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Comment by ponyous | Hacker News Reader

The site is currently unavailable 503 so I can't read it. But I wonder, what should you consent to? Every dependency? Every dependency above 1GB?

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Maybe consent is not an appropriate term. Perhaps an acknowledgement and a way to say "I don't want this" would be a more suitable approach. I feel like a flag to turn off LLMs is useful. Firefox added something like this in a recent release. I don't know how much they're downloading or how much they run it, nor would I be a good judge if it's necessary or not, but I don't want that functionality in my browser so turned it off.

Isn't that asking for consent?

the subject has been faced many years ago an super well applied in EU privacy regulations: Google knows it very well, and in super details and I have no doubt they will be fined for this despite all reduction of it thanks to their lobbying (and corruptions, too, in my super personal opinion): this fact well explain EU fines based on company's income.

why would they be fined for this? In fact a local LLM is exactly the opposite direction of a privacy concern. The local LLM gives an answer generated locally and never uploaded to a server.

There's a setting in `chrome://flags` mentioned in the post that allows users to turn this off. I guess people want opt-in consent rather opt-out consent which there's always debate about. Some people say it degrades the experience for the majority of users who would opt-in for the happiness of the few possibly already detracting users.

Extra power and ram usage without your permission, for example.

Exactly, for all the hate of Windows, I could at least just look for shit named co-pilot and uninstall it for a pretty nice experience on my new computer. Phones aren't always as straightforward (especially jarring as "Google services" are required in Sweden on Android for stuff like mobile identity systems).

This is so absurd... I have to keep an old (rooted in order to hide that adb is enabled) phone connected to my home server just to use such app, because grapheneos without google services is apparently not secure enough.

That ship has sailed on the web a long time ago.

Read the article, it's not about that, but a mere 4GB of storage.

Oh and why is it there? Do you really think it's not loaded and executed automatically by default, so some Google executive can justify their "AI" spend?

I don’t. Do you have any actual evidence they’re doing that beyond the vibe?

Do I look like law enforcement? I don't have to do innocent until proven guilty.

It's the tech company's problem to convince me they are trying to do something useful to me. Come to think of it, it's their problem to convince me they still understand "useful to the customer" first.

4GB of storage is not a “mere” thing, to the contrary.

It is in 2026. Average daily household usage is at ~25gig. That's average, so 50% are more than that

It sounds like you’re talking about network usage, but this is about storage.

Also, average doesn’t mean 50% lower and 50% higher.

I did mention "storage".

Don't install chrome in the first place then

I'm logged in to work in Chrome and to personal stuff in Firefox :)

Does that include the CPU burning cat girl captchas or not?

It absolutely should.

Hello iOS upgrade.

Sounds like the words of someone that doesn't pay for their data use.

Silicon Valley is not the world.

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