• Public FTP mirrors in Japan, Korea, and Singapore provide full GenBank releases (~1 TB) and human-genome subsets (94 MB–1 GB per assembly) without NCBI registration, while BioSQL offers a pre-populated relational schema of the entire NCBI taxonomy for instant bio-informatics backends.

• Cluster economics were debated after a quote of ≤ $400 per quad-core, 4 GB RAM diskless node, with participants weighing DIY super-clusters against high-end workstations and referencing commodity-hardware lists and a Top-500 university machine.

• Mind-uploading skepticism led to a proposal for “brain re-architecting” instead of soul-style continuity, questioning whether destructive high-fidelity scanning would ever be acceptable; personal projects around artificial wombs and DNA synthesizers were cited as more attractive paths.

• Wearable-input brainstorming produced sketches for backpack-mounted swivel keyboards, half-QERTY belt keyboards, and thigh-mounted split keyboards, supported by links to Matias half-keyboard studies, DIY split-keyboard blogs, and the $139 Kinesis Freestyle.

• MTConnect, an XML-based open-source protocol for manufacturing interoperability demonstrated at IMTS 2008, was highlighted as middleware that exposes machine sensor data and alarms and could slash the $90 B/year spent on proprietary integration.

• A low-cost reverse-engineering kit (Next Engine 3-D scanner plus software) was showcased, claiming 1/10 the price of existing systems and using a toy Ferrari as the test object.

• “Supply-chain closure” was framed as the next transhumanist milestone—achieving self-manufacturing through biology (biohack.sf.net) or heavy-metal fabrication (heybryan.org/exp.html).

• DIY brain–computer interfaces were discussed, including using shampoo and pennies for scalp electrodes and ultrasound gel as a conductive medium, alongside calls for an automated “archive bot” to retrieve and scan library books on demand to bypass paywalls.