- Open-source hardware is now generating million-dollar businesses, as highlighted in a Harkopen article profiling companies that design and sell open-source devices.  
- The ethics of DIY biohacking are under discussion, with links to a P2P Foundation blog post and a National Defense Magazine piece on rising public interest in genetic science.  
- A new “Open Microbiome” project (openmicrobiome.com) was announced, aiming to provide open-access microbiome resources.  
- NIH equipment-grant opportunities (PAR-05-028) and UC Berkeley’s equipment-funding page were circulated as potential support for lab build-outs.  
- Virtual-world design critiques emerged: Dustbin argued that full human avatars are premature, proposing floating heads tracked by webcam plus spherical, gravity-free meeting spaces instead of traditional auditoriums.  
- Utopiah shared IBM’s INNOV8 CityOne game/simulation for exploring smarter-city scenarios.  
- A “used lab-mouse adoption program” was floated as a way to repurpose research animals and reduce costs for citizen scientists.  
- Multiple links on open-source hardware culture and telepresence communities (telexlr8.wordpress.com) were posted to foster distributed collaboration.