I don't remember where it was originally written, but Qt used to have a fantastic Qt Quarterly about API design that included "The Boolean Parameter Trap", which advised several potential solutions to this very problem. Of course, it was somewhat specific to C++ in what it recommended, but I find that many insights in Qt's API design are more broadly applicable than they may first appear. In this case one insight that stuck with me: it's often better to use an enumeration of two values over a boolean.
I had pondered the same thing about other package ecosystems in the past, in general. Now with the benefit of hindsight we can comfortably say that the absence of known (!) attacks doesn't really say anything about how relatively difficult an attack would be. Are -sys crates, or build script attacks, particularly potent? Who knows. When I did a cursory search, the only attempts I saw were at runtime rather than build time[1]. Which raises a good point; pwning a developer machine or CI box with a build script may be quite valuable, but if you might get that and prod with a runtime exploit, is the build time exploit that much more valuable? Guess it depends! (Of course, I personally think having at least optional build time sandboxing is even better than hoping it won't be valuable to attack.)
Of course, crates.io has surely had some malicious packages. (I'd assume it isn't all that unlikely there could be some undiscovered right now; it's definitely large enough for something like that to slip under the radar, even if it is relatively small compared to say, NPM.) But, I think it really hasn't had its XZ backdoor moment, its left-pad, where you really get to see how well it does or doesn't handle a serious challenge. Since I have actually not published on crates.io, I'm not really sure how the security posture is, but if it's more similar to other programming language repositories than it is to Linux repos, I dunno exactly why it would be hard to believe a high-level compromise is possible and could slip in (really, anywhere, be it a build script or otherwise.). Of course, "would not be difficult" is all relative. I'm sure many of these attacks are not really all that simple, but a lot of them aren't exactly groundbreaking either. It was well executed and took quite a lot of time, sure, but there wasn't all that much about the XZ backdoor that was novel. (Except maybe the slyness with which the payload was hidden in test files. That was pretty cool.)
I argue that strlen is actually still quite often the number you need+want, because possibly the main use case for it is determining how many bytes long a string is.
It is, it just isn't always any more. When printing the string to the screen, the multibyte sequences need to be accounted for, like an emoji that's 2 bytes but only renders as one character too the screen.
I made the tragic mistake of getting a Bambu printer (an X1C, with AMS even...) right before they gave all of us the middle finger. I now have it offline, running out of date firmware, connected to a special WiFi network that is isolated from the Internet.
That upset me, but now I'm pissed. Now I don't even care about their stupid printers. Now I'd like to waste Bambu Lab's time and cause problems for them.
And also, while this X1C should be going strong for years, my eyes are on Prusa should I want another printer any time soon for any reason. Less polished or not, they seem like they're still better for consumers even though they are apparently less open than they used to be. But I'm of course interested in hearing what people recommend, too. (I got an X1C because I knew it would be simple, but I don't particularly mind getting my hands dirty or anything. I did build an Ender 3 kit before that.)
Once you have a reliable printer, the workflow is mostly to slice -> send to printer -> wait and check on it every couple of hours until it's done ime. Imo it no longer super matters how much better the on-screen ui or webcam are.
Mutli-color though is where Bambu has a good leg up.
(Diluted) Vision Miner Nano Polymer Adhesive and a good bed leveling probe has done a lot to make my printer set and forget, no matter which print sheets I use.
Wasn’t the main hassle in calibrarion and Bambu was good in that and is major reason for popularity? So ”once you have a reliable printer” is kinda big thing.
What Prusa is that? Last one I've used (not my own, community lab), I had to level the bed using the sheet-of-paper-method. Which is the reason why I got a Bambu for myself.
My mk3s+ (circa 2020) had a bed sensor. It's still super reliable and I'm only upgrading it to a Core One L because of the upcoming INDX system. Prusa quality, ethics, and true multi-material (not multi-color) in a compact package? Yes please!
Can anyone in the commentariat recommend a great, locally available adhesive in Japan? Vision Miner is import-only and pricey. I’ve been using glue-sticks but am ready to level up as I’m moving away from PLA.
I just have a layer of Cape hairspray, on a hardware store aluminium sheet, taped onto the moving down Z frame with Daiso acrylic foam tapes, on a RAMPS1.4 + SERVO42B modified i3-style Cartesian build, works for me.
Depending on your level of DIY-ness and willingness to handle powders, you could make some Super Goop. I've heard good things about it but haven't yet had enough bed adhesion issues to make it yet.
I don't trust it anymore. I'm using LAN mode today, I have little incentive to update. If I update to anything, it will certainly be third-party modified firmware.
I'm running my P2S in LAN mode. But I also blocked it on my router from connecting outward. Sure I can no longer use the mobile app. But BamBuddy solved that for me. It has a web UI that is mobile browser friendly.
I'm also in the same boat of regret, but for other reasons. Their support team is beyond awful. I purchased an H2S AMS combo just shy of two months ago (mostly because I saw it being praised by HNers a while back) and found out recently that the AMS they've sent me is defective. It's been truly a bizarre experience trying to deal with customer support. They told me to disassemble the AMS and swap a couple of modules that they mailed me. I did, provided them evidence that I did, and provided evidence that it didn't fix the problem. Their response was to claim that I didn't actually swap the modules and that because of that my warranty no longer applies, and then they said they'd give me a free roll of filament for my troubles (lol). At that point I began the process of invoking the consumer protections afforded to me. Called my credit card company and opened a dispute, invoked Massachusetts law M.G.L. c. 93A, and I'm about to contact my AG.
It's a shame they're going in such an anti-consumer direction, both with their gaslighting customer support and the lawfare against Orca.
The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act is your friend. Furthermore, the idea that you could be expected to perform technical labor to repair something is ridiculous: grandma is protected, too, and this type of service falls far outside the scope of what is reasonable.
Odd - I bought an H2C about a month ago - and the nozzle-swapping Vortek rack just wouldn't calibrate or operate - blocking even calibrating the left-nozzle from proceeeding.
However - yes, they did have me perform multiple disassembly/re-connect steps and document, and then of course every question/answer was at least a 24-hr turnaround (some delays were because I keep my printer at my office and chose to work from home a few times), eventually they sent me an entire new Vortek rack - which, once installed worked perfectly.
I was not looking forward to packing the entire thing up and shipping it back.
hmmm - they never asked for the old one back... (hmmm, harvest the servo motor? drag-chains and rods for other projects? Mount it on the wall and use it to store extra induction nozzles? Ideas?)
I have seen one YouTube video that seemed to indicate a problem with pulling filament was because of a little flap within the new 4-1 PTFE filament adapter. There is a little rubber valve/flap (apparently it is a consumable, because the printer came with extra) - which he found if left in-place would cause filament jams, so he removed it, and no more feed problems. (Unfortunately, I cannot find the exact video - I have seen/bookmarked too many)
I had the same experience with their shitty customer service but for something much smaller. I had red filament from bambu that was constantly getting clogged and they had me go through so many hoops. they had me measure the filament thickness in 10 places WITH CALIPERS and also FILM IT. all this shit was a waste of my time. After they asked for even more steps, I just gave up. I felt it wasn’t worth it for a $16 exchange.
But it left a really bad taste in my mouth about the company.
Consumers are used to stuff like Amazon customer service. I wasn’t expecting to waste all that time to exchange 1kg of filament. I thought they’d send it out no hassle and take back the defective filament to research it themselves.
So now when I recommend Bambu, I say the printers are great but their customer service is horrible. So be very careful.
