The synthetic yeast genome project (the precursor to this project) is more or less complete (currently at about 70%). Most chromosomes of Saccharomyces cerevisiae have been successfully synthesized from scratch. We are not speaking of a few hundred nucleotides (that was state of the art a couple of decades ago), but millions, all properly wrapped up in the proteins stabilizing chromosomes in eukaryotic cells. This project is a logical extension.

accessible via this network?

I am surprised how lenient this is. For the faking of legal citations and precedents I would have expected immediate disbarment. I cannot think of anything more disgraceful for a legal professional.

So that demonstration is completely missing the point. F1 cars generate their downforce exclusively by carefully guided airflow, which is technologically much more demanding than just installing a suction fan.

The EU has always been unhappy with how low the effective tax rates for the big US internet platforms are - and they are now preparing a digital tax on these services.

Using Watts or AmpereHours, i.e. SI-based units is definitely and uncomfortably un-american. Especially in the current political climate.

Top-level researchers have generally already moved internationally across the globe multiple times during their career - one or two post-docs, junior faculty, assistant professor, full professor - these routinely require you to move whereever in the world your research profile is valued. These people are not scared by moving once more. And the language of research groups is English anyway, everywhere.

The EU is already formulating a program to welcome exiled top scientists with open arms and funding. China has had a similar program for some years already. If the brain drain really gets traction, this will harm the scientific competitiveness of the US for decades (but the university and college football teams will remain awesome and continue to make good television).

A surprisingly large fraction of the US Nobel Price winners are immigrants born and initially educated in other nations, not US-schooled native citizens. They were drawn to the top universities to start their scientific career. During their one, two or three decades in the labs toiling at their research projects they became US citizens before they received the Price.

Due to the current political climate, the top talents have begun to leave the US, not move into it. The EU is preparing a program to lure top US researchers to Europe, and so has China for quite a while.

Another moving target.

That sentence makes no sense. In the original BBC article, these are 100 meters. Who writes such brain-dead summaries?

Never, ever look at the front page. Spotting a duplicate can kill you!

The core structure is made by a genetically modified yeast, which needs to be grown under very controlled conditions in a sterile bioreactor. Good luck with that in your home lab.

The first experimental samples were actually made synthetically - by a sequence of close to 100 distinct chemical reactions. Good luck again, and this approach will be orders of magnitude more expensive than just buying the product.

Magistral preparation means a pharmacist prepares an ointment, eye drops etc. by compounding raw pharmaceutical compounds with solvents, ointment bases, etc.. This is pure galenics. Pharmacists do NOT chemically synthesize pharmaceutical ingredients. Extracting ingredients from natural products to obtain some substance is maybe a borderline case.

Running a reaction is one thing (if you are lucky enough not to poison yourself - their promoted set-up does not even include a standard hood). But distributing stuff with no proper purification and, even worse, zero analytics is plainly criminal.