By your reasoning, a doctor who volunteers to provide free care to people has no duty of care to those patients. This is patently absurd - ethics and norms are a large part of what constitutes a professional.

And for what it's worth, I have flagged your comment for the inevitable pointless bickering it has precipitated. While applying reductionist frameworks and seeing where they lead is a necessary part of an individual's path to understanding, please avoid pushing ignorant assertions ("there is no duty here") as if they might constitute well reasoned truths.

Continuing the analogy - rather than a relationship that might even possibly include a duty of care, the relationship of the modern surveillance industry (Faceboot, Google, etc) to its "users" is that of arms manufacturers to military targets.

Exactly, which is what makes the Nazi/fascist/autarkist/autocratic position even more absurd. As we're seeing play out in the US, calls to "put the country first" are rooted in hate for the country that actually exists, and end up being quite destructive to the country's actual interests!

There would seem to be a common pattern whereby preaching of values tends to fill in for actually living out those values (eg religion, performative virtue signalling, so-called "rightist" libertarians), and the whole "put our country first!" or "make our country great again!" seem to be strong examples of this.

How committed are you? A one letter change gets you to Faceboot, as in "a boot stamping on a human face - forever". Just sayin'.

It just comes naturally to me, I know them as Facebook.

There’s some effect of corporate name changing in order to have a reputational reset. I’m opposed to that.

Real people OTOH I’m happy to call them whatever they wish

Don't mistake a lack of vibrancy for civilization.

And physician, heal thyself! It's a bit rich to bemoan "archetypal third world behavior" while applying your own third world sense of order, don't you think?

If you think the escalators are slow, just wait until you have to suffer the prevailing walking speed.

Even if so, this would seem to be a positive use of LLMs. Something traumatic happened, and she wants to put her perspective into the public dialog rather than continuing to be a passive subject of the social media industry's two minute hate. I know in such a position I myself would be at a loss for words, with the perfect being the enemy of the good enough.

While I agree with where you're coming from, I think you're overstating it just a little. It only seems like something that should be considered a public utility because Google has anticompetitively bundled what should be several distinct types of products together as one take-it-or-leave-it package. Android (really Google Play Services) should not be tied to the Play Store App (think how MS was forced to include a browser choice screen in the EU). Likewise the Play Store Curation/Hosting Service should not be tied to the Play Store App (ie Aurora store etc should work and be fully supported by Play Store Curation/Hosting Service through the Service having a well-documented open API). Then Play Store Curation/Hosting Service would have to compete on its own merits, rather than anticompetitive tying with two instances of Metcalfe's law (Android users plus app developers).

This is the real crux of the mattter. The rule of law means nothing when the autocratic authoritarians have installed corrupt judges that just rubber stamp the dictator's decrees. At every level, it's a bad faith execution of all the trappings of law, but with none of the ideals or justice. We see the same setup in every authoritarian country - it's not like Russia or China is lacking for laws - rather the authoritarian dynamic is always about how they're bent and abused to serve naked power.

The real problem is how many people eagerly eat and repeat the nonsensical bullshit, as if they are airtight logical deductions rather than mere rationalizations promulgated by the party's apparatchiks. I don't know if most people still just want to feel power from being on the "winning team" or if they're really unable to mentally model situations with independent parties that have their own rights while government has restrictions in order to preserve those rights, or what. Alas, it does not bode well.

I think it's a third thing: people ignore inconvenient issues as long as they get theirs. Conservatives just want to "win" conservative things and don't care if democracy dies in the process. They might even pretend democracy still exists with a single party in total control of the government.

That was the norm in 1930's Germany. They still had "voting", but only one party could win, and the state eliminated all opposition. (concentration camps were originally created to detain political enemies, and only years later started to include minority groups) Most Germans went along with it because as far as they could tell their nation was improving. Strong leader, better economy and rule of law, out with the old, convenient scapegoats to blame.

Russia and China both had long periods of murdering millions of people in order to break the people into submission for their new regimes. America hasn't had that yet, but history does rhyme.

> Does your air conditioner use water?

Yes, it does. As far as water is concerned, air conditioners are open loop. Air conditioners make water from condensation forming on the inside (cool) coils. Modern window air conditioners then splash that water on the outside hot coils, to benefit from evaporative cooling. I haven't looked into the details about data center water usage, but I would guess the cited usage is from evaporative cooling.