Google Chrome is downloading a 4 GB Gemini Nano model onto users' machines without consent, with no opt-in, no opt-out short of enterprise tooling, and an automatic re-download every time the user deletes it. The pattern is identical to the Anthropic Claude Desktop case I wrote about last month, but the scale is between two and three orders of magnitude larger. This article does the legal analysis and, for the first time, the environmental analysis. The numbers are not small.
Personally, my familiarity level is maybe 2 out of 10. Don’t really know what I’m doing with Linux, only made the jump a few weeks ago. I’ve had to google some stuff but it’s still much less hassle than windows. I just got bored of seeing all those ‘switch to linux durr’ comments so I gave it a try, turns out they were right.
Those comments really do get tedious. But there’s no billion-dollar company pushing desktop Linux and buying podcast ads and whatnot, so … there’s really no other way to get the word out.
Personally, my familiarity level is maybe 2 out of 10. Don’t really know what I’m doing with Linux, only made the jump a few weeks ago. I’ve had to google some stuff but it’s still much less hassle than windows. I just got bored of seeing all those ‘switch to linux durr’ comments so I gave it a try, turns out they were right.
Those comments really do get tedious. But there’s no billion-dollar company pushing desktop Linux and buying podcast ads and whatnot, so … there’s really no other way to get the word out.