- Fabuntu (277 MB live-CD) bundles MIT’s fablab scripts and tools, including cad.py; the complete inventory list is at http://fab.cba.mit.edu/about/fab/inv.html.  
- “How to Make (Almost) Anything” class projects were discussed, including the whimsical “fabaroni” pasta printer and the apocryphal Slashdot tale of students building a 747 on a desert island.  
- A literature trawl surfaced several membrane-lysis techniques for algal lipid extraction: 3.25 kV cm⁻¹ electroporation, microfluidic nanoscale-barb mechanical lysis, pressure-cell shock, thermal depolymerization at 300 °C/15 min, and enzyme digestion.  
- kanzure is compiling quantitative energy models for each lysis method to enable direct comparison; membrane potential (~1.2 V in bacteria) and dielectric breakdown thresholds are key variables.  
- Optogenetics (light-driven neuronal firing) and the paper “Life without a cell membrane” (J. Cell Sci. 114:2009-2018) were highlighted as biologically relevant edge cases.  
- Multiple specialized XML markup languages were noted—Spacecraft Markup Language, Dream Markup, Facility Control Markup Language, and Physical Markup Language for kinematic pairs—prompting debate on whether interface metadata could reuse ebXML CPP structures.  
- A chemical sperm-count kit that stains semen proportionally to sperm concentration was dissected; the reaction is protein-based (likely Bradford assay), not pH-driven.  
- Cultural skepticism toward self-replicating machines was attributed to Hollywood tropes (Terminator, The Matrix); participants listed upcoming live-action adaptations of Ghost in the Shell and Cowboy Bebop.  
- Hardware chatter included IBM/Lenovo employee-pricing (~22 % discount), MacBook orders, and the irony that newer laptops often lack mature Linux drivers.