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Comment by kitd | Hacker News Reader

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kitd

Absolute number of downloads inevitably goes up. Weekly downloads number doesn't.

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> Weekly downloads number doesn't.

The ChatGPT app downloads a copy of LibreOffice when you ask it to make pptx files.

So I've downloaded LibreOffice 3 times this week without really paying attention to it.

Ironic since the headline implies that people are downloading it specifically to avoid AI features being shoved into our document editors.

Their point is that weekly downloads may have been on a constant rise for years due to a constant rise in popularity. It's not as constant as absolute number of downloads, but the point is that "breaking record" is still something that's likely happening frequently and doesn't need to be related to any statement they gave. They don't share any numbers, at least in the post.

> In one week, the installer was downloaded more than 1 million times — not counting updates via Linux distribution repositories.

Either there's 1m people downloading new software "because no ai", or there's another popular thing that installs this, and is not counted in the "updates via linux repos". One is much much more probable than the other.

> or there's another popular thing that installs this

Yeah, an AI tool:

The ChatGPT/Codex app bundles a full copy of LibreOffice

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49527396

and the bundled copies will contribute to installer download statistics?

You underestimate the public's hatred of AI-in-everything. HN is a bubble of AI.

I fully expect the bubble is the people in tech who have strong feelings about the goodness or badness of AI one way or another.

Yeah, the ones that know obvious slop and won't ship it are the ones who will win. Unfortunately it seems like I'm stuck with the other half at my current job.

Disliking clunky autocomplete is very different from going out of your way to replace Word with Libre Office. The average office worker will tolerate ten bad assistants before they voluntarily deal with ODF formatting quirks in a corporate environment

Global population is still rising. In general you should expect numbers to go up.

Unless they're is a negative force, such as people being put off by the lack of AI features. While a lack of such a response might not justify the headline used here, I think it is certainly worth noting.

If you know absolutely nothing, though: expect usage of something used by humans to scale with the number of humans.

Yes. But in this case as there has been a recent announcement that could be significant, the trend continuing has some significance because it means the announcement likely⁰ had no detrimental effect¹.

We don't know absolutely nothing here: there is a new variable in play and this result gives us some evidence of the effect of that.

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[0] It _could_ have done, but something else countered it, though this is less likely according to Occam's razor.

[1] As opposed to reducing interest in the tools. The figures² apparently don't look to support an increase in interest though.

[2] Going by what others here are saying. The linked text doesn't state any numbers, nor does the announcement from the LibreOffice project, and I don't have time to go digging further ATM.

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