That is what I think happened. It took some time (millions of years) for LUCA to emerge, once it did it would have quickly spread across the planet, quickly being more millions of years. LUCA would have evolved, some being fitter than others: faster, more robust metabolism - these would have out competed less fit LUCA descendants and also non LUCA that was getting going.

That is not to say that non LUCA descendants do not exist in some niche somewhere - but we have not seen them - yet. So apply Occam's razor and say: possible but probably not.

was army not database ?

is if our civilisation will survive the next few hundred years and, if it does not, what will be the causes of our decline:
* climate change (the effects will not be evenly felt)
* nuclear (or other) war
* rise of AI that takes control
* grey goo (molecular nanotechnology)
* strike from deep space asteroid

Feel free to reply with other possible causes.

It it suggested that dark matter rarely interacts with normal matter but when two dark matter particles smash together they can generate gamma rays.

From the New Scientist These hypothetical particles are fiendishly difficult to detect because they interact so rarely with regular matter, but theorists predict that they should occasionally self-annihilate, disappearing and producing a flash of high-energy radiation in the form of gamma rays..

in anticipation of fees to be earned from class action lawsuits. Win or lose these parasites will come out on top.

The readings are downloaded frequently and have a granularity of less than a day. So if your electricity usage suddenly drops this can be noticed.

All it takes is a sysadmin type under financial pressure (divorce, gambling debts, medical bills, ...) who needs cash. S/he will be prey to crooks who can get them to do some SQL queries, or similar, to identify usage drops and pass them to the crooks - these addresses are prolly empty as the inhabitant may be away on holiday -- a great place to send a burglar.

They could largely fix this by putting a two week delay before meter readings are uploaded. They will not.

Eg Tesla, and I am sorry to have to say it but with the current president anything seems to go at the drop of a whim. I would not buy a car made in the USA.

Which is good as I occasionally organise group outings to a play or similar. People pay me the cost of their ticket. I do, sometimes, profit as some theatres will give (me) a free ticket if I buy more than 10 or so -- but that is not why I do it.

with me when I next go out burglaring then!

Does anyone know what permissions on your 'phone the app will require ? Eg: access to your contacts which will let Ryan Air work out who your friends are. This sort of thing is my primary reason for not liking this.

And pay the price of a parcel for a letter. How much will that cost you ?

Yes but we will need people who will tell us the truth about what they see, not what they would like to see or what they think those listening would like to believe.

Sad to say but these days that is a real possibility.

Why do we, a supposedly intelligent species, make war rather than cooperate ? If you think that I am naive - please explain.

and his push for coal quite so much if the pollution so caused would stay within the borders of the USA so that only Americans suffer climate and health problems caused by the orange idiot's stupidity. Unfortunately this is fantasy: we all share this planet and it's atmosphere so we all suffer pollution elsewhere.