- A loophole in UT Austin policy appears to allow an undergraduate to declare a dual major in “Manufacturing & Design,” a program newly confirmed by the department chair; the curriculum is expected to cover factory-level systems design rather than pure operations-research.  
- Participants debate how academic programs teach manufacturing when so much industrial know-how is proprietary; consensus is that most process innovations originate in academia and are later locked up by industry.  
- Max More (in Austin) and the World Transhumanist Association are separately converging on the need for a shared, process-oriented technology database; WTA favors a simple wiki, while More is open to a more structured, workflow-centric system.  
- DIYbio members are defaulting to Delicious for bookmarking despite its vendor lock-in; the channel argues that open, self-hosted alternatives (FOAF, NoseRub, or a 20-minute thttpd/Perl prototype) would be more robust and computationally efficient.  
- IEEE is mentioned as a potential stakeholder that might adopt or fund an open technology-tracking platform, though no commitment is confirmed.  
- Fold.it is noted as unavailable for native Linux, illustrating ongoing platform-compatibility pain points for open bio-games and citizen-science tools.