I was offered to return it or try to fix it myself. In the end the fix was even easier than initially thought and it's working great since. No idea if that's because I am in the EU market and not US. They did take their time to respond but otherwise service was ok.
> I was almost just like you I got some recommendations from HN, all of them were for Bambu.
Bambu has spent a ton of dough on paid advertising via YouTube shills (it is absolutely rampant in that scene - I like the channel Maker's Muse as a notable exception, who also has some funny videos up where he reads emails from various vendors trying to bribe or intimidate him in various ways), and many in the HN crows were happy to parrot their talking points to justify their purchases. A winning marketing strategy.
To this day you end up encountering a lot of people who are under the impression Bambu printers somehow made 3D printing accessible or are the only ticket to a problem-free experience. And you know, the product might do that, the problem is the message that they're the only game in town, which has never been true and which they largely achieved on the back of work already done by others for them in software, designs and ecosystem development.
To contrast this: You often hear this about Apple, that they didn't necessarily invent the stuff, but they did the last-mile integration really well. It's incomparable. Apple did far more work on their products than Bambu ever did.
You're rewriting history here because of something that you dislike that happened long after Bambu Labs became popular.
In the beginning Bambu Labs came up with the X1C which is essentially a really good Core XY printer with an enclosure for $1500 that included a revolutionary AMS that no other manufacturer had. If you wanted a printer of similar quality, you would have had to build your own Voron for $1000 with the obvious caveat that you have to order the parts yourself and then assemble it.
Then Bambu Lab releases the P1S, which is comparable to a Voron but cheaper and you don't have to assemble it.
At that point Bambu Labs was no longer just a high end printer company with Apple aesthetics. Regular consumers could afford their printers.
Then they came up with the A1 mini and the AMS Lite. They've started building a printer that is cheaper than an Ender 3, but has the same print quality as the higher end Bambu Lab printers and despite being a gantry design, much faster print speeds with low setup and maintenance. I personally got an A1 mini for $200.
Compared to other Chinese competitors, their printers were both good and affordable. Prusa had good printers that were relatively expensive.
Meanwhile if you bought an Ender 3, which was the community recommendation before Bambu Labs, you basically brought an unreliable low quality piece of garbage into your house that you constantly have to maintain when it breaks or upgrade features that should have been there out of the box. The abysmally bad Ender 3 gave outsiders the impression that most 3D printer enthusiasts treated the printer as the project rather than the things they make with the printer.
Basically, the entire 3D printing community centered itself around a terrible overpriced 3D printer from a company that still produces garbage to this day. Meanwhile if you bought a rather expensive Bambu Labs printer you never had any issues to begin with. If the 3d printer community had centered around e.g. Sovol printers, this disconnect from reality probably have never happened.
Then Bambu Labs came out with the A1 bed slinger and at that point they had a printer that was cheaper and better in every single aspect. The masks from the existing Chinese 3D printer companies peddling you garbage fell off. Suddenly they have X1C, P1S and A1 clones that are 90% as good as Bambu Labs printers. Like, every single manufacturer realized simultaneously that their printers were bad and that they could have sold you printers that weren't terrible.
>And you know, the product might do that, the problem is the message that they're the only game in town, which has never been true and which they largely achieved on the back of work already done by others for them in software, designs and ecosystem development.
You're assuming some marketing fantasy which isn't the case. Most Chinese printer manufacturers simply made terrible products before Bambu Labs. If you restrict yourself to Chinese manufacturers, then Prusa is out. Back in those days when you were buying a Chinese printer, they really were the only game in town.
The thing about doing it on the back of others sounds stupid. There were hundreds of niche 3D printer companies that sold you unsupported products that barely worked. Obviously they didn't write their own software from scratch. They used existing software from the open source printer ecosystem.
>To contrast this: You often hear this about Apple, that they didn't necessarily invent the stuff, but they did the last-mile integration really well. It's incomparable. Apple did far more work on their products than Bambu ever did
Now you're getting things backwards. Bambi Lab's is a lot like Apple here, with the difference that they don't charge Apple level premiums.
I'm wondering how you can take it for granted that they are doing the equivalent of selling a MacBook Pro at the price of a regular MacBook. Bambi Lab also came up with two AMS types before everyone else adopted multi filament printing in a mass consumer basis. Not to mention quality of life features like quick change nozzles.
You shouldn't rewrite history just because you don't like a company. Without Bambi Labs we would be stuck with Creality.
You can use their slicer (which works well!). If you don’t want to, you can use one that sends through their Bambu Connect software, which Orca Slicer doesn’t want to support for…reasons. Or you can use it in LAN mode. Or you can just transfer the gcode via an SD card or flash drive like ye olde days.
Despite the tone of the other reply to your question, they are absolutely the easiest printers to work with. I don’t love their new multicolor solution for how slow it is compared to other options, but that would be the only real fault with their newest line.
After my initial Ender 3v2 (which was my entry point to 3D printing, but a terrible printer otherwise), we bought a Prusa even thought it was much more expensive than Bambu because we wanted to support a European company and because as a European company they are under the GDPR.
It has been absolutely great and low-effort. I haven't needed it yet, but their printers seem to be focused on easy maintenance by their owners.
Speaking about Prusa, my experience has been that they’re very condescending to users.
Extremely basic features (like serial printing) are considered “nice to have”. Some tickets have remained open for over 6 years now and ignored by prusa:
It is well-known that Prusa is rather slow and hesitant to implement new features in their firmware because they really want new features also to work on their very old printers if possible. And Prusa really wants to avoid introducing regressions with new firmware versions (even though they are not perfect regarding this).
Thus, because of this basically promise by Prusa, the pace with which new features become available is much slower.
Prusa is for people who really want their 3D printers supported for a very long time.
Meh. I use bambu and I am a maker but it's not a big thing in my opinion.
I bought a bambu precisely because I don't want to mod the thing with a gazillion custom upgrades like I needed to do with my previous printers to make them work reliably. I just want to press print and... print. Bambu totally delivers there. They really commoditised 3D printing and brought the price down. And if you do want to go off the beaten track they have options.
My hobby is not 3D printer tinkering. It's printing stuff to use. This is clearly what bambu market towards and they do the job really well. I know many people in the makerspace community that spend weeks tuning their perfect Klipper setup. Cool but I prefer spending those weeks perfecting my designs instead. It's hard to overstate the difference they made in out of the box capability especially for the price. And their spare parts are decently priced too.
Now if they start locking down the consumables like other evil companies like 3D Systems and Da Vinci XYZ did then yes. Then they deserve all the blame they can get.
The orcaslicer thing I don't know what to think about yet (I have to read up on it) but the discussion here was more about the local mode.
Ps Bambu isn't the only brand I have. But I do like what they've done. It was exactly what I needed.
My daughter is an architecture student and needed a 3d printer to help with making models for her studio class. She had no desire to learn the ends and outs of 3d printers. She wanted something easy to use and reliable. The Bambu Labs printer I bought her has been just that.
i tossed my ender 3 for this reason alone. it’s just not worth the headache. it’s like the physical manifestation of vim, endless ways to tweak it and you could get lost with the tool instead of getting anything done. and i don’t even have a replacement, i’d rather have nothing than have a headache inducer
I’m about to toss my ender 3 s1 pro. The damn print won’t adhere to the bed. Z-probe calibration, temp towers, bed leveling, wash the plate, use a glue stick, turn the fan down, increase flow rate. I’ve tried it all. Still get spaghetti when I try to print a catamaran toy for my kid.
Ironically I started using orcaslicer recently. It seems cool. But I really just want a working printer. Probably getting a bambu in spite of the angry noises online.
