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::: spoiler Article:

Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the nineties shooter game "Doom" and say they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing.

It's the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain's networking system.

Each so-called "biological computer" contains around 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations.

Having mastered the simple computer game "Pong," where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball across a screen, the brain cells have moved on to bigger things.

Initially, the neurons were at the "level of a beginner who's never played a video game before," Alon Loeffler, Cortical Labs' senior application scientist, told AFP.

"Doom" involves a chaotic 3D game-world where the user is required to explore its surroundings and dispatch enemies—no easy task for a clump of cells.

"They were walking into walls a lot, shooting the walls, turning around, doing funny things like that," Loeffler said.

"And then eventually they started targeting the enemies more regularly and correctly."

It's not the cleanest execution, however. One demon takes several attempts to slaughter, with shots fired in multiple directions before the target is hit.

But the mind-bending research proves the neurons can adapt to stimuli in real time and complete goal-directed learning, Cortical Labs say.

'Scratching the surface'

The researchers converted the digital environment in "Doom" into patterns of electrical signals the neurons on the chip could understand.

When an enemy appears, specific electrodes stimulate the neurons on the special chip called a CL1, causing them to react.

Different patterns of neuron activity produce specific responses, such as firing the gun or moving left or right.

Researchers monitor the electrical activity of the neurons from a computer screen connected to the CL1, represented by thousands of tiny dots.

From this data, the team adjusts their input to influence and train the neuron's activity.

The CL1 isn't limited to computer games—the chip can be coded to perform a range of applications, from drug screening to AI-like machine learning.

"We are just scratching the surface of what these neural cultures can achieve when integrated in systems like our CL1," said chief scientific and operations officer Brett Kagan.

"Our neural cultures have been explored for a variety of tasks," he said—everything from "robotics, real-time learning tasks that are similar to AI, as well as health care, medicine, disease modeling, drug screening and even personalized medicine."

Not 'wacky science'

Kagan describes the CL1 chip as "a more sustainable and more powerful form of intelligence."

The human brain runs on an estimated 20 watts of power, a level of efficiency that silicon computing and artificial intelligence have not yet been able to replicate.

While it's "not aimed to replace what AI is doing" it's intended to "give us abilities that we've never had before," Kagan said.

The cells have a six-month lifespan and aren't yet capable of producing consistent, programmable results.

But analysts say the project's value could lie in its more sustainable power consumption compared to regular chips.

"We need better ways to manage that power envelope and get higher levels of efficiency," William Keating, CEO of semiconductor research company Ingenuity, said.

"This isn't wacky science or some bunch of scammers. This is real science and it's making real progress."

Positive headline in an overall shitty situation. For the other half of the picture (CW: misogyny, abuse):

• [UK] Teachers' union warns of 'masculinity crisis brewing' in schools
• [UK] Influencers fuelling misogyny in schools, teachers say

Cross-posted from worldnews@lemmy.ml -- https://hexbear.net/post/8490981?scrollToComments=false

At the end of the article, Berletic justifiably bristles at US propaganda that manufactures consent for anti-China aggression, but it's worth noting that, despite that propaganda, China is quite popular outside the imperial core while the US is widely reviled.

https://hexbear.net/comment/7161766

He overstates his case but the figures are interesting. TLDR:

• Nearly 40% of Hormuz crude goes to China
• But only 40% of Chinese crude imports are from Hormuz
• Oil accounts for "only" 18% of Chinese energy consumption
• [Not mentioned, but ~30% of their oil supply is domestic]
• China has ~1.4M barrels in reserve, equivalent to:
  • 4 months of imports from all sources
  • 7 months of imports through Hormuz
• China imports crude from 8+ different nations
• China imports no more than 1/5 of its crude from any one nation
• Russia is largest supplier, and some of that is by pipeline
• [Malaysia is second largest, iirc, comparable to Russia]
• Coal and renewables dominate China's power grid
  • [~90% of China's coal supply is domestic production]
  • [China converts some of their coal into liquid fuel]
• China has larger EV fleet than rest of world combined
• Author admits that blockade hurts China chemical sector
  • Depends on naptha and LPG feedstocks

Anyway here's the article:

The Hormuz blockade won’t hurt China

Doug Stokes, Tuesday, April 14, 2026, 10:32 AM

::: spoiler rest of article:

As I argued last month, the Iran war was really about America’s great power competition with China. Not by design, perhaps [sure dude], but these kinds of conflicts are not easily confined by those who start them. Any disruption to the world’s principal energy chokepoint becomes, whether Washington planned for it or not, a test of the Sino-American balance of power.

Trump’s announcement on Sunday of a naval blockade targeting all vessels entering or leaving Iranian ports, after peace talks collapsed in Islamabad, sharpens that test considerably. Hours before CENTCOM confirmed the blockade would begin on Monday morning, two Chinese state-owned supertankers had already passed through the strait under the IRGC’s yuan-denominated toll system, collected their military escort and were heading east into open water. China is not a bystander in this crisis. It is the country around which the whole episode turns, and arguably the one best positioned to come through it.

