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Today Google bricked my Chromebook by force-installing a hidden extension

237 points by robin_reala 2y ago

tossandthrow 2y ago
If the machine is less than 2 years old (and you are in eruope) just return it as defect.
- ginko 2y ago
  If OP is in Europe Google could be drawn and quartered for GDPR violations.
  - hilbert42 2y ago
    Exactly!
  - kleiba 2y ago
    "could" being the point here - as Joe Bloke, you're not going to get yourself into a legal dispute with Google, but it's not very hard to return an electronic device as an ordinary end consumer when it's still under warranty.
    - nottorp 2y ago
      You don't need to sue Google, just file a complaint with whatever the GDPR authority is in your country ...
      - zazazache 2y ago
        Better to just contact NOYB directly, they are responsible for about 50% of all GDPR fines to date. Outside of Norway the DPAs seem mostly useless, especially when it comes to big tech…
      - kleiba 2y ago
        I'd be interested to know if anyone on HN has actually done that in the past, and what the experience was?
        robin_reala 2y ago
        Confiks managed to get Spotify to reinstate the API that allowed connections to SongShift with a GDPR complaint about the right to data portability (or threat thereof): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24764371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24764371
    - dgellow 2y ago
      Anyone can submit a complaint: https://www.edps.europa.eu/data-protection/our-role-supervisor/complaints_en https://www.edps.europa.eu/data-protection/our-role-supervis...
    - Matthyze 2y ago
      That's not how the GDPR works. Just like criminal procedure, subjects do not sue alleged offenders themselves. The state instead sues on their behalf.
  - mardifoufs 2y ago
    GPDR forbids local OCR? Can you be more specific
- em-bee 2y ago
  laws should be adapted to extend the warranty every time a remote change is made to the device. basically, the warranty should hold as long as the device is maintained. say, each update should come with half a year of warranty. it's a bit tricky as it could motivate companies to stop updating, but that could be solved with a separate law forcing companies to provide an extra number of years to provide updates. (if that doesn't exist already)
  - ginko 2y ago
    Sounds like a good way to make sure that companies drop SW support as quickly as possible.
    - tossandthrow 2y ago
      Not if it as accompanied by laws about a lower bar for the functioning of software. Eg. regular sec patches etc. However, this would be a great way of separating hardware and software products - and would that be so bad?
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      They already do.
    - exe34 2y ago
      As long as they release all the source and build tools, I'm okay with that.
  - haswell 2y ago
    I don’t think relying on new laws as the primary incentive is going to get far, especially when big tech has the outsized influence they do on government. This then just leaves a strong incentive to stop updating things.
  - juergbi 2y ago
    This may make sense if the extended warranty is limited to defects introduced by the remote change. I.e., if they remotely break your device, they should be responsible for fixing the damage. A full warranty extension doesn't seem reasonable to me, though. With regards to your last sentence, I think a good first step would be to require at least security and other critical updates to be provided within the full warranty period. And this would make sense even without the (limited) warranty extension, and I actually consider it more important.
microtonal 2y ago
This seems to be a thing for almost a year? https://support.google.com/chromebook/thread/286204300/utility-screen-ai-service?hl=en https://support.google.com/chromebook/thread/286204300/utili... https://old.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/1et9y0m/what_is_screenai_within_chrome_and_how_do_i/ https://old.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/1et9y0m/what_is_scr... This is apparently the source code: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/refs/tags/127.0.6517.1/services/screen_ai/ https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/refs/tags/1...
hilbert42 2y ago
As tossandthrow says, return it as being defect. Reckon this should apply anywhere where warranty applies. If what you say is correct then the device is (a) not fit for purpose and (b) it's possible you may be able to claim damages on the basis that the manufacturer has changed its modus operandi without your permission or consent and it's now incompatible with the way you work, etc., etc. If Google reckons it had the right to alter your device because you agreed to its EULA, then it seems you'd still have a case on grounds that it no longer functions as it should. There are only two things that will stop these bastards—them realizing such behavior is draining money from their hip pockets and proper consumer and privacy legislation. But forget the latter, democracy is stuffed, and Big Tech has it by the balls anyway.
