• The true annual cost of keeping a laboratory mouse is dominated by labor and caging, not feed; chow itself is only ~$2.60 per mouse per year, undercutting the oft-cited “$1/day” figure.  
• JAX Laboratories’ near-monopoly on knockout-mouse strains was criticized for demanding downstream-royalty licenses on discoveries, highlighting tension between proprietary genetics and open science.  
• Polyphasic sleep schedules were deemed largely ineffective, whereas biphasic (siesta) patterns plus modafinil or melatonin were discussed as more viable ways to reduce sleep inertia and latency.  
• MyHDL, a Python-to-Verilog/VHDL library, was showcased as a practical route to open-source HDL design, with ready-to-use “rhea” scripts enabling one-click synthesis on low-cost boards like the DE0-Nano.  
• New sub-$100 FPGA/SoC boards—Snickerdoodle (Zynq + Wi-Fi/BT), MYiR Z-turn, and Parallella (Zynq + Epiphany)—were highlighted as accessible platforms for custom imaging or ADC clock-generation projects.  
• A DIY x-ray photodiode front-end PCB project demonstrated both the promise and pitfalls of small-run fabrication when an OSH Park error produced an extra unsilkscreened but functional batch.  
• FDA inspection documents labeling Theranos blood-collection vials as “uncleared medical devices” were circulated, reinforcing skepticism about the company’s regulatory compliance.  
• A new DMCA exemption now allows security researchers to inspect and modify automotive software, celebrated as a win for right-to-repair and open automotive research.  
• Practical Bitcoin acquisition advice included using Electrum for desktop security, Coinbase for convenience, and a 2012 PIA blog post as a starting guide for anonymous U.S. purchases, while noting that credit-card chargeback risk prevents truly instant fiat-to-BTC transactions.  
• The enzyme-free “AQUA Cloning” method (PLOS ONE, 2015) and open-science resources such as the Peer Production Handbook and O’Reilly’s BioCoder magazine were shared as low-barrier tools for DIY biology.