It looks more to me like a marketing stunt. If they were to operate as Twitter, it would muddy the waters for their cleaner brand image.

Your last line answers your unasked question, because selling tokens is their business, AI chat bots are sales analogues.

So between the lines, you gave real estate for sex with a human, how much real estate is robot sex worth as a monthly maintenance fee? That's the economics that the vendor wants to work out. Just how shit does the service have to get before you stop paying.

I think that's some wishful thinking if you believe those success stories aren't just shills.

ignoring all other aspects, the actual shoplifters don't go near the tills, and don't get deterred by anything. They'll walk in, probably with a face mask, pick up what they want, and walk out. The door attendants don't intervene. So who does this actually target? Who does it police? Not the shoplifters that account for the majority of "shrinkage".

It's penalising the customers only.

So long as they say plays on Linux, be that wine or native, it puts some "supported"-like element into it. I think that's really what matters as it makes people a bit more confident in using Linux as a daily OS.

Which is good as it has better everything.

Have you ever tried to get a Windows refund? Virtually impossible. The problem with the PC price going up is that the OEM bundles it, so unless you're on eBay and there's a windows/no-windows competitive marketplace you're going to have to suck up the OEM pricing.

The costs of switching to Linux are indeed low, and switching away are comparably low as you don't have to pay the entrance fee to Linux or the exit fee from it.

Switching between the other platforms will obviously have a cost.

If you don't scrap your hardware for an upgrade cycle, you can probably start a migration/trial plan.

Obviously, what would likely be worthwhile would be self-hosting the cloud services that go along with Windows/Mac/Chrome.

...but we got there, Google is finally doing what ask.com was doing in the 2000's.

Mob justice is often applied when they go in for this crime. Much like a death penalty.

Where is DOGE that one time you need 'em?

Rules for thee, but not for me

From this /. thread, it's the Windows update that install the LG software, probably retrieves a blob from LG which deploys the advert mill. Don't look after Windows myself, and not seen ads on my own machines as they're all Debian or Xubuntu.

Why employ geologists when your oil fields are dry?

If you have some capital and your core business is shrinking, you're going to try and invest in something that you speculate will have a ROI later. In this case, they're trying to get ahead of the AI demand and be a infrastructure provider.

At least Meta are admitting their compute isn't in demand