If you don’t print anything proprietary or private, sure go ahead. You can let them intercept your 3d files all day and not be worried when you encounter models they decide they don’t want you to print with your printer in the future. (And trust me, that is ABSOLUTELY what is coming; monitoring everything you print and blocking you from printing anything they — Bambu or Government — deem you shouldn’t be allowed to print.)
That is my issue. I’m not printing guns or anything unsafe. I also don’t know what could happen in the future; it’s not like we get to govern ourselves (unless you buy into that lie). So given that, I’d rather stick with something that won’t have the capacity to stop me from using it later, for any reason.
The developer mode everyone loves to point out only came after massive community backslash to the fact that they made you unable to print without the Cloud. It wasn’t something they planned to add, it was an afterthought added only to quell the complaints and negative press which they can easily take away later again with an OTA firmware update (and have already demonstrated they are willing to).
You might call that noise, I call that a legitimate concern on being able to use the product I bought and paid for in the future. It’s good to be informed of what the “noise” is really about, since people like to marginalize concerns they dismiss or don’t understand. Best of luck with your purchase!
> She had no desire to learn the ends and outs of 3d printers. She wanted something easy to use and reliable. The Bambu Labs printer I bought her has been just that.
Where is this coming from? You absolutely need to know the ins and outs of a 3D printer. Nozzles wear out, build plates wear out, components need to be regularly cleaned properly and lubricated, you have to keep filaments dry, certain filaments can only be used with certain components, you constantly tweak slicer and temperature settings, ... The list goes on.
3D printers, including Bambu Lab printers, are definitely not easy to use nor are they reliable. They're maintenance heavy. Sometimes you have to do a print multiple times because it'll fail for a myriad of reasons. Maybe you oriented it wrong, maybe your slicer settings are off, maybe it didn't have proper supports, maybe the filament is messed up, ...
The maintenance needed is minimal, and Bambu make it easy to learn in their wiki. It even sends you reminders to lubricate the Z-axis (the others don't need it). I've never had a clogged nozzle on my bambu printers but that is also clearly documented.
I've been doing 3D printing for 15 years so I've been through all the heavy maintenance printers. But most of that knowledge I don't need anymore. First layers are always perfect as long as the bed is properly grease free. The only knowledge I still really need is the design for 3D printing, like overhang orientations, seams etc.
That hasn't been my experience. Bambu's documentation, including the guides and wiki, is disjointed and inconsistent. You'll often find contradictions between pages or information that isn't appropriately fleshed out. Sometimes bits and pieces on a topic are spread across several wiki pages and guides. You'll also find that there's now an increase in AI slop in some of the introductory guides (e.g., tons of emdashes and sentences that don't seem to make sense).
Having the printer give you reminders to do something doesn't mean that maintenance is minimal.
Outside of Prusa - how would you compare Bambu's documentation against it's competitors?
In my experience, having owned 2-other printers prior to an X1C - there is absolutely NO comparison - EVERYTHING was community, Reddit, forum or random YouTube guidance from non-manufacturers.
The most common failure in my printing experience is just plain old dirty bed, especially when human hands interact with it. That takes operational discipline especially if you're printing lot of models over time.
I honestly get that, architecture is such a time intensive degree. It is drilled into you to produce results more than to care about the process.. and to spend more time on exploration and resolution than on learning.
I do think though, that a little learning and understanding of your tools is such a useful thing practically and creatively speaking, but also ultimately time saving.
The price is a huge factor in the commoditisation of 3D printing. The design quality too. A 3D printer looks the part, that is important if you have it on your desk.
> A 3D printer looks the part, that is important if you have it on your desk.
Good design is only very partially objective, it's often an acquired taste. I, for example, find Bambu printers with their "glossy Apple-inspired look" incredibly ugly, and strongly prefer the look of Prusa printers.
> Bambu totally delivers there. They really commoditised 3D printing and brought the price down.
Prusa's MK3S delivered consistently good, zero fuss, straight out of the box prints with auto bed leveling for $999 before Bambu labs even existed at all.
Bambu brought Core XY & multi-filament to the "mainstream" (for however mainstream 3D printing is at all), absolutely, but if you just wanted a 3D printer that consistently worked for an affordable price? Prusa beat them to that by years. They just didn't advertise the shit out of it on YouTube like Bambu did.
Prusa unfortunately then kinda just... relaxed? Not sure what happened, but MK3 -> MK4 was pretty meh, the XL was delayed, the Core One a good response but still lacking on the multi-material front, etc...
The MK3S still looks like a kid's science project. The Bambu A1 is much more polished and it costs 1/3 of the price. That price alone is a huge factor in commoditisation. I never considered a prusa for that reason alone.
Prusa is still doing silly things like having 3d printed component manufacturing. I get that they really want the aesthetic and they do make very good products but for a consumer a Bambu printer is just outright a better choice
Dude, the only reason you can be a maker is because of the many hours of work provided by the open source community. The very same one your support is trampling on since it's in favor of a company profiteering from them. All because you don't want to be inconvenienced.. Educate yourself on the issue and start having some respect.
And the open source community is open source precisely to drive the state of the art further.
Having respect for other makers doesn't necessarily mean agreeing on everything.
I'm just giving the other side of the story. If you wish to choose another brand you're free to do so of course. Not all my printers are bambu, in fact my latest one isn't either.
No, dude, open source and more specifically GPL is intended to keep things open and accessible to everyone and out of control of monopoly actors, not to drive state of the art.
Can you agree on not stealing? That's the equivalent of what BL is doing.
What stealing? Their slicer code is in turn published back and made accessible, orcaslicer itself has merged a number of their changes and vice versa.
What you are complaining about is access to their proprietary, and optional cloud control functionality. I'd like for access to be open there too, but them trying to gate what apps can access to that isnt "stealing" from the open source community.
But.. the good news is that any future potential buyers ( like me ) know to avoid that particular vendor. The issue, as it appears to be common lately, is that the number of buyers gets smaller and smaller as regulatory frameworks get more and more onerous. Otoh, I am more than happy to lend a helping hand. This is probably as good of a fight as it gets.
I was lucky enough to have seen the initial controversy and install the X1Plus firmware on my X1C about 2-weeks before lockdown. It has worked flawlessly with OrcaSlicer ever since. For monitoring when I am away from my office, I setup VPN, HomeAssistant and could do it from my computer - but there was also a "Bambu Companion" app released pretty quickly in that timeframe (there are probably others now) which allowed my to replace the "Bambu Handy" functionality on my phone.
So - of course, I swore I would not buy another Bambu. But, when looking at the various pricing and other aspects of competitors - about a month ago I did end-up buying an H2C with double-AMS and an HT - mainly to reduce filament waste, have a larger build volume, be able to use multi-materials for support "quickly" and have active chamber heating for more "engineering" type filaments. Don't believe the hype about the chamber filter though - I have found with ABS, you still need external exhaust or air filtering as even though the chamber "closes" and recycles via the filter, you still have the "poop chute" venting fumes...
... and of course... even if I wanted to switch to LAN-mode, unfortunately OrcaSlicer does not yet support the H2C... perhaps it never will unfortunately...
If you’re eyeing Prusa, that’ll probably be ideal.
...but it does look like Sovol is teasing an INDX alternative (I have a Sovol SV08, it’s a “good value” tinkerer printer based on the Voron)
And if you really want “open”, there’s isn’t much better than a Voron in that aspect.
Same experience. Wanted to get an X1C after I had saved enough, then I was lucky enough to be able to send it back within the 2 weeks time frame. I live in the EU so I was able to demand the refund.