- josephg 2y ago
  > But forget the latter, democracy is stuffed, and Big Tech has it by the balls anyway. Not everywhere. Here in Vic, Australia, I can return a product for defects any time within its “expected product lifetime”. How long is that? It’s never specified explicitly! So yeah, it kinda doesn’t matter how old a laptop is if the manufacturer pulls stunts like this. You can still give them a headache if you want to. Europe also has great customer protection laws. And this domain is .NZ - I wouldn’t be surprised if New Zealand has decent customer protection laws too. The US’s democracy is stuffed. But thankfully the world is much bigger than the United States.
  - CamouflagedKiwi 2y ago
    Yes, NZ does. The Consumer Guarantees Act is pretty strong - goods must work for a "reasonable period", which is similarly not defined but has generally been upheld as you'd hope by the courts. Companies can't contract out of it.
- _heimdall 2y ago
  > proper consumer and privacy legislation. > But forget the latter, democracy is stuffed What does consumer and privacy legislation have to do with democracy? They may both be important, but I see no connection between the two other than the fact that those democratically elected would be the ones making the legislation (and any legislation).
tjpnz 2y ago
If op is a Kiwi he should be covered under the Consumer Guarantees Act. https://www.consumerprotection.govt.nz/general-help/consumer-laws/consumer-guarantees-act https://www.consumerprotection.govt.nz/general-help/consumer...
DeathArrow 2y ago
Google not being evil. /s
- yard2010 2y ago
  It's fine because they don't say they're not evil anymore.
G_o_D 2y ago
Just wait till google and youtube uses ai to access camera and track your eye movements to detect whether you are actually watching ads or not, when ad comes and you place your phone away or move your eye away for time being ad gets complete, ai will detect you are not watching ad and pause it, thus when you return it will play again, thereby forcing us to watch ads
- toxik 2y ago
  Then I’d buy a fake head to trick the camera. Oh and this hack works with FaceID too, by the way.
- sorokod 2y ago
  That is just one option once they start tracking your attention. Truly a Black Mirror reality.
- lotophage 2y ago
  Pause and resume across devices even. Pure psychological torture. Close your laptop and then pick up your phone later and it resumes right where you last saw it. You immediately put your phone down to cut it off because you want to relax. Go make a cup of tea then sit down on the couch and turn on the TV for a minute... It resumes.
ur-whale 2y ago
I'm trying to remember the last time some actually positive and surprising (in a good way) news came out of Google. I seem to remember a time when they produced one of those every week. Lately it seems to be mostly the kind of fuck-up and misstep this article talks about. And I'm not even mentioning those where the misbehaving is actually willful.
verytrivial 2y ago
I switched away from Chrome a few years ago when it became slightly evil regarding trying to own login information. I seem to have made the right choice. (I'm not mentioning what I've switched too because it never results in meaningful discussion.)
- pepa65 2y ago
  Mentioning what you switched to could help people that trust your judgment. Just ignore anybody that unfruitfully discusses it..!
ohgr 2y ago
This stuff scares me. The amount of schools dependent on this sort of stuff and google’s estate is insane here (UK). They have no contingency plan either.
yapyap 2y ago
oh wow, literally too hot to touch. I imagined it was like too hot as in syphoning off all your data but yikes, this is both that and physically too hot.
scq 2y ago
This seems like a bug in the ScreenAI service? There's no evidence whatsoever for his claim that Google "trains a machine vision model on the contents of my screen". According to https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/main/services/screen_ai/ https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/main/servic... it is just inference. > These functionalities are entirely on device and do not send any data to network or store on disk. There is also this description in the Chrome OS source code: > ScreenAI is a binary to provide AI based models to improve assistive technologies. The binary is written in C++ and is currently used by ReadAnything and PdfOcr services on Chrome OS.
- bri3d 2y ago
  This. Go to chrome://flags and disable “Enable OCR For Local Image Search” and I bet the problem goes away. It’s a stupid feature for Google to enable by default on systems that are generally very low spec and badly made, but it’s not some evil data slurp. One of the most obnoxious things about enshittification is the corrosive effect it seems to have had on technical users’ curiosity: instead of researching and fixing problems, people now seem very prone to jump to “the software is evil and bad” and give up at doing any kind of actual investigation.
  - NoNotTheDuo 2y ago
