Welp, it's taken me a few days to get round to it, but I have just now deleted Chrome (and it's associated LLM malware downloads) from ALL my Macs.

[fazalmajid@social.vivaldi.net]

@cstross another endorsement for Vivaldi, but I understand you are invested in Firefox and can't easily switch.

Safari is the most energy efficient browser on macOS, thus a good fit for your Neo. Unfortunately, in line with Apple's collapsing software quality, it is rife with web standards compliance bugs. Apple is also all-in on advertising, and the corrupting influence is seeping through the company. For instance, in a "one rule for thee, but not for me", they exempt themselves from the advertising ID opt-in they impose on others because "we're not a third-party", the EU is taking a dim view on this, but according to a classmate who works at the EC's antitrust division, Apple is the most arrogant and entitled of the FAANGs.

I myself switched to Linux, and use Vivaldi fully locked down (cookies disabled by default unless allowlisted, uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, Global Privacy Contol turned on), and a vanilla Firefox for the sites that won't render on Vivaldi (typically Javascript-heavy ones that break if cookies are disabled, grrr), but I have a button that nukes all cookies and state in Firefox.

[pier@infosec.exchange]

@AlisonW @JustinMac84 @cstross Except that apparently Chrome doesn’t even use the local model except for a couple of features that most people don’t want or use.

[kenswinson@indieweb.social]

@mhedney @cstross

I'm a recent mac convert and have the same question

[vw_guy@mastodon.social]

@cstross on my Macs I switched form FF to Orion as a secondary browser because FF kept changing settings after updates. I don't love Orion but I'm a Kagi user so its convenient and uses FF extensions.

[cstross@wandering.shop]

@mhedney Deleting the app is a start, but you also need to go into ~Library/Application Support/Google and delete the crap it leaves there, too.

[cstross@wandering.shop]

@pier @AlisonW @JustinMac84 Yes, and that's the most infuriating part of it all! They're fly-tipping useless junk on my property.

[tseitr@mastodon.sdf.org]

@cstross @ParadeGrotesque @salixlucida I am curious, I don't use zen browser but is there something wrong with it?

[kanamauna@sauropods.win]

@cstross

Almost 3 G's for an app I think I used once to access my energy company's website. What a waste.

[tbortels@infosec.exchange]

@cstross

I recently switched from Firefox to Librewolf because Firefox was having issues not preventing popups, and I was getting worried about Mozilla leadership. Painless - export bookmarks, re-import. Just for your back pocket in case FF follows suit with the AI shenanigans. Congratulations on dumping chrome.

[dckim@mastodon.social]

@WellsiteGeo @cstross from what I have read, the model that is being transferred to the users machine is one that purports to aid in 'writing essays' and whatnot.

Essentially, what that can do, is parse your inputs for idioms. Does that make sense?

That's then a known intermediate step before likely using the one at the search prompt with google.

They installed it, and they know the offloading step and result. So there is a huge advantage to using your machine to compute, and feed it back in.

[woe2you@beige.party]

@cstross Imagine the same thing on a Chromebook. They must've taken leave of their senses.