Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device

18 réponses [Dernière contribution]
mangeur de nuage
Hors ligne
A rejoint: 09/27/2015

https://www.thatprivacyguy.com/blog/chrome-silent-nano-install/

"I wrote about Anthropic silently registering a Native Messaging bridge in seven Chromium-based browsers on every machine where Claude Desktop was installed"

"This week I discovered the same pattern, executed by Google. Google Chrome is reaching into users' machines and writing a 4 GB on-device AI model file to disk without asking"

"The file is named weights.bin. It lives in OptGuideOnDeviceModel"

This is why I'm still for not having any chromium fork in Trisquel repositories.
It's the same issue each time it "unconditionally downloads binary blobs"
Idk why people can't just see it's pure malware.

mangeur de nuage
Hors ligne
A rejoint: 09/27/2015

Forgot to add, umatrix rules are

thatprivacyguy.com 1st-party css allow
thatprivacyguy.com 1st-party image allow

It doesn't need all the rest of the junk to be able to load/read the website.

vlcsnap-2026-05-05-12h53m51s139.png
Avron

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Hors ligne
A rejoint: 08/18/2020

I don't find this 4GB download worse than many Firefox features. Then should Trisquel remove abrowser too?

I'd love to only use netsurf, but so many websites won't be usable with it (Trisquel forum is difficult to read with it, but your link looks fine with it).

mangeur de nuage
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A rejoint: 09/27/2015

Correct me if I'm wrong but since when FF forks did download unconditionally proprietary software without regards from user consent ?

Avron

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Hors ligne
A rejoint: 08/18/2020

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-drm

I don't know since when, but I think it is a long time.

If you search, you can disable it, but by default it is enabled and I suspect there is no notification when this happens.

Legimet
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A rejoint: 12/10/2013

I'm pretty sure Firefox prompts you before installing that.

Magic Banana

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A rejoint: 07/24/2010

Abrowser is compiled with the --disable-eme option: https://gitlab.trisquel.org/trisquel/package-helpers/-/raw/ecne/helpers/make-firefox

Without the Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), no Content Decryption Module (CDM) works.

icarolongo
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A rejoint: 03/26/2011

I just want a browser with all the latest HTML and CSS features (like CSS scroll-triggered animations, CSS scroll-state, CSS scroll-driven animations and many new features to come...). Just that.

99% of the websites I use don't have JavaScript, WebGL, WebAssembly and everything else. Fortunately, today I only need to access 1 website with the TrapScript.

Avron

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Hors ligne
A rejoint: 08/18/2020

I just want a browser with all the latest HTML and CSS features

Do you use a browser lighter than abrowser for this?

icarolongo
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A rejoint: 03/26/2011

I use Abrowser and ungoogled-chromium. Always with JavaScript disabled.

Avron

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A rejoint: 08/18/2020

Can you view, create or comment issues on Trisquel gitlab without a web browser and javascript? Many free software projects use gitlab (self-hosted) or forgejo for code and issues.

Also, many free software projects use discourse for user discussions (including the FSF associate member forum). On a web browser without javascript, it is difficult to read a discourse forum and impossible to post messages. There is a mailing list mode that allows to see messages, but most discourse instances don't allow to initiate a discussion by email, you can only reply to other people messages, and if they edit their message, you will never get anything.

icarolongo
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A rejoint: 03/26/2011

You can view any GitLab instance with Laboratory frontend[1] and Github with GotHub[2]. I can view Forgejo and Gitea without JS. I've never tried to comment yet.

My suggestions to FSF:
- phpBB
- Redmine
- WordPress bbPress
- Drupal Forum Module
- Simple Machines Forum
- FluxBB_by_Visman

Useful tips:
https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/escaping-javascript-trap

[1] https://lab.vern.cc/gitlab.trisquel.org/trisquel/package-helpers/
[2] https://codeberg.org/gothub/gothub#user-content-instances

Avron

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A rejoint: 08/18/2020

You can view any GitLab instance with Laboratory frontend[1] and Github with GotHub[2].

Thanks for the references. The Laboratory front-end allows viewing issues, but I can't find a way to comment using it, or open an issue. With gothub, I can't see anything, I am not sure how useful it is, one could just run "git clone".

My suggestions to FSF

Thanks for the list, I had a look at them. Drupal's website shows absolutely nothing without JS so I have doubts their forum can work without JS. I look at the others, I must say that I find Discourse far more readable than other software, and I expect migrating to another forum might not be easiy.

I found https://codeberg.org/glenneth/discourse-mode, I'll give it a try.

I also use the mailing list mode, but I have not seen any discourse instance allowing to initiate topics by email.

Zoma
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A rejoint: 11/05/2024

Pity badwolf browser isn't in your repos then.

It does all that just fine as long as you are updated to the latest version that is out.

I think you'd be able to though.

Although, there might be others.

nparafe

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A rejoint: 10/20/2020

> Pity badwolf browser isn't in your repos then.

I have this in my devuan install

Installed (dpkg-i as root)
https://ftp.linux.org.tr/mx/repo/antix/trixie/pool/main/a/antix-archive-keyring/antix-archive-keyring_20026.03.18_all.deb

$cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/antix.list
deb http://repo.antixlinux.com/trixie trixie main

$cat /etc/apt/preferences.d/antix
Package: *
Pin: origin repo.antixlinux.com
Pin-Priority: 1

then (as root)
$apt install badwolf

Maybe it can, also, work on trisquel?

Zoma
Hors ligne
A rejoint: 11/05/2024

If nothing else it can definitely be built from source

tonlee
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A rejoint: 09/08/2014

There is no local ai free software? Or in other words, there is no ai you can run locally on your computer such that the free software foundation will have no reservations?

Magic Banana

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A rejoint: 07/24/2010

If by "ai free software" you mean "with weights under a free software license", then there are options. I gave examples in that thread: https://trisquel.info/forum/artificial-intelligence-confessions

Malsasa
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A rejoint: 12/01/2016

Thanks for the warning.

Sincerely yours,

Malsasa