    > but it’s not some evil data slurp. Not yet anyway. We’ve just seen Amazon change how all Echo’s/Alexa’s operate. It has been local-only for years and years, but now they want the audio data, so they’ve changed the Terms of Service. There’s no reason to believe Google won’t do the same thing sometime in the future.
    - simpaticoder 2y ago
      "Trauma" is when one horrible experience lowers your danger threshold so much that it triggers on everything, and becomes useless and harmful. "Learning" is when new threat awareness lowers the threshold an 'appropriate amount'. Even if the GP was strictly wrong about their conclusion, in my personal opinion they are quite right to remain vigilant. Note to parent: it is strictly unfair to lump Google in with Amazon (and if you demonize a good actor long enough, eventually they'll aquiesce since they are already paying the reputational price). However given that they are American corporations operating on similar incentives during the Wild West (or World War) of AI aka WWAI, it makes sense to be suspicious. Heaven knows "reputational downside" is just about the only counter-veiling incentive left, since Trump has stripped consumers and investors of virtually all legal protection (see: CFPB elimination; SEC declines Hawk Tua coin grift prosecution; Trump pardons Trevor Milton). I think it is an excellent time for all of us to be extremely careful with the software we use.
rs186 2y ago
I flashed UEFI firmware on my Chromebook to use Linux. I have been wondering if that's the correct decision, given a number of compatibility issues I have run into on that distro. But seeing this, I know I can live with those issues but not with Chrome.
bri3d 2y ago
The source is available: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/refs/tags/127.0.6517.1/services/screen_ai/ https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/refs/tags/1... It’s not “training an AI model on screen contents without consent.” It is a stupid feature for Google to enable by default: likely what’s making OP’s machine useless is that it’s running an OCR inference model on the OP’s images to index them for search. Go to chrome://flags and disable “Enable OCR For Local Image Search” and I bet the problem goes away. The AI Service does have a few other features, but that’s the one that’s likely to be cooking the machine. As for the other comments on this thread, I doubt there’s anything to do with GDPR here. It’s all local.
- xg15 2y ago
  This also seems crazy to me on a technical level: OP says, this operates on the contents of the screen. So essentially the OS already has the text in memory, renders it to the frame buffer, then OCRs it back - I suppose because it's "cheaper" in dev time to just slap OCR on a screenshot than maybe spend some time looking up what's already accessible in memory and through the UI toolkits. CPU time is indeed cheaper than dev time, especially if it's your users' CPUs and not yours.
  - bri3d 2y ago
    Well, kind of, I don’t think it’s that crazy. This service does two things: * Performs image OCR on images, generically. This is then used for several features: “I type a word in the search box and it can look through my screenshots and photos,” “I’m in one of those horrible scanned image-only PDFs and I want to search,” and so on. * Performs “main content extraction” on websites by using a screenshot of the website _alongside_ the accessibility tree for that website’s structure. It basically says “given this tree of elements and screenshot, can you prune the tree to just the elements a user would care about.” The fact that this is necessary is more an indictment of the DOM than this feature, IMO :)
    - xg15 2y ago
      Ah ok, that seems more sensible. My understanding was it would pretty much literally make screenshots and then run OCR on them. If there is enough smartness to only run OCR on the parts that have no text information, it makes more sense. (Though as we see here, even that approach can be too much)
exe34 2y ago
Completely normal for Google. A few weeks ago they bricked my Chromecast. It wouldn't take casting from Netflix anymore, so I looked it up and everybody including Google tells you to reset the piece of crap. I did, and now Google home won't connect to it anymore. Something about a certificate expiring somewhere and now it won't work at all. I'll try again in a few months and then bin it. I won't be purchasing any further cast/stick devices, I'll simply use a laptop and chrome, and when that stops working, I'll stop using Netflix or Amazon prime video.
meta-level 2y ago
This is was Microsoft did with their copilot thing, but they knew 95% would not care or even realize..
Animats 2y ago
Is this the "PDF Searchify" feature?[1] [1] https://windowsreport.com/chromes-new-feature-makes-scanned-pdfs-searchable-and-editable-never-type-again/ https://windowsreport.com/chromes-new-feature-makes-scanned-...
- scq 2y ago
  Looking at the Chromium source, PDF Searchify indeed uses this service (search for "ENABLE_SCREEN_AI_SERVICE").
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
93po 2y ago
I don't understand why people so commonly misuse "bricked" these days. Your computer running like crap isn't bricked, it's just shitty.

