You must be an engineer to have figured that out!

Crap to call this greenwashing.
The problem of microplastics already exists around the world, including in the snow on Antarctica and mother's milk.
When this would lead to an affordable way to catch and remove the existing microplastics this would be great news.

That isn't counted.

At what? The statement can't be answered generally. There's things these tools are good and bad at. It seems to be quite good at translations for example.

No. Unless you use the assistant on your phone.

There's no evidence of that. You may not touch it, but there's 3.9 billion Android devices out there. 1/4th of them using the assistant alone would meet those numbers, and that's before you count those people who use the AI mode on Google search, or run the Gemini App, or have a subscription to Gemini through work or school, or are provided Gemini features through Google Docs. Even my fucking car has Gemini respond when I push the "voice" button on the steering wheel and that probably counts me as a second user on top of my phone.

The number is actually quite believable when you consider just how many things out there Gemini is shoehorned into.

Not just on mobile devices. My *car* had an update roll out so that voice request now go via Gemini.

Upside: Gemini actually knows what "take the toll road" means.
Upside 2: Gemini can actually tell you "how much faster is it to drive home via the A40?"
Downside: Everything takes 3x as long to execute. "Change the AC to 22 degrees." Proceeds with the little waiting icon for a good 3-4 seconds longer than it used to in the past all while drinking a bottle of fresh water in the progress.

That last bit was a joke, but only partially.

Not quite. In many cases AI is just a tool replacing another tool we already use. Here's some examples that have nothing to do with brain atrophy:

If you want to translate a phrase:
Old: Type "Translate "what even is AI"" into Google Search and hit enter. Receive Google translate answer.
New: Type "Translate "what even is AI"" into Google Search and hit the AI mode button. Receive a far better translated answer.

If you want to save $1.51:
Old: Press the voice button on your steering wheel and say "avoid toll roads". And have the Google Assistant say "okay I've updated your navigation".
New: Press the voice button on your steering wheel and say "avoid toll roads". And have Gemini say "okay I've updated your navigation".
(I bring this one up for a reason because for some inexplicable reason "avoid toll roads" worked on the old Google Assistant, but "take toll roads" didn't. They both work on Gemini though).

Not all AI is replacing thinking. Some is just replacing some other tools.

Hard to distinguish. The Google search results with an "AI generated" answer are not counted here, but what about if you click that button next to the search bar? The one that says "AI mode". That very much is counted.

Sidenote: Do this for translation. Typing "Translate "what the fuck is this" into German" into the search bar and clicking the AI button gives far better results than the normal Google translate results.

I do this every so often so I'm probably counted as a MAU even though I never use AI for day to day activities.
Also ... my car now uses Gemini for voice commands, so I guess when I yesterday pushed the button and said "avoid toll roads" I probably counted as a second MAU.

We know the context: AC's are fucking morons and they know it or they wouldn't post AC.

Records only go back to 1895? Why is that? Is that because 1894 was even hotter? Concerned citizens want to know. Wake up sheeple, there's no such thing as climate! /s

Anyway jokes aside I'm glad this was the "hottest ever". It stops the number of morons who say "but it was hotter that one month 47 years ago and therefore climate change isn't real" and significantly reduces the amount I want to punch people in the face on any given day.

The Indian outfit I consult with is a Microsoft shop, everything is tied to Office 365.
I use Kubuntu and using the Brave browser I can easily access their documents.
Two days ago I spoke via Teams with an engineer working in the Quality and Regulatory dept. of a French company and he told me he is also using Linux.
At first he tried to reach me from a Windows computer but the mandated anti virus software did not allow him to use the camera in Teams, switching to Linux solved the problem.

No I don't act that way. If you want to talk about the current medical system than let me heap a whole world of criticism on that broken piece of shit too.

There's one area though where you made an incorrect comparison. The insurance system is fucked and needs to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up. But the organ transplant example has a different cause: Supply and demand based prioritisation.

The only reason you will "never" have that organ transplant is because there are people who are likely are better able to extend their life with it in front of you on the list. The entire medical system promotes maximising life (the exact opposite of the GP's claim). We don't judge the worth or the wallet of the person getting a transplant, we judge how well the transplant is likely to extend their life. Younger people, healthier people, and non-drug addicted people win here.

If we had more supply of viable organs than even those people you list would receive them.

We don't have a shortage of medicical and care though, we only have pieces of shit who think some humans deserve death because they are too expensive to keep alive.

Yes, they do. It goes something along the lines of:
Administration: Announcement about ....
Republican Voters: MUST BE GOOD!

Yes because we had a whole new group of stupid people to deal with in COVID. Countries with a lower population of morons didn't make COVID about choice either. You weren't vaxxed you didn't get to do many things.

Parents shouldn't have a choice about MMR. There's no choice to make. The three are horrible diseases that can cause a painful and completely avoidable death. Having the option of 3 shots won't placate any anti-vaxxers since all three are in fact vaccines, and the normal people (you can read "normal" as pro-vaccination) already realise the benefit of stabbing your kid once instead of 3 times, booking one doctor instead of 3, paying once instead of 3 times.

What "choice" are you promoting here? How much you can torture children who hate needles?

I know EEE very well, and yet publishing something in a store is very much not EEE. The Microsoft store provides no APIs to extend functionality, and has no capability in itself to extinguish any competition.

Virtually everyone who uses the phrase Embrace Extend Extinguish fails to understand there are very specific market conditions that need to exist for that strategy to work. For one, you can't do it on an open ecosystem, you can only do it on a closed one. That's why it worked against Novell, but wouldn't work against e.g. Linux, or in this case the distribution of software.