- A Fusion.net article on the “brain-enhancing” pill RISE triggered debate: the product is merely a combination of bacopa, theanine, and caffeine sold at ~$1 per pill, while bulk suppliers offer the same ingredients for pennies, raising questions about the economics and ethics of nootropic marketing.  
- Participants disputed whether caffeine qualifies as a nootropic, with some arguing its tolerance build-up and side-effect profile disqualify it, while others defended its cognitive benefits at moderate doses.  
- The group revisited the definitional criterion that a “true” nootropic must recursively enable the design of better nootropics, ultimately rejecting it as impractical.  
- Synthego’s current focus was clarified: contrary to earlier speculation about on-chip DNA synthesis, the company is now concentrating on conventional lab-automation robotics rather than microfluidic chips.  
- Opentrons announced that its first production batch of open-source liquid-handling robots (“alpha” units) has been completed in Shenzhen and successfully tested in Brooklyn, marking a milestone for low-cost lab automation.  
- The Internet Archive’s new “internetarchive.bak” initiative was discussed, aiming to create redundant, verifiable torrent backups of the entire Archive, with technical papers on proof-of-storage and proof-of-retrievability schemes shared.  
- Participants explored “proof-of-retrievability” schemes for long-term file storage, proposing that originators pre-compute challenge-response pairs (e.g., HMACs) while the file is still in hand, allowing later verifiers to confirm data integrity without needing the full file.  
- Sourcing small quantities of precision piezoelectric tubes for DIY scanning-tunneling-microscope (STM) projects was identified as a challenge, with commercial suppliers demanding minimum orders in the thousands of dollars; low-cost alternatives such as repurposing piezo buzzers or real-time-clock crystals were suggested.  
- Links shared included PubMed 20438233 (a cognitive-enhancement meta-analysis), MIT’s “Yak Shaving” essay, Nature 497, 7451 (a synthetic-biology paper), a Fraunhofer report on wafer-level MEMS packaging, and DIY-STM guides at http://e-basteln.de/index_m.htm and https://jessdea.wordpress.com/2010/05/18/assignment-7-diy-build-your-own-scanning-tunneling-microscope/.