237 points by robin_reala 2y ago

tossandthrow 2y ago

If the machine is less than 2 years old (and you are in eruope) just return it as defect.

ginko 2y ago
If OP is in Europe Google could be drawn and quartered for GDPR violations.
- hilbert42 2y ago
  Exactly!
- kleiba 2y ago
  "could" being the point here - as Joe Bloke, you're not going to get yourself into a legal dispute with Google, but it's not very hard to return an electronic device as an ordinary end consumer when it's still under warranty.
  - nottorp 2y ago
    You don't need to sue Google, just file a complaint with whatever the GDPR authority is in your country ...
    - zazazache 2y ago
      Better to just contact NOYB directly, they are responsible for about 50% of all GDPR fines to date. Outside of Norway the DPAs seem mostly useless, especially when it comes to big tech…
    - kleiba 2y ago
      I'd be interested to know if anyone on HN has actually done that in the past, and what the experience was?
      - robin_reala 2y ago
        Confiks managed to get Spotify to reinstate the API that allowed connections to SongShift with a GDPR complaint about the right to data portability (or threat thereof): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24764371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24764371
  - dgellow 2y ago
    Anyone can submit a complaint: https://www.edps.europa.eu/data-protection/our-role-supervisor/complaints_en https://www.edps.europa.eu/data-protection/our-role-supervis...
  - Matthyze 2y ago
    That's not how the GDPR works. Just like criminal procedure, subjects do not sue alleged offenders themselves. The state instead sues on their behalf.
- mardifoufs 2y ago
  GPDR forbids local OCR? Can you be more specific
em-bee 2y ago
laws should be adapted to extend the warranty every time a remote change is made to the device. basically, the warranty should hold as long as the device is maintained. say, each update should come with half a year of warranty. it's a bit tricky as it could motivate companies to stop updating, but that could be solved with a separate law forcing companies to provide an extra number of years to provide updates. (if that doesn't exist already)
- ginko 2y ago
  Sounds like a good way to make sure that companies drop SW support as quickly as possible.
  - tossandthrow 2y ago
    Not if it as accompanied by laws about a lower bar for the functioning of software. Eg. regular sec patches etc. However, this would be a great way of separating hardware and software products - and would that be so bad?
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    They already do.
  - exe34 2y ago
    As long as they release all the source and build tools, I'm okay with that.
- haswell 2y ago
  I don’t think relying on new laws as the primary incentive is going to get far, especially when big tech has the outsized influence they do on government. This then just leaves a strong incentive to stop updating things.
- juergbi 2y ago
  This may make sense if the extended warranty is limited to defects introduced by the remote change. I.e., if they remotely break your device, they should be responsible for fixing the damage. A full warranty extension doesn't seem reasonable to me, though. With regards to your last sentence, I think a good first step would be to require at least security and other critical updates to be provided within the full warranty period. And this would make sense even without the (limited) warranty extension, and I actually consider it more important.

microtonal 2y ago

This seems to be a thing for almost a year? https://support.google.com/chromebook/thread/286204300/utility-screen-ai-service?hl=en https://support.google.com/chromebook/thread/286204300/utili... https://old.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/1et9y0m/what_is_screenai_within_chrome_and_how_do_i/ https://old.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/1et9y0m/what_is_scr... This is apparently the source code: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/refs/tags/127.0.6517.1/services/screen_ai/ https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/refs/tags/1...

hilbert42 2y ago

As tossandthrow says, return it as being defect. Reckon this should apply anywhere where warranty applies. If what you say is correct then the device is (a) not fit for purpose and (b) it's possible you may be able to claim damages on the basis that the manufacturer has changed its modus operandi without your permission or consent and it's now incompatible with the way you work, etc., etc. If Google reckons it had the right to alter your device because you agreed to its EULA, then it seems you'd still have a case on grounds that it no longer functions as it should. There are only two things that will stop these bastards—them realizing such behavior is draining money from their hip pockets and proper consumer and privacy legislation. But forget the latter, democracy is stuffed, and Big Tech has it by the balls anyway.

