While it is patently immoral for big internet companies to basically steal the entirety of human creative output, in order to train their stupid (so-called) ai models and fill their future pockets, if we don't do it then bad guys with absolutely no morals in far flung parts of the world will do it anyway, OK we can have the smug sense that we have done the right thing when we are the penniless vassals of our current global technology competitors, who will remain unnamed out of courtesy.

The last four seagate drives I have bought have bricked themselves within three years and with virtually no use. (I back up everything on multiple hard drives and keep them offline in a safe.) If anything their inactive shelf life seems to be going down. I'm seriously thinking of going back to tape.

but this time automated and more efficient.

You obviously hadn't heard that - after literally decades of waiting - this is finally the year of linux on the desktop! Yay.

I would happily work for nothing and even pay google for the honour of being in the office for 6 days a week. I wouldnt use any of that AI shit either.

I'm sure it is their human right to work from home if they want.

Google subsidiary acts to protect key revenue stream for parent company. This is why I have never used chrome - the buggers simply can't be trusted.

I thought it said the earth was peeing!

No it's not ok - if I had bought a $100 android piece of junk then I'd assume that I was the product in that business model and expect all the crap that goes with it (lots of ads, poor privacy, no security, etc.). When I spend north of $1000 on a phone I don't need and rarely use, I at least expect the vendor to stick to (UK / EU) data protection law.

The police, CPS, courts and other actors in the UK criminal justice system frequently release basic details about investigations and cases of all sorts, without prejudicing the carriage of justice. They have also been doing this for ever. What gets up people's noses here is the selective application of this excuse in politically sensitive cases - where the intent is to prevent voters from particular sections of society in certain marginal constituencies from being offended. Classic 2-tier justice.

in any third world pharmacy - even the last resort ones - if you have the cash. And plenty of people do. I'm not blaming them - I'd do the same myself. The trouble is that countries and individuals are fundamentally selfish. That's why nothing will be done about this, or the climate thing or overpopulation. It doesn't matter much as loss of biodiversity will get us first once the food chains start to collapse. Just sayin.

The only single number that matters is your bank balance.

who needs a 15 hour flight in some cramped shitty economy airplane just to look at skyscrapers, eat burgers and buy cheap branded cotton sportsware? You can do that everywhere in the world already. Stay put and save the planet!

You're right - it's a cert that future (mainstream) programming languages will be optimised for AIs rather than people - cos it's another (very effective) way to dis-intermediate human devs out of the process.

A ring occupies every possible position in its orbit simultaneously so is roughly 3 x 10^8 times more likely to be hit by some random rock or comet in an elliptical orbit than if it was a satellite. A sphete on the other hand is guaranteed to be hit by everything that crosses its orbit. Just saying.