Yes, this is how consumer labeling works today. Net weights, cash register scales, gasoline pumps, etc. Errors are only allowed if they're in the customers' favor.

That said, sunscreen is hard to apply precisely. One interesting emerging option is personal "makeup mirrors" that use a UV camera.

I'm referring to the oversaturated mainstream media coverage, not real activist.

The golf course number was surprising so I shared it. Forgive me.

It's telling that for AI we're only given impressive-sounding water numbers, but never in the context of total consumption. It has all the hallmarks of a media-driven moral panic, not serious activism.

The fact that HN's response is to compare (these particular) water users to murderers[0] and cry whataboutism and unseriousness against me... it's not exactly helping convince me that this isn't 90% motivated moral panic and 10% legitimate grievance.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45097661

TLDR Godwin's Law except every action becomes the act of murder.

Do I really need to say that ecological impacts and murder are very different things?

The funny part is your "murderer in the next town over" example is almost exactly how cap-and-trade works (plus a price mechanism), which is the most effective system yet devised to reduce smog from power plants. So in this area of public policy we already let off the "murderer" (eyeroll) with that excuse, and rightfully so...

In the comments someone mentioned 400 golf courses in Arizona, and it got me to wondering...

In the US, golf courses consumed 1.68 million acre-feet of water in 2022[0] (down 29% from 2006, they are pleased to report), which works out to 1,499 million gallons per day.

So golf courses consume three times as much water as AI. Were's the proportional level of outrage over that issue, I wonder?

[0] https://gcmonline.com/course/environment/news/water-manageme...

uMatrix can be (somewhat) replicated by setting up uBlock Origin with multiple modes and configuring the "Relax Blocking Mode" hotkey.

So for instance you can start with an extremely restrictive mode like noJS/3rd-party/images, then with each time pressing the hotkey it relaxes to noJS/3rd-party, and then noJS/embeds, then no embeds, then full access (ie like uBO comes configured out-of-the-box).

https://github.com/gorilla/ublock/wiki/Keyboard-shortcuts

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Advanced-settings#blo...

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode

You still need a solution for cookies (eg CookieBro), and I still long for an "expanded expanded" mode on uBO's menu that reveals uMatrix columns, but this might help replace some of your use cases that currently require uMatrix.