- lsneff shared a Substack essay arguing that “modern ML is incredibly inefficient” and asked for critical feedback on the piece.  
- jrayhawk highlighted a new paper (PMID 35389778) reporting the first fully functional primordial germ-cell–derived sperm from rat pluripotent stem cells, a milestone for synthetic reproductive biology.  
- ACM announced that all articles published from 1951 through 2000 are now freely accessible in the ACM Digital Library, opening decades of foundational computing research.  
- fenn surveyed alternative actuator technologies, comparing fishing-line-based artificial muscles, carbon-fiber-wool electrostatic actuators, and piezoelectric inchworm designs, noting trade-offs in power density, voltage requirements, and environmental robustness.  
- Discussion turned to silicone-sheet capacitive stacks that generate electricity under compression and can be driven electrically to expand, suggesting a path to purely electric “air-muscle” analogues without pneumatics.  
- fenn proposed repurposing inexpensive MLCC ceramic capacitors as micro-actuators, exploring multi-stage flexure lever systems to amplify their tiny displacements into useful motion, and considered reel-to-reel fabrication for layered actuator arrays.