Recently researchers finished mapping the central nervous system (CNS) connectome of not just the female Drosophila melanogaster (i.e. fruit fly) brain, but also that of the male D. melanogaster for a comparative analysis. Here the sexually dimorphic changes turned out to induce specific mating behavior that ensures that there will only be smooching between genetically fit D. melanogaster males and females, while the rest of the connectome remained effectively the same.
Of course, with this connectome in hand it led some people to ask themselves what else one can do with this connectome graph of about 160,000 neurons other than make a fruit fly into a fruit fly. So far we have seen [Nftechie] turn this connectome into a crypto stock trader with the Stonkfly project that uses the connectome’s reward circuits to potentially make profitable trades, though [Nftechie] says that they haven’t verified yet how good a fruit fly is at trading stocks, only that it does said stonks.
Over at [PC Gamer] they summarized a number of things that people have also done, including trying to make the connectome control a game of DOOM and Beat Saber. Each game frame stimulates sensory neurons, with the generated outputs then mapped to game controls, with dopamine-producing reward circuits wired in for reinforcement learning.
Although the D. melanogaster brain is only the merest fraction of the size of the human brain, it does provide us with a glimpse of what actual artificial intelligence research may lead to, as we unravel how even a 160,000 neuron connectome is enough to make these terrors of rotting plant matter do their wonderful things.
After the Orion capsule of the Artemis I lunar mission returned to Earth, it was found that massive chunks of its heatshield had been ripped off, posing a serious risk to any future missions. In a recent video in which [polymatt] takes a break from repairing old laptop shells and the like, he tries to 
When you see a listing for an Ethernet switch whose specification list is in effect ‘yes’, with a four-digit price tag when new, and with the seller asking for less than 10% of said $3,000 asking price in an ‘untested’ condition, the only rational thing to do is of course to mash that ‘buy’ button. This is what [This Does Not Compute] 
For a little while vacuum tubes and semiconductors were fighting a heated battle for dominance, with bipolar junction transistors and 1959’s RCA Nuvistor both allowing you to build a compact circuit with relatively low power usage and no high voltages. Although we now know that semiconductor technology won out overwhelmingly, that doesn’t mean that you cannot build a brand new Nuvistor board in 2026, 
