Given the analogy, I assume the provider can refuse to disclose information except under a warrant.

And that the client and provider can sign a contract forbidding the provider to disclose the information except under a warrant.

ChatGPT gets about 2-3x as smart the second you turn off memories.

I have never bought an Arduino. I have bought a few Picos, a few ESP32s, and a couple Picos. And a clone of an Arduino Nano integrated in a system with a Pico for 5V logic, specifically, to implement a PS/2 controller. I don't see any advantage an Arduino has over an ESP32, aside from 5V logic support.

While that is true, if Espressif and the Raspberry Pi Foundation can build their SDKs and still offer cheap chips/boards, so could Arduino.

I'm not expecting a $0 markup, but Arduino prices are simply unreasonable for what they offer, especially if you live in a lower income country.

While that is true, both Espressif and the Pico have their own SDKs, and they're really well written too.

The Arduino SDK is the simplest to use, sure, but the Pico framework (I don't have experience with the Espressif one) is extremely good, and the Pico's PIO is a godsend. I used it to implement 3 wire SPI (data bidirectional on the same wire) at almost 'real-time', which is to say, at half the speed of the hardware SPI controller (half the speed because the interface clock is put up one cycle and down the next; this also gives enough time for data shuffling).

Why does the Arduino SDK necessitate a huge markup on Arduino boards, when $0 of every computer I buy to run Linux on goes to GCC?