- A $995 open-source “Oxygen Plasma Bonder” kit (microwave + vacuum chamber) from Black Box Labs / Epsilon Micro Devices enables PDMS-to-glass bonding for microfluidic fabrication; a companion DLP-based photolithography setup is also offered, both purchasable with Bitcoin.  
- Channel members argued that improving the existing open-source BRL-CAD kernel—by adding a modern OpenGL viewport, feature trees, infinite undo, and high-level Python bindings—would be more productive than attempting a new 400-person-year geometric kernel.  
- A consensus “open biology lab stack” was outlined: thermocycler, centrifuge, electrophoresis rig, electroporation system, flow-cytometry sorter, spectrograph, DNA synthesizer/sequencer, and low-temperature storage, with emphasis that cheap single devices are useless without the full pipeline.  
- A Raspberry Pi–based, IRC-controllable webcam microscope project is being planned: the Pi’s on-board H.264 encoder will stream live video, OpenCV will auto-detect “interesting” microorganisms, and users will issue stage-movement commands in chat.  
- CO₂ laser longevity was dissected: sealed RF-excited tubes last ~45 000 h and can be refilled, whereas common Chinese DC-excited glass tubes fail after 1 000–2 000 h mainly because helium diffuses through the walls, altering the 9.5 % CO₂ / 13.5 % N₂ / 77 % He gas mix.  
- Superfinishing—a hydrodynamic precision process that produces mirror-flat surfaces by floating a workpiece on coolant over a fine abrasive—was identified as a “lost art,” with Arthur M. Swigert’s 1940 book “The Story of Superfinish” cited as the definitive reference.  
- Participants shared open-source reverse-engineering resources: John McMaster’s siliconpr0n.org for IC imaging, degate/png2netlist variants for netlist extraction, and CNC microscope mk2 videos for high-resolution die photography.  
- A PLOS ONE paper showing that identifiable bystander images can be extracted from corneal reflections was circulated, alongside a Stanford paper on “Representing exact numbers visually using a mental abacus” as cognitive-enhancement reading.