That's because virtually 100% of patent holders use their patents defensively.

You missed the part where they knowingly allowed a patent to become part of a published open standard and ignored it for an entire decade, *then* started going after violations.

Oh, actually, it's worse than that. Dolby acquired these patents from General Electric two years ago. So in this matter, they quite literally ARE patent trolls. They did nothing to create this technology, but rather bought the patents to enrich themselves by becoming a leech on the industry now that companies are abandoning their codecs in favor of codecs whose encoders don't involve royalties.

You obviously don't understand patent law terminology, so let me give you a refresher:

• Defensive use of patents - patents held until someone sues you, then used to retaliate and make the other company's lawsuit more expensive and complex, usually resulting in a cross-licensing agreement.
• Offensive use of patents - suing someone else over the patent without having been previously sued by that someone else.

Suing multiple companies for violating a patent without getting sued first is the very definition of offensive use of a patent.

Those are actually separate lawsuits. (See link above.) The AV1 lawsuit is suing to stop them from using AV1 and force them to use a Dolby-licensed codec. They're also suing a Chinese hardware maker over AV1 at the same time.

The hell you can't. Patent infringement occurs on creating an instance of an invention. The moment they create source code for the software (an instantiation of the patent), they have violated the patent. It doesn't have to be instantiated into hardware or used by a business to be a violation. The patent violations began when AOMedia distributed the first beta versions a decade ago. The original patent holder (GE) did not sue.

To be fair, the reference implementation may not have been directly created or distributed by AOMedia, in which case the same applies, but to whatever company actually created and distributed it. This is largely an unimportant detail.

Businesses using products *also* infringe patents, which IMO, is a bad thing, but that's a separate discussion.

You literally didn't understand what I said.

Patent exhaustion occurs when a product is sold by someone who has the right to sell something that violates a patent, which typically means that either they own the patent or they paid licensing fees. It prevents someone from then suing downstream customers. And there is a six-year statute of limitations on suing over a patent violation. What I'm arguing is that:

• Distribution of open source software effectively occurs exactly once per version, because the redistribution permission inherent in open source software makes it impossible to determine whether a copy of the software was obtained directly from the creator on a particular date or from someone else who previously got it from the creator.
• Open source distribution is effectively a sale for patent purposes, just at zero cost.
• That sale occurred a decade ago when AOMedia distributed the reference implementation.
• Because no objection was made to that sale (against AOMedia) during the statutorily limited 6-year period, that sale should be considered to be an authorized sale, in which case patent exhaustion occurred on the results of that sale.
• All copies of the original reference implementation and their derivatives are therefore untouchable.

This is a legal theory. To my knowledge, it has never been tested in court, largely because companies do not do what Dolby is doing, suing companies for using open source reference implementations or their derivatives nearly a decade after their release. And it should be clear that this theory applies only to patents in the context of software.

uh, no. You didn't win.

Places like Bell Labs were more like university research centers than corporate dressing on mandatory-overtime grind. They were not expected to directly turn a profit as business units of the company, because what they did was to lay the groundwork for technology that the other business units could then adapt into products. The return on the investment paid into running them took years or even decades to realize. Without the pressures of needing to turn quarterly or even annual profits they weren't working their researchers to the bone and they were fostering a culture of internship for college students into joining their ranks as researchers to perpetuate the institutional knowledge.

It's not. There's nothing about news which requires it to be a surprise. Why do you think anyone finds it surprising? TFS and TFA don't. The only surprise was the cancellation of SORA which very much came out of nowhere.

This isn't just AI. Since launch $100 would be accounted for due to inflation alone. Add to that Trump's tariff war which would have added over $100, and then add AI on top of that, and AI looks like the least of the actual contribution to price rise (it's not, to be clear AI = bad and hardware prices are out of control).

Also reminder that there's no connection between hardware price, and time in the console war. Consoles have never been priced according to hardware prices as (other than Nintendo) everyone else produced them as a loss leader to sell games. The idea that console prices go down over time caught COVID and died.

In the current politico-economic environment in the US Valve has committed as recently as 2 weeks ago that it will be brought to the market this year.

At this point though it's a matter of faith, I agree it is at risk, but right now Valve has shown they are still committed.

If he clearly meant morally he would have used the word morally. He didn't clearly mean anything. He wrote an ambiguous statement to be interpreted in a number of ways. If that wasn't the intention then he fucked up.

Frankly you're an idiot for making assumptions, and an arsehole for labelling those who disagree with your assumptions. Be a better person.

This isn't subservience. Subservience is the end user adopting something optional. It's no different than seeing two different downloads on websites in the early 00s when encryption was export controlled. The GP fundamentally screwed up due to not understanding how and why something was failed. The optional inclusion of something in a software does not help support nor defeat any legislation. That is up to adoption of the end users.

