Author: Navarre Bartz

279 Articles

An illustration of two translucent blue hands knitting a DNA double helix of yellow, green, and red base pairs from three colors of yarn. Text in white to the left of the hands reads: "Evo 2 doesn't just copy existing DNA -- it creates truly new sequences not found in nature that scientists can test for useful properties."

LLMs Coming For A DNA Sequence Near You

April 24, 2025 by 13 Comments

While tools like CRISPR have blown the field of genome hacking wide open, being able to predict what will happen when you tinker with the code underlying the living things on our planet is still tricky. Researchers at Stanford hope their new Evo 2 DNA generative AI tool can help.

Trained on a dataset of over 100,000 organisms from bacteria to humans, the system can quickly determine what mutations contribute to certain diseases and what mutations are mostly harmless. An “area we are hopeful about is using Evo 2 for designing new genetic sequences with specific functions of interest.”

To that end, the system can also generate gene sequences from a starting prompt like any other LLM as well as cross-reference the results to see if the sequence already occurs in nature to aid in predicting what the sequence might do in real life. These synthetic sequences can then be made using CRISPR or similar techniques in the lab for testing. While the prospect of building our own Moya is exciting, we do wonder what possible negative consequences could come from this technology, despite the hand-wavy mention of not training the model on viruses to “to prevent Evo 2 from being used to create new or more dangerous diseases.”

We’ve got you covered if you need to get your own biohacking space setup for DNA gels or if you want to find out more about powering living computers using electricity. If you’re more curious about other interesting uses for machine learning, how about a dolphin translator or discovering better battery materials?

A black and blue swirl background with the logo of a blue dolphin over the word DolphinGemma with dolphin in white and Gemma in blue

DolphinGemma Seeks To Speak To Dolphins

April 24, 2025 by 39 Comments

Most people have wished for the ability to talk to other animals at some point, until they realized their cat would mostly insult them and ask for better service, but researchers are getting closer to a dolphin translator.

DolphinGemma is an upcoming LLM based on the recordings from the Wild Dolphin Project. Using the hours and hours of dolphin sounds recorded by researchers over the decades, the hope is that the LLM will allow us to communicate more effectively with the second most intelligent species on the planet.

The LLM is designed to run in the field on Google Pixel phones, due to it being based on Google’s in-house Gemini product, which is a bit less cumbersome than hauling a mainframe on a dive. The Wild Dolphin Project currently uses the Georgia Tech developed CHAT (Cetacean Hearing Augmentation Telemetry) device which has a Pixel 6 at its heart, but the newer system will be bumped up to a Pixel 9 to take advantage of all those shiny new AI processing advances. Hopefully, we’ll have a better chance of catching when they say, “So long and thanks for all the fish.”

If you’re curious about other mysterious languages being deciphered by LLMs, we have you covered.

Continue reading “DolphinGemma Seeks To Speak To Dolphins” →

An orange PSOne in the shape of a crab sits next to a large CRT monitor displaying a video game of a person running through what appears to be a park. A Pepsi logo is toward the top of the HUD.

Playstacean Evolves The PSOne Into The Crab It Was Always Meant To Be

April 3, 2025 by 6 Comments

Odd hardware designs crop up in art and renders far more frequently than in the flesh, but console modder [GingerOfOz] felt the need to bring [Anh Dang]’s image of the inevitable carcinization of our gaming consoles to life.

Starting with the image as inspiration, [GingerOfOz] got to work in CAD, creating an entirely new shell for the battered PSOne he adopted for the project. The final product is slightly less curvy than the picture, but some artistic license was necessary to go from the page to the real world.

The enclosure itself looks straightforward, if a bit tedious, but the articulating crab controller is a work of art itself. He could’ve made the arms static or non-functional, but they’re a fully-functional PlayStation controller that can move around just like on your favorite crustacean at the beach, minus the pinching. We love this whimsical take on the console mod which is a breath of salty air to the continuous race to get increasingly complex consoles into handheld form, although there’s certainly nothing wrong with that!

If you’re looking for some other console mods, how about this Apple M1 inside a Wii or getting your old Ouya up-and-running again?

Continue reading “Playstacean Evolves The PSOne Into The Crab It Was Always Meant To Be” →

Have Li-ion Batteries Gone Too Far?

March 13, 2025 by 84 Comments

The proliferation of affordable lithium batteries has made modern life convenient in a way we could only imagine in the 80s when everything was powered by squadrons of AAs, or has it? [Ian Bogost] ponders whether sticking a lithium in every new device is really the best idea.

There’s no doubt, that for some applications, lithium-based chemistries are a critically-enabling technology. NiMH-based EVs of the 1990s suffered short range and slow recharge times which made them only useful as commuter cars, but is a flashlight really better with lithium than with a replaceable cell? When household electronics are treated as disposable, and Right to Repair is only a glimmer in the eye of some legislators, a worn-out cell in a rarely-used device might destine it to the trash bin, especially for the less technically inclined.

