However, that's a privacy question (also important, but in this discussion beside the point), not a monopoly / market manipulation question. There is also Facebook which is big in the ad-space and datamining business, Microsoft in search and datamining (you really think Windows 1X is free?) and a lot of other larger and smaller players.
The question here should be does Google actively hinder consumers who want to use an alternate browser and push those browsers out of the market, like Intel and Microsoft did with their products in their 'heydays'. Or is Chrome just the 'fittest' browser for most people?
I still happily use Firefox (as long as when it arose from Netscape's ashes) as my web browser of choice amongst at least 4 different operating system platforms (Windows/Linux/Mac OSX/Android) and only use Edge and Chrome for compliance testing (I develop web apps, amongst other IT related stuff) or when I need two entirely separate web browsers working on the same device (mostly for various tests as well).

Never heard of them (I'm Dutch). When I google search on "bird ai dutch" all I get are news headlines and somewhere on the second page I find a couple of companies which have 'bird' in their name and apparently do AI things. I'm not impressed with their SEO efforts (maybe they are AI based).

Are you sure about that? Nowadays, to be able to SURVIVE in most 'first world' countries, you are REQUIRED to have an internet connection. Without it, you can't find proper jobs, do your taxes, act on health care/insurance or manage your debit/savings/credit account. It's nowadays even more necessary than having physical money. If you have internet and banking, at least you can pay for most goods or services electronically. You have to pay extra nowadays to big corporations if you use hard currency because they find it bothersome and instigates low level corruption. All electronic banking always leaves a paper trail. And while you have that internet to do the things that make you live another day, why won't you also use it to gather information, let your critical thoughts be heard and even, dare I say it, some entertainment?
In countries where governments REQUIRE you to file your taxes electronically, internet should be a basic right and the poor and homeless should have free internet access first so they have at least the possibility to manage everything else then.

Not unlikely any microbe that would naturally evolve from outside of this solar system would exhibit such a degree of compatibility with anything alive on this planet... but otherwise.. I guess it would theoretically be possible. However, there are labs in this world working with highly infective and devastatingly ill-making earth-borne microbes. And as long as all protocols are followed correctly, they seem to hold up, until now.... at least, we're still here, aren't we?

AI coding vs. programming, mass electronics manufacturing vs. hobby electronics, LLM translators vs. learning a language, industrial scale agriculture vs. gardening...

No. Worst case it gives you a sense of accomplishment, best case you find a niche to specialize in and earn big bucks because barely anyone / anything else can what you can (cue the COBOL programmers). And then there is the whole 'build upon shoulders of giants' thing if you're really good, where you can do the fine-tuning and leave all the boring stuff to the previous generations and/or automation.

The problem isn't has (insert technology) killed (doing it yourself). Its (insert technology) only profits investors that keep (insert technology) as close guarded secrets for several generations preventing people to build upon (insert technology) and everyone else can starve. That's the actual problem.

I agree with you on Starlink. The only two other options I could see make sense for negotiations are:

-SpaceX was the first company that made rocketry (almost) reusable but their rockets can still be discarded for extra boost if that's in the interest of the payload's profile, and even then, there is still second-stage debris. Also, they are developing an even larger payload capable reusable rocket with the upper stage (hopefully) re-usable as well.. Maybe the EU wants to push for even less, or preferably no rocketry-related space debris and wants SpaceX's input how it can be avoided or coorporation?

-The development of a space debris cleanup program for which it wants to use SpaceX's services because they are currently the 'cleanest' launch provider.

A 10 million per person total life value is very doable. And before we continue, I assume, the average diminished lifespan due to the pollution of fossil fuel is calculated as a fraction in total lifespan (75 odd years?) lost in respect to that 10 million.

For a simple calculation to someones total economic contribution over his/her lifespan:
An adult that earns $30.000 per year over its working life of 40 years (25-65), builds an economic output in that 40 years of over 10 million $US ($10,548,097. 65 to be exact) with an average investment return of 9% if he/she could invest all his income.

Of course he/she can't and will have to live off that money. But if he/she dies at the start of his/her career and his/her economic unit would have to be compensated for that loss of income, it would amount to a total expense, including interest, of 10 million $US. So, yes, in that sense, the total value of an adult that has had a bog standard job can be computed as equivalent to 10 million $US.

