This strikes me as a bit of a shakedown, settle with out patent claims or we'll screw up your IPO by creating a new potential liability.

Back in the early days of the personal computer explosion there was a patent for the "XOR cursor" which I hear was used as a trolling operation. Story goes that every time a new hi-tek company was in that sensitive period just as they're about to go public, they'd get a notice that they were believed to be violating that (even if whatever they were doing didn't even involve a display with a cursor, XOR or otherwise) and an offer to license the patent for something substantial but far lower than the cost and risks of fighting it. ($10,000?) So the companies generally paid up rather than derail their IPO.

It was jokingly referred to as a tax on incorporation. There are rumors of discussions of buying a hit on the trolls. Apparently this netted over $50,000,000 before the patent expired. (Also there was apparently prior art discovered - AFTER the expiration.)

Bing
Is
Not
Google

The simple version as I see it is that if Social Media account is used for PERSONAL things only, they can block people, if they use it to communicate within the scope of their job as a public servant then they can't.

Most people can't help themselves and comingle their public life and their private life.

So, a person creates an app, that fits a niche enough to start making money and a knockoff appears that literally steals customers. That's the real competition. And it sucks.

Wow, I did NOT SEE that coming

They are back to censoring people now. Elon isn't in charge and those that are, are in fact increasingly censoring people like the good old days.

You could also start with:
  - two molecules that (moderately) accurately copied each other (though getting them both at the same time makes the time scale to the big event much longer.)
  - A molecule that makes NEARLY always inacurate (but occasionally acurate and complete) copies of itself. (This also drastically pulls in the time to a two-molecule solution.)
  - A molecule that makes inaccurate copies but with string of typical errors that occasionally loops back to an accurate and complete (mod a few errors in unimportant places) copy of a previous version.

These could eventually mutate into a version that can perform a one-step copy-itself loop.

=====

I've always been partial to an RNA-only origin. RNA can do it all (self-copy, enzymes, energy transport batteries in at least two sizes with self-pluggin-in connectors: ATP/ADP and UTP/UDP, expression regulation, directed genetic code editing, etc.). It's also still doing a lot of that in current lifeforms, especially in key parts (such as many of the components of the DNA duplication, DNA repair, DNA-to-MRNA copy, gene expression regulation, MRNA exon-eliminating editing, and MRNA directed protein synthesis machinery)

The end is nigh

Obviously didn't see the recent bruhaha about broken AI models due to over sensitive DEI type modeling.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/ar...

That wasn't AI's LLM problem, that was a human programmer (AI Training) problem. The result is effectively censorship. Luckily we live in a free and open society, so they were caught and exposed. The results were both terrifying and Humorous. I searched on Google a few different ways to get the link above, but Google has effectively (tried to anyways) censored it.

Censorship doesn't work in a free and open society.

Class Action Lawsuit should be available, right?

And I would suggest that any terms of service that changes functionality AFTER purchase is not a legal contract, as there is no option to negotiate. Terms of Service changes that take consumers' rights away should be null and void, IMHO

You don't think they tested it?

The DEI hires most certainly did test it. They programmed (aka "trained") it do be 100% woke like them. The problem isn't the AI, it is the people.

The problem with DEI type people, they think "diversity" and immediately assume everyone is the same given certain immutable characteristics. Those values were reflected in the results. Results that showed how utterly stupid that framework actually is.

"Put a chick in it, make her lame .. and gay"

Change Form Factors and see that issue mostly disappear.

Cellphone. one of the most used Computing devices, more powerful and capable than computers just a decade or so ago.

Linux on the desktop arrived, and people didn't notice (Android). The desktop screen size shrunk (physically), but has better than VGA graphics. People shift if you don't tell them you are changing their OS.

I'm a bot?

Oh no!!!!!

Anyways ....

Most people Do Not need MS OSes any longer. There is no "value add" to them at this point for Home/Small Office. The Lone exception is perhaps Excel needs. Everything else can be substituted with other platforms and software options.

There are use cases for specific software products, but with containers taking off, those will become less platform specific.