Now I am rebuilding my old Ender 3 with Openbuilds parts into a CoreXY setup, all metal hotend, sturdier metal frame, and the newer RAMPS board with a raspberry pi and klipper setup. Don't know enough about the multi tool related things, but maybe I am gonna focus on that afterwards.
I am having tons of fun while doing so, it has been quite a while since I rebuilt my Anet A8 into an AM8 with a custom Marlin firmware back then.
> my eyes are on Prusa should I want another printer any time soon for any reason.
Have Prusa finally fixed their engineering? Prusa basically sitting inert on the engineering front is what allowed Bambu to leapfrog them.
Bambu made real engineering improvements: linear slides, servomotor for feed, accelerometer tuning, etc. Has Prusa finally decided to compete again? A lot of us are willing to give a company more money for being open source, but the basic product can't be too significantly inferior.
It looks like there is at least one linear slide on the Prusa Core One+ so that's a start...
Bambu won with relentless free giveaways to every YouTuber on the planet, cheap prices, and a consumer friendly looking design.
I don’t think they earned it.
I suspect there is a huge number of people out there who bought them who don’t even know what else exists. They saw a YouTuber advertise one on a video making something and decided to buy that.
Prusa is equally guilty there, I think. Every time I see a Youtuber receiving multiple free Prusa printers, while I continue to save and delay on the high price of getting one myself, I curse them a bit more.
In the last two years I could easily count on one hand the number of Prusas I’ve seen given out. Yeah, it happens.
Bambu is straight up sending them to everyone breathing. 3D printer people? Given Bambu. Tinkerers? Bambu. Lego channels? Yeah seriously Bambu. Way outside the traditional maker channels.
I’m not saying no one should give out free printers. But Bambu is carpet bombing YouTube, and they require the videos be turned into Bambu ads to do it. Having to show it multiple times, talk about its great features multiple times, etc. i’ve never seen the script but I’ve seen enough videos have conspicuously similar elements promoting the printer to know it must a condition.
The videos I’ve seen where people get a free XL mention that fact, maybe one other, but that’s about it. It’s not hammered on like Bambu seems to want.
I think you’re trying to rewrite history. The Bambu printers were really, really good for their price point when they came out. It wasn’t looks or giveaways. The printers were seriously much better hardware than what Prusa had at the time.
I was recommending Prusa to everyone who inquired about 3D printers for many years before Bambu launched, so I’m not unfamiliar with the market.
Trying to criticize Bambu for sending a lot of printers to YouTubers is ironic when Prusa has always done the same thing.
1) The people around me who bought a Bambu P1S or P2S weren't swayed by marketing. Some of them even owned Prusa machines. They bought those Bambu printers because they had products they needed printed, and the Bambu got it done while the Prusa failed prints and made them dork around with things.
2) The A1 minis are cheap and look good to consumers; they also work remarkably reliably. Prusa doesn't have anything even remotely in the same class. That is squarely the fault of Prusa.
3) A lot of people who don't know any better can go to Best Buy and buy a Bambu in stock, off the shelf, with a return policy. Again, the fault lies squarely with Prusa.
4) The Bambu printers had fundamentally better components like linear slides and servo motors, for example. Again, fault to Prusa.
Prusa got caught with their pants down and refused to adjust for far too long. Bambu did genuine engineering while Prusa rested on its laurels.
3) is marketing and access to capital that Prusa don't have. 4) Prusa is of similar quality in my experience, or both machines have their problems for different reasons. I would need to run a scientific experiment.
There is no argument in which Bambu succeed solely on technical merit alone. Bambu can outspend Prusa due to access to venture capital funding and state support. That is a structural advantage that cannot be easily overcome.
>
Have Prusa finally fixed their engineering? Prusa basically sitting inert on the engineering front is what allowed Bambu to leapfrog them.
This was the time when Prusa produced the MK3... printers. The MK4S was already a huge step forward: in my opinion - privacy topics aside - already better than Bambu's offerings for some applications (even though these applications were possibly not the ones that the masses care(d) about).
The Core One+ and the Core One L that were released after that are really good printers. Also the Prusa XL is a great printer for what it has been designed for if you give it some maintenance love (note however that the Prusa XL was from a time when less people wanted to print filaments that strongly profit from a heated chamber, so the Prusa XL was - in opposite to the Core One and Core One L - not designed with a focus on this).
Yeah, same. It is hard; we start to need a collective boycott.
We can all do our part, by using their products as little as possible, contribute to open alternatives (OpenStreetMap, Fediverse, Linux, Nextcloud...) and by stimulating our (non-techie!) friends and family.
I wouldn't hold your breath. The government is reliant on them for surveillance, censorship, and propaganda. It is a synergistic relationship, not adversarial.
We cannot vote with our wallets because there’s no real competition. That’s the problem with the big tech companies and other monopolistic companies in other areas.
Everything that gets money from ads. The network effects are too strong for competition against their ads platform and their ability to do targeted advertising based on data only they have. You can’t build a new ads platform and then use that to monetize your company’s other services, because the existing ad networks are so mature and established.
Phones. Your choice is Apple or Google.
As you said, YouTube. Again, they have users and creators in one place, so it’s hard for a new platform to compete.
There are also a lot of enterprise contracts that bundle many things together. Like cloud and their workplace apps (whatever it is now called).
But also, just their size is a problem. Look at their AI story. First off, many customers get forced into packages where they get Gemini included as part of the bundle (which means they’re paying for it automatically and have less of a reason to pay for something else). But also - Google was slow to build useful products here. Even though they are late and made many failed attempts like Bard, they can afford to take losses for years that no small company - or maybe even large companies that aren’t mega corps - can absorb. Those other competitors would go out of business and have to be careful and move slowly in spending. But Google’s capital lets them make mistake after mistake but still compete and eventually win. So it’s not a fair competition.
It should have been the government providing an identity verification API, like they already do in the physical world with physical IDs. Governments dropped the ball, and so now Apple and Google get to be infrastructure.
Do you think identifies never need to be verified? Seems like a central function in operating an accountable society, hence birth certificates, passports, etc.
There should not be a requirement to verify identity, but if a website owner only wants to provide access to their website to people with verified identities, why is that not their right?
> Do you think identifies never need to be verified? Seems like a central function in operating an accountable society, hence birth certificates, passports, etc.
Verifying identity for specific services tied to your finances or body is a whole different topic.
> if a website owner only wants to provide access to their website to people with verified identities, why is that not their right?
I like the GDPR's general point of view that the right to privacy is more important than the right to trade privacy for access. An anonymous verification might be fine, but this system is not, and random websites needing your specific identity is not.
A mechanism to verify identity does not preclude a mechanism for anonymous verification of other attributes. I do not see why someone else should be able to tell you (a business or person) who you have to allow access to your computers and your bandwidth that you pay for. Costco has the right to verify my identity when I walk into their store, I don't see why computing resources would be different.
> I do not see why someone else should be able to tell you (a business or person) who you have to allow access to your computers and your bandwidth that you pay for.
The spirit of the law isn't to tell you that, it's to limit how much you can track people without their consent.
> Costco has the right to verify my identity when I walk into their store, I don't see why computing resources would be different.
That falls under "Verifying identity for specific services tied to your finances or body". You bought a membership, they're checking your membership.
If it was a store without a membership, then for practical purposes in real life we let them look at your ID but they shouldn't be allowed to record any identifying data off of it. When it's all done by machines we should use cryptography to make it anonymous from the start.
The US government is a feckless facade, the US is a corporation run economic zone. The nice thing about being corporate run is that the rulers are unelected and unaccountable!
