- A Swedish amateur nuclear experimenter was arrested after attempting to split atoms at home using thorium, radium from watch dials, americium from smoke detectors, and $1 k worth of equipment; the story was widely circulated and discussed as a modern “nuclear boy-scout” case.  
- Channel member superkuh revealed he had previously tried to fuse atoms in his apartment and was visited by the FBI, but declined to give details on legal advice.  
- fenn is prototyping a novel “spatial beamformer” that manipulates the cross-sectional shape of a beam rather than its angle, promising pictures and explanation once functional.  
- Extensive troubleshooting advice was exchanged for recovering data from an old IDE hard drive, including using a second ATX PSU with a paper-clip jumper, grounding caveats, and warnings about potential ground-loop damage.  
- jrayhawk surveyed multi-display hardware options, noting that quad-output cards are common, Matrox offers up to 16 outputs at medical-industry prices, and DisplayLink USB adapters remain poorly supported under Xorg.  
- Wayland was introduced as the forthcoming replacement for X11, eliminating legacy drawing primitives and aiming for smoother compositing on modern GLES platforms.  
- QuantumG recommended the documentary “Transcendent Man” as a balanced introduction to transhumanist ideas, suggesting it could serve as a canonical pointer for newcomers.