Google Chrome Installed a 4GB AI Model on Your PC 16 days ago
The accusation that they pushed a new feature to Chrome users? They do that all the time? Why is this one alarming / needs special consent?
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imnes
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Serious question - why would Google need to ask user consent to push a new feature / update to Chrome?
There's been a lot of new tech introduced through Chrome and eventually widely adopted and available everywhere. Without requiring user consent.
QUIC + HTTP/3, WebP, Service Workers / PWAs, WASM, WebRTC, View Transitions API
This feels like just another step of "make this new capability widely available so developers can adopt it if they want."
This one seems to be all on-device local capabilities. Not calling additional APIs or sending data off-device.
Is the argument just around "Don't use 4gb of drive space without asking me first"? What other issues does this introduce?
From a year ago. They talked about adding the ability for Chrome to install Gemini Nano on-demand when a web app wants to use it. I guess this is the next step, making it always available by default.
Practical built-in AI with Gemini Nano in Chrome
Local AI needs to be the norm 2 months ago
I'm going through a similar exercise right now in an app I'm building. No server dependencies, for features that have traditionally used server side APIs, moving those capabilities onto the device. And also utilizing the on-board AI features provided by Android and iOS. So far it's been a very positive experience, and the capabilities provided on these devices have been more than capable for my needs. Working on providing apps that don't have ongoing operation costs of running server side infrastructure, so I can offer them as "pay once, run it forever" instead of ongoing subscription costs for the user.
Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2026) 5 months ago
We're actively hiring, lots of positions. WEX is an international Fintech company. Most positions are being recruited as on-site roles, must be located near or willing to relocate to one of our locations. It's been a good company to work for, I've been there 7 years.
Is there a nerdfont variant?
Keep Android Open 9 months ago
Ask HN: Are cookie consent banners meaningless? 2 years ago
A large portion of websites I visit for the first time all show a cookie consent banner. I was curious what accepting or rejecting in that banner actually does. After all, as a web developer, I'm used to seeing most cookies sent with the initial page load.
So I've started using the browser dev tools to just look over the list of cookies that are sent and stored to my browser even after selecting "Reject All" or whatever the closest option is, in the cookie consent banner.
Turns out I usually still see a flood of marketing and ad related cookies. A few sites I've reported as a bug back to the site owner, with a reponse of "thanks for surfacing this, we'll work on it.."
Curious what other people are noticing. And in general, is cookie consent a real thing, or are these consent banners just part of normal UX now and people include them without really implementing the corresponding app behaviors?
I wouldn't try to implement anything yourself. Use one of the game building toolkits already out there.
If you don't mind going vintage, this is one I used many years ago, it's for building 3D games similar to DOOM, for DOS. You might need a dos emulator to run it in if your OS is too new to support it. Fun to play with though.
I'd use one of the existing game toolkits that you can build a 3d game on top of, not try to build anything from scratch. If you want to go vintage this was a DOS app for creating DOOM style 3D games.
Doesn't appear to be related to Firefox. I tried it from Chrome on my desktop (with dev-tools emulating a Nexus 5). See screenshot. Looks like if you're on a mobile device at all they want you to use the app instead of your browser.