• The Si elegans EU project proposes assigning one FPGA per C. elegans neuron to guarantee deterministic timing, but #hplusroadmap participants reject it as hardware overkill and doubt its 3-year timeline, favoring OpenWorm’s conventional numerical simulation approach.  

• A practical route to full Android virtualization on Nexus 4 hardware is blocked because no Android kernel has been built against the Linux-arm-kvm branch; the interim fix is running Debian inside a LilDebi chroot.  

• Participants explore a Bitcoin-based business model of manufacturing scarce FDA-listed antibodies for rare diseases and selling them directly, targeting therapies that currently cost $10 k+ per month and are in chronic shortage.  

• Rob Carlson’s $100 k consulting fee to design a $50 open-source thermocycler is cited as emblematic of how consultants and marketers (“parasites”) capture more value than the engineers who create the hardware.  

• Channel members lament a “brain drain” from biology to computer science, noting that new CS grads earn roughly $150 k while biology PhDs are offered ~$60 k, attributing the gap to low bio funding, long training times, and tedious bench work.  

• Bristol researchers demonstrated a cascade of microbial fuel cells that convert human urine into enough electricity to charge a Samsung handset, as reported by the BBC.  

• DIY bio pricing is scrutinized: ATCC 700926 E. coli costs ~$300, whereas functionally similar K-12 strains from Carolina Biological are only $11.50, highlighting cost barriers for amateur labs.  

• Builders of custom bioprinters seek open documentation or inexpensive sources for piezoelectric inkjet heads (e.g., Epson), but most hobbyists still rely on salvaged printer control boards due to limited open hardware specs.  

• A YouTube demo of the Pansys3000 robotic cell-culture system shows 50 µm-precision liquid handling, illustrating the kind of high-throughput automation that could be replicated in open-source biology labs.