The entire point of Eater is that accessing zero cards is not quite the same as not accessing cards. If it instead caused you to not access cards, it wouldn’t work with access replacement effects, and there’d be much less reason to ever play it.
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Okay, but this is why the semantics of the game are so frustrating at times. If I say you can eat no more than zero pieces of pizza, you wouldn’t say you’d eaten pizza. But in netrunner, accessing zero cards is still accessing.
I’m starting to understand why so many programmers play Netrunner now 
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Not to confuse you even more, but the Eater/Archives ruling (specifically relevant against IG) is great. Accessing archives flips cards face up, but since you’re accessing 0 you don’t ever have to eat the shocks (or breached dome’s now). This is why you’ll often see IG players overwrite rezzed Archives ice once an eater dropped. They’ll never rez it because as soon as they do their ID is essentially blank.
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I get your frustration with the wording. There has been common interaction with Eater and cards that replace accessing (like Siphon and Keyhole), that use the words “instead of accessing cards”. It’s easy to miss because the words “access cards” is squished in between other clauses:
Whenever you expose a card or access cards and do not steal or trash any of them, place 1 virus counter on Aumakua.
Players were used to replacing the words “instead of accessing cards” with a complete replacement of the access step (now called 5.5), but it’s very easy to miss that with the (correct) wording on Aumakua.
I wish they will start updating their template (or maybe start templating if they haven’t already) soon and maybe start bolding or italicizing keywords like that, so that it’s clearer to all players (and not just rules lawyers).
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If the game was made by programmers, we wouldn’t have these ambiguities
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I’m still confused by this ruling. Does it only work for eater, or is the ruling that running on an empty archives (or empty remote I guess) gives Aumakua counters? It seems to me the second case could use a separate ruling, because it seems very counter-intuitive.
Step 5.5 of the Run Timing chart is when you access cards and you determine how many cards you access. If archives is empty, that’s 0. My guess is a remote server with no cards in it will also give you a counter since you again access 0 cards.
You’re accessing cards. Just there’s no cards to access but as you don’t steal or trash any Aumakua gets it’s counter.
On a separate note, lets say I play Comet as my console. My first click in the turn is to play Planned Assault and I then play the run event I find in my stack. However, Comet only triggers the first time I play an event each turn, so does that mean that by playing Planned Assault first, I lose the Comet trigger since I’ve just played 2 events? Or does Comet trigger since it only sees the use of Planned Assault?
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Comet triggers after resolving the first event you play. Paying PA leads into another event. After this one is resolved, PA(the first you played this turn) is resolved and than comet triggers.
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Excellent, thanks!
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Not just Eater. The words “access cards” refers to step 5.5 of the run-timing chart. It’s fine if you want another ruling, but I don’t think this is new territory. Players on this forum can explain rules and interactions, but if you want a ruling, you’ll have to go to FFG’s rules form:
Given Aumakua also works with Gang Sign, it’s maybe better to reverse that, and say that step 5.5 of the run-timing chart refers to “access cards”.
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Good point.
If you use Allelle Repression to swap cards between Archives and HQ, what state do the HQ cards end up in Archives. Face down or matching the state of the cards you are swapping?
Face down, I’d say. From the FAQ:
Revealing Cards
If a Corporation card is not visible to the Runner when it is
trashed or discarded, then it is sent to Archives facedown. If a
Corporation card is visible to the Runner when it is trashed or
discarded, it is sent to Archives faceup.
The Swap entry in the FAQ offers no additional clarification.
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The cards from HQ go into Archives face down.
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Thanks again 
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My guess: I think Mirāju’s ability is constant, so it fires first. But I don’t see any reason it would stop Spooned from also firing. So the Runner is sent to Archives and Mirāju is derezzed and then trashed.
And I think I played this wrong last week, because I didn’t read Mirāju closely enough and assumed it was a triggered ability.
While we’re discussing Mirāju: The second UFAQ ruling seems to imply that the shuffle is required whether the Corp draws a card or not. Is that correct? If so, I’ve been playing that wrong too.
Correct. The draw is optional but the shuffle is mandatory.
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