irate944

Yeah, it’s what I said. Right now it’s defaulting to the cloud

For clarity sake, that’s not what’s happening here. (Don’t misunderstand this comment as defending google, I could write a book about how much they suck)

The model downloaded is a LLM called Gemini Nano, and it’s used for things like “help me write”, checking if an incoming message is scam, summaries, etc.

Don’t worry about it itself being a spyware. It’s not; but for argument sake, if we were to assume that it was: they already know a lot about you through their usual apps and services, and get a lot more info out of you through them. This LLM would hardly move that needle.

The actual issue is that they download it for everyone, even if their devices don’t match the minimum requirements. And without consent. And to enable it, you need to go through several menus, as the default behaviour is to use the cloud (this could change eventually, my understanding is that in this update they’re just laying the foundation)

But, it’s Google that we’re talking about. Last year they were sentenced to pay a fine for spying on users despite them having their tracking settings off. And it wasn’t the first time iirc. This kind of behaviour is par for the course with them

I use arch btw

The idea sounds reasonable to me.

Of course, between idea and execution a lot can change. But as long they take some sane design decisions (opt-in, transparent, sandboxed, give the user freedom to use their own API or local models, etc), I’m fine with it

In their observations and interviews with employees of the 200-person company, the researchers found that generative AI didn’t free up time—it expanded what workers felt capable of, and willing, to take on.

The title is either poorly thought out, or bait lol

TL;DR: the study says that AI doesn’t save time, but it intensifies work because the people using it feel more confident in tackling more things (that’s my interpretation after skimming it)

Better specs sure, but I would sooner cut my wrists than to try to work on an iOS device

Copy pasting a comment that I saw on Reddit

——

Link to the original study (with a less sensationalized title):

https://zkae.io/

A few important notes:

• the study is about Bitwarden, LastPass, Dashlane and 1Password. Proton Pass isn’t mentioned.

• the study presumes that they’re working with a malicious server (read this as compromised server, controlled by an attacker). The attacks they talk about in the article would not work on a normal server. Here’s their quote:

No need to panic: all of our attacks presume a malicious server. We have no reason to believe that the password manager vendors are currently malicious or compromised, and as long as things stay that way, your passwords are safe. That said, password managers are high-value targets, and breaches do happen.

• Here’s another quote, about other password managers:

You can ask your provider the following questions:

1. ⁠Do you offer end-to-end encryption? What security do you provide in case your server infrastructure were to be compromised?

2. How do you check that public keys and public-key ciphertexts are authentic?

3. How do you authenticate security-critical settings, such as the KDF type and the iteration count?

4. Do you provide integrity guarantees for a user’s vault as a whole? Can a malicious server add items to your vault?

You can also ask your favourite password manager to commission an audit checking for our attacks in their products.

• If you still feel unsure/unsafe, then adopt an offline password manager (I highly recommend keepassXC).

Yeah you’re right, I was just making a joke.

But it does create some silly situations like you said

I could’ve told you that for free, no need for a study

My company forced us to use only Chrome on our PC’s and one of the things I was worried about was the ads. I put youtube in the background while I work.

And I was surprised by how… My experience was exactly the same as Firefox and Brave. Ok, actually, one or two ads managed to slip through and appeared in the front page - albeit rarely and randomly - but I never got those ads at the beginning of the video. On other websites, I never got ads.

I was wondering, then, if there was some catch. Maybe the trackers would still get through or something. But according to that link, not even that? lol

I would love to read an independent study on this, but this is from Anthropic (the guys that make Claude) so it’s definitely biased.

Speaking for myself, I’ve been using LLM’s to help out with jumps in small gaps of knowledge. Like for example, I know what I need to do, I just don’t know/remember the specific functions or libraries that I need to do that in Python. LLM is extremely useful for these moments; and it’s faster than searching and asking on forums. And to be transparent, I did learn a few tricks here and there.

But if someone lets the LLM do most of the work - like vibe coders - I doubt they will learn anything.

but they’re easily outnumbered by the console market

I don’t think this is the case nowadays. I remember reading an article that PC market was outselling the console market.

But yes, the mobile market is a giant

edit: found it: https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/new-report-says-pc-games-are-outselling-console-games-calling-pc-gaming-a-bright-spot-in-a-troubled-industry/

PC’s consumer spending in 2024 was ~$30B, while consoles was $18B (including the Switch)

Anyone managed to download the report? Here it just says “form submitted” and then nothing happens. No emails no nothing.