- DIYbio is attracting mainstream media coverage (Slashdot, AP) and sparking both enthusiasm and regulatory concern; participants warn that Texas and Maryland already restrict sales of scientific glassware and medical devices to non-licensed buyers.  
- A sub-$100 open-source PCR thermocycler was outlined: Peltier heaters/fans, thermistor feedback, and a 50 µL cuvette water-bath rack controlled by a microcontroller, with surplus campus stores and Fry’s Electronics cited as cheap glassware sources.  
- A machine-readable protocol format is being prototyped to replace natural-language lab instructions; debate centers on whether a new domain-specific language is needed or existing C/G-code suffices.  
- A $20 USB webcam was repurposed into a 130× microscope capable of imaging planarians and large microbes, demonstrating ultra-low-cost lab imaging.  
- Safety discussion: lab-adapted E. coli strains are considered unlikely to survive outside controlled conditions, mitigating fears of accidental release from garage labs.  
- Participants argued that no truly distributed SQL database exists; one claims relational systems only manipulate “hyper-rectangles” and current indexing is a “fake,” while others point to Google BigTable and column-oriented stores as solutions that abandon relational algebra.  
- Latent semantic analysis and high-dimensional vector representations of text were explored as practical homework examples, with WordNet and document-term matrices offered as tools for sentence similarity tasks.  
- CouchDB was recommended for personal projects involving document-heavy data, framed as a more human-friendly alternative to traditional RDBMS.  
- PCB and mechanical-design tooling complaints dominated: EagleCAD, BRL-CAD, Alibre, and Metasequoia were named, with consensus that “all PCB tools suck” and jokes about reverting to paper and drafting tables.