EnshittificationThe article gives 3 options to avoid it:
The only ways to make the deletion stick are to disable Chrome’s AI features through chrome://flags or enterprise policy tooling that home users do not generally have, or to uninstall Chrome entirely
- It can probably be reverted at their whim at any time
- You probably don’t have access to it
- It is the most realistic option, just use another browser
These Big Tech are really getting comfortable with downloading malware now. Sign of desperation or Hubris?
They are incredibly desperate because they know that bubble is sitting there waiting to go. And all of these companies are at risk of major catastrophe. They need to embed themselves as much as possible before everything goes to hell if they want to survive after it.
Their absolute disregard for any form of consent is a hell of a flag on so many levels
And I thought Apple force downloading that U2 crap to my device was bad. This is insane.
The music album?
Probably, it happened over a decade ago
That's pretty nice detective work.
Now the lawyers can begin. If Google downloads a ton of stuff for users, some of them with limited disk space, some with metered data connectivity, Google is making their lives worse. If they automatically make the life of (for example) 100 million people worse, they should be fined for such behaviour. If this behaviour is occurring in Europe, then I predict that under the EU Digital Services Act, they will be fined eventually.
This would be for users of Chrome web browsers only? Not just using Google search on DDG? How about through steam overlay?
Wait until they do a study on gaming's contribution to climate change...
If you play video games 3 hours per day every day from the moment you are born to the moment you die and every joule of it comes from fossil fuels, you still produce fewer emissions than a single private jet flying one time from New York to London.
0.5 kW x 3 hours/day x 365.24 days/year x 80 years = 44 MWh in a lifetime of gaming 3 hours per day.
300 gallons/hour x 7 hours x 47.4 kWh/gallon = 100 MWh from a single flight.
Also, a person running on a powered treadmill produces more emissions than a person playing video games on a computer:
0.7 kW treadmill + 0.5 kW person engaging in exercise = 1.2 kW power consumption on a treadmill.
0.5 kW gaming PC + 0.2 kW person sitting = 0.7 kW power consumption.
Multiply it by a few million.
Did you notice in the first sentence where I said "and every joule of it comes from fossil fuels"? Yeah, slap a solar panel on your roof and game at noon or use a battery, and you're producing fewer emissions than someone who does light exercise.
There are still the manufacturing and recycling costs, whether the gaming hardware or all the extra agriculture that needs to get done to grow the calories you're burning by going on a jog. But like how agriculture can be made into permaculture, computer hardware could be built to last much longer if we decide to settle on the current level of processing power. If fossils can keep their detailed structure for hundreds of millions of years, I wonder how long a computer could be made to last.
All in all, solar-powered vegan gamers produce fewer emissions than most mammals their size. If you say there is no place for gamers in the ecosystem, there is no place for humans or elephants or bison or wildebeest or buffalo or rhinos or pigs or tigers or cattle or moose.
What’s the fediverse equivalent of theydidthemath?
Did you account for the download cost of Call of Duty?
