- A new IBM/ETH neuromorphic chip is reported to run 100,000× faster than biological neurons; 500,000 of them would equal the neuron count of a human brain, prompting discussion about whether such a cluster could become sentient and what I/O (cameras, Internet, chat) it would need.  
- Participants debate the trade-offs between fixed-function ASICs, dense but inflexible, and open-source reconfigurable FPGAs that allow algorithmic changes but cost area and power; ideas include 3-D stacking of RAM on top of neurons and optical or spread-spectrum on-chip interconnects to beat RC-delay limits.  
- A serial, circulating-state architecture is proposed: one wire per neuron carries a time-multiplexed byte stream, letting a neuron update its state and return the byte to the queue, eliminating wide address/data buses and permitting very large, cheap networks.  
- FreeFEM++ is highlighted as a tool for shape optimization; kanzure is experimenting with Navier–Stokes simulations of membrane-less microfluidic filtration and wants to evolve channel geometries via genetic algorithms to steer flow-density centroids to target locations.  
- A 2009 nanopore-sequencing paper is circulated: single-stranded DNA is digested by an exonuclease, individual bases drop into an α-hemolysin pore with cyclodextrin, and the resulting current blockades identify nucleotides; open questions remain about capture efficiency and whether the same principle could sequence entire strands by differential current measurements.  
- Practical wearable-computing notes: fenn is designing “memory glasses” using a 16 GB Class-6 SD card as swap, investigating RAID-over-USB with multiple cards, sourcing low-power USB 2.0 hubs, and selecting quick-release “fastex” buckles and Kevlar webbing for a leg-mounted borg rig.  
- kanzure flags the Wikipedia “Mind uploading” article for deletion and shares links to an IEEE open-manufacturing group and a humorous “Turboencabulator” page; sysadmin chatter covers Apache umask settings and file permissions on a shared web host.