I’m not saying I agree with their justification but I could see why they might be collecting yet another data point: education level. If someone constantly uses a calculator for simple calculations they might have a low education level. People in that demographic will be served different ads than more educated people.

It sucks, but I could see Google doing that.

Agreed, but there have been big projects that have been open source. I can imagine* an AI (LLM) being developed fully FOSS. It would be rare, but I can see it happening if a big foundation got behind it. Maybe Mozilla, or another that tries to keep the spirit of their mission statement.

*Imagine: I’m not too familar with all of the current, public, and free models out there, just a few. This was just me making a hopeful guess about if it might be actually happening now.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=chatgpt+alternatives

I’m not the person who asked, but still thanks for the information. I might give this a try soon.

• Academi, formerly known as Blackwater

Yes.

• NordVPN: Actually, We Do Comply With Law Enforcement Data Requests (pcmag.com - Jan., 2022)

“NordVPN is clarifying that it will comply with information requests from international law enforcement after publishing a blog post in 2017 saying that it wouldn’t.”

So, it seems they’ll turn on logging if asked nicely enough.

Grammar*

Security and privacy.

I sometimes use MAC addresses as usernames.