physarum_salad

To be more specific: PCB manufacture anywhere other than China is, given the current economics, so dead. This includes the USA. The only viable alternative is SE asian countries (e.g. Malaysia) but that's not at a comparable scale. The reason is simply economics (e.g. labour costs, equipment, etc).

"This approach is not going to revive electronics in Europe."

Revive what exactly? There's ASML, IMEC and many others. Then a host of PCB fabs that are expensive but are present and perfectly useful such as Eurocircuits and many others. This project is typical of these conferences where people find it interesting and fun to do things from scratch.

Given the economics, it is not possible for anywhere other than a couple of south east asian countries to be competitive at scale with Chinese manufacturers. This presentation hasn't a hope of replacing that using the methods outlined but it doesn't mean its a waste of time!

Depends which model. Arduino Mega retails in Europe for around 50 euro.

Teensy is the best imo...would love to see that expand into more boards/specific use cases.

Ah yes unilad a great repository of rigorous scientific results haha.

There's a lot of complexity in fungal physiology and research has barely scratched the surface.

Dunning-Kruger is basically a middling party put down at this stage. Similarly this article is not making a whole lot of sense other than as a mild and wildly applied dis?

What about the case where publicity is intentionally avoided so as not to have results drowned in a deluge of hyperbole and journalistic hubris?

Yes, that's vague. I specifically mean a creative monopoly. Compare the writing and dialogue of a Paul Thomas Anderson or Tarantino movie to Rockstar. Most of their games don't come close. Because it's a game the standard for storyline and dialogue is slightly lower because you are like "wow I am almost literally a cowboy/Nico". I wonder if we will see a mix of games with genuinely Tarantino style writing and narrative + technical / design implementation. Small studios doing this faster and more ethically would be better. People who quit Rockstar are very talented with something to prove too.

I genuinely cringed at the end of RDII due to the dialogue just feel the need to mention that again...

I love GTA/Red Dead but Rockstar really is just another monopoly (in terms of creativity) at this stage. More mid sized studios, like Rockstar when it started/midway, would be better.

Also the narrative and dialogue is ever so slightly overated in Rockstar games because the competition is quite nerdy/square in that department as are most of the audience. The ending of Red Dead II was actually quite trite, especially in terms of dialogue and narrative (in my opinion) even though the game is incredible overall. It is honestly still very far from a Tarantino script.

Also I genuinely love your educational progression and kudos for it!

My argument:

- U.K. universities have pivoted to being a finishing school (e.g. you cannot fail if you pay enough money) and Harry Potter experience for international students. -This affects all levels of prestige. Harms research. - Is a geopolitical leverage tool of unknown power. Interesting example linked by poster.

This is well known in most of Western Europe as a phenomena and some naive people love it because it makes short term profits: https://opportunities-insight.britishcouncil.org/short-artic...

Congratulations on avoiding going to university.

The point about the tourism/finishing school aspect of universities in Britain is widely held and has been reported on for years. It was inevitable that it would provide China with leverage and other things. Not a good idea imo.

I don't need to divulge personal information to make a point. See comment below. I think it is pretty apparent to anyone with any interactions with universities in the U.K. and in other countries. The fact that it is now a geopolitical tool for China is pretty concerning.

Yeah it's just funny that its more akin to a sector in the tourism industry than academic or research. There are obviously pockets of world-class research and brilliant academics but the pressures in the opposite direction are pretty insane due to the business incentives.

I disagree. Oxbridge, LSE, Edinburgh, etc appear equally as susceptible. In fact in top London universities it seems to be worse - prestige attracts more international students.

I also agree in the sense that there are less prestigious universities that appear to operate as if they are almost Chinese/in China.

Both are major concerns I would have thought.

The international student Harry Potter experience economy model is not actually working for British universities. If your idea of a university is: outputting high quality research and developing the next cohort of researchers/other talented people who go into industry, etc.

Another lesser problem is the half-baked REF system.

Great point: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/30/toxin-le...

This is, morbidly, from crematorium emissions. Now imagine if that was the output of every electronics section of the local recycling centre/dumps.

The problem is if a particular material becomes the golden goose and companies won't avoid it if there is a perceived/real advantage.

Don't understand the implications of this:

"And to take care of another utterly bizarre comment: Encylopedias are always, per defintion, also repositories of knowledge."

We should just accept wholescale editing and knowledge production when we personally agree with it? Otherwise its verboten? You are aware of "edit-a-thons"? Are these biased?

Why not just have an AI print all of the currently available information on a topic with minimised (not zero) biases?

If we lived in a utopia where wikipedia could randomly allocate tasks to a diverse group of expert level civilians and then aggregate these takes/edits into a full description of a topic I would agree with wikipedia maximalists. This does not happen and a bunch of bad or naive actors have reduced the quality.

John Lennon's doorman

Omission by design or by accident/lack of resources can be found in most pages on wikipedia.

Device to device variability is not considered? This is a huge problem in analog computing

The optical mouse is great example. There are lots pre-90s ofc such as in military applications.

One of the reasons for failure to compete is that actually all computers are physical computers. Therefore digital is still tethered to one of the greatest analog components ever discovered and as a result when you do analog ai you are really competing with the physics of the transistor. The digital computation is the complex icing on the top of an analog cake.

Love this idea. One use case is actually music synthesis as digital tools like supercollider are not that aurally satisfying while making analog circuits is tedious. Software controlled analog is a nice in-between. BTW I mean use case as in "this is cool, I would like to use it" not "bzillion users and a pile of money" ofc haha.

I mean generally working towards changing how peer review works.

For example: https://prereview.org/en-us

Anecdotally, a lot of researchers will run their paper pdfs through an AI iteration or two during drafting which also (kinda but not really) counts as a self-review. Although that is not comparable to peer review ofc.

Are review papers centred on novel research? I get what you mean ofc but most are really mundane overviews. In good review papers the authors offer novel interpretations/directions but even then it involves a lot of grunt work too.

Ok I take your point. However, it is possible to generate a middling review paper combining ai generated slop and edits. Maybe we would be tricked by it in certain circumstances. I don't mean to imply these outputs are something I would value reading. I am just arguing in favour of the proposed approach of arXiv.

It is actually great because it shows how well it works as a system. Screening is really important to keep preprint quality high enough to then implement cool ideas like random peer review/automated reviews etc

The review paper is dead... so this is a good development. Like you can generate these things in a couple of iterations with AI and minor edits. Preprint servers could be dealing with 1000s of review/position papers over short periods of time and then this wastes precious screening work hours.

It is a bit different in other fields where interpretations or know-how might be communicated in a review paper format that is otherwise not possible. For example, in biology relating to a new phenomena or function.

The fact you think there are none is really hilarious!

If the fungus was dried how do ions move? Where is the memory effect. Hyphae collapse so maybe it is ions shuttling through the dead matrix?