I'm sure the researchers used a much better educated model to get to that 10 million, but I'm not an economist and I'm just proposing here something that makes some sense to me. Willing to be educated on better models that explain a persons VSL.

I'm not sure if you're sarcastic or actually think you're correct. Sodium and Lithium are part of the same periodic group. Sodium is actually right below lithium. They have very similar chemical properties. The big difference for battery technology between these two is the way the ions are stored in the battery medium when charged (Anode). With Lithium, the ions can neatly fit in between the layers of graphite, quite many of them. However, due to this, the graphite deforms a little and this limits the number of charging cycles due to deformities over time.
Sodium ions are too big to use graphite efficiently as a storage medium. But they are still absorbed by amorphous (irregularly structured) hard carbon. Only not closely to the density Lithium is stored in graphite. This means energy storage density is lower, so the volume (and weight) of the battery goes up significantly. However, the anode also deforms a lot less, which gives Sodium ion batteries a larger number of charging cycles than Lithium ion batteries.
Applications where weight/volume isn't a top priority but the longevity of the storage medium is (like in grid storage), Sodium-ion batteries are superior. Also, Sodium hydroxide is several magnitudes cheaper than Lithium hydroxide, which should factor in costs when you start producing at scale.

Well, he's not that wrong. The southern German border fits nicely in that dip around the great lakes. The usual Canadian-US parallel (49th?) almost cuts Paris in half. Europe on average is a lot more northerly than the United States are.

I bought an ASUS ROG Stryx Scar two years ago for a little over 2K euro, AMD Ryzen 5900HX with 2 M.2 slots and the USB-C 3.1 2nd gen port does support 4K HDMI with a Vention USB hub I bought for a couple of tenners. (In device manager the monitor seems to be directly connected to the NVidea 3070 mobile in there). With the included HDMI port you can drive 2 external 4k monitors. Don't know if those specs are good enough for you but they are for me :P It doesn't have soldered RAM, though and I'm glad for that because the 64 GB I have in there now helps very well with my professional ICT work and it doesn't break the bank.

Unless you're willing to do it the 'rapid development' and 'blow up often' style... How much (increasingly expensive) problem seeking do you do vs. finding the problems in situ 'once' and then make sure you have fixed them in the next iteration? Both ways cost money. NASA or. SpaceX?
The big question is: did they foresee the possibility of some scraps to find the problems and have the money for it? Else their business model is flawed and that can lead to much more unpleasant consequences from grumpy investors to unwanted 'chapter' requests.
Also, if they're using third party equipment (like that power supply) shouldn't those come with some specifications for operation / guaranties? Or did they do a version of 'let's see if an IPad works on the ISS and if it does... Yay!'.

Tell that to about every other satellite internet provider except Starlink and they will tell you the amount of money they rake in. Satellite internet is/used to be outrageously expensive and slow as molasses running through an Alaskan town in winter. And with horrendous latency to boot. It's meant to be reliable and available at 'impossible' locations and is mostly based on high-altitude satellites because you don't need a metric shit-tonne of 'em. The Musk company is the exception, not the norm.

Those optical amplifiers have to be fed with a power source. And usually that means a 'copper' line runs alongside the fiber or may even be part of the same cable, at least for the long ones between backbone nodes.

Then we make it a real name + nation statehood based unique ID must be known and only known by the platform owners and used solely (punishable by law) to ban and keep banned bad behaving individuals. The database of said IDs should be protected by your nations privacy laws and in case of a data breach, the same rules should apply as with medical/banking records etc. Full disclosure required and organization/company fines if an audit finds protective measurements were insufficient. You can provide said ID using the same government tools that make it able to do your taxes, watch your medical and banking records... if your nation state provides such tools. If your nation state doesn't have said laws or provides such tools I feel sorry for you and you should lobby your local politicians to care more for its citizens privacy and proper use of private data.

In the EU we have a directive (the WEEE) that states all e-waste must be recycled. A few exapmles where I live: electronics retailers have to accept a comparable old/defect appliance i8n return, that the customer wants to have recycled, at a new sale at no extra charge and municipalities have free turn-in e-waste collection stations as part of their garbage disposal program.