6 ms·

It's additional software that many users didn't ask for, don't want and will not be aware of. Reminds me a bit of back when installing software was a minefield

by jchw 6mo ago

It's additional software that many users didn't ask for, don't want and will not be aware of. Reminds me a bit of back when installing software was a minefield due to all of the integrated "promotions" for things like toolbars, only now they've vertically integrated the unwanted software, cutting out the middleman. Honestly, for most features you could justifiably say its fine. I mean honestly, how large is an English dictionary? 100 KiB? That is a far cry from 4 GiB. Just taking up 4 GiB of disk space without even asking is indeed a shit move no matter how you shake it. If Microsoft Word updated and suddenly took up 4 GiB more for something like a dictionary, it might not cause as much uproar as if it were something that many people are tired of hearing about and not interested in, but I'm not sure you would find a single soul who would find that acceptable, more just tolerated, probably partly because a lot of people simply wouldn't know better.

kaptainscarlet 6mo ago
An AI is not additional software. Infact, a model is not software.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
  > a model is not software When does code become software?
- jchw 6mo ago
  How does that change anything? It doesn't matter if you categorize it as software or not, unwanted is unwanted. And frankly I just flatly disagree, you could certainly make the case that model weights are a form of software.
  - dylan604 6mo ago
    If they downloaded a 4GiB media file of some Irish band that nobody asked for, people would be upset as well. It doesn't matter what the 4GiB contains. If it is not going to be used by the user and the user didn't ask for it, that's just idiotic to think people would not be upset about it.
    - jchw 5mo ago
      I think we are agreeing.
- knappa 6mo ago
  It's not processor op-codes, but sure it's part of the software. You wouldn't say that a set of precomputed weights in a numerical integrator aren't part of the software, would you? Or say that the graphics in a game aren't part of the software?
ethagnawl 6mo ago
> That is a far cry from 4 GiB Equating a 4GB file installed without explicit consent to the installation of a language dictionary is comical. That's like saying an unwanted political mailer left in your mailbox is the equivalent of a pallette of hammers left in your driveway.
- xp84 6mo ago
  It sounds like you have a specific number of GB in mind that an app can take up, below which it's totally their business, and above which they need to plead their case, disclose the purpose, and allow me to choose. What's that number? How did you arrive at it and why? My Chrome binaries are about 700MB on Mac and 500MB on Windows. Is this below or your line, or are they actually in trouble as soon as they're extracted? My point is just that it seems there may be an arbitrary limit here that may not be the same for everyone (and 90% of users are nontechnical and thus couldn't give an answer whether 4GB is "worth it" for whatever the features are). Rather than add another whole ecosystem of "Cancel or Allow?" dialogs I'd rather operating systems did a better job of letting users put piggish applications on a strict space budget. Most of the apps on my phone are storing half a gig of "stuff" (called "Documents & Data" but not itemized, and even apps that have none of my 'data' such as browsers), which I can't force them to dump even in an extreme emergency. I can only delete the whole app. I'm talking about Apple platforms as examples because I use those a lot and with their epic stinginess of SSD, anyone who doesn't pay $400 more than the base model will exhaust their storage within hours to months.
  - Arelius 6mo ago
    > My Chrome binaries are about 700MB on Mac and 500MB on Windows That's kind-of the point though right? An application that has been say <700 MB for decades, suddenly deciding it'll take a multiple of it's size without asking seems pretty unreasonable, I think it's pretty fair to say the expectations for Chrome were set already. It'd be similarly unreasonable for a video game that once took 50 GB, to suddenly decide to take 400 GB.
    - boredhedgehog 5mo ago
fastball 6mo ago
You could say the same thing about shipping V8 with Chrome. Some users disable JS so shipping V8 with Chrome is additional software they didn't ask for.
- detourdog 5mo ago
  The old unix administrator would expect a platform to ship choice of JS that would be in /usr/bin/JS. The local administrator would add their local choice of JS /usr/local/bin/V8. The browser would then have a configuration option of which JS interpreter to use.
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
- r-w 5mo ago
  Bad analogy. "Some users disable it" is very different from "it was introduced without any notification or information about what it does and the vast majority of laypeople have negative sentiment toward it".
  - fastball 5mo ago
    > vast majority of laypeople have negative sentiment toward it Citation very much needed. Technologists are not laypeople, and are almost certainly a vocal minority.
    - NiloCK 5mo ago
