chinathrow wrote: post #36
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.

Firefox.

is it as greedy as chrome for the ram?
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