These days every time a government as much as thinks of imponging on a supranational corporation's right to do whatever the hell it pleases you'll hear no end of cries ranging from "overregulation" to "tyranny".
The technical challenge is actually the smaller one. The real one is to get people to care. Don't be tricked by the HN/techie bubble. Most people don't understand the problem, or don't see it as a problem because nothing smacked them in the face yet. Any attempts to explain it makes you sound like a lunatic to some, or just a bit of a worrier to others.
Whether it's targeted ads, or training AI on their data, or verifying their age and implicitly identity, or "fraud defense", most people happily take it in exchange for a convenient freebie which is why things keep escalating.
It's understandable, people are assaulted with all kinds of abuses from every direction. There are more immediate threats that they can grasp more easily so this stuff has to wait its turn.
"Technical" isn't really what I meant in the first place. It's about convenience/UX. Lots of OSS has been technically great but very lacking in that part, understandably.
The prime recent example of this is gamers. I've seen many people say a version of this: "I tried Linux before but it was too complicated/didn't run most games/when I ran into something I had no idea how to solve it, so I just went straight back to Windows. Now I installed Bazzite cause I was fed up with Win11 and I'm super happy with it. If I do run into a problem I just ask AI and it solves it".
I've genuinely seen dozens of comments similar to this. The fact is that there needs to be a very convenient and user-friendly alternative ready to go for the moment that some people do start to care. You need both just as much as each other. And until very recently, those alternatives didn't exist, not at the level of convenience required.
Fair enough. Then as I said, the technical part has been a huge barrier because it has prevented the majority of those who do care from migrating. That changing is really nice, and I'm convinced it's partially behind the acceleration of Google and friends taking over the internet with attestation and such as this post is about.
Just doing a casual search will show you so many people migrating off of managed SaaS to self-hosted solutions and from closed source platforms to OSS ones over the last 12 month, the acceleration is massive and it's due to the combination of LLM themselves and the quality of these things going up. Just 3 years ago it was still very niche, common on HN but near unheard of outside of it. A lot of people who always wanted to do it but just didn't have the time. The SaaS stocks getting crushed isn't just all vibes, there's a real move behind it.
> Most people don't understand the problem, or don't see it as a problem because nothing smacked them in the face yet.
Or don't approach the world with a fundamental mindset of having agency to (help) fix things they see as broken. Just because people see something as bad doesn't mean they inherently see a bright flashing line from that to "so I should do something about it rather than accept it".
IMO the biggest issue is that some non-tech people will occasionally be straight up hostile and will whine about not having "features", but then again it only takes a small amount of people taking action inflict real change. Also medium term we need to start making phones (smart OR dumb) that are FOSS as possible.
> Linux
Open/FreeBSD too, we need to have more redundancy.
You think systems that have adblockers installed will keep being able to pass WEI / Google Cloud Fraud Defence checks?
This is an attestation scheme. Attestation is about controlling what software you are and aren't allowed to run. If a future version of this allows desktop browsers rather than just phones, it will almost certainly try to do similar forms of attestation, and prevent you from controlling your own software stack.
The problem is this type of controlling move, that will be used to benefit their company, is one among many things a company like Google can do that is unethical. They won’t stop. They are too powerful and can get away with it repeatedly. Even if this one thing is stopped, there will always be another dark pattern or another privacy violation or another anti-competitive thing.
We really need brand new legislation that makes it much easier to break up companies that are too big, and also to tax mega corporations at a much higher rate than all other companies. Then we can have fair competition and the power of choice. But the existing laws end up with no real consequence for these companies, and even if there’s some slap on the wrist, it takes years in court. New laws must make it very fast and low cost for society to take action.
But remember: once again, don't simply get angry at Google the institution. Get angry at Page and Brin personally. They have the power to prevent this, a power they were careful to preserve when they gave Google its IPO. They are fully responsible for Google's choices here. But, partly because they aren't constantly jumping up and down drawing attention to themselves on social media, they've tended to escape the same personal scrutiny given to eg. Elon Musk. That needs to end.
It's additional software that many users didn't ask for, don't want and will not be aware of. Reminds me a bit of back when installing software was a minefield due to all of the integrated "promotions" for things like toolbars, only now they've vertically integrated the unwanted software, cutting out the middleman.
Honestly, for most features you could justifiably say its fine. I mean honestly, how large is an English dictionary? 100 KiB? That is a far cry from 4 GiB. Just taking up 4 GiB of disk space without even asking is indeed a shit move no matter how you shake it. If Microsoft Word updated and suddenly took up 4 GiB more for something like a dictionary, it might not cause as much uproar as if it were something that many people are tired of hearing about and not interested in, but I'm not sure you would find a single soul who would find that acceptable, more just tolerated, probably partly because a lot of people simply wouldn't know better.
> It's additional software that many users didn't ask for, don't want and will not be aware of
You just described 95% of the parts of all software, especially in this era. And think of the Web - how many gigabytes of terrible adtech and tracking code does the average user download in a month of web browsing without an adblocker? Remember, each one probably packages in a couple hundred NPM dependencies into its bundle.
I don't have even a single use for Siri on my Mac. It's useless AND redundant with the Siri that I have to have on my phone, yet Apple downloaded and installed "Siri" on there. If I install GarageBand which is the only first-party way to do basic audio manipulation, Apple installs at least 4GB of audio samples on my Mac.
None of this is to say "I approve of this exact thing Google is doing" - just that I agree with GP that this is exactly the same as what every big company (and many small ones) do every day.
The only "consent" we ever get is basically the all-or-nothing EULA we have to click Agree to in order to log in for the first time - the relevant terms are "Want computer? Accept that we will be shipping you all kinds of code constantly, for 'reasons.'"
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.
> The article doesn't mention Chrome version, release channel, whether on fresh vs existing install an if settings were altered.
Actually, it does claim this is the stable release channel. And it's reasonable to assume that if the author is documenting on a fresh profile / user account on the Mac, they probably downloaded the current (that day) release, though we're inferring when don't don't truly know for sure.
> 10. Code-signed, shipped through the normal release channel. This is not test build behaviour. It is Chrome stable.
I think it's poor form to run cover for one of the biggest corporations in the world like this. Don't let them off the hook. As the author correctly points out, metered connections are being abused. Hell, last month I somehow hit ATT's bandwidth limits on my mobile and got throttled for five days. It made my phone so unusable that I turned on hotspot on my work phone and connected to that over wifi when I went to lunch.
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 ).
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.
That's going to the opposite extreme. Making major components optional and including some basic information about what they are at install time is easy to do. It's very common with creative software and even some games.
I think this will be increasingly true in this extended period of more expensive memory and storage media. The Macbook Neo, for example, has 250GB onboard storage and 8gb memory. Many users will not want to spend 2% of their storage and allocate half their memory just to run a web browser.
I agree that the disk usage we're discussing here is especially painful on that hardware, but:
> "just to run a web browser"
I don't even mean to be hyperbolic here, but 'running a web browser' is almost the only purpose of a MacBook Neo for at least 90% of its target audience.
Consider what normal people do on a laptop:
- Email - web browser
- Social media - web browser
- pay bills, research, book trips - web browser
- watch video content - web browser
For many users, you could hide the Dock and just autolaunch Chrome at Startup and it wouldn't have any negative impact on them.
And I'd bet that any browser with more than 5 tabs open, especially without an adblocker, is using whatever portion of its paltry 8GB of RAM that the OS hasn't hogged. So the argument to be made for allowing some feature bloat (and paying the space cost) in a browser is that this is probably the app most people will spend 75-100% of their time in anyway.
