• motruck@lemmy.zip
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    11 hours ago

    Google doesn’t need to scrape the web they just need chrome to send them the das you are already scrapping for them. Stop using Chrome.

  • tomjuggler@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

    I found out this doesn’t apply to celeron laptop from 2016 with 4 GB ram so all good.

    Local AI js API checks pc specs before downloading - cos it wouldn’t work anyway 😁

  • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
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    15 hours ago

    Omg but it’s ok because we called it 🌼⭐ federated learning ✨💮 so we only steal the data that is profitable to us while legally no PII leaves your device 🚀 weeeee!

  • wraekscadu@vargar.org
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    15 hours ago

    It’s all a joke at this point lol.

    “So what new evil schemes are big tech up to? Ah, installing LLMs on people’s devices? Wonderful!”

    • Frenchgeek@lemmy.ml
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      11 hours ago

      Maybe one of their users will find a use for it.Then they will finally have a business plan!

  • ben@lemmy.zip
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    1 day ago

    Well your first mistake was using Chrome in 2026

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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      22 hours ago

      same i abandoned as soon as they said they were going to slow the browser/computer down for people using private mode. oh and it has no adblock that is good as ublock origin.

    • Björn@swg-empire.de
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      1 day ago

      I hate that I still have to use Chrome because it can do some streaming stuff better than Firefox (and even Chromium for some reason). I only use it to connect to one KVM.

      • Victor@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Do the streaming issues resolve themselves ✨magically✨ when faking the user agent to be Chrome for those streaming sites, e.g. using Firefox and a user agent add-on?

        • CyberEgg@discuss.tchncs.de
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          1 day ago

          Many do, yes. Any time I get an error message like “You’re not using a supported browser” that message vanishes after adjusting the user agent.

          • Victor@lemmy.world
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            23 hours ago

            Well yes, the warning messages will disappear as those are often shown or not shown based on user agent.

            But will the actual streaming issues go away is the big question.

            Teams on the web for example, worked fine in Firefox even though it warned the user it didn’t work in anything but Chrome.

        • ByteJunk@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          My issues were with h265/HEVC support, proprietary stuff like media codecs can sometimes be a pain. I no longer have that need so I’m a happy fox.

          • The_Decryptor@aussie.zone
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            1 day ago

            Pretty sure Firefox added support for HEVC a while back, but it relies on the system to provide the decoder (Which you’ll usually have to pay extra for)

            Firefox also supports MKV files now, which is nice.

          • Madrigal@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            Tell them to get their shit together and support open-source browsers, or more accurately just browser standards in general.

        • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          4 hours ago

          When I need to use Chrome, I just use the Chrome Mask extension in Firefox to change my user agent. I haven’t had a site that actually failed to work on the Gecko engine instead of Chromium. It’s just lazy devs checking your user agent to see if you’re using Chromium, and then throwing a fit if you’re not.

          Chrome Mask even has a built in site reporter, because broken sites don’t actually conform to modern web interoperability requirements. If it fails to work on Gecko, there’s a good chance that it will also fail to work on other platforms (like Apple’s WebKit) as well. And the reports go to the team that develops Firefox, so they can figure out why the site is refusing to work on Gecko.

        • matchaotter@lemmy.zip
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          13 hours ago

          Vivaldi is a great Chromium browser. I’m more of a Firefox/Librewolf on my personal machines, but my work’s software has a few features that only work with Chromium extensions so I had to use it. Was my preferred alternative to all others, while bloated it was highly controllable and didn’t focus on unnecessary features like Brave or others. My work recently banned any browser that isn’t Chrome/Edge/Firefox though, so I guess I’m back to Firefox and will ignore the features I can’t use

      • OwOarchist@pawb.social
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        1 day ago

        Try Brave for this use-case. I find that it works well for all kinds of streaming.

        And while it’s no Firefox or Librewolf, it’s still a lot better than Chrome.

        • Axolotl@feddit.it
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          1 day ago

          The problem with brave is that the CEO is a very bad person, the company also give me sketchy vibes with the crypto stuff they push

  • Katana314@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    A while back, I was actually okay with MS being semi forcible about Windows Update.

    Most people overestimate their antivirus, and don’t realize that frequent updates are generally the most important way of keeping their system safe. And, to avoid turning computers into zombies for botnets, to keep the whole internet safe. Windows is the world’s most popular OS - it’s good for the world to keep systems secure.

    And then MS had the gall to betray that responsibility of only shipping critical security patches by forceful methods. They started forcing people to Windows 11, pushing Edge back in as their browser, pushing popups and Start menu changes, and so on. For a thousand reasons, Windows Update has more notoriety in common with malware than the malware it’s meant to protect you from.

    • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 hours ago

      Yup, exactly. The concept of forced updates is fine, as long as it is handled properly. The issue is that Microsoft has not handled it properly.

    • teslekova@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      I have to admit, I started laughing when it tried to update me to Win 11, I finally threw up my hands and said “Fuck it, why not!” said yes, and it did not work. 😄 It still kept asking though. Hilarious.

      I installed Bazzite this year.

  • mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca
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    1 day ago

    I googled a definition of a word today. it took me two minutes to get chrome to not use the “AI mode” search when searching via the address bar

    tomorrow I’m switching to Firefox at work. after I spend an hour trying to figure out how to remove the copilot overlay from Excel, anyways

    • 7101334@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      When it comes to disabling AI in Google searches, you have two choices:

      • Lawful Option: Add -ai to the end of your search, ie, “define asinine -ai”
      • Chaotic Option Add profanity to your search, ie, “what the fuck does asinine mean”
      • mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca
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        1 day ago

        this wasn’t the AI preview/response thing at the top of a regular Google search result. they brought me into a new “AI mode” chatbot window completely separate from google search

        I’m still not sure how I got it to fuck off. it kept doing it for simple searches, but would do a regular search if the search keys had enough words

      • texture@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        opera is not nice to you, its an awful company and does not respect your privacy or data at all.

        look at a firefox fork like waterfox if you want a browser that will be nice to you

  • zikzak025@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Software updates have gotten so fucked up in general these days.

    It’s so rare that changelogs are published to actually educate the end user about what an update will do. Most of the time it’s just “Bug fixes and feature updates” with no further detail. What bugs? What features? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    Then you update (or, more likely, you left auto-update on) because they guilt you into thinking that you’ll immediately fall victim to a zero-day vulnerability if you don’t. And suddenly everything just gets slightly worse and worse.

    It should be more accepted to follow the mentality of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” with software, precluding the need to install new updates unless something stops working or there is a vulnerability to patch. On my phone at least, I have auto updates turned off and will generally let audience consensus determine if it’s something I want. But it’s still a coin toss if I decide to take an update, because no one bothers to tell you what they really do anymore.

    • dbx12@programming.dev
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      1 day ago

      Fun fact: when releasing apps on Google Play, you are basically forced to give a proper summary about what the update contains and Google threatens your developer account if you fail to do so. If you want some sour chuckles, check the “what’s new” of YouTube or Google Play itself.

      • Paradachshund@lemmy.today
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        13 hours ago

        And then they give you a very short character limit in which to do so, thus leading to a lot of summarized patch notes due to those limits.

    • OwOarchist@pawb.social
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      1 day ago

      Come to the world of open source.

      Where changelogs are detailed and informative, and software updates actually make the software better.

    • REDACTED@infosec.pub
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      1 day ago

      It’s so rare that changelogs are published to actually educate the end user about what an update will do.

      This reminds me - One of the games I play did an update called “Nothing update” and it just simply said “Nothing was updated, no need to investigate”.

    • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 hours ago

      It’s always funny seeing the recent Reddit migrants here. Brave did a massive astroturfing ad campaign on Reddit for a while, and it was hugely successful. After things reached a critical mass, the echo chamber took over and Reddit users naturally began pushing Brave’s marketing fluff to the top. Brave is wildly popular over on Reddit as a result.

      But they never targeted Lemmy, and Lemmings were pretty quick to jump on the “Brave is run by a very problematic person, and has a problematic past” side of things. Lemmy also has a very vocal FOSS enthusiast crowd, because the idea of FOSS meshes very well with why people would land on Lemmy. So Lemmings tend to prefer Firefox forks instead.

      But you can always tell when someone has recently migrated here from Reddit. Because they’ll post a comment praising Brave, expecting to get upvoted like they would on Reddit. And instead, they get buried in downvotes and “my specific fork of Firefox is better” comments.

      And sure enough, OP’s account is less than a day old, so they’re most likely a recent Reddit migrant.

      OP, to address your point, Brave is still a Chromium browser, and has all of the trappings that entails. It is also run by a dude with a problematic past, and the company as a whole has a problematic past too. You should consider switching to a Firefox fork instead, with uBlock Origins or AdNauseum (which is a uBO fork) as ad blockers. I personally suggest the WaterFox fork, though you’ll likely want to disable some of the more strict privacy protections (like wiping all of your data every time you close the app) because it can make daily use a bit of a chore otherwise. There is always a matter of give-and-take between convenience and privacy, and WaterFox tends to skew more towards privacy.

      • Nyadia@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        3 hours ago

        I think you’re mixing up Waterfox with Librewolf. Librewolf by default deletes all your data after closing it, Waterfox doesn’t.

        It’s actually for this reason that I use both for different purposes. I sign into accounts with Waterfox (using account containers and browser profiles so each account’s data is self-contained and not shared between each other) and use a sandboxed installation of Librewolf with a few extensions like NoScript installed and letterboxing enabled for anything I don’t sign into (i.e. news articles, web searches, etc.) so that the 50-odd domains running scripts on my local news station’s website get way less of a fingerprint off me to use to target ads at me or sell my data to data brokers or the gestapo.

        • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          3 hours ago

          Hah, you’re 100% correct. I use WaterFox as my daily driver, and remembered all of the frustrations with persistent data deletion from initially trying Librewolf. I swear WaterFox came with those features by default, but I probably transposed the frustration from when I initially tried out Librewolf instead.