I had a client complain that some software we recommended installed a database. How fucking dare we install this giant blob of software without his consent! It was MySQL, and integral to the application.

So what's your solution? A click-through acceptance of every single library, component, dependency, etc. every app uses?

P.S. - out here in the real world of the people who just use software, they don't want this. Which is its own problem, because they should care more than they do, but we play the hand we're delt.

The problem here is that the on-device model is old news packed as clickbait without any research beyond his file system. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48034889 And all news outlets spreading it w/o any further research of their own.

Policy GenAILocalFoundationalModelSettings disables and removes the local model without any flag hacks since 2024. In Canary since January behind Settings > System > On-device AI

The article doesn't mention Chrome version, release channel, whether on fresh vs existing install an if settings were altered.

Yep. The fact that it is being hand waved away in this manner as if it was a valid argument is beyond maddening. I am starting to wonder if the move behind land and 'extreme personalization' of software is a fad I thought it was ( I mean, yeah regular users won't, but there is no helping some people if they don't want to be helped ).