Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB Gemini Nano AI model on your device

[lbroggi@livellosegreto.it]

@Tutanota For those who wonder about the CO2 cost, here is a direct quote

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. That is the environmental cost of one company unilaterally deciding that two billion peoples' default browser will mass-distribute a 4 GB binary they did not request.

[kotaro@kotaro.me]

@Tutanota It would still be forgivable if we could freely use that 4GB scaled-down version of Gemini in a harness other than Chrome, but that's not the case.

Worse than Apple .

[jetmcquack@mastodon.uno]

@Tutanota

[miguelpergamon@kolektiva.social]

@Tutanota

Oh, so was that what happened to my Lenovo tablet when it froze on Sunday and displayed the "cog" symbol at the top left with a 'UI is working' message?

[blindcoder@toot.berlin]

@Tutanota It's not a "can" or "can not" situation. It's a "Google allows you to do that" situation.

[lemgandi@mastodon.social]

@Tutanota Don't be Evil

[clintonanderson@universeodon.com]

@MokhtarStork @Tutanota

And maybe graphene OS on mobile.

https://grapheneos.org/

[feyter@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@Tutanota but how is this model expected to run on my crappy hardware?

[locha@fediscience.org]

@Tutanota Scratching my head: say we assume the best intents, is it better or worse than sending those requests to external server? Silent bloat or spyware?

[mast0d0nphan@beige.party]

@The_Universality @Tutanota They want to crash all local devices so they can sell us AI-slop cloud laptops that we don't control.

Google's new motto: YOU WILL OWN NOTHING AND YOU WILL BE HAPPY! ALSO WE'RE TOTALLY EVIL!

[yaqubpk@mastodon.social]

@Tutanota install librewolf get rid chrome

[fichusalon@mas.to]

@Tutanota next step, no more data center, but distributed LLM on our computers

[mast0d0nphan@beige.party]

@MokhtarStork @Tutanota As long as you still use Google Chrome on any OS, there's a chance of this happening again. I'd recommend using Cromite, Ungoogled Chromium or Helium instead. Hell, just drop the Chromium monopoly altogether and use LibreWolf, Mullvad Browser or Waterfox.

On Android, I'd recommend Cromite, Ironfox, Fennec, or Iodé.

[mast0d0nphan@beige.party]

@ClintonAnderson @MokhtarStork @Tutanota https://beige.party/@mast0d0nphan/116522033827491424

[pa27@mastodon.social]

@Tutanota On the bright side, none of my machines has the folder "OptGuideOnDeviceModel". So far so good! I'll keep a watch out for it.
As for Claude desktop - why would anyone install that anyway?

[clintonanderson@universeodon.com]

@mast0d0nphan @MokhtarStork @Tutanota

It is important to be vigilant, no matter what one is using.

[mokhtarstork@zirk.us]

@mast0d0nphan @Tutanota I NEVER used Google Chrome; Never will use Facebook again. My laptop is now Linux. Why? Can't stand 'electronic bugs'.

[the_universality@mastodon.novotnykrystof.com]

@mast0d0nphan @Tutanota Me enjoying a Linux desktop with Brave, Falkon & Tor.

[hotelbreakfast@mastodon.social]

@Tutanota Default <on> is the bad factor here. Rather, provide the European ‘browser-choice’ like feature.
And Apple .. should provide their own model as well, and bè a competitor on their own (branded?) platform.

[savvyhomestead@mastodon.social]

@yaqubpk @Tutanota

YES. Librewolf is the best.

Rundown on browsers. Skip to 15.00 or so to learn about Librewolf.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4jLOZ8bf-4