The problem isn't the US oligarchy taking another step to fascism: The problem is so few people complaining about it. The opposing politicians being the obvious failure in the task. Bureaucrats in US GOA or Department of War could demand certain information be included in the purchase, ditto for repair skills and diagnostic equipment rental.

Everyone is avoiding the real problem, one that's existed for 10 years: School devices connect to the internet. If parents really cared about online games, if teachers cared about ChatGPT, if bureaucrats really cared about stranger danger, they'd ensure these devices connect only to the school wi-fi. Parents should be demanding that coursework is downloaded at school and doesn't need Pearson's servers tracking their child, to work.

"End to end" means that the servers holding the data can't decrypt it. (What all those 'think of the children' types complain about.) If the server is the end-point, it's not actually end-to-end security. Marketing executives are moving the goal-posts so that cloud services can pretend to care about their customers.

Is this meant to impress parents? If parents had any self-awareness, they'd demand ALL billionaires pay taxes to vaccinate, feed and educate the country's children: That like other countries, the federal government enforced a minimum level of healthcare and education (more than a NCLB exam) by the states. At the moment, many US states treat children as an avoidable expense.

Remember, many states are converting education funding to a voucher scheme: Do voucher-funded schools care about NCLB? Do they receive sufficient money that they can ignore federal education incentives?

Translation: Facts give our customers a reason to dislike and distrust our business practices.

It's is terrifying the number of corporations demanding the US first amendment give them the right to hide the truth. This is why US courts must not give human rights to legally-immortal corporations.

The study found that disadvantaged groups have worse health outcomes: Why am I not surprised?

The study concludes that phone usage causes worse outcomes: It is possible that worse outcomes happened before the phone usage. Since these are disadvantaged groups, that is essentially guaranteed.

The damage caused by many hours of sedentary behaviour, have been known for decades: This outcome is expected. In addition, multiple studies seem to identify young females as having worse outcomes. In practice, it is seen more as an unwanted evil, like car crashes, than as bad choices that needs the attention of family members or mental health professionals.

There's another corporate perk: With FTA television, Australia subsidizes the first 3 seasons of a drama. So, many popular Australian shows are cancelled once the corporate welfare ends. A few years ago, the government threatened to cancel all subsidies and the majority US-owned networks threatened to leave Australia. Instead, Australian-made streaming dramas feature US copganda.

The USA tried this: Too many people whinged "I paid my bills, why did I suffer when no-one else has to: It's not fair". Meaning, a 'world owes me' selfishness for historical grievances is more important than helping children.

Or to be accurate, the government cowered instead of declaring that investing in the future was more important than band-aids on the past.

On the plus side, most of File Explorer is already loaded. But why pre-load the rest? Since MS is currently fixated on training AI, the simplest answer is, so MS can commit more data theft.

Another effect is, Windows adopts the 'always on' paradigm of iOS or the Palm Pilot: Applications remember more than traditional UI settings/history list. Current applications are designed around the OS 'clean slate' paradigm where memory is divided into 'fast' and 'slow' usage. Many applications pretending that hardware distinction doesn't exist, will make an already-freezing OS, less stable.

Obviously, uninstall Windows. Because one can't uninstall AI crap-ware MS Recall and MS Co-pilot.

Fox News and GOP have spent 30 years telling US people, they are victims, the government is wrong and billionaires will save them. While one should definitely distrust the agents in the 'shadows', these people don't trust the government they see everyday. A second element is, their selfishness is righteous, their faith is righteous (You are correct: No good deeds required.), their distrust is righteous. A third element, their selfishness demands the world owes them: It owes them white racism, it owes them a white-washed past, it owes them avoidance of responsibilities like civics education, sex education, taxes and secularism.

An entitlement is a communal recognition that one gets a share of the wealth even though one didn't directly contribute. The best example is child support. Although, in practice, it's only a entitlement if you're not paying taxes. Want to guess why the US budget is always in deficit? Clinton, Obama and Biden proved that the government can provide healthcare and not lose money. I suspect you don't want to hear this but the Trump 'war' on waste, fraud and welfare didn't reduce subsidies to corporations: They get the usual entitlements plus a massive tax cut.

Am I wrong to be impressed by a machine that can use a large body of 'facts' to make mediocre choices, just like me?
No, it is the customers who are wrong.

Remember, the last stage of enshittification is, "too big to care". It's where the customer becomes a resource to be harvested without consent, like honey or milk. Instead of depending on the customer to value the product and spend money, the mere existence of the customer is a means to create profit.

The easiest form of parochialism to fall into, is to assume that we are smarter
than the past generations, that our thinking is necessarily, more sophisticated.
-- Thomas Macaulay, 1841.

The government web-site is trying to push everyone to not-portable pass-keys. The bank web-site demands I enable 2FA by purchasing a physical dongle: For some reason, they won't support authenticator applets. They recently installed password rules though.

In 3 months, every update will enable their 'agentic' AI. In 9 months, its usage will be mandatory.

Given the number of UI controls that 'freeze' during the normal operation of the Windows 11, I suspect that any agentic AI will be destroyed by Microsoft's own OS bugs.