That is not quite the same, since the goal was logic, rather than chemistry. Fluid/pneumatic logic was used in early embedded ICBM targeting and control systems, because it could withstand a thousand times as much radiation as an electronic circuit of that era.

Campfires gave rise to story telling and conversation, leading to the expansion of the human mind. This started about 400,000 years ago, and continued until the mid 1950s, when television became widespread, and families stopped talking to each other. It has been downhill since then.

Quite likely, especially since his basic premise is wrong. Many people get dementia as they age, but many others don't. It is not inevitable. I know bright, active people in their 90s. We are making a lot of progress at understanding the causes of Alzheimer's and other debilitating diseases of old age. His future may not be as bleak as he imagines. On the other hand, he may already be losing his grip on reality, since he believes that American are "obsessed" with exercising, and doing mental puzzles. A quick glance at obesity rates, and reality TV popularity, should disabuse him of that belief.

The evolution of intelligent live requires far more than "planet formation". The more we learn about Earth's history, the more we realize how long the odds were. First you need a rocky planet in the habitable "goldilocks" zone. Those are common in our region of the galaxy, but are likely less common further out, where there is more hydrogen/helium and fewer heavy elements. Then you need liquid water. The early earth was too hot and small to hold on to water (it lost almost all it's neon, which has about the same molecular weight). So the water came later, from comet impacts. But if you have too many big gas giants, they will suck up all the comets, and you end up with a desert planet like Arrakis (but without either worms or molecular oxygen). Too few gas giants, and you get too many comet impacts, which form a global ocean hundreds of km deep, like Europa. A ocean that deep has no upwelling, so the nutrients sink to the bottom, where there is no energy other then volcanic vents. Even if you get the water level right, too many comet ELEs can wipe out species before intelligence evolves. To few ELEs, and life stagnates, as species evolve into narrow niches.

Whichever fork does the job. Any smart person will realize using fork X only for dish Y is an old fad.

Or, since the POTUS was never in the slightest danger, maybe we can afford to cut the Secret Service budget even more. The savings could be used for something even more critical to the long term security of our country: debt reduction.

No. That is not what the judge said. He said FB could be used IN THIS ONE CASE. He did not say it could be used generally. In this case, the plaintiff was able to show that his wife was not reachable by other means, and was actively using her FB account. If you have a physical address of record, and you either answer the doorbell, or open and read postal mail sent to that address, then you don't have to worry about your "other" folder on FB.

It is also cause for celebration because Google will make better decisions about resource allocation than the education bureaucracy. The bureaucrats tend to spend most additional money on increasing administrative staff.

Nearly all of them. Flash media, including SD-cards, SSD, etc. should survive. A HDD that is powered off, should survive. The biggest threat is to anything that is connected to mains power. The power supply in your desktop computer may die, but a powered off laptop should be fine.

Russia is independent of the USA part of the Internet to a degree you can hardly imagine. They have their own Facebook (vk), their own Google (yandex), two DNS root-server anycast instances, and even for credit cards they'll not be very sorry as Russians prefer debit cards from their own banks over Master/VISA credit cards.

Sure it'd be noticeable and some stuff would stop working, but it is certainly feasable.

If they ask, I'll consider it and I may decide this way or that.

If they lock me out without ads, I'll never visit their site again. I don't want ads, they don't want me as a visitor, we seem to have a concord.

Exactly. You're the kind of people they want to keep out. People who think that $5k is a waste. For their target audience, $5k is either not worth even thinking about, or a fair price to pay for making sure you spend your time only with people who fall into either of these categories.

Those TV and music starlets will stay on FB because they want and need to stay in touch with their fans.

The wealthy have always segregated themselves. That $10k membership fee in the golf club is not because keeping the grass short is so expensive, either. It is to make sure everyone you meet there is in your class.

Frankly speaking, I'm mostly surprised that this doesn't already exist.

We know that warlike once-nomadic Aesir mingled with settled farmer Vanir.

Which speaks heaps about their worshippers.

Why? Microsoft has a long history of hiring many top researchers, and then doing very little with the results. It is much better for those researchers to be more productively employed elsewhere. The researchers will have little trouble finding new positions in Silicon Valley, where talent is in high demand.