      I'm surprised by this request. People detest AI. Local subreddits are filled with posts "calling out" usage of AI by local businesses or governments. Consensus is that persons who are found out to be be AI users should be fired or resign, businesses that use it should be boycotted / shamed, etc. https://www.reddit.com/r/newfoundland/comments/1t3x6q3/aialtered_image_depicting_a_woman_with_six/ https://www.reddit.com/r/newfoundland/comments/1t3x6q3/aialt... https://www.reddit.com/r/PEI/comments/1s8rtyn/burger_love_ai/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PEI/comments/1s8rtyn/burger_love_ai... --- Protests around a data center construction project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11Q9ncOdnDg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11Q9ncOdnDg
hatthew 6mo ago
Chrome installs additional software that 99% of users don't use. It can intercept and modify code running on your computer, and spies on all network requests. Hackers use it to analyze potential vulnerabilities. 90% of users aren't even aware that it exists!
xp84 6mo ago
> It's additional software that many users didn't ask for, don't want and will not be aware of You just described 95% of the parts of all software, especially in this era. And think of the Web - how many gigabytes of terrible adtech and tracking code does the average user download in a month of web browsing without an adblocker? Remember, each one probably packages in a couple hundred NPM dependencies into its bundle. I don't have even a single use for Siri on my Mac. It's useless AND redundant with the Siri that I have to have on my phone, yet Apple downloaded and installed "Siri" on there. If I install GarageBand which is the only first-party way to do basic audio manipulation, Apple installs at least 4GB of audio samples on my Mac. None of this is to say "I approve of this exact thing Google is doing" - just that I agree with GP that this is exactly the same as what every big company (and many small ones) do every day. The only "consent" we ever get is basically the all-or-nothing EULA we have to click Agree to in order to log in for the first time - the relevant terms are "Want computer? Accept that we will be shipping you all kinds of code constantly, for 'reasons.'"
- munk-a 6mo ago
  I, personally, have found the adtech bloat (for both disk space and processor usage) to be a huge issue for quite some time. If this is the hill where the public decides to take a stand I'll happily stand beside them to try and reverse this gradual enshittification. I think several other hills were more worthy to defend but nobody noticed those ones so apparently this is the place to fight that fight. I doubt anyone would appreciate software bloat purely because of how widespread it is[1] - it just hasn't risen to the level where it's so noticeable for such a contemporarily controversial topic yet. 1. As an aside - ubisoft game sizes are absolutely bonkers. I didn't realize that each Assassin's Creed had twelve different operating systems crammed into it but I can't see how else they're clocking in where they do.
  - oneeyedpigeon 5mo ago
    Modern games include assets with very large file sizes that operating systems do not.
    - 5mo ago
aucisson_masque 6mo ago
The issue is the size of the 'update' and the impact it'z going to have on your computer performance. If tomorrow Google was to include a Blockchain miner in Google chrome, you'd still say you consented to it by using their software ? Because I'm pretty sure that this LLM is also going to be used by Google to gather data on the user and feeding it to Google, hence just like the Blockchain miner using our computer ressources (space & performance) to feed Google yearly benefits.
- ZetsuBouKyo 5mo ago
  Hey, you got the point. Is there a chance that Google actually plans to use users' computers as their edge computing devices?
- prepend 5mo ago
  Chrome has been eating my CPU for years. Who knows what Google is doing, but it sucks. I wish they wouldn’t do that. But I suppose hundreds of millions of people don’t mind based on the continued usage. I miss programmers being proud of efficient code and size. I suspect moms of Chrome developers are embarassed to tell their friends.
andai 5mo ago
> Reminds me a bit of back when installing software was a minefield due to all of the integrated "promotions" for things like toolbars, only now they've vertically integrated the unwanted software, cutting out the middleman. You know, I never thought about it like that, but it is true. The bloat and spyware is a core part of the OS now. It's just more efficient that way!
GoblinSlayer 5mo ago
That 4 GiB will also update daily, because without churn it will be dead.
neya 5mo ago
> It's additional software that many users didn't ask for, don't want and will not be aware of You mean like Siri? It does the exact same thing and no one asked for it, either. That shit barely works too.
stronglikedan 5mo ago
> It's additional software that many users didn't ask for, don't want and will not be aware of. You just described at least 90% of the software packages on your machine, if not 100%. Almost all software contains modules that go unused by certain users.
prepend 5mo ago
Have you looked at Chrome lately? It’s 1.88GB and there’s tons of crap in there I didn’t “consent to.” Software is very bloated these days and I don’t think most projects allow users to pick and choose what part of the apps are installed or not. MSWord takes up 2.6GB, btw.
Mr_Minderbinder 5mo ago
> I mean honestly, how large is an English dictionary? 100 KiB? If it contains less than 50,000 words, perhaps, but most standard print dictionaries contain ~500,000 entries. The size of /usr/share/dict/words on my system is 954 KiB and the small version of the cracklib dictionary is 481 KiB.

