Ed Zitron completely fails to take into account the four factors which will inevitably lead to massive profitability for the AI firms. These are:
1 Stuff
2 Things
3 Misc
4 Other

This is not just my view, it is the informed opinion of experts in the AI field.

I didn't forget, I lived through it. It didn't flourish.

UK has been in decline, with overpopulation and underinvestment and corruption since the 1950s.
We were told that joining the EU would save us, but the decline continued, then we were told that Brexit would save us, but the decline continued. Now idiots are saying rejoining EU will save us.

I assume the guy picking up the phone was a designer, he is picking up his designer phone in the same way batman picks up his batphone.

It is probably more accurate to say that we live in a society where profit motivates food companies to make their food as addictive as possible, regardless of legality.

"Even Microsoft seems to have gotten the memo that Windows is very inefficient compared to macOS, and they are now working on making their OS less wasteful of hardware resources."

I can believe that Microsoft said they are now working on making their OS less wasteful of hardware resources. I can believe that they will spend billions on meetings, conferences, advertising, announcements, reshuffles, layers of management, pamphlets, t-shirts and FSM-knows what else, but I cannot believe that Microsoft can make Windows less wasteful of hardware resources.

Now Apple can flatten my battery and use all my ram and bandwidth to make me part of a distributed AI service it can sell! Hurrah!

It's Moon Base Alpha.
Er, hang on.
Moonbase Alpha...Moon Base Alpha...Moonbase Alpha.
Give me a minute.

Whaling station.

I think you may be confusing it with "Bald hero drives vehicle in improbable physics-defying way through gridlocked traffic whilst bad guys shoot ineffectually near him using increasingly powerful military weapons."

Bad example. Five minutes of Hollywood action movie is already a one sentence prompt. Hero drives vehicle in improbable physics-defying way through gridlocked traffic whilst bad guys shoot ineffectually near him using increasingly powerful military weapons.

I pay to use the service, but the music 'I make' never belongs to me , I can only listen to it on their platform and access to it can be withdrawn at any time ? Am I missing anything? SpotifyUMG can monetise for themselves it in perpetuity? Anything else?

"Could" is the operative word. The Waymo cars "could" use their lidar to detect floodwater and not drive into it, but for some reason they didn't. This seems an easier problem than moving in perfect close formation at high speed which they "could" do.

Don't let yourself fall for the sunk cost fallacy.
With the latest AI generating code, whilst being supervised and corrected by other AI, and the result implemented and rolled out by other AI, it will be possible to create another failed approximation of Second Life at half the price.

There is nothing to look into with Jeffrey Epstein, nobody has ever met him or knows anything about him, not even people who lived in his houses or went to his island. Did he even exist? It is one of the great mysteries of our time.