I pride myself on downloading the "US version" of software back in the day. Stick it to the man, showing that despite legal avenues I am in fact a rebel. The same applies here. Adopt Systemd with all it's age verification goodness and then demonstrate to the world how you give it the middle finger ignoring the field.

There's a very big difference in approach here and specifically about *who* was responsible for doing something. Encryption wasn't illegal, it was subject to export controls. The onus was exclusively on those exporting a product, and that fundamentally fails in the world of the internet.

It's fun to think that some open source coders standing their ground ended this, but the reality is it was big corporations. Those who offered "US version" and "International version" downloads on the same website. The "Here's a complaint one, pretty please use it" approach to adopting the law. This change here in Systemd is very much along the same lines: An entirely optional field. You want to be a rebel end user, don't use it. You want to be a large corporation who actually has legal departments that would otherwise ban the product from being used internally? Do use it.

These have always been about maximising availability while minimising risk. Gen-X rebels didn't kill the encryption debate. The entire concept of an internet which knows no borders did.

Someone else already pointed out the fridge is running Linux but you missed some other crucial fact. No the fact that something is open source doesn't not impart you magic powers to do what you want with ease. This is not a computer that you slot an SSD into, change some UEFI settings and watch it boot to a FDE (Fridge Desktop Environment). You can't just throw a memory stick in to boot from your fancy custom distro and click an install button.

This is an embedded system. Changing the OS on an embedded system will require you to either be blessed to have a vendor management interface exposed (and hope it's non proprietary and not password protected), or required probing and accessing certain areas of a circuit board. End users won't do that.

My TV runs Linux as well, yet I have ZERO way to install something custom on it without completely disassembling it and getting out a soldering iron since the initial firmware was baked in during production.

Age verification is an outgrowth of the christian nationalism, it is a core part of Republican identity politics.

It may be many things but it ain't that.

Yeah Android could do that in theory, but in order to do that you'd need some very deep integration with Android Auto and the car system so that the interface is unified. I'm not sure anyone would go to the effort of doing so since 99% of that effort is the same as implementing Android Automotive, which at that point... why would they make their own system and implement their own API when they can outsource it?

WRT controls I agree. Buttons need to exist (and they do on my car too). But my demand here is to have functional options. Fun fact the small space in the car means that a HVAC system is fundamentally able to control the environment to a tighter tolerance. There's less lag time, etc. The reason I prefer voice control for my HVAC system is that I probably change a setting maybe once every few months and as such haven't even bothered committing to memory where those buttons on the dash are. The system just regulates the temperature that well that summer / winter the car is just comfortable. The only time I touch it is if I do something weird like have thermals on when I get in the car and can't cope with the temperature it's set at all the time.

For functions used very infrequently, voice control is superior. I can do things without taking my eyes off the road.

Why would the infotainment system be obsolete? It's not like the system stops working just because it doesn't have the latest shiny patch.

Fun fact my car's Android Automotive version got an update yesterday. ... to Android 13... It was applied to the 2023 year models and later only. My friend has the 2019 version of the same car, his system still runs Android 11. Still runs, just fine. Has all the same functionality.

So you're saying that no one should be pissed since zero functionality was lost because everyone has a phone anyway? Please don't watch Disney movies while you are driving. Come back to me when something meaningful in the infotainment system stops working.

Slavery was once legal because there were not laws AGAINST it. Laws don't make things legal, they make them illegal.

What utter bullshit.

The state of slavery is of such a nature, that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political; but only positive law, -- Lord Chief Justice William Mansfield

And you know that general line of reasoning was why slavery had to be actually recognised in the constitution because if you have a nation of any laws at all you need to pass a law to not have them apply to some people.

They are actively working on that. But imagine how nice it would be for a common UI to work between my phone and my car when my phone is dead... the reality is I'm orders of magnitude more likely to have my phone stolen or broken than my car.

People say this, right until they are stuck somewhere with a non-functioning phone. Do you have a map in your car? Like a physical paper copy? And a Ukulele so you can play yourself some music? People throw the word infotainment around as if they don't go into a panicked shock when they are suddenly sitting in a vehicle in silence unsure how to get to their destination with a phone that won't turn on (or has just been stolen, or dropped and broken, etc, etc).

I demand my car retain 100% of its functionality without my phone. In 2026 that includes navigation, traffic updates, and because my car isn't a 1990s gas guzzling PoS that includes charging station finder, and information about the state of charge.

I'm with you with the buttons thing, but only in principle. I want those buttons to exist, but I demand a car with flexibility not to force me to use them.