Liquid metal could turn everyday things like paper into smart objects

arstechnica.com

15 points·rbanffy··9 comments

Looking at the paper it uses Gallium, Indium and tin - not particularly abundant metals (yes, tin as well).

Global annual production of Gallium in particular is ~770 tonnes - about a fifth of the amount of gold mined.

The element is found largely in bauxite at a concentration of 50ppm, so recovering it is an involved affair.

Is the global production so low because of how rare it is, or because there's not many uses, so the small amount of gallium produced as a byproduct of aluminum production is sufficient for current demand?

There might even be sources richer than 50 ppm for it, but bauxite is already mined for aluminium, so that part comes for free.

For a while we imagined Gallium Arsenide would replace Silicon in HPC, but then Seymour Cray died and there was nobody stubborn enough to make it work.

Because that's what we need as a society. Paper that needs rare metals to produce, consumes energy to "work", and spies on us.

Even better, it can self-assemble with other pieces of paper into a killer robot and murder us.

That will be the new Transformers movie: ”Transformers: Origami”

It's more like Terminator.

"Your foster papers are dead."

It's one thing to spy, but the devices that phone home will stop working if they receive a command to do so. Smart TV's have a 'kill switch, so do smart tractors. And companies are willing to use it - Amazon will delete your account for giving them bad publicity. Google will delete you account if you use a chargeback.

In the current legal landscape, most 'smart' things don't belong to you

Reply on news.ycombinator.com