by jchw 6mo ago

kaptainscarlet 6mo ago

An AI is not additional software. Infact, a model is not software.

deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
> a model is not software When does code become software?
jchw 6mo ago
How does that change anything? It doesn't matter if you categorize it as software or not, unwanted is unwanted. And frankly I just flatly disagree, you could certainly make the case that model weights are a form of software.
- dylan604 6mo ago
  If they downloaded a 4GiB media file of some Irish band that nobody asked for, people would be upset as well. It doesn't matter what the 4GiB contains. If it is not going to be used by the user and the user didn't ask for it, that's just idiotic to think people would not be upset about it.
  - jchw 5mo ago
    I think we are agreeing.
knappa 6mo ago
It's not processor op-codes, but sure it's part of the software. You wouldn't say that a set of precomputed weights in a numerical integrator aren't part of the software, would you? Or say that the graphics in a game aren't part of the software?

ethagnawl 6mo ago

> That is a far cry from 4 GiB Equating a 4GB file installed without explicit consent to the installation of a language dictionary is comical. That's like saying an unwanted political mailer left in your mailbox is the equivalent of a pallette of hammers left in your driveway.

xp84 6mo ago
It sounds like you have a specific number of GB in mind that an app can take up, below which it's totally their business, and above which they need to plead their case, disclose the purpose, and allow me to choose. What's that number? How did you arrive at it and why? My Chrome binaries are about 700MB on Mac and 500MB on Windows. Is this below or your line, or are they actually in trouble as soon as they're extracted? My point is just that it seems there may be an arbitrary limit here that may not be the same for everyone (and 90% of users are nontechnical and thus couldn't give an answer whether 4GB is "worth it" for whatever the features are). Rather than add another whole ecosystem of "Cancel or Allow?" dialogs I'd rather operating systems did a better job of letting users put piggish applications on a strict space budget. Most of the apps on my phone are storing half a gig of "stuff" (called "Documents & Data" but not itemized, and even apps that have none of my 'data' such as browsers), which I can't force them to dump even in an extreme emergency. I can only delete the whole app. I'm talking about Apple platforms as examples because I use those a lot and with their epic stinginess of SSD, anyone who doesn't pay $400 more than the base model will exhaust their storage within hours to months.
- Arelius 6mo ago
  > My Chrome binaries are about 700MB on Mac and 500MB on Windows That's kind-of the point though right? An application that has been say <700 MB for decades, suddenly deciding it'll take a multiple of it's size without asking seems pretty unreasonable, I think it's pretty fair to say the expectations for Chrome were set already. It'd be similarly unreasonable for a video game that once took 50 GB, to suddenly decide to take 400 GB.
  - boredhedgehog 5mo ago

fastball 6mo ago

You could say the same thing about shipping V8 with Chrome. Some users disable JS so shipping V8 with Chrome is additional software they didn't ask for.

detourdog 5mo ago
The old unix administrator would expect a platform to ship choice of JS that would be in /usr/bin/JS. The local administrator would add their local choice of JS /usr/local/bin/V8. The browser would then have a configuration option of which JS interpreter to use.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
r-w 5mo ago
Bad analogy. "Some users disable it" is very different from "it was introduced without any notification or information about what it does and the vast majority of laypeople have negative sentiment toward it".
- fastball 5mo ago
  > vast majority of laypeople have negative sentiment toward it Citation very much needed. Technologists are not laypeople, and are almost certainly a vocal minority.
  - NiloCK 5mo ago
    I'm surprised by this request. People detest AI. Local subreddits are filled with posts "calling out" usage of AI by local businesses or governments. Consensus is that persons who are found out to be be AI users should be fired or resign, businesses that use it should be boycotted / shamed, etc. https://www.reddit.com/r/newfoundland/comments/1t3x6q3/aialtered_image_depicting_a_woman_with_six/ https://www.reddit.com/r/newfoundland/comments/1t3x6q3/aialt... https://www.reddit.com/r/PEI/comments/1s8rtyn/burger_love_ai/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PEI/comments/1s8rtyn/burger_love_ai... --- Protests around a data center construction project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11Q9ncOdnDg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11Q9ncOdnDg

hatthew 6mo ago

Chrome installs additional software that 99% of users don't use. It can intercept and modify code running on your computer, and spies on all network requests. Hackers use it to analyze potential vulnerabilities. 90% of users aren't even aware that it exists!

