xadxad

Notable absence is Noah Glass (imho) - the 4th cofounder pushed out in 2006

Yes - very impressive and cool BUT part of me wonders if this is just a waste of money - from a practical sense

  All of the raw power is impressive, but what do 
  they plan to do with it? Mostly, to visualize
  models run on the Pleiades. Displaying global
  tide patterns on the Hyperwall 2...

Mimms, original author, posted a follow-up which incorporates a lot of the comments from here. I've posted it to HN here

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6225725

Assuming they lean heavily on the current flavor of the Apple TV OS, they have a lot of work ahead to improve it.

The number of channels to deal with using a bare-bones remote isn't cutting it.

I for one hope this means I'll finally be able to edit down the 'channel' list

You're linking to the Latest news part. The correct URL is:

http://qz.com/87204/if-apple-and-other-american-corporations...

Posted it here if you can't Edit this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5753021

A line from the first paragraph says it all:

  Systems & Materials Research Corporation, just got a six
  month, $125,000 grant from NASA to create a prototype of
  his universal food synthesizer

The Sunlight Foundation has been full of awesome ideas and tools. Its worth digging into their other projects