I know for a fact that Microsoft processes the data I produce at work - as well as my coworker's data - and it doesn't take a genius to figure it out:

- Put a photo in a Word document. Say a photo of a tree. Wait a few seconds: Word suggests "This looks like a tree. Add description?" or some such.

Meaning Microsoft appropriated my photo, sent it to their servers and processed it without my explicit permission or my company's.

- Likewise, make a video in which you say something or other. Upload it to your company's Sharepoint, then replay it: all you said in the video appears as AI-generated subtitles.

Again, Microsoft processed the video without permission.

If you believe they only nicely process your data with their AI for your convenience and don't let their AI train on it, I have a bridge to sell you.

Because why would they refrain? It's almost impossible to prove they're doing it. So Microsoft, being an unprincipled monopoly, most likely does everything they can get away with, and that includes monetizing your data without your consent - corporate or otherwise.

It's possible they're innocent of what I accuse them of doing, but it's more logical and more probable than they aren't.

The ads are the least of your problems when you use Office.

The real problem is, Microsoft essentially reads everything you write over your shoulder. And sees your spreadsheets. And reviews your PowerPoints. And trains their AI on your data...

That is all.

Not only did they torrent a ton of shit like petty pirates, they didn't even contribute bandwidth back by seeding for others.

... of West-Denmark names how? Let him have his fun. Send him an extra Smoerrebroed for good measure.

This is where the US of A is at. I'm not even talking about Trump V2, that's by and large just a special effect symptom. This has been going on for decades and only gotten worse. So much so that you guys have somewhat of an all-out oligarchy coming up.

Curiously, I'm pretty confident that you guys could do a fairly peaceful revolution to move to a sensible two party system, modern 1st world healthcare, a modern penal system and the other nice things without to much hassle. IMHO the assassination by Luigi is a key incident in this regard. It has right-wingers warming up to universal basic healthcare and leftists catching a drift on what your whole second amendment thing actually is about.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed, from across the pond.

Using commercial services that rely on noisemaking and provocation to gain attention and ad-money is a part of that problem, but also basic etiquette and manners. Don't offend easily and don't be easily offended is one rules from back in the days of usenet and fidonet that people these days would benefit from observing.

all I have to do is visit amazon.com?

People didn't start using JavaScript because they knew it, they used it because it was the PL available in Browsers. That it was/is easy is a good reason to keep on using it. That it was open source was a good reason to built a FOSS runtime for the server, so web folks could use a single PL on both ends.

Todays washing machines and IoTrash offers JS because JS has the most developers for the cheapest price and usually it's those deciders who ask for IoTrash that have cheap Web developers around and ask them to do IoT. With the usually disastrous security consequences do to shittyweb n00b progging.

The problem with classic 'fast' PLs is that they are, by today's standards, pretty shitty. A big like bad upgrades of Opcode/Assembler.

Modern "fast" languages came relatively late, after we got a slew of languages for the Java VM and for Web development.

Something like Go and most certainly Rust was overdue for decades

The last ones upgrading their PLs are the embedded, systems and low-level people, after some systems people finally got fed up of C and CPP.

Obviously.

A real world example: I've been using a commercial subscription of CGPT4o to help me understand an Angular 11 legacy business application I've been tasked with getting under control. And to help me with coding. I asked it polite questions as I would in an IRC group of key developers. The response was amazing, my productivity and my speed in understanding what was going on jumped 3x immediately. After working with it for a few days I ran into a situation where it started to obviously not understand me. It gave me a fix to a class that was the exact same function with only minor details changed unrelated to my problem.

Did it not understand what I needed? Did it 'halluszuinate'? I don't know and I don't really care. I do though have a feeling of how far I can trust it. Not that super far.

Another example: I met a cute lady just last weekend in a cafe in a small town about 50 minutes away. We flirted a bit and and had a chat. She was smoking and drinking but I didn't mind that much. 30 minutes in she started behaving erratic. Verbal ticks, strange immediate changes in habitus, etc. Apparently trauma and/or prolonged alcohol/drug abuse and/or mental disorder like BPD or something. Shame. Do I trust this woman I'll probably never meet again? Not as much as I'd like to. For obvious reasons.

Bottom line: Humans and AI are just about the same when it comes to trust. It's that simple.

It's not really their content, but they think it is.

Well, you got that right.

Which is a freakin' convoluted historically grown arcane mess with dialects that vary per individual practicing it. Insane. Sort of like configuring sendmail with a system designed by a monkey on crack. ... But what do you expect from written language that has developed over thousands of years? It's not that LISP easy to understand, and that's not even 100 years old. ... Although it _is_ more consistent. Somewhat. A little. Kinda-sorta.

... how these fotos are always super-grainy with little to truly recognize? This one looks like a piece of junk or a rock sticking out of the surface of a calm lake, with a fence in front of it and a plane passing overhead.

Anyhow, I've seen way better fake UFO fotos that this one. The "Gulf Breeze Sightings", which later turned out to be super-fake, would be one example.

Notice also how since we all now have smartphones with premium cameras on them the reports of potentially alien craft have plummeted? Oblig. XKCD - one of them on this topic.