News You Can Bruise for 2000 August 11

Consensus (from Daniel Hsu and Sumana Harihareswara) is that gold-pressed latinum can't be replicated because its structure is too complicated. Sumana says you just end up with regular latinum. I find this highly unconvincing. There are not many things simpler than gold. In fact, there are exactly 78 things simpler than gold. But that's the semi-official explanation (Sumana got it from a Trek novel).