From the abstracts and conclusions, I'll summarize a few main points that I got from this:

1. The functional CPU is implemented in an FPGA (a type of programmable chip) at 96Mhz

2. It performed about 25% as fast as a Core 2 Duo clocked at 3Ghz, which, while slow, is an order of magnitude better than procedural implementations on FPGAs

3. It took advantage of significant parallelism on the circuit level which is not available to modern processors

It seems that if some effort went into perfecting these chips as we do with procedural chips, we could see vast performance increases. Maybe they could be implemented as an additional unit on the computer to take advantage of functional programs.

So much wrong with this (feel free to add more numbered points):

1. The account was already popular (i.e., it served a purpose): 4000+ followers.

2. The account was already active with plenty of tweets.

3. No warning. No notice.

4. No back-up of the tweets.

5. The new account is clearly some useless social media expert bullshit.

6. In their defence, the new user claims not to have been informed of how this was going to be handled.

I perfectly understand the general concept of fighting user name squatters, but this just makes no sense to me from any point of view.

Is there any nasty legislation that can penalize Twitter for having accounts misrepresenting the official namesake?

Quite the confused article. I did some digging of my own and here is what I found:

In order to use this you need to install iCloud and enable 'Find my Mac' (this allows you to locate and wipe your Mac should it be stolen). The guest account is then repurposed and will only reboot to the recorvery partition (which is also new in Lion) and only allow guests to open up Safari and connect to WLAN networks. As soon as they quit Safari the computer shuts down.

If you have secured your Mac with a password, logging into the guest account is the only thing thieves can do. iCloud cleverly uses this to goad thieves into going online and broadcasting their position as well as allowing for remote wipes – it even displays instructions for how to connect to WLAN networks when it boots up – while still not allowing them to access any of your files.

This is not supposed to compete with Chrome OS. It doesn't have a password manager and you can't download anything. It also won't remember anything after a reboot.

By the way, you can now also sart up Safari when booting into the recovery partition normally. That's also new and it's just useful but nothing else.

Apples's answer to Chrome OS is the iPad with iOS, not OS X running only Safari. If you don’t understand that then you have understood nothing about Apple.

I might have to disappoint you all...

An Australian company, BHP (my employer at the time), was working on this method of steel production in the early 1990's. They had big hopes and put a lot of R&D investment in it, but were unable to commercialize it as the sheets of metal produced did not have consistent ductility and were prone to cracking.

So - the idea is not new, and the challenges of going from a concept to commercialization are serious, and were beyond the capabilities of one of the world's largest steel producers. The Bainsteel website indicates that they are still in the R&D phase. Best of luck to them, hope it works, but it is vaporware until it is on sale.

I disagree. This type of slide can be useful for explaining where the startup fits.

Perhaps it should refer to all the brilliant people in %90 of web startups in general. The majority of Silicon Valley's (NYC perhaps even more so) recent output is fluff, stuff that impacts people's lives about the same as drugstore celebrity mags.

(But it's not a new trend, TV or advertising or law or finance are/were similar in that respect.)

Given how often this happens with Twitter, Facebook and ever other Corp-owned namespace the more I appreciate the clear ownership status afforded by DNS, despite it's many flaws.

It's also why I put my domain on my business card but not my Twitter, all it'd take is an account hack and some spam or a backhander from some firm and it would't be mind anymore with no recourse whatsoever.

You may be right that Facebook has not peaked, but saying Facebook overthrows countries is kinda like saying the inventor of the quill wrote the Declaration of Independence.

Civil dissent overthrows governments. Ubiquitous communication methods certainly help organise civil dissent - but let's not forget that the French in 1789 managed it with pamphlets and soapboxes.

I don't know, ED is a pretty easy problem to trivialize, but when you think about how meaningful and important sex is in a relationship and life in general, I don't know if it's on the level of hair loss medicine. I'm not saying it's as ”important” as cancer, but I don't think it's trivial either.

"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." --Carl Sagan

Unless you're selling to enterprise or the government.

Is it any worse than the reams of medical researchers working on giving old affluent men hard-ons and their hair back?

I doubt it...

I like this, but it feels hypocritical after the recent domain seizures and bullshit internet and digital media laws, and past censoring / banning of documents. It's OK to break other nations' walls, but not your own, apparently.

Second this. Don't understand why a sensationalist headline should translate as is to HN.