- A $100 Chinese pico-projector phone (ic-mall.com link) was cited as evidence that “US manufacturing is fucked.”  
- Genehacker posted TI’s DLP Discovery site and a YouTube clip of a laser-projection rig, saying “want to hack,” highlighting interest in open-source optical hacking.  
- UtopiahGHML asked for a comparative table of 3-D printer/fab-lab projects (RepRap, FabLab, iFab, etc.); genehacker noted that FabLab built iFab but released no documentation.  
- kanzure uploaded a 38 GB archive of RDF bibliographies + PDFs (http://heybryan.org/books/papers/bibliographies/) and shared Zotero utilities (Zotfile, ZoteroRename.py) for auto-renaming and managing research PDFs.  
- Discussion of NASA “capaciflector” and “radioscope” sensors: fenn and kanzure debated whether the claimed >1 ft range for ionizing-radiation visualization is physically plausible; capaciflector specs show 0.5 in typical, 1 ft specialized.  
- NASA “gear-bearing” transmission (2000:1 reduction, anti-backlash via herringbone planetary rollers) was reverse-engineered in chat; katsmeow-afk explained how dual-ring, 2-tooth-offset Chinese winch gearboxes achieve extreme ratios.  
- drazak proposed that DIYbio groups could analyze the emerging 2009 swine-flu outbreak if they had proper containment training; linked early Mexican fatality report.  
- kanzure is building a Firefox sidebar extension to log and permute Google Scholar queries so researchers don’t lose exploratory search trees.  
- NYC reporter Jocelyn Zuckerman scheduled May 18 visit to interview Austin DIYbio participants; locals counted as kanzure, fenn, genehacker, cline.  
- fenn and kanzure brainstormed 3-D file-system visualization: extending FSV (OpenGL-based) with zoomable thumbnails, head-tracking, and hyperbolic tree layouts for large data hierarchies.