- Theo Jansen’s walking mechanisms were discussed as a complex but inspiring example of mechanical design for open-source robotics projects.  
- A call for volunteers for the “designfiles.org” hardware initiative was prematurely sent before the constitution, social contract, and “free hardware guidelines” were drafted, sparking debate over coordination and process.  
- Eliza Evans outlined plans to streamline university-industry R&D pipelines, citing 30-page IP contracts at UT vs. one-page agreements at Purdue and the $35B in U.S. corporate research money that reportedly moves overseas due to IP friction.  
- kanzure proposed using SKDB packages and git repositories to automate kit-data ingestion for the diybio.org store, letting developers push hardware projects directly into the kit database.  
- hundred-ideas floated a microfluidic turbidistat Arduino shield and a “synthetic aesthetics” microfluidic tinkering platform, linking to a one-page proposal at http://has100ideas.com/idea/synthetic-aesthetics-proposal.  
- The Awesome Foundation (awesomefoundation.org) was identified as a potential funder for open-hardware videos; kanzure submitted an application the same day.  
- Required reading for a “downloadable hardware / open-source hardware” lecture in the 2010 Singularity Studies course was debated; candidates included Cory Doctorow’s “Makers,” Greg Egan’s short story “Chaff” (from Luminous), and Vernor Vinge’s “Rainbow’s End.”  
- triffid’s lightweight RepRap firmware that runs on stock Arduinos was shared: http://github.com/triffid/ATmega-Skeleton/blob/master/mendel/Makefile.  
- Wearable-computing discussion centered on Android phones as CPUs, FPGA power-consumption issues, and subvocal-recognition headsets as a quieter BCI alternative.  
- kanzure will present three separate talks at SciPy 2010 on PythonOCC, SymPy, and the OKFN/CKAN datapkg toolchain, acting as a “drone python programmer” for teams unable to travel.