xp84 6mo ago

> It's additional software that many users didn't ask for, don't want and will not be aware of You just described 95% of the parts of all software, especially in this era. And think of the Web - how many gigabytes of terrible adtech and tracking code does the average user download in a month of web browsing without an adblocker? Remember, each one probably packages in a couple hundred NPM dependencies into its bundle. I don't have even a single use for Siri on my Mac. It's useless AND redundant with the Siri that I have to have on my phone, yet Apple downloaded and installed "Siri" on there. If I install GarageBand which is the only first-party way to do basic audio manipulation, Apple installs at least 4GB of audio samples on my Mac. None of this is to say "I approve of this exact thing Google is doing" - just that I agree with GP that this is exactly the same as what every big company (and many small ones) do every day. The only "consent" we ever get is basically the all-or-nothing EULA we have to click Agree to in order to log in for the first time - the relevant terms are "Want computer? Accept that we will be shipping you all kinds of code constantly, for 'reasons.'"

munk-a 6mo ago
I, personally, have found the adtech bloat (for both disk space and processor usage) to be a huge issue for quite some time. If this is the hill where the public decides to take a stand I'll happily stand beside them to try and reverse this gradual enshittification. I think several other hills were more worthy to defend but nobody noticed those ones so apparently this is the place to fight that fight. I doubt anyone would appreciate software bloat purely because of how widespread it is[1] - it just hasn't risen to the level where it's so noticeable for such a contemporarily controversial topic yet. 1. As an aside - ubisoft game sizes are absolutely bonkers. I didn't realize that each Assassin's Creed had twelve different operating systems crammed into it but I can't see how else they're clocking in where they do.
- oneeyedpigeon 5mo ago
  Modern games include assets with very large file sizes that operating systems do not.
  - 5mo ago

aucisson_masque 6mo ago

The issue is the size of the 'update' and the impact it'z going to have on your computer performance. If tomorrow Google was to include a Blockchain miner in Google chrome, you'd still say you consented to it by using their software ? Because I'm pretty sure that this LLM is also going to be used by Google to gather data on the user and feeding it to Google, hence just like the Blockchain miner using our computer ressources (space & performance) to feed Google yearly benefits.

ZetsuBouKyo 5mo ago
Hey, you got the point. Is there a chance that Google actually plans to use users' computers as their edge computing devices?
prepend 5mo ago
Chrome has been eating my CPU for years. Who knows what Google is doing, but it sucks. I wish they wouldn’t do that. But I suppose hundreds of millions of people don’t mind based on the continued usage. I miss programmers being proud of efficient code and size. I suspect moms of Chrome developers are embarassed to tell their friends.

andai 5mo ago

> Reminds me a bit of back when installing software was a minefield due to all of the integrated "promotions" for things like toolbars, only now they've vertically integrated the unwanted software, cutting out the middleman. You know, I never thought about it like that, but it is true. The bloat and spyware is a core part of the OS now. It's just more efficient that way!

GoblinSlayer 5mo ago

That 4 GiB will also update daily, because without churn it will be dead.

neya 5mo ago

> It's additional software that many users didn't ask for, don't want and will not be aware of You mean like Siri? It does the exact same thing and no one asked for it, either. That shit barely works too.

stronglikedan 5mo ago

> It's additional software that many users didn't ask for, don't want and will not be aware of. You just described at least 90% of the software packages on your machine, if not 100%. Almost all software contains modules that go unused by certain users.

prepend 5mo ago

Have you looked at Chrome lately? It’s 1.88GB and there’s tons of crap in there I didn’t “consent to.” Software is very bloated these days and I don’t think most projects allow users to pick and choose what part of the apps are installed or not. MSWord takes up 2.6GB, btw.

Mr_Minderbinder 5mo ago

> I mean honestly, how large is an English dictionary? 100 KiB? If it contains less than 50,000 words, perhaps, but most standard print dictionaries contain ~500,000 entries. The size of /usr/share/dict/words on my system is 954 KiB and the small version of the cracklib dictionary is 481 KiB.