The strait carries roughly a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil, and China alone receives nearly 40 percent of all crude transiting it. When Trump announced the blockade on Sunday, targeting all vessels entering or leaving Iranian ports, the immediate effect was to shut down the trickle of ships still getting through, most of them bound for China or India. Beijing’s response was measured: Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the UAE’s special envoy that the blockade does not serve the interests of the international community. China, he said, stands ready to play a “positive and constructive role.”

The conventional assumption is that China’s dependence on the Gulf makes it acutely vulnerable. Trump himself claimed in March that 90 percent of China’s crude imports pass through the strait. The actual figure is closer to 40 percent, and even that overstates the vulnerability. China is simultaneously the largest single importer through Hormuz and, paradoxically, among the countries best insulated against its closure.

Start with stockpiles. China’s state and commercial reserves are estimated at roughly 1.4 billion barrels, enough to cover four months of total imports or seven months of what normally transits Hormuz. Japan holds weeks of LNG cover. Then there is diversification. Unlike Japan, which sources nearly 80 percent of its oil from Saudi Arabia and the UAE, China spreads its purchases across eight suppliers, none of which provide more than a fifth. Russia, the largest source, delivers partly by pipeline. The Power of Siberia gas line provides an overland route that no blockade can touch.

Most striking is electrification. China’s electric vehicle fleet is roughly as large as the rest of the world’s combined. New energy vehicles accounted for over half of all car sales last year. The oil displaced by EVs in 2025 was roughly equivalent to Saudi Arabia’s total imports. Oil accounts for only about 18 percent of China’s energy consumption; coal and renewables dominate a power grid almost entirely insulated from seaborne imports. The People’s Daily has been telling readers the country holds its own “energy rice bowl.” That is partly propaganda but not entirely wrong.

The crisis is not costless for Beijing. Independent refiners in Shandong are losing access to discounted Iranian crude on which their margins depend. The chemicals sector faces a squeeze on naphtha and LPG feedstocks. China halted fuel exports in March to conserve domestic supply, triggering shortages across South-East Asia from Laos to the Philippines, and then released selective quotas to Bangladesh, Myanmar and Vietnam as a tool of regional influence. Real money is being lost. But this is not a systemic threat.

Contrast that with America’s actual allies. Japan sources 70 percent of its Middle Eastern oil through the Hormuz Strait. South Korea’s net oil imports run to nearly 3 percent of GDP. Thailand, Pakistan, the Philippines: all are rationing fuel, canceling flights and telling citizens to work from home. These countries are bearing the sharpest costs of a war they had no part in starting. The blockade compounds their predicament while doing relatively little additional damage to China, which had already lost most of its Hormuz supply weeks ago and has since begun buying American crude to fill the gap. Some 600,000 barrels per day of US crude are scheduled for loading to China in April. Chinese state media framed this, with characteristic delicacy, as a competitive victory over Japan in securing American supply. With friends like Washington, Tokyo might reasonably ask, who needs adversaries?

The IRGC toll system, under which vessels pay in yuan routed through China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System, does not herald the end of the petrodollar. The Gulf Research Center is right to call the yuan’s role here that of a “corridor currency:” not a universal alternative to the dollar, but one whose utility rises where dollar settlement is constrained. What matters is that alternative payment rails now exist and function, and infrastructure built under wartime pressure tends to persist.

Beijing’s wider posture is “active neutrality.” It condemned the strikes, backed Pakistan’s mediation and is calling for restraint, but will not intervene militarily. If Washington gets bogged down in the Middle East, it is distracted from the Indo-Pacific. The preference is to ring-fence the crisis, keep buying from whomever will sell, and wait.

Britain was right to refuse to participate in the blockade, but the European angle is secondary. The primary contest is between Washington and Beijing, and the real lesson is that China’s energy planners have been vindicated. The EV program, the strategic reserves, the pipeline diversification, the coal-and-renewables grid: all were designed for precisely this contingency. The 15th Five-Year Plan doubles down on every one of those priorities. Whatever happens next, Beijing’s capacity to absorb the shock will only grow. The same cannot be said for Tokyo, Seoul or the capitals of Southeast Asia, still dependent on a sea lane that the United States can no longer reliably guarantee. That asymmetry is the story of this war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_system)

I'm tempted to speculate (baselessly) on the degrees of separation between Rubio and US intelligence-connected elements in the Cuban exile criminal world. So far I have yet to see anything in that vein related to Rubio. That whole situation first came to my attention when I read an article titled "Azov 9/11", which, to support its arguments, details a history of blowback from US-backed right-wing groups, including Cuban exile criminal groups that began as US proxies.

Mario Tabraue now works as a zookeeper