• The Economist’s recent 3-D printing coverage was cited as evidence that mainstream media is finally acknowledging the transformative potential of digital manufacturing and open hardware.

• A $20 k open-source tissue-culture platform was proposed: a sterile RepRap inside a HEPA enclosure, $50 / mL degradable hydrogel, and ~$1 k / week consumables, with the caveat that complete protocols—not just hardware—are still needed; NIH RFA-HL-11-025 was highlighted as the authoritative funding call outlining remaining cell-viability and perfusion challenges for human-scale organ printing.

• The community released the Open Source Hardware Definition 1.0, aggressively promoted by Ayah Bdeir (littleBits), Limor Fried (Adafruit), Phillip Torrone (Make), and Bug Labs, and covered on Make, Arduino, and Slashdot.

• kanzure proposed rebuilding the “Transhumanist Technical Roadmap” as a version-controlled, milestone-oriented YAML document compiled with LaTeX, seeded with a draft list of DIY-transhumanist projects and their estimated costs.

• pyscad (https://github.com/kevinmehall/pyscad) was introduced as an experiment in using Python’s ctypes to manipulate OpenSCAD’s abstract syntax tree, aiming for deeper Python integration in open-source CAD workflows.

• Manu Sporny released his genome into the public domain (http://manu.sporny.org/2011/public-domain-genome/) and received a tongue-in-cheek GitHub pull request that “increased the stimulating effect of caffeine by 5%,” illustrating how version-control culture is being applied to human genetic data.

• Amsterdam’s pilot DNA-spray anti-theft system—tagging criminals with unique genetic barcodes—sparked debate on civil-liberty implications and forensic reliability, with some participants calling the technology “dirty.”