So what does this "supercomputer" mean in context of RT.com?
> The model is so far designed to tackle only one specific problem, but that is enough to set the groundwork for further research, and, according to Nicolau, biocomputers are coming our way fast.
I think they mean a computer with high-level computational capacity, even though it is hard to see that this become reality within few years. It would be really cool to make it happen though.
basically they are little chambers with in ports and out ports with environmental control (temp, pressure). You shove stuff in, let it react, then flow it back out.
Gives you control over concentrations. The flow cell is transparent so you can put it in a microscope and analyze the reactions. In this case it looks like they used beam lithography to create a surface inside the flow cell.
"There are worlds and worlds and worlds, an infinity you cannot grasp. You could travel from one to another to another and find me in thousands upon thousands, spreading like stars in the sky from reality to reality. They invite me in. They give birth to me. And soon, yours will do the same, men are working tirelessly toward it. They bring me into their world because they always want what only I can give. In this place, seven billion men bear my mark. And of the limitless infinity of worlds, I rule over almost half of them." -- Korrok, from "John Dies at the End"
"I serve none but Korrok" should be the new "I for one welcome our robot overlords" :)
The ship's computer in Star Trek: Voyager was biological, with bags of neural tissue networked together. There's an episode where the ship literally gets sick along with the crew: it's what I thought of immediately after reading the headline.
When I hear "biocomputer", here's what I think: I am a programmer in the near future, and I need to feed my computers daily, and change their water weekly. This is just to maintain a minimal amount of performance. But I'm awful at this: I have killed many fish before in my life purely by not being attentive enough. I would almost certainly accidentally murder my biocomputers. And the smell!
do not post any news from this criminal news network. russia is killing people in Ukraine and then try to look otherwise using this network as a primary tool!
If I purchase a biological supercomputer, how long does it take for normal cell death to render it ineffective? Humans have a planned obsolescence of around 80 years but a (large) dog only lives for about 10 years. I guess in some ways this is no different from electronics manufacturers gluing their computers/tablets/phones together (or building them with non-replaceable batteries) but I'm opposed to that trend as well.
Biology has been used for NP-hard before. Travelling Salesman was run in a petri dish maybe 20 years ago IIRC. Answer was encoded in RNA fragment concentrations.IIRC again) the base sequence was the solution.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 73.4 ms ] thread> The model is so far designed to tackle only one specific problem, but that is enough to set the groundwork for further research, and, according to Nicolau, biocomputers are coming our way fast.
basically they are little chambers with in ports and out ports with environmental control (temp, pressure). You shove stuff in, let it react, then flow it back out.
Gives you control over concentrations. The flow cell is transparent so you can put it in a microscope and analyze the reactions. In this case it looks like they used beam lithography to create a surface inside the flow cell.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11186640
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11195344
"I serve none but Korrok" should be the new "I for one welcome our robot overlords" :)