- A user asked for the optimal NaCl concentration to achieve the “salting-in” effect for increasing protein solubility, highlighting practical protein-biochemistry concerns in a DIY setting.  
- kanzure shared Greg Maxwell’s 2015 Bitcoin talk slides (PDF) covering cryptographic fragility, the inverse correlation between feature-rich software and security rigor, and broader skepticism about the long-term viability of cryptography itself.  
- Discussion of Moore’s Law’s 50th anniversary framed ongoing debates about the end of classical scaling and its implications for future computing hardware.  
- nmz787_i linked a video demonstrating 4 GB RAM multitasking on the ASUS ZenFone 2, prompting debate over whether Android—not the hardware—is the primary bottleneck for productive mobile computing.  
- fenn showcased the Pocket NC 5-axis desktop CNC mill and Inventables’ X-Carve gantry router as examples of accessible, high-precision fabrication tools for makers.  
- Critique of “maker culture” emerged: participants lamented its drift from empowering durable, useful self-manufacturing toward churning out trivial plastic trinkets.  
- andytoshi sought a large corpus of Zen koans as plain-text files; adlai provided a downloadable collection from sacred-texts.com, noting its modest size (<50 koans).  
- Conversation contrasted “weapons of mass creation” (e.g., CNC machines, intelligence-enhancement tech) with traditional weapons, positioning open-source fabrication and cognitive augmentation as core transhumanist priorities.