this post was submitted on 05 May 2026
991 points (97.8% liked)

Technology

84413 readers
4466 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
991
Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent. At a billion-device scale the climate costs are insane. (www.thatprivacyguy.com)
submitted 2 days ago by sanitation@lemmy.radio to c/technology@lemmy.world
313 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

In an internet browser?

[–] fiat_lux@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago

Yeah, even there. A page loading is one thing, but browser features are somewhat independent of the content. There's also a good chance this is being used as a hook for other Google products like Drive or Docs (which are basically websites under the hood) to allow offline file management, creation, etc.

It's a bad choice, but it wouldn't be the first bad choice Google has made.

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 1 points 1 day ago

Well everything else is in it.

Shit, Chrome supports the use of COM ports. It's an OS within an OS.