But at this point, isn't Facebook so ubiquitous that being on it is pretty much meaningless? I'm all for a employees being a good communicators, but being able to toss a bunch of empty noise onto the internet doesn't prove anything.

It's a ridiculously condescending statement. Smart as he is, the guy's an asshat.

Impossible not to notice that there's a "correct" way of thinking assumed by his statement. Did he manage in an afternoon's musing to answer all the questions millenia of epistemologists have failed to uncover?

Well, he may have been launched from a bigger boat. But yeah, canoes are hardly standard issue science vessels. Had this been a powered inflatable I might have believed it (until reading about what the garbage patch actually is).

I've been using [Browser A] for [Duration] now. I used to use [Browser B], but I was [Negative Emotion] at how it implements [Feature]. So I gave [Browser A] a shot and was [Postive Emotion] at how it handles [Feature]. [Feature] is very important to me, so naturally I never looked back. My life is now [Positive…

"At least for those in America" is the important bit. Even from Canada I could see that the main reason anyone outside the US was affected was because the US has ties with basically every other country and it changed a lot about how it dealt with the rest of the world.

I seem to be alone in agreeing with you. The only time I'm aware that science had a higher profile was back when we assumed the future would be a lot like the present, except fully automated and powered by atomic rockets. News stories and political claims seem driven by stats and studies (though often questionable)…

My hunt mode was often random, but I limited my choices to those that would eventually form a checker pattern. If I hit a ship very early, I often left it alone until the board filled in enough to give me a better clue which way it was facing.

I'm getting tired myself of the whole, "It's a totally different movie, and a nearly original concept, but we'll lash it to this famous thing (and accept the inevitable shortcomings) so that you'll say, 'I remember that!' and assume in advance that it's awesome and worth paying for."

I think this list of predictions (and others like it) should also dampen a "science will give us all the things!" attitude. A lot of today's solutions are nothing like what was predicted, though they solve the same problem. And a lot of predicted tech, though it may turn out to be technically possible, remains…

The average life expectancy is indeed increasing regularly, but are we actually pushing back the expected maximum? If you look at the list of oldest living people for every year since 1955 ([en.wikipedia.org]) the ceiling seems to be stuck at around 115 (+/-5). Sure we have more people living that long. But that's not…

I've got an HP Envy and the Fn keys aren't swapped when I use any modifier besides the Fn key. So plain F4 is my screen switcher, Fn+F4 is "classic" F4, but Alt+F4 closes programs while Alt+Fn+F4 does nothing.

I come across a lot of people who seem to think that philosophers are primarily interested in inventing coherent-but-fictional worlds rather than discovering better ways of thinking about this one. It probably has a lot to do with a history of very fantastic thought experiments and frivolous-seeming "sound of one hand…

Saying they're philosophers by definition distorts things, and wasn't my claim. They do a fair bit of philosophical activity, but I don't know that it qualifies them as philosophers. They also do a lot of non-philosophical activity.

This is weaker than it needs to be. No philosophy, no such thing as science. Simple as that.

"And given the progressively worsening condition of Earth and our ever-growing demand for living space and resources, we may have no other choice."

Nice thought...except for the day/night cycle. :p

If only "Forward Thinkers" were as interested in proliferating beauty and peace as they are in concentrating power. I'm not keen on my future being determined by sociopaths.

Search Engine De-optimizer? So would that replace over-repeated words with synonyms from a thesaurus, or just randomize the list order of your search results?

Anything that is still very close to its natural form is usually a pretty safe bet (see also: the "outer rim"). For everything else, keep a running grocery list somewhere. Then only buy what's on the list. No exceptions. If you really need it, it will find its way onto the list and you can get it next time.