5 ms·

> 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

by 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 6mo ago
  Modern games include assets with very large file sizes that operating systems do not.
  - SilasX 6mo ago
    Yeah, I was surprised to learn that Ticket to Ride (downloaded on Steam) uses like a half gigabyte, but the most data-intense thing it does is a few musical tracks and 2D images with scaling. They fit Final Fantasy 3 (SNES) with 3 CDs of music (albeit low quality) and Mode 7 graphics for the airship onto like 3 MB.
    - xp84 6mo ago
      I would confidently state that in terms of hours of enjoyment per byte, nothing can come even close to the 16-bit era. I can't count how many hours of Super Mario World I played. 512 freakin KB. I don't think anything will ever come close to it - and even if you measured one full typical playthrough.
    - well_ackshually 6mo ago
      >They fit Final Fantasy 3 (SNES) with 3 CDs of music (albeit low quality) and Mode 7 graphics for the airship onto like 3 MB. Sure, the good old days where _all of this didn't work without specialized hardware that you bought with every single cartridge_. Mode 7 didn't come for free, it was an entire additional, single purpose chip in the cart on a console that didn't have any concept of task management or even OS. But hey, if you want to have to plug in and swap PCIE cards for each piece of software that you want to run, feel free to reinstall DOS.
Razengan 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. So what are you saying? Don't be mad over this becoming the norm, just shut up and sit down and accept it?
- ambrozk 6mo ago
  It's not "becoming the norm." It's been the norm for decades. And yes, you should not be mad about the norm.
  - Razengan 6mo ago
    > And yes, you should not be mad about the norm. Right and if slavery and virgin sacrifices happen for decades we should just join in
    - k33n 6mo ago
      Deeply incongruous example tbh.
      - lostglass 6mo ago
        Is it? It's kind of the heart of the matter - just because something is common doesn't mean it's acceptable. The difference is that in our society we've all agreed the sacrificing is no longer acceptable.
        deleted 6mo ago
        [deleted]
      - Razengan 6mo ago
        The comment above was literally gaslighting against complaining about bad behavior that is common and going on for a long time.
anigbrowl 6mo ago
You just described 95% of the parts of all software, especially in this era. Yes, that's the problem
- iugtmkbdfil834 6mo ago
  Yep. The fact that it is being hand waved away in this manner as if it was a valid argument is beyond maddening. I am starting to wonder if the move behind land and 'extreme personalization' of software is a fad I thought it was ( I mean, yeah regular users won't, but there is no helping some people if they don't want to be helped ).
- cachius 6mo ago
  The problem here is that the on-device model is old news packed as clickbait without any research beyond his file system. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48034889 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48034889 And all news outlets spreading it w/o any further research of their own. Policy GenAILocalFoundationalModelSettings disables and removes the local model without any flag hacks since 2024. In Canary since January behind Settings > System > On-device AI The article doesn't mention Chrome version, release channel, whether on fresh vs existing install an if settings were altered.
  - alsetmusic 6mo ago
    > The article doesn't mention Chrome version, release channel, whether on fresh vs existing install an if settings were altered. Actually, it does claim this is the stable release channel. And it's reasonable to assume that if the author is documenting on a fresh profile / user account on the Mac, they probably downloaded the current (that day) release, though we're inferring when don't don't truly know for sure. > 10. Code-signed, shipped through the normal release channel. This is not test build behaviour. It is Chrome stable. I think it's poor form to run cover for one of the biggest corporations in the world like this. Don't let them off the hook. As the author correctly points out, metered connections are being abused. Hell, last month I somehow hit ATT's bandwidth limits on my mobile and got throttled for five days. It made my phone so unusable that I turned on hotspot on my work phone and connected to that over wifi when I went to lunch.
noirscape 6mo ago
There's a name for when a virus scanner finds a program that may have a legitimate purpose, yet is typically bundled into other software in a malicious manner. It's called a PUP, or Potentially Unwanted Program and most anti-viruses offer to remove them. They can be legitimately installed, but often aren't. (Usually they were shipped in the installers of legitimate software downloaded from sketchy distributors.) Random AI models being shipped with Chrome is very much a PUP. The user wanted to browse the internet, not use a model. They'd install an extension if they wanted that. The Ask toolbar was seen as a virus. Mozilla had massive user bleed in Firefox due to installing sponsored extensions in the browser. The only reason this shit isn't regarded the same way is because it's both done by Google and because it's labeled with AI, so all AI bros have to retroactively find an excuse to justify it.