[Bogost] decries “the misconception that rechargeables are always better,” although we wonder why his article completely fails to mention the existence of rechargeable NiMH AAs and AAAs which are loads better than their forebears in the 90s. Perhaps even more relevantly, standardized pouch and cylindrical lithium cells are available like the venerable 18650 which we know many makers prefer due to their easy-to-obtain nature. Regardless, we can certainly agree with the author that easy to source and replace batteries are few and far between in many consumer electronics these days. Perhaps new EU regulations will help?

Once you’ve selected a battery for your project, don’t forget to manage it if it’s a Li-ion cell. With great power density, comes great responsibility.

Smartwatches Could Flatten The Curve Of The Next Pandemic

March 4, 2025 by 72 Comments

While we’d like to think that pandemics and lockdowns are behind us, the reality is that a warming climate and the fast-paced travel of modern life are a perfect storm for nasty viruses. One thing that could help us curb the spread of the next pandemic may already be on your wrist.

Researchers at Aalto University, Stanford University, and Texas A&M have found that the illness detection features common to modern smartwatches are advanced enough to help people make the call to stay home or mask up and avoid getting others sick. They note we’re already at 88% accuracy for early detection of COVID-19 and 90% for the flu. Combining data from a number of other studies on smartwatch accuracy, epidemiology, behavior, and biology, the researchers were able to model the possible outcomes of this early detection on the spread of future diseases.

“Even just a 66-75 percent reduction in social contacts soon after detection by smartwatches — keeping in mind that that’s on a par with what you’d normally do if you had cold symptoms — can lead to a 40-65 percent decrease in disease transmission compared to someone isolating from the onset of symptoms,” says Märt Vesinurm.

We’ve got you covered if you’re looking for a smartwatch that looks a bit like a hospital wristband and we’ve also covered one that’s alive. That way, you’ll have a slimy friend when you’re avoiding other humans this time around. And when it’s time to develop a vaccine for whatever new bug is after us, how do MRNA vaccines work anyway?

A stainless steel metal toaster sits on a white table. Its cord is draped artfully around to the front and the leftmost toast holding apparatus is rotated out from the front of the device like a book pulled down and out from a bookshelf.

Flat Pack Toaster Heats Up The Right To Repair

March 2, 2025 by 85 Comments

The toaster is a somewhat modest appliance that is often ignored until it stops working. Many cheap examples are not made to be easily repaired, but [Kasey Hou] designed a repairable flat pack toaster.

[Hou] originally planned to design a repairable toaster to help people more easily form an emotional attachment with the device, but found the process of disassembly for existing toasters to be so painful that she wanted to go a step further. By inviting the toaster owner into the process of assembling the appliance, [Hou] reasoned people would be less likely to throw it out as well as more confident to repair it since they’d already seen its inner workings.

Under the time constraints of the project, the final toaster has a simpler mechanism for ejecting toast than most commercial models, but still manages to get the job done. It even passed the UK Portable Appliance Test! I’m not sure if she’d read the IKEA Effect before running this project, but her results with user testing also proved that people were more comfortable working on the toaster after assembling it.

It turns out that Wikipedia couldn’t tell you who invented the toaster for a while, and if you have an expensive toaster, it might still be a pain to repair.

A man in black glasses and a black t-shirt has his arms resting on a grey workbench. Between his opened hands are the two halves of a copper ice press. They are fist-sized copper cylinders. The lower half has large spiraling grooves to aid in the release of excess water from the ice being formed as it melts.

Make Ice Spheres In A Copper Press

March 2, 2025 by 11 Comments

Perfectly clear ice spheres are nifty but can be a bit tricky to make without an apparatus. [Seth Robinson] crafted a copper ice press to make his own.

Copper is well-known for its thermal conductivity, making it a perfect material for building a press to melt ice into a given shape. Like many projects, a combination of techniques yields the best result, and in this case we get to see 3d printing, sand casting, lost PLA casting, lathe turning, milling, and even some good old-fashioned sanding.

The most tedious part of the process appears to be dip coating of ceramic for the lost PLA mold, but the finished result is certainly worth it. That’s not to say that any of the process looks easy if you are a metal working novice. Taking over a week to slowly build up the layers feels a bit excruciating, especially compared to 3D printing the original plastic piece. If you’re ever feeling discouraged watching someone else’s awesome projects, you might want to stick around to the end when [Robinson] shows us his first ever casting. We’d say his skill has improved immensely over time.

If you’re looking for something else to do with casting copper alloys, be sure to checkout this bronze river table or [Robinson’s] copper levitation sphere.

Thanks to [DjBiohazard] for the tip!

Continue reading “Make Ice Spheres In A Copper Press” →