josephg 2y ago
> But forget the latter, democracy is stuffed, and Big Tech has it by the balls anyway. Not everywhere. Here in Vic, Australia, I can return a product for defects any time within its “expected product lifetime”. How long is that? It’s never specified explicitly! So yeah, it kinda doesn’t matter how old a laptop is if the manufacturer pulls stunts like this. You can still give them a headache if you want to. Europe also has great customer protection laws. And this domain is .NZ - I wouldn’t be surprised if New Zealand has decent customer protection laws too. The US’s democracy is stuffed. But thankfully the world is much bigger than the United States.
- CamouflagedKiwi 2y ago
  Yes, NZ does. The Consumer Guarantees Act is pretty strong - goods must work for a "reasonable period", which is similarly not defined but has generally been upheld as you'd hope by the courts. Companies can't contract out of it.
_heimdall 2y ago
> proper consumer and privacy legislation. > But forget the latter, democracy is stuffed What does consumer and privacy legislation have to do with democracy? They may both be important, but I see no connection between the two other than the fact that those democratically elected would be the ones making the legislation (and any legislation).

tjpnz 2y ago

If op is a Kiwi he should be covered under the Consumer Guarantees Act. https://www.consumerprotection.govt.nz/general-help/consumer-laws/consumer-guarantees-act https://www.consumerprotection.govt.nz/general-help/consumer...

DeathArrow 2y ago

Google not being evil. /s

yard2010 2y ago
It's fine because they don't say they're not evil anymore.

G_o_D 2y ago

Just wait till google and youtube uses ai to access camera and track your eye movements to detect whether you are actually watching ads or not, when ad comes and you place your phone away or move your eye away for time being ad gets complete, ai will detect you are not watching ad and pause it, thus when you return it will play again, thereby forcing us to watch ads

toxik 2y ago
Then I’d buy a fake head to trick the camera. Oh and this hack works with FaceID too, by the way.
sorokod 2y ago
That is just one option once they start tracking your attention. Truly a Black Mirror reality.
lotophage 2y ago
Pause and resume across devices even. Pure psychological torture. Close your laptop and then pick up your phone later and it resumes right where you last saw it. You immediately put your phone down to cut it off because you want to relax. Go make a cup of tea then sit down on the couch and turn on the TV for a minute... It resumes.

ur-whale 2y ago

I'm trying to remember the last time some actually positive and surprising (in a good way) news came out of Google. I seem to remember a time when they produced one of those every week. Lately it seems to be mostly the kind of fuck-up and misstep this article talks about. And I'm not even mentioning those where the misbehaving is actually willful.

verytrivial 2y ago

I switched away from Chrome a few years ago when it became slightly evil regarding trying to own login information. I seem to have made the right choice. (I'm not mentioning what I've switched too because it never results in meaningful discussion.)

pepa65 2y ago
Mentioning what you switched to could help people that trust your judgment. Just ignore anybody that unfruitfully discusses it..!

ohgr 2y ago

This stuff scares me. The amount of schools dependent on this sort of stuff and google’s estate is insane here (UK). They have no contingency plan either.

yapyap 2y ago

oh wow, literally too hot to touch. I imagined it was like too hot as in syphoning off all your data but yikes, this is both that and physically too hot.

scq 2y ago

This seems like a bug in the ScreenAI service? There's no evidence whatsoever for his claim that Google "trains a machine vision model on the contents of my screen". According to https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/main/services/screen_ai/ https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/main/servic... it is just inference. > These functionalities are entirely on device and do not send any data to network or store on disk. There is also this description in the Chrome OS source code: > ScreenAI is a binary to provide AI based models to improve assistive technologies. The binary is written in C++ and is currently used by ReadAnything and PdfOcr services on Chrome OS.

