- The Merck Index, once the canonical chemistry reference, is now paywalled and only available as poorly-scanned PDFs or proprietary web forms, prompting participants to share a torrent of the dataset and to call for open, structured chemical data.  
- Early molecular-nanotechnology (MNT) design tools—Will Ware’s NanoCAD and Crystal Clear, NanoEngineer-1—were revived in discussion; kirka is prototyping a new UHV-oriented CAD in Racket while kanzure argues for extracting NanoEngineer’s core into importable Python modules without the GUI.  
- Eric Drexler’s current position is that protein design and engineered enzymes are the most practical route to productive molecular machinery until deterministic mechanosynthesis matures; the custom Anton ASIC for millisecond-scale MD simulations was highlighted as an under-utilized resource for accelerating this work.  
- Participants debated the feasibility of rod-logic nanocomputers, reviewing Merkle’s reversible-logic concepts, Nanosystems rod-and-knob gates, and the open problem of detaching finished rods from sacrificial Ge or Sn substrates without violating mechanosynthetic constraints.  
- Valve’s flat-management handbook was recommended as a case study in “passion vs. power,” with kanzure arguing that measurable results outweigh claimed passion in leadership.  
- Community infrastructure proposals to revive MNT discourse included a wiki (diyhpl.us/wiki), a Sympa mailing-list/forum hybrid, and pressuring the Foresight Institute to release archived videos; kanzure rejected traditional PHP forums and Facebook groups as low-impact.  
- Links shared include the Valve employee handbook PDF, the Merck Index torrent, archived 1998 MrEd GUI toolkit pages, Nanosystems PDF (15 MB DJVU), Zyvex rod-logic primer, Merkle’s reversible-computation paper, and a Sloan Foundation report on bioterrorism preparedness.