Running a web browser _with a local AI model_ is likely something that most users are not aiming for. This is extra disk and bandwidth for something that benefits Google but does nothing for the average user.
I think it's the same extreme, it just shows up in different places, but fair enough. Both views are problematic.
Making major components optional
"I don't want no steenkin DB installed!". Unclick box...app doesn't work right, and now it's the vendors fault, and the vendor has to spend the time to explain to the (possibly non- or even anti-technical) user why. And the user will be on social media complaining about you.
Now, if you want some more extreme thinking, you in theory might never need to develop with a DB; you can just explicitly code all data handling in the app. There you go...no complaints about superfluous installs. Does any developer want to do that? Probably not; DBs are pretty nice abstractions for data handling.
And that's how the AI model here will be justified: this is how apps are built now, accept it or don't use the app. True or not, that'll be the party line.
including some basic information about what they are at install time is easy to do
Easy to do; hard to support. Now you're dealing with "I don't even know what a database is, much less do I want it or not" and you're doing tech support again. And the user will be on social media complaining about you.
Of course, the assumption that most users pay any attention at all to the instructions, disclosures and T&Cs of their software is almost comically quaint. Click, click, click, install.
I think this will be increasingly true in this extended period of more expensive memory and storage media.
This is by no means the first (or, yet AFAIK, worst) shortage of computer components. In the previous ones, I recall noone who said "I won't upgrade to the latest, more bloated version of MYReallyImportantApp because I don't have enough disk/memory/cpu". They delete a less important app, or accept performance isn't so good, or bite the bullet and find the scratch to upgrade. YMMV. And complain about it on social media.
Many users will not want to spend 2% of their storage and allocate half their memory just to run a web browser.
Oh yes they will. For many/most users, a web browser is pretty much all they use outside of maybe games. And most users have exactly zero idea how much each app consumes...they just assume when they double click it's go-time.
Personally, I doubt anything more than "This app uses AI. You good? Y/N." will work.
> It's additional software that many users didn't ask for, don't want and will not be aware of
> You just described 95% of the parts of all software, especially in this era. And think of the Web - how many gigabytes of terrible adtech and tracking code does the average user download in a month of web browsing without an adblocker? Remember, each one probably packages in a couple hundred NPM dependencies into its bundle.
So what are you saying? Don't be mad over this becoming the norm, just shut up and sit down and accept it?
The story is only trending because it’s an AI model and the internet is anti-ai right now. It’s a double standard.
It’s like how people are outraged that electricity is being used in data centers to power AI models. When you do the math, the power consumption is far, far less than all the other things you do all day without thinking twice. But again, anti-AI double standard
>A product like Chrome probably has 10,000-ish features, maybe more.
It doesn't have 10,000-ish features that take 4GB of space.
Chrome doesn't take 40TB on my hard drive.
The machine I'm typing it on has 10GB free right now, and that was after I cleaned it up. I noticed the hard drive filling up when I was doing nothing, but I didn't suspect Chrome of all tihngs.
if someone doesn’t want ai on their devices, you think it’s a double standard that they’re annoyed when it’s installed anyway?
i’m not anti-ai by any stretch, but to pretend like their personal choices don’t matter is a bit too dismissive. it’s their choice, we probably shouldn’t imply other people having their own personal taste is hysterical or whatever it is you’re dancing around.
There are many technologies that begin in the corporate world on the enterprise level, and/or in research and education fields, and then trickle down to consumers. And basically anytime a tech reaches consumers, it's a fait accompli; it's ingrained in the business world 100%; scientists and defense contractors have blessed it.
The Avalanche Has Already Started. It is Too Late for the Pebbles to Vote. -- Ambassador Kosh Naranek
The funny thing about "AI Data Centers!!1!" is that they're unsurprising to anyone who knows the progression of this. First there were gigantic computers. Then telecom closets and machine rooms. Those machine rooms and closets got big and hungry! But they were hidden inside drab office space and far inside security perimeters and nobody really paid them mind, because it was part of doing business for the businesses.
Then came the cloud mania and corporations began gutting their machine rooms and migrating to the clouds. So if the consumption and demand for resources ramped up, who knows, but it was transferred from a very distributed, scattered model to centralized in a few big datacenters.
And now those datacenters are becoming an end unto themselves and everyone's gotta get one. Yeah, the scale and consumption of computing increases, but this has been evolutionary and it's only alarming because now, you can drive around a big city and pass several obvious data centers (and a few non-obvious ones) on your way. Did people freak out over AT&T constructing central offices? Dunno, those meant a lot of jobs. We all needed to reach out and touch someone.
The 'internet' is not an entity. Outrage and engagement drive ads. Beyond that 'AI' has very little benefit for most people and it's straight loss if you look at consumer electronics (getting price out of PCs) or energy prices.
I’m actually quite interested in this on device scam detection and might be installing chrome on my aunts computer. She’s an upper 70s millionaire widow who is constantly confused and attacked by a deluge of convincing scam emails.
Just fyi, this is not a temporary phenomenon, not a phase. People dont like spam, robocalls, persistent advertising, even as we use the tools that enable them. They definitely wont like massive job losses, if that actually comes to fruition. Constant surveillance, "slop" news and entertainment, significantly reduced human contact - not popular. Like most technologies, AI benefits a small group - those who control the means of production - but everyone else loses out.
Not just the Internet either. People are actively talking about data centres using available electricity, and the constant push from employers of using AI for things it clearly isn't suited for. Not to mention the constant "Let me talk to a real person" requests -- people see AI's everywhere and often have no desire to interact with them.
It certainly makes me uncomfortable given the current capabilities of AI and what the tech CEOs have said about what they see AI becoming. It's not just like any other feature. Am considering uninstalling and no longer using Chrome on principle now.
Those disks have been too small to be a reasonable default, and getting even more unreasonable by the day, for a decade, so while I agree that's a great reason to be quite peeved about this move, I'd be mad at Apple even more.
I'm surprised so many people still use Chrome. there are perfectly serviceable browsers which block ads. do normies not know you can block ads if you use a different browser?
They don't. A large number of them don't even care. Some even click on all of the "allow this site to send you notifications" and then proceed to get spammed by hundreds of notifications on their phone/PC. And don't mind it.
You are very right, though it's difficult for those of us here to imagine it. 20 years ago, people would browse the Web through a 11-inch by 4 inch slit because all the adware toolbars had nearly occluded the whole viewport. Today most of the webpages themselves look like that without an adblocker and most people just tolerate it. And even click the ads!
It clearly isn't the only other option - otherwise you wouldn't have people like you and others in this thread being outraged about people taking one of the other options.
That we as a society are beholden to corporations is a myth those corporations want you to believe but its not how things actually work. If we come together to say no then those corporations either comply or will cease to exist.
What did I say that made you think I’m outraged? If a product isn’t suiting you, just use a different product. Personally, I switched to Firefox years ago.
I’m a bit confused about the activist mindset being applied to a web browser, as if there’s some kind of human right that entitles you to dictate what will or won’t be bundled inside Chrome.
If the internet was like this in 2015, there would have been riots over Chrome implementing DRM for video. Widevine?! Not on our watch!
Is it? It's kind of the heart of the matter - just because something is common doesn't mean it's acceptable. The difference is that in our society we've all agreed the sacrificing is no longer acceptable.
I, personally, have found the adtech bloat (for both disk space and processor usage) to be a huge issue for quite some time. If this is the hill where the public decides to take a stand I'll happily stand beside them to try and reverse this gradual enshittification. I think several other hills were more worthy to defend but nobody noticed those ones so apparently this is the place to fight that fight.