by xp84 6mo ago

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 6mo ago
Modern games include assets with very large file sizes that operating systems do not.
- SilasX 6mo ago
  Yeah, I was surprised to learn that Ticket to Ride (downloaded on Steam) uses like a half gigabyte, but the most data-intense thing it does is a few musical tracks and 2D images with scaling. They fit Final Fantasy 3 (SNES) with 3 CDs of music (albeit low quality) and Mode 7 graphics for the airship onto like 3 MB.
  - xp84 6mo ago
    I would confidently state that in terms of hours of enjoyment per byte, nothing can come even close to the 16-bit era. I can't count how many hours of Super Mario World I played. 512 freakin KB. I don't think anything will ever come close to it - and even if you measured one full typical playthrough.
  - well_ackshually 6mo ago
    >They fit Final Fantasy 3 (SNES) with 3 CDs of music (albeit low quality) and Mode 7 graphics for the airship onto like 3 MB. Sure, the good old days where _all of this didn't work without specialized hardware that you bought with every single cartridge_. Mode 7 didn't come for free, it was an entire additional, single purpose chip in the cart on a console that didn't have any concept of task management or even OS. But hey, if you want to have to plug in and swap PCIE cards for each piece of software that you want to run, feel free to reinstall DOS.

Razengan 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. So what are you saying? Don't be mad over this becoming the norm, just shut up and sit down and accept it?

ambrozk 6mo ago
It's not "becoming the norm." It's been the norm for decades. And yes, you should not be mad about the norm.
- Razengan 6mo ago
  > And yes, you should not be mad about the norm. Right and if slavery and virgin sacrifices happen for decades we should just join in
  - k33n 6mo ago
    Deeply incongruous example tbh.
    - lostglass 6mo ago
      Is it? It's kind of the heart of the matter - just because something is common doesn't mean it's acceptable. The difference is that in our society we've all agreed the sacrificing is no longer acceptable.
      - deleted 6mo ago
        [deleted]
    - Razengan 6mo ago
      The comment above was literally gaslighting against complaining about bad behavior that is common and going on for a long time.

anigbrowl 6mo ago

You just described 95% of the parts of all software, especially in this era. Yes, that's the problem

iugtmkbdfil834 6mo ago
Yep. The fact that it is being hand waved away in this manner as if it was a valid argument is beyond maddening. I am starting to wonder if the move behind land and 'extreme personalization' of software is a fad I thought it was ( I mean, yeah regular users won't, but there is no helping some people if they don't want to be helped ).
cachius 6mo ago
The problem here is that the on-device model is old news packed as clickbait without any research beyond his file system. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48034889 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48034889 And all news outlets spreading it w/o any further research of their own. Policy GenAILocalFoundationalModelSettings disables and removes the local model without any flag hacks since 2024. In Canary since January behind Settings > System > On-device AI The article doesn't mention Chrome version, release channel, whether on fresh vs existing install an if settings were altered.
- alsetmusic 6mo ago
  > The article doesn't mention Chrome version, release channel, whether on fresh vs existing install an if settings were altered. Actually, it does claim this is the stable release channel. And it's reasonable to assume that if the author is documenting on a fresh profile / user account on the Mac, they probably downloaded the current (that day) release, though we're inferring when don't don't truly know for sure. > 10. Code-signed, shipped through the normal release channel. This is not test build behaviour. It is Chrome stable. I think it's poor form to run cover for one of the biggest corporations in the world like this. Don't let them off the hook. As the author correctly points out, metered connections are being abused. Hell, last month I somehow hit ATT's bandwidth limits on my mobile and got throttled for five days. It made my phone so unusable that I turned on hotspot on my work phone and connected to that over wifi when I went to lunch.

noirscape 6mo ago

There's a name for when a virus scanner finds a program that may have a legitimate purpose, yet is typically bundled into other software in a malicious manner. It's called a PUP, or Potentially Unwanted Program and most anti-viruses offer to remove them. They can be legitimately installed, but often aren't. (Usually they were shipped in the installers of legitimate software downloaded from sketchy distributors.) Random AI models being shipped with Chrome is very much a PUP. The user wanted to browse the internet, not use a model. They'd install an extension if they wanted that. The Ask toolbar was seen as a virus. Mozilla had massive user bleed in Firefox due to installing sponsored extensions in the browser. The only reason this shit isn't regarded the same way is because it's both done by Google and because it's labeled with AI, so all AI bros have to retroactively find an excuse to justify it.