They have been working on ARM cores but focussing on the 64bit server farm NOT consumer devices.

Intel has been placing bets in a number of mobile Linux projects for some years now - including Android, Meego, Tizen, Firefox OS, Chrome OS. They have cash to burn in competing with ARM but so far haven't emerged triumphant in anything but a niche.

Intel's biggest enemy in consumer electronics is themself. It has maintained 2 separate product families - Atom (budget energy conscious) vs Core (performance). At what point, in competing with ARM, does Atom become good enough for all but the most high-end of workstations? In which case people simply stop buying $1500 Core i7 laptops because a $400 hybrid tablet/netbook running Windows 8.x with an Atom does all the average business user could ever need...

So AMD are somewhat safe to wait-and-see so long as Atom remains only a peripheral competitor to Snapdragon, Tegra, Exynos and Apple A7. The greater fear would be that the Windows market will diminish as iOS and Android gain market share over traditional PCs, in which case even MS has a problem!

Well sure but teenagers exhibit shyness, which is one reason proximity-based hookup apps exist in the first place.

I remember also that popular classes either had 200 or more people in the one lecture hall (too many to remember faces or engage with all of them) or were scheduled in smaller rooms across different days and times.

In my younger days, we didn't have mobile phones, let alone facebook.

How to meet your future spouse (2014)

1. Enrol for a first year university subject with a broad cross-section of students e.g. Psychology or Italian for Beginners.
2. Join your professor's facebook group.
3. Enable proximity.
4. Study in a large communal area near the cafeteria.
5. Your phone beeps...

So while the article mentions 'friends', enabling proximity for classmates would be a quick way to break the ice with a large group of people.

Google Play is a competitive marketplace.

Any vendor that doesn't cross compile risks losing market share to one that does.

my linux distribution already includes the kitchen sink for many of these services.

Perhaps they're not packaged in a 'personal' context to enable you to run the next facebook on chrooted debian running on your smartphone, using various peer-to-peer encryption protocols. Is that the intent? Or a full-blown linux server that runs in a Hyper-V container from you Win 8 Pro desktop? Sounds very "hand-wavey'.

So, I'm just curious as to why a project with vaguely defined goals and no obvious roadmap or system architectural document ends up as a front page Slashdot submission?

I have coding skills, I can't contribute docs for a project that can't elucidate its purpose to laypeople on their homepage.

A 3 sentence description that doesn't use meaningless mumbo-jumbo vision statement as found on the linked wiki?

(a summary of its goals and how it compares to prior art?)

Australia? hardly. We exported Rupert, remember.

Try our neighbours across the Tasman Sea.

China has some of the worst pollution on the planet, due largely to their improving living standards.

So even if climate change turns out to be "absolute crap", developing nations have a vested interest in clean technologies.

It's a platform that restricts the available choice of software, forcing content to be rewritten for a web interface.

Pre-existing content isn't an issue just for Chrome OS. e.g. A friend's grandchildren were forced to use an iPad for classroom use. Turns out they couldn't do a homework exercise because the educational material targeted flash.

Unit tests?

Advocates of TDD would stress a complex suite of tests that self-document assumptions and side-effects - especially prior to refactoring code to bug fix and add new features, as specified in the summary.

Don't you mean Deaf One-armed Leper?

Even in Quebec?

Not helpful??

Think of the plants in the rainforest with which local tribesmen use to treat illness. Synthesising these compounds may be crucial in treating the next batch of superbugs.

Think of terra preta, a fertile soil mix found in the Amazon, whose synthesis could be the key to 21st century crop yields devastated by climate change.