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  1. After several encounters with my most recent enemy (electricity-eating fungi) I've decided to study the damn things and figure out how to eradicate them.

    They're not actively harmful, but colonies form in low-current circuits, and cause devices to stop working. Phone lines and tv remotes are the two places I most often find them in, and even though I fully clean the devices, after a while the fungi shows up again.

    Thursday, 18-Jul-19 08:18:40 UTC from web
    1. @nerthos I'm sorry, do you live in the future ?

      Thursday, 18-Jul-19 09:42:07 UTC from web
      1. @drinkingpony There is no future. The world becomes suffocated by pollution in 2050.

        Thursday, 18-Jul-19 10:13:01 UTC from web
        1. @thismightbeauser That is a lot more rose-tinted than the version I heard earlier.

          Though I guess how much rose-tint is to be found directly corresponds with how much you liked or hated the new Mad Max

          Thursday, 18-Jul-19 12:44:04 UTC from web
      2. @drinkingpony @thismightbeauser No, probably in the sci-fi future fungicide for this specific thing would be readily available.

        For now I'm trying to figure out what is good at killing them and doesn't mess with circuitry. There's not a lot of info on them that's easy to get, most of it is academic research on them and how electric polarization affects the distribution of colonies, not on how to get rid of them.

        Thursday, 18-Jul-19 18:20:41 UTC from web
        1. @nerthos Tey

          Thursday, 18-Jul-19 19:41:00 UTC from web
        2. @nerthos Anyway, as I was trying to say, tried anything temperature or oxygen based? Freeze/nuke, suffocate, whatever?

          Thursday, 18-Jul-19 19:43:28 UTC from web
          1. @scribus @drinkingpony Sub-zero doesn't kill them, considering they made a colony on the phone line box thing outside despite a week of antartic wind consistently dropping the temperature below 0ºC

            Haven't tried suffocation. I've used alcohol and contact cleaner to completely clean them off but they show up again. They're probably airborne as there's no way they could have gotten inside the tv remote by contact.

            Friday, 19-Jul-19 07:18:56 UTC from web
            1. @nerthos Here is a stupid idea... Try hairspray.

              Nono, not on them, remove them first and then see if hairsprayed components inhitbit their growth.

              Also, have you considered that it is not fungus you are dealing with but some form of oxydation ?

              Friday, 19-Jul-19 08:24:33 UTC from web
              1. @drinkingpony I'm 100% sure it's not oxydation, copper is intact and copper oxyde isn't gooey and transparent

                Saturday, 20-Jul-19 00:32:27 UTC from web
        3. @nerthos Well, I doubt it would survive a bath of 99% isopropyl alcohol.

          Oh, also, note : do not drink that.

          Thursday, 18-Jul-19 21:18:46 UTC from web
    2. @nerthos Electricity-eating fungi honestly sounds like something from science fiction.

      Thursday, 18-Jul-19 09:47:45 UTC from web
      1. @thismightbeauser They are quite real I assure you. However you pretty much need to go out of your way to find them currently. Such as dropping electrodes in a pond in a park and return in a month time to see if you cought any.

        Thursday, 18-Jul-19 12:42:13 UTC from web