
Scientists successfully test ‘biological supercomputer’ performing complex tasks - jonbaer
https://www.rt.com/news/333912-biocomputers-perform-complex-calculations/
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neuro_imager
How is this built exactly? In a petri-dish?

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dekhn
No, in a flow cell.

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whoisstan
do you have a link describing a flow cell?

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dekhn
[http://www.biofilms.biz/flow-cells](http://www.biofilms.biz/flow-cells)

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.

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DarkLinkXXXX
If anyone wants it, here's a pdf of the original study.
[https://my.mixtape.moe/lymbwb.pdf](https://my.mixtape.moe/lymbwb.pdf)

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ColinWright
See also:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11186640](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11186640)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11195344](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11195344)

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jonstokes
"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" :)

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DarkLinkXXXX
I just looked up that book, and it seems so trippy. Do you recommend reading
it?

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andrey-p
It's one of my favourite horror novels. It's really good fun if you're into
that kind of thing.

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smoyer
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.

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mikkom
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.

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StreamBright
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.

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fapjacks
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!_

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return0
For careless people like you , you will be able to rent computers from the
cloud (well, the lake or the river, maybe from the actual Amazon river).

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Fuxy
Viruses may become a serious problem both kind. In the future you might need
to get medicine for your computer :)

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namelezz
Flu shot too :D

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bitwize
Rabbit, flu shot, someone talk to me!

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edvinbesic
cookie cookie cookie cookie cookie cookie

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bitwize
I'll head 'em off at the pass.

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dwarman
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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malas
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!

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xjfjdjcnc
The same thing could be said about US news sources.

