- FreeSurfer, an open-source toolkit for cortical-surface reconstruction and fMRI overlay from structural MRI, was spotlighted along with a companion brain-region glossary, underscoring the community’s push for freely available neuro-imaging tools.  
- Early open-source augmented-reality experiments were recalled via ARQuake (a wearable-computer version of Quake) and MIT’s MIThril platform, framing the historical roots of today’s AR/VR research.  
- The Open Graphics Project released a complete open-source graphics-card Bill of Materials in Google Spreadsheets and a public wiki, inviting discussion on cost, XMVC support, and the feasibility of community-designed GPUs.  
- A technical debate on minimal self-replication contrasted naturally occurring barchan sand dunes with engineered replicators, concluding that post-replication utility and complexity—not mere growth—define true self-replication.  
- NASA’s 1970s lunar-self-replication study was re-examined, revealing estimates of a one-year doubling time for a city-scale factory and ~320 Mbit of onboard computation for mining robots, providing historical benchmarks for autonomous space manufacturing.  
- Micro-fabrication options were surveyed: optical lithography for volume ICs, e-beam/SEM lithography for one-off chips, and explicit safety warnings about HF, nickel carbonyl, and cyanide for garage-scale chemistry labs.  
- Osram’s 2007 shutdown of its OLED micro-display fab prompted a proposed hack—using an OLED linear array and vibrating mirror—to recreate the classic Private Eye/Virtual Boy near-eye display, highlighting the fragility of niche hardware supply chains.  
- A 600 KB “prettyrepo” archive replaced a 300 MB dataset, offering XML/Perl scripts and a 1.2 MB text dump of engineering-design ontology; participants debated MySQL schemas with unique IDs and parent-child keys to structure the data for open-science reuse.  
- Recent iPSC and organoid research was summarized as “cloning without cloning,” demonstrating that patient-specific organs or brain tissue can be grown from a pin-prick blood draw, underscoring the rapid convergence of regenerative medicine and DIY bio.