...my wife has had nothing but trouble trying to send money to her daughter.
I make machines for glasswork and customers report difficulty when trying to pay.
It seems that legitimate users constantly face roadblocks while scammers run free

They are not accepted at very many places. Many banks don't accept them. Out of all of the things I log into, only one accepts passkeys.
AFIK, they either can't be totally local or local storage is discouraged. Most want you to use a service like google.
I have also read that they are either difficult or impossible to backup and restore.
I have spent several hours searching, and have not found clear answers to my questions.
Can they be used totally without a smartphone, for any reason, ever?
Can they be managed totally locally, with no external service required?
Can they be backed up and restored?
And yeah, I admit ignorance, but clear information is hard to find. Most of what I can find is just step by step instructions involving a phone or a service

...prohibiting art students from studying published work?
ALL human training is done by studying the work of others

Only corporate sites will be allowed
Any hobby or personal sites are dangerous and must be destroyed

...an artform
Hopefully, it will survive as art as its utility in commercial signage diminishes

...from acquiring tech is futile. See the drug war for a good example
They will always find ways of getting it
Even worse, they may invent something better and refuse to sell it to us

Good autonomous driving is still science fiction
I have a Tesla. They turned on FSD for a month to let me test it
I tried it and turned it off after a short while
It drives like a not very talented teenager with bad eyes trying to pass a driving test with a very critical instructor

Parts are a big problem
I have a Tesla and was shocked and more than a bit angry when I discovered that they don't sell parts

Run Away!

I suspect that it will fix easy bugs, generated by inept programmers
I want future AI that finds the really hard, intermittent bugs and obscure edge cases

I don't need an AI assistant to help me find common stuff, I need an AI assistant to help me find really obscure industrial stuff and get accurate technical details about it. A typical query would be something like, I'm looking for a ceramic substrate for borosilicate glasswork that can tolerate thermal shock and not stick to hot glass

No, not for me, no, no, no
Direct brain interface FTW

...to do useful work
This is the promise of AI, not stupid crap like "summarizing emails"

Maybe in the future, once AI is developed to give accurate information.
All it does now is spew crap

...somewhere between annoyed and amused.
While groups like Deep Mind with Alpha Fold are doing useful work, the rest of the AI world seems committed to producing useless, annoying crap generators