Here’s what he’s had to say so far (spoiler alert: he would not put it in the “one of the greats” category alongside Lenny Dykstra):

* “LinkedIn is outrageously overvalued”

* “It’s preposterous”

* “It’s an absolute travesty”

* “This thing is making a mockery of NetFlix”

* “It’s horrible and should be stopped”

* “I lived through this with TheStreet.com”

* “We need a government to come in and say ‘this is wrong’”

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Intel’s (INTC) today announced it has “reinvented transistors” with a new manufacturing technique it calls “Tri-Gate,” and nicknamed the “3-D transistor” that is meant to increase performance 37% over its current line. Intel will start manufacturing the chips at 22-nanometer feature sizes later this year in a chip called “Ivy Bridge.”

Intel describes the new feature as a “three-dimensional fin that rises up vertically from the silicon substrate,” as opposed to traditional transistors made up of grooves etched into silicon and subsequently built upon in layers of various materials deposited onto the chip.

The point is that the “gate,” the thing that turns current on and off, wraps around the “channel,” the thing through which current flows, on three sides. That is supposed to offer greater control for turning on and off the flow of current. I’ve posted the delightful video by Intel below explaining this better than I can.

Analysts have been looking forward to Ivy Bridge to provide a significant improvement in CPU and graphics performance while offering much lower power consumption, as part of Intel’s bid to beat back competition in mobile devices from chips based on designs by ARM Holdings (ARMH).

Today’s announcement had been hinted at several times, most recently during the conference call to discuss Intel’s blow-out Q1 report on April 19th, when CEO Paul Otellini reiterated that an upcoming technology at 22-nanometer would be “revolutionary.”

Glen Yeung of Citigroup, who’s been avidly following the hush-hush work on 3-D at Intel, today offers a rousing endorsement of Intel’s competitive position versus ARM, reiterating a Buy rating on the stock and a $27 price target.

Writing that Intel has a three- to four-year lead on other chip makers, Yeung points out that the 3-D technique will reduce current leakage when the chip is sitting around doing nothing, and reduce operating voltage when it is busy doing work. He thinks the latter aspect offers the biggest gains for Intel.

We expect multi-gate will vault Intel squarely into the battle for mobile devices (tablets and handsets). We expect [thermal design points] for handset/tablet processors could drop to 0.5 watts to 1 watt, all else being equal, clearly competitive with ARM. Notebook battery life, all else being equal, will double.

Raymond James analyst Hans Mosesmann, who has an Outperform rating on Intel shares, writes, “Intel’s 3-D Tri-Gate transistor breakthrough is a big deal and is incrementally positive for the shares.” He notes that GlobalFoundries, the contract chip maker that spun out of AMD (AMD) is also working in this area, and that Samsung (SSNLF) is considering 3-D technology.

Regardless of what it does for Intel’s competitive standing, the 3-D chip fabrication is a remarkable threshold for the industry. To give you a sense of how far things have come in 3-D chips in two decades, author Don Lindsay with Microprocessor Report wrote as follows in 1993 about the state of the art — basically, gluing things together:

Although multichip modules (MCMs) are fairly new for production parts, they are already reaching their limits in research projects, and to go much further requires a 3-D approach. Several research groups have glued SRAM chips into stacks, with interconnect traces down one face of the stack. One of these groups thins the chips first to get more compact stacks. Beyond this is the possibility of stacking things that are really thin–on the order of a few microns–producing a chunk of silicon resembling a tiny multi-layer PC board using vias for interchip communication.

Intel shares this afternoon are up 29 cents, or 1.3%, at $23.34.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

via guestofaguest.com: Today is Ash Wednesday. And, despite popular belief I was born and raised Catholic, not Scientologist. Alas, I will let you in on what I’m giving up for Lent this year. Then THE MOST EXCITING THING OF THE WEEK happens. We launch some new sites. Click below for all the answers…. MORE>>

Article courtesy of %source%

Those of you who’ve seen The Social Network know there is a scene in which Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss (AKA The Winklevi) go to Larry Summers, the then president of Harvard, to complain that Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea for Facebook. In the movie, Summers is portrayed as a bit of a dick, essentially telling the Winks to fuck off and go waste someone else’s time. Was the portrayal accurate, Summers was asked this morning? Hell yeah it was. And you want to know another thing? Big Lar doesn’t regret for one second telling the twins to get out of his office.

Edmund Conway reports:

[EC via Heidi Moore]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

The following clip was a voicemail supposedly** sent from an unnamed managing director to one of his peons, referred to only as “Chuck.” Please offer your theories as to which bank the duo is employed by, the deal they were working on and how Chuck came to name the thing “Project Cookie.”

Project Cookie [Audio Clip]

**I say supposedly since I guess this could be fake though it’s unclear why anyone would go to the trouble of making a fake voicemail if it wasn’t going to be at all over the top and/or somewhat amusing, but who knows.