I doubt anyone would appreciate software bloat purely because of how widespread it is[1] - it just hasn't risen to the level where it's so noticeable for such a contemporarily controversial topic yet.
1. As an aside - ubisoft game sizes are absolutely bonkers. I didn't realize that each Assassin's Creed had twelve different operating systems crammed into it but I can't see how else they're clocking in where they do.
Yeah, I was surprised to learn that Ticket to Ride (downloaded on Steam) uses like a half gigabyte, but the most data-intense thing it does is a few musical tracks and 2D images with scaling. They fit Final Fantasy 3 (SNES) with 3 CDs of music (albeit low quality) and Mode 7 graphics for the airship onto like 3 MB.
I would confidently state that in terms of hours of enjoyment per byte, nothing can come even close to the 16-bit era. I can't count how many hours of Super Mario World I played. 512 freakin KB. I don't think anything will ever come close to it - and even if you measured one full typical playthrough.
>They fit Final Fantasy 3 (SNES) with 3 CDs of music (albeit low quality) and Mode 7 graphics for the airship onto like 3 MB.
Sure, the good old days where _all of this didn't work without specialized hardware that you bought with every single cartridge_. Mode 7 didn't come for free, it was an entire additional, single purpose chip in the cart on a console that didn't have any concept of task management or even OS. But hey, if you want to have to plug in and swap PCIE cards for each piece of software that you want to run, feel free to reinstall DOS.
There's a name for when a virus scanner finds a program that may have a legitimate purpose, yet is typically bundled into other software in a malicious manner.
It's called a PUP, or Potentially Unwanted Program and most anti-viruses offer to remove them. They can be legitimately installed, but often aren't. (Usually they were shipped in the installers of legitimate software downloaded from sketchy distributors.)
Random AI models being shipped with Chrome is very much a PUP. The user wanted to browse the internet, not use a model. They'd install an extension if they wanted that.
The Ask toolbar was seen as a virus. Mozilla had massive user bleed in Firefox due to installing sponsored extensions in the browser. The only reason this shit isn't regarded the same way is because it's both done by Google and because it's labeled with AI, so all AI bros have to retroactively find an excuse to justify it.
Equating a 4GB file installed without explicit consent to the installation of a language dictionary is comical. That's like saying an unwanted political mailer left in your mailbox is the equivalent of a pallette of hammers left in your driveway.
It sounds like you have a specific number of GB in mind that an app can take up, below which it's totally their business, and above which they need to plead their case, disclose the purpose, and allow me to choose.
What's that number? How did you arrive at it and why?
My Chrome binaries are about 700MB on Mac and 500MB on Windows. Is this below or your line, or are they actually in trouble as soon as they're extracted?
My point is just that it seems there may be an arbitrary limit here that may not be the same for everyone (and 90% of users are nontechnical and thus couldn't give an answer whether 4GB is "worth it" for whatever the features are). Rather than add another whole ecosystem of "Cancel or Allow?" dialogs I'd rather operating systems did a better job of letting users put piggish applications on a strict space budget. Most of the apps on my phone are storing half a gig of "stuff" (called "Documents & Data" but not itemized, and even apps that have none of my 'data' such as browsers), which I can't force them to dump even in an extreme emergency. I can only delete the whole app.
I'm talking about Apple platforms as examples because I use those a lot and with their epic stinginess of SSD, anyone who doesn't pay $400 more than the base model will exhaust their storage within hours to months.
People don't typically have specific numbers already set aside whenever they discuss what is too much. The example given was people can handle a political flyer in the mailbox but not a pallet of hammers delivered in their driveway. Do you have specific amounts (probably will need to be a weight limit and a volume limit) already figured out when you think of how much junk someone can mail to you reasonably? Or how much HD space a browser is allowed to install before it gets to be not-their-buisness?
So as long as I'm allowed to bump into you I can also smash your face in, right? After all there isn't any clear point where I'm applying too much force.
agreed that not everyone has the same limit, but 4GB is big enough to be annoying to many. that still costs real money (in bandwidth) and storage (on low-end hardware) for a lot of folks.
> My Chrome binaries are about 700MB on Mac and 500MB on Windows
That's kind-of the point though right? An application that has been say <700 MB for decades, suddenly deciding it'll take a multiple of it's size without asking seems pretty unreasonable, I think it's pretty fair to say the expectations for Chrome were set already.
It'd be similarly unreasonable for a video game that once took 50 GB, to suddenly decide to take 400 GB.
Local storage and cache only have limits relative to available disk space in Chrome, IIRC, and can easily bloat to 100 GB without intervention. Personally I think that's a design flaw and they need customizable hard limits as well, but web browsers wasting space without asking is not a new or sudden development.
What a completely asinine post. I'm sick of seemingly smart people in the technical world think they are being so clever by trying to literally rehash the continuum fallacy. You hear this literally everytime anyone even so much as suggests a standard, norm or god forbid a regulation. It seems especially common among libertarian types who think governance of any kind of simply impossible because of it.
Just because there is a gradual spectrum between two states doesn't mean we can't draw distinctions. For example, just because we cannot define the exact, precise color when blue turns into green, it does not mean that blue and green are the same color for any normal person discussing an issue publicly in good faith.
When someone says "X and Y are on a spectrum, X is good and Y is bad", the point is to highlight the differences. Pointing out that the spectrum or continuum might not have a precise boundary has literally zero weight towards the validity of the ultimate conclusion a person is making here and really is just a complete derail done by people who have no substantive points to make.
The idea I was replying to suggests "consent" is needed, but apparently just for this one example of bloat.
And doesn't explain how normal non-hacker users (99% of the audience) are supposed to judge what "4GB" means to them.
I'm all for users getting to have more control over the usage of their finite resources, especially in this cursed age of soldered-down storage and RAM. But I disagree that some dialog that explains the feature and asks permission to use 4GB would improve anything. Honestly, it wouldn't even improve the PR with this crowd, it would just change the headline to "Chrome pushing users to download and install a 4GB model for so-called 'AI features'!"
Agreed. If anything your comment is too charitable. This is just one of the GP's highly sophistic comments here. Considering how he is exploiting the sorites paradox, I wouldn't be surprised if he bases his sophism on Zeno's paradox from time to time.
Excuse me while I go count the hairs on my chin to see if they are >= MIN_BEARD_THRESHOLD.
I'm sorry to have offended you. I had to go research all your interesting Greek philosophy terms.
I don't think it's too much to ask that someone at least define their line if they are saying apps must ask permission to use disk space. I didn't say consent is irrelevant. And I think when you're asking to burden the user with a technical question such as "Can I use 4GB" I struggle to see how most people can make a good informed choice. You can argue in this one case that the AI model is not useful and therefore it's "good actually" if users, not being able to judge what 4GB is, reject it even when they actually had plenty of space. But it seems like those who disagree with me here aren't really speaking to whether the model is useful (or if it has future potential), they're mad specifically about an app downloading a thing that's 'too big.'
Also, just pointing out - Apple also uses ODMs, which it installs on its customers' hardware via its normal default-on software update procedure, to power its (imho mostly useless) AI - to great praise for the positive privacy ramifications of on-device. So it's interesting to me that this one model's presence is being cited as a betrayal of user trust. I admit though that it's whataboutism to imply that excuses the behavior of anyone else - if we are saying that any software downloading anything over 1GB (or whatever) is bad.
Personally I'm pissed at both. A large jump in requirements without warning is bad, if I want to avoid it I now need to take immediate less considered actions or get stuck with the consequences. Plenty of decent software actually lets you decide what plugins to install for added functionality, chrome actually has a extensions store that they could have put this crap in.