bri3d 2y ago
This. Go to chrome://flags and disable “Enable OCR For Local Image Search” and I bet the problem goes away. It’s a stupid feature for Google to enable by default on systems that are generally very low spec and badly made, but it’s not some evil data slurp. One of the most obnoxious things about enshittification is the corrosive effect it seems to have had on technical users’ curiosity: instead of researching and fixing problems, people now seem very prone to jump to “the software is evil and bad” and give up at doing any kind of actual investigation.
- NoNotTheDuo 2y ago
  > but it’s not some evil data slurp. Not yet anyway. We’ve just seen Amazon change how all Echo’s/Alexa’s operate. It has been local-only for years and years, but now they want the audio data, so they’ve changed the Terms of Service. There’s no reason to believe Google won’t do the same thing sometime in the future.
  - simpaticoder 2y ago
    "Trauma" is when one horrible experience lowers your danger threshold so much that it triggers on everything, and becomes useless and harmful. "Learning" is when new threat awareness lowers the threshold an 'appropriate amount'. Even if the GP was strictly wrong about their conclusion, in my personal opinion they are quite right to remain vigilant. Note to parent: it is strictly unfair to lump Google in with Amazon (and if you demonize a good actor long enough, eventually they'll aquiesce since they are already paying the reputational price). However given that they are American corporations operating on similar incentives during the Wild West (or World War) of AI aka WWAI, it makes sense to be suspicious. Heaven knows "reputational downside" is just about the only counter-veiling incentive left, since Trump has stripped consumers and investors of virtually all legal protection (see: CFPB elimination; SEC declines Hawk Tua coin grift prosecution; Trump pardons Trevor Milton). I think it is an excellent time for all of us to be extremely careful with the software we use.

rs186 2y ago

I flashed UEFI firmware on my Chromebook to use Linux. I have been wondering if that's the correct decision, given a number of compatibility issues I have run into on that distro. But seeing this, I know I can live with those issues but not with Chrome.

bri3d 2y ago

The source is available: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/refs/tags/127.0.6517.1/services/screen_ai/ https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/refs/tags/1... It’s not “training an AI model on screen contents without consent.” It is a stupid feature for Google to enable by default: likely what’s making OP’s machine useless is that it’s running an OCR inference model on the OP’s images to index them for search. Go to chrome://flags and disable “Enable OCR For Local Image Search” and I bet the problem goes away. The AI Service does have a few other features, but that’s the one that’s likely to be cooking the machine. As for the other comments on this thread, I doubt there’s anything to do with GDPR here. It’s all local.

xg15 2y ago
This also seems crazy to me on a technical level: OP says, this operates on the contents of the screen. So essentially the OS already has the text in memory, renders it to the frame buffer, then OCRs it back - I suppose because it's "cheaper" in dev time to just slap OCR on a screenshot than maybe spend some time looking up what's already accessible in memory and through the UI toolkits. CPU time is indeed cheaper than dev time, especially if it's your users' CPUs and not yours.
- bri3d 2y ago
  Well, kind of, I don’t think it’s that crazy. This service does two things: * Performs image OCR on images, generically. This is then used for several features: “I type a word in the search box and it can look through my screenshots and photos,” “I’m in one of those horrible scanned image-only PDFs and I want to search,” and so on. * Performs “main content extraction” on websites by using a screenshot of the website _alongside_ the accessibility tree for that website’s structure. It basically says “given this tree of elements and screenshot, can you prune the tree to just the elements a user would care about.” The fact that this is necessary is more an indictment of the DOM than this feature, IMO :)
  - xg15 2y ago
    Ah ok, that seems more sensible. My understanding was it would pretty much literally make screenshots and then run OCR on them. If there is enough smartness to only run OCR on the parts that have no text information, it makes more sense. (Though as we see here, even that approach can be too much)

exe34 2y ago

Completely normal for Google. A few weeks ago they bricked my Chromecast. It wouldn't take casting from Netflix anymore, so I looked it up and everybody including Google tells you to reset the piece of crap. I did, and now Google home won't connect to it anymore. Something about a certificate expiring somewhere and now it won't work at all. I'll try again in a few months and then bin it. I won't be purchasing any further cast/stick devices, I'll simply use a laptop and chrome, and when that stops working, I'll stop using Netflix or Amazon prime video.

meta-level 2y ago

This is was Microsoft did with their copilot thing, but they knew 95% would not care or even realize..

Animats 2y ago

Is this the "PDF Searchify" feature?[1] [1] https://windowsreport.com/chromes-new-feature-makes-scanned-pdfs-searchable-and-editable-never-type-again/ https://windowsreport.com/chromes-new-feature-makes-scanned-...

scq 2y ago
Looking at the Chromium source, PDF Searchify indeed uses this service (search for "ENABLE_SCREEN_AI_SERVICE").

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

93po 2y ago

I don't understand why people so commonly misuse "bricked" these days. Your computer running like crap isn't bricked, it's just shitty.