Yet there is another post a few rows down where people are losing their shit that Chrome has a local LLM model that uses a couple of GB of space for local-inference.
If it was such a good and laudable idea why didn't they tell me about it before they activated it? It seems to me like they avoided it in the hopes that I wouldn't notice, because, presumably if I had, I would have IMMEDIATELY disabled it.
Also why doesn't their task manager show that it's actually the one downloading? Why does it go out of it's way to hide this activity?
Since I have conky on my desktop I could catch this immediately, and take the action I preferred with my own computer, which was to _immediately_ disable it.
I've never had a "What's new" tab ever open because I disable the customized home page where that's displayed. I'm guessing you're not aware that's an option.
Please show me where in either of those documents it explains it's going to download a 4GB model.
Thank you for going out of your way to deny my exact experience. Do you think I'm doing this to rag on Google? And you're this eager to defend them?
I'm on gentoo. I have to update chrome manually. I updated it. On update I _never_ get a "what's new" page. I've had this profile for more than a decade so I have no actual idea why, but, I can absolutely tell you, I do *not* get one. After update it started consuming all my bandwidth. This use did not show in it's task manager. I have a metered connection. This is a problem for me. I worried it was a compromised plugin. I had to spend 10 minutes in Firefox discovering why chrome was doing this then going to the configuration and disabling this.
This was a disappointing experience. I'm sorry you feel differently; other than stating the obvious, I seriously have no idea what you and the other corporate defense squad members are trying to achieve with this gaslighting nonsense.
That makes sense. You aren't really "updating" at all. You're basically reinstalling a new Chrome on every update. It makes sense then that you aren't seeing "what's new" because that's not how a fresh install starts up.
I hate to be an apologist for anything but I think you are pointing fingers in the wrong place. The Google-official releases use the built-in automatic updater and do show What's New. This is a Gentoo release and they chose to do their own thing for updates.
> I've never had a "What's new" tab ever open because I disable the customized home page where that's displayed.
I'm not "denying your experience" of not having the what's new tab. I'm denying your explanation for it.
You wrongly thought it was due to disabling the home page, and then you were insulting to the parent with the snarky "I'm guessing you're not aware that's an option".
You were the one who wasn't aware of the real explanation. Now you make up a totally unwarranted accusations ("going out of your way to deny my exact experience", "gaslighting nonsense"), and add character assassination on top ("you're this eager to defend them?", "corporate defense squad members").
Your comment is extremely inappropriate. Please re-read the HN guidelines, especially:
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
This is a bit disingenuous. People aren't losing their shit about a local model being installed. It's the lack of user autonomy. Just give the option to download a model instead of a silent install. It's not that hard. This is how every other local option works.
This is a weird take. If its not opt in or you’re shoe horning it into a browser, then that sucks. Nobody is getting enraged that an app for running local LLMs downloads data to do so.
Although you can opt out and even disable the download feature when you build them in some cases, most of the local LLM tools are too download–happy by default.
You don't understand the difference between "I run a local LLM because I chose to" vs "The browser chose to run a local LLM and I have no say"? You don't understand?
Not to mention that the LLM that I choose to run requires a monster machine and is infinitely more capable than whatever google chose to put on their browser?
I mean, none of this affects me because I don't use chrome, obviously, but you don't see the difference? Bewildering.