"You know about slime mold? Well, slime molds are so close to being both plant and animal that it's like they can't make up their minds. Some think that maybe it's these indecisive organisms who have been running the earth all this time. There’s more slime mold than any other form of protoplasm on the planet. If they wanted to, if they finally decided to commit to being either plant or animal, they could take us over just like that. [Interviewer: You talk about slime molds like I should know what these are]. I mean, they're everywhere. If you walk in an alleyway and slip a bit, twisting your ankle, maybe it wasn’t an accident. Maybe it was a slime mold attack." - David St Hubbins in a deleted scene from Spinal Tap (1984)
the reason they did this is because if they succeed in sneaking this out, MS would have been 'drinking the milkshake' of google, adobe, facebook and everyone else trying to do the same thing at an app level. it would be the holy grail of training data -- they could replace or simulate the entire user at an inter-app level for A/B testing anything they want, or worse. the idea of having full user behavior history of the majority of the worlds computer users is just too tempting not to try for them and im sure theyll try again despite any backlash.
MySpace: 16 years (2003–2019)
Friendster: 12 years (2002–2013)
Google+: 8 years (2011–2019)
Vine: 4 years (2013–2017)
Orkut: 10 years (2004–2014)
Path: 8 years (2010–2018)
Yik Yak: 4 years (2013–2017)
Meerkat: 2 years (2015–2017)
Windows Live Messenger (MSN Messenger): 15 years (1999–2014)
AIM (AOL Instant Messenger): 20 years (1997–2017)
ICQ: Ongoing (since 1996) but significantly declined after the early 2000s
Yahoo Messenger: 20 years (1998–2018)
Bebo: 14 years (2005–2019, relaunched in 2021)
Google Wave: 2 years (2009–2011)
Ping (Apple): 2 years (2010–2012)
Discord: 8 years (2015-)
so clearly discord is inherently different and here to stay forever! /s
Even with services that lived over a decade, it's not clear whether messages were accessible for all that time. E.g. Google Talk/Meet/Whatever seemingly lost all messages before ~2013. Links to Facebook posts tend to die quickly, as both users and Meta itself seem to constantly play with privacy features. Etc.
I really like your point (I'm one of bbchallenge maintainers). I think that Discord is close to optimal for us in the short term, but bad for the reasons you and other have mentioned mid/long term.
just to clarify, in the book it's basically just 'a form of ice that stays ice even when warm'. it was described as an abandoned projected by the military to harden mud for infantry men to cross. just like regular ice crystals, the ice9 crystal pattern 'spreads' across water, but without the need for it to be chilled, eg the body temp water freezes etc, it becomes a 'midas touch' problem to anyone dealing with it.
Apart from the geometrical explanation linked in the other comment, there's an Anthropic Principle angle here too -- the fact that eclipses seemed so "perfect and meaningful" to our ancestors was probably a big factor in the development of mathematics and engineering as they tried to predict the eclipses. another similarly intelligent species on a planet without such "perfect" eclipses wouldnt be intrigued by them enough to try to explain their timing. The fact that planets with such perfect sun/moon relationships are "rare" could be one of the missing factors in the Drake Equation. [something similar was a plot point in the scifi book Dragon's Egg]
