[mrqwerty]

This article takes a broad view of an interesting subject. You twits are arguing over the tiniest of minutiae and completely missing the big picture. Both the fractal dimension inaccuracy and the issue of information density within DNA are entirely irrelevant to the thesis being put forward. This is something I really dislike about hacker news.

[sinkasapa]

This is something I like about hacker news. There are people here who recognize that a thesis stands on the accuracy of its arguments.

[neolefty]

Is the thesis that nature is so efficient that it is near the limit of what is physically possible?

I don't quite believe that thesis. While nature is vastly more efficient than our current technology in things like storage density of information and energy efficiency of computation, the arguments that it is near the limit of what is physically possible are flawed, as HNers are pointing out.

Will our technology ever reach the physical limits?

Does our technology advance by copying nature's examples?

Will our technology surpass nature along the way to the physical limits?

[cortesoft]

There are a lot of "Well, actually" people on hacker news.

http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.html