Yes it's also that it's AI and mostly that chrome is foisting off all the cost of that AI model to me and other users. Without warning and explaining what this model is, is my workplaces power cost going to be up 10% because of whatever they want to run it for? Who knows.
There'd be a lot less complaining if they'd actually warned and less still if they asked.
Honestly this is 2026. Chrome on my phone is nearly 2gb. Google on my phone is 1gb. 4gb storage isn't outrageous, Windows barely runs on anything below 128gb storage. Right now my phone has 445gb unused memory and usage isn't likely to go up much. My PlayStation eats 500gb for breakfast. Heck I use a 2011 Thinkpad for casual use and it should still be fine with it.
This is also GOOGLE chrome, it serves their ends, in the past that was to render internet unimpeded (they saw a need then), needs change.
I'd rather models serve most requests locally anyway, so long as it's not destroying my battery life.
Remember the whole chrome-RAM-gate saga? This shouldn't be shocking to anyone.
PC's shipping 8gb ram, Google removing ad blocker extensions, these should be the real rally points.
To get so upset over this is crazy, no need to be so pedantic. Needs change.
Your 2015 MacBook pro had 8gb ram and 128gb storage, the current equivalent has minimum 24gb ram and 1tb or 2tb. Please explain what you're using all this storage for??
Raw footage or something, well there's some double standards it's just a photo too if this is just a browser. 4gb is immaterial.
The issue is the size of the 'update' and the impact it'z going to have on your computer performance.
If tomorrow Google was to include a Blockchain miner in Google chrome, you'd still say you consented to it by using their software ?
Because I'm pretty sure that this LLM is also going to be used by Google to gather data on the user and feeding it to Google, hence just like the Blockchain miner using our computer ressources (space & performance) to feed Google yearly benefits.
> Reminds me a bit of back when installing software was a minefield due to all of the integrated "promotions" for things like toolbars, only now they've vertically integrated the unwanted software, cutting out the middleman.
You know, I never thought about it like that, but it is true. The bloat and spyware is a core part of the OS now.
Chrome installs additional software that 99% of users don't use. It can intercept and modify code running on your computer, and spies on all network requests. Hackers use it to analyze potential vulnerabilities. 90% of users aren't even aware that it exists!
> It's additional software that many users didn't ask for, don't want and will not be aware of.
You just described at least 90% of the software packages on your machine, if not 100%. Almost all software contains modules that go unused by certain users.
You could say the same thing about shipping V8 with Chrome. Some users disable JS so shipping V8 with Chrome is additional software they didn't ask for.
The old unix administrator would expect a platform to ship choice of JS that would be in /usr/bin/JS. The local administrator would add their local choice of JS /usr/local/bin/V8.
The browser would then have a configuration option of which JS interpreter to use.
Bad analogy. "Some users disable it" is very different from "it was introduced without any notification or information about what it does and the vast majority of laypeople have negative sentiment toward it".
Local subreddits are filled with posts "calling out" usage of AI by local businesses or governments. Consensus is that persons who are found out to be be AI users should be fired or resign, businesses that use it should be boycotted / shamed, etc.
ChatGPT (a 3 year old product) has nearly one billion WAU.
Some people detest businesses slopping AI at them, but the evidence suggests consumers love using AI, which is presumably one of the primary uses of a micro LLM model that runs locally on your computer and is embedded in your browser.
People that post on "local subreddits" and the randos that protest datacenters are once again a vocal minority. Reddit in particular is probably the most echo-chambery destination on the web.
There's an important distinction between chatbots people go to on websites or download from the app store versus a product downloading without their consent. There's also a massive difference from large power and water hungry data centers being built near people. I don't think those are particularly popular across party lines regardless of ChatGPT usage.
So yeah in general AI as a helpful tool people use online is popular. AI to replace jobs, build data centers and do unknown things on your device without consent, not so much. AI to potentially replace workers, not popular at all.
I'm not sure you understand the distinction you are making.
The model Google is shipping with Chrome runs on device. ChatGPT does not. The people that dont like data centers should love this feature. Same with people who are concerned about privacy.
> I mean honestly, how large is an English dictionary? 100 KiB?
If it contains less than 50,000 words, perhaps, but most standard print dictionaries contain ~500,000 entries. The size of /usr/share/dict/words on my system is 954 KiB and the small version of the cracklib dictionary is 481 KiB.
It's not processor op-codes, but sure it's part of the software. You wouldn't say that a set of precomputed weights in a numerical integrator aren't part of the software, would you? Or say that the graphics in a game aren't part of the software?
How does that change anything? It doesn't matter if you categorize it as software or not, unwanted is unwanted. And frankly I just flatly disagree, you could certainly make the case that model weights are a form of software.
If they downloaded a 4GiB media file of some Irish band that nobody asked for, people would be upset as well. It doesn't matter what the 4GiB contains. If it is not going to be used by the user and the user didn't ask for it, that's just idiotic to think people would not be upset about it.
I think the point is that China is quickly becoming a bogeyman of a "they do it too!" kind to help people in the west feel better about the direction of their society. Ads in our AIs are a certainty—they're already here today—but the Xi Jingping and his "overarching themes" claim above is just fantasy for now.
You're illustrating something related but separate. There's no disagreement here that they perform basic censorship.
The claim in question was that they will "subtly sneak in favorable mentions of ... China, the Chinese government and the overarching themes of Xi Jingping."
I tried this on NixOS, but it doesn't seem to be easily reproducible. There's no /usr/bin/su - okay, fine: I changed it to /run/wrappers/bin/su, but that didn't work, and I think the reason why is because the NixOS suid wrappers have +x but not +r:
Not that this makes the underlying mechanism of the exploit any better, but I wonder what else you can do with it. Is there a way to target a suid binary that doesn't have +r? I guess all of the suid binaries necessarily don't, since the wrapper system doesn't grant it and you can't have suid binaries in the /nix/store.
I know it's also unrelated, but this is the most aggressively obvious LLM slop copy I've ever seen and it is a page with like 30 sentences. I guess we're just seriously doing this, huh?
It's the same with Gentoo, setuid binaries are installed without read permission.
But modifying a setuid binary is just the demo exploit that was published with the vulnerability disclosure. The vulnerability actually allows modifying four bytes in any readable file. That means system configuration files, other binaries intended to be run by root, libraries... It's not limited to modifying setuid binaries.
> 42.9 units of insulin from a single photo. That’s not a rounding error. That’s a potential fatality.
Shit like this is why you shouldn't involve AI output in your writing process. It's especially ironic in an article about LLMs being unreliable... but it's pointless when the pre-print seems just fine at least to my eyes.
I want to respect the guidelines for the good of the community, but at this point it isn't serving the community well for there to not be backlash against the rising flood of AI-generated garbage.
It was really truly bad enough when it was ~half the articles either being about AI directly or indirectly. Now it's that, plus half of it is written by Claude too.
What meaningful community is going to be left for these guidelines to protect?
Moderation needs to put their foot down in some cases, as a matter of necessity. Sometimes users need to put their foot down, too.
I'm all for banning AI slop articles. The HN guidelines were recently updated to address slop comments[1], but they have not put their foot down yet about slop articles.
And while searching for a reference, I found the original Qt Quarterly, archived here: https://doc.qt.io/archives/qq/qq13-apis.html - I am sure some of it is just hopelessly outdated, but the general insights probably still hold up. There's a probably-more-modern successor here on their wiki: https://wiki.qt.io/API_Design_Principles
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