Two layer PCB's with the surface metal already stripped off. More likely left over material when odd shaped PC boards were cut from rectangular sheets.

Why not? It's the standard progression for large tech companies in decline. Services are an effective way to extract profit from established mind share when products are fading. The big iron companies have all gone down this road.

Control Data, which survives as Ceridian, a pure services company
Unisys, which used to make mainframes is now an IT services company
DEC merged into Compaq into HP which has threatened to turn pure services
IBM still makes products but service revenue dominates

It doesn't take much furniture to not comfortably fit into a car and it's usually cheaper than living somewhere that is furnished. Of course, the usual solution is to abandon/give away said furniture because it was never all that valuable any way.

If your wage prospects are so dismal that you can't afford to buy a new bed then I guess you might have a problem.

The sending and receiving depots have people to load and unload. I can't see it being used for end point deliveries without extensive additional automation. However, for moving packages between depots, it would work fine.

That's what would be a step further. Being able to direct my car to come pick me up and not bother me with the details of how it got there.

Remotely piloted vehicles might useful for long haul trucking. It would be easier to drive in shifts this way if the drivers did not have to be physically present. They could even get a decent "night"'s sleep in a bed when not driving.

Have they gone back, though? Speaking as a strong supporter of personal servers and one who has been running such servers on consumer grade Internet connections for 15 years, this is first time I've heard it suggested that Net Neutrality implied that ISP's needed to allow servers on their consumer Internet offerings.

Net Neutrality, as I've understood it, means that an ISP must treat the packets to and from the Internet the same. For example: They should not impair packets from Yahoo or give preferential treatment to packets from Google. It means no matter who you are or how much money you have not have to bribe ISP's, as long as you can host a server, your customers will be able to reach it. It does not say that any ISP must always allow their customers to connect servers directly to their network.

I think that geeks are seeing "Don't be evil" and assuming that this means that if Google is on their side on some issues that Google has to be on their side on all issues.

Actually, it might. The quick and easy smart device schemes I have seen require that all communication between devices route through an external server. If hosting starts migrating to China and local infrastructure to to short circuit these paths doesn't become pervasive in the mean time, you might very well find that your fridge talks to your phone via China.

What sort of people get their teeth drilled often enough that this is an option? If you have good teeth, do you really want the unnecessary drilling to put this device in? Even if you have bad teeth, how often do you need those fillings replaced? Do you really want to take them out early just you can change the battery in this device?

And then there is the problem of what happens if the device does not survive the hostile environment inside a human mouth and starts leaking whatever toxic chemicals it is made of.

Indeed. In racing, any advantage that is not forbidden is mandatory.

So, if you eliminate rules prohibiting doping then all competitive athletes will have to max out on drugs, steroids, and red blood cell enhancements. "Max" will be whatever allows the most performance while still allowing the athlete the stay alive long enough to finish the race. Some will go over. The rest won't live much past their time in the spot light.

The government doesn't ignore the people. This is still vaguely a democracy so public support is required. Working against the interests of the people is done through hiding the existence of the effort or deceiving the public into believing that it is a good and/or necessary thing. A large enough and vocal enough movement is, for a politician, an opportunity to gain or lose power. No politician will ignore that. The first action may be to step up the misdirection efforts but the movement's desires will be addressed. Whether the movement's aims make any sense has little bearing. The anti-nuclear movement is and remains too large to ignore and too entrenched to misdirect so they often get their way to the determent of saner voices.

A surfer paddling on the surface is back lit by the sun. A shadow against the sun is going to appear black no matter what color the suit.

This isn't a problem for scuba diving. However, shark attacks on scuba divers are quite rare even without special wet suits. Sharks' MO is to watch for seals near the surface and lunge upward to catch them. Scuba divers don't linger on the surface and under water they don't look anything like seals.

These days computers are cheap so people naturally assume that "your" computer is one that you actually own. That wasn't always the case.

The first computer that was truly mine was an Amiga 500 with 512KB so a ratio of 32000 relative to my current 16GB
The computer in my house was parents' Tandy 1000 with 384KB (I think) so about a 1:40,000 ratio
But I actually learned to program on the School's Apple II+'s with their whopping 48K or a 1:341,000 ratio

When I do the search (and I'm 99% sure that we have the same name) porn comes up long before football. Curiously, I'm now getting a standup comic as the first hit. That's new.

If I add my middle name, I get lots of obscure characters but you don't find me.

I like broccoli but, like many people, I don't feel so well after I eat very much of it.

But China is wrong too. The Ming Dynasty was conquered by the Manchu Empire in 1644 which gradually morphed into the Qing Dynasty. So no more than 369 years.

China before 1950 did not include Tibet.

It could even be argued that modern China's sovereignty was not recognized until 1971 when the UN recognized the PRC as the legitimate ruler of China.