I often term such people "Campaigners for Kicks". People addicted to the hit of winning a campaign for change, regardless of whether that change was good or not.

It turns out that even though you can cover 5 miles quicker in a car, it negatively correlates with health outcomes compared to running or cycling the same distance. Using AI is like taking a taxi.

How much CPU power does a machine have that can't run a 64bit OS and browser? Would such a machine cope with even a single tab of a modern bloated website?

I just stick with what I can write in vanilla PHP that is "simple and disposable and easy to change" to use his phrase. I've tonnes of little things on my LAN, dozens of lines, hundreds at most, to do simple tasks. You can read the entire thing in a few minutes, if necessary just rewrite the whole thing in a few minutes. As soon as you have 10k's or more of lines, you need to do organisational gymnastics. If you want to use a large framework, that starts constraining how you deploy: vs just stick 5 .php files in a folder under htdocs somewhere and done.

You can do a lot with PHP and no framework, and I prefer to stick to that. My solution to the problems of code complexity is simply not to have the complexity if it can be avoided.

Non reproductive sex is basically using somebody else's bodily bits as a masturbation toy to satisfy a biological urge. Not the most hygienic of habits.

Fair use is a defence in court against a copyright infringement lawsuit.

But Youtube is not a court of law. Youtube is like private property that content creators and consumers have an implicit invite to use. Youtube has only those restrictions required by things like non-discrimination law, so far as what Youtube permits. If Youtube says it won't host some kind of video, what right do you have to insist that they do? If Youtube says it will take down your channel, what right do you have to insist that they don't?

Thus, fair use is not a defence against copyright claims on Youtube. Youtube needs to do the least necessary in law to avoid getting sued, but it is up to Youtube what policy it adopts with copyright content. Something may be fair use in the sense of a copyright infringement lawsuit, but Youtube is not legally required to permit such use on Youtube.

I am not a lawyer, but this is how I read it.

It's like a pub being able to bar a customer for whatever reason (except possibly racial or sexual discrimination). If you annoy the management of a pub, they don't have to obtain a court order to prevent you returning: they simply withdraw your invitation, and once that is done, you are trespassing and they can treat you as a trespasser.

This is the problem with the increasing creep of private ownership, whether land or utilities or social media. Such things are, subject to an restrictions in law, entirely controlled by company board and policy. There is no democratic representation on the board of a company. They do whatever they think will bring them profit, and avoid whatever they think will cause them losses. And everybody else has virtually no say in the matter. Even worse, large private corporations can afford to make large donations/bribes to politicians to bend the laws in their favour, and the rest of us can't afford to donate a dime.

What is published on the blockchain can't be redacted later. If what is published is bs, then it is bs and will remain bs. But that bs will be visible, and verifiable in the long term - they can't later deny they wrote it. If the current administration have their grubby hands all over the numbers, and manipulate things to suit their ends, then those manipulations will still be visible in the future, and hard to hide. It's like the thief making a livestream of them in the act, so as to show off.

If people want to develop free and open source AI, it's better than just leaving it to self-interested corporations. Provided it's not forced on people.

I'm hoping governments that like this see the sense in putting resources into development, not just using it. A lot could be achieved if governments invest part of what they save by not paying Microshaft subscription fees.

Paid annually, Duolingo is inexpensive for something I use for a few minutes every day. (Streak at 1400, and that has a powerful effect on making you do at least one lesson per day.) Motivating someone to practise daily is something Duolingo does a good job of. I tried a cheap AI chatbot thing with speech and voice recognition, but it seemed their AI servers were overloaded, so I never got into it. But if Google can make a chatbot I can interact with, especially vocally, I'm sure to give it a good go. Trying to avoid paying around £40 a year is very cheapskaty.

Comparing learning vs assist: This is like comparing using an exercise machine to help you exercise, and using a robot to do the hard work of your workout for you. (Or going for a long ride on an e-bike vs an old school pedal powered ride.)

Sometimes a machine translator is what you need, but you learn little by using one. And learning is a mental muscle that benefits from regular practice and exercise. I did try Lango, but had too much trouble with the AI engine timing out or something (probably they lacked the AI muscle to run their app, something which isn't a problem for Google).

I look forward to seeing where this idea goes. A chatbot you can listen to and talk to and which can generate basic lessons will be of great benefit to many people. It's a matter of when, not if, this sort of thing becomes as commonplace as web searching.

You can't always buy a DVD or Blu Ray. Sometimes paying for streaming on Amazon is the only option available.

And it is like this with e.g. music software. If I 'buy a license' for Reaper (good IMO), you get a file that unlocks it without online activation. If I 'buy a license' for Bitwig, and Bitwig's activation servers stop playing ball, I lose my access to software I've paid for. Arguably if I buy something with iLok protection, it is up to me to protect the physical device if my licenses are stored on it. But that sucks too. But in general, if something requires online activation, and the activation servers are deactivated, you lose what you paid for (as happened with earlier version of Propellerhead Reason). In a sense, some licenses are like food which goes off after a 'best before date', or like hardware which has a warranty period and, after that warranty period, it may cease to function. Or perhaps a DVD where the disc goes bad after a while and becomes unreadable. In a sense, subscriptions are the most honest thing out there (and I am no fan of the modern fad for subscription software), where if you stop paying, you lose the capability of running stuff that you may depend on. At least with a subscription they make clear that if you stop paying your annual or monthly fee, you lose access.

But for the many of us who don't use massive Excel files with lots of complex stuff, LO Calc is fine.

Most likely MS will slam the door on Office running on Windows well before Libreoffice does. And that is unlikely to happen for a very long time.