- A new multi-beam electron-beam mask writer (MBMW-101) was highlighted; it delivers 262 000 programmable 20 nm beams at up to 1 A cm⁻², enabling a full 7 nm-node mask to be written in <10 h via a 120 Gbps data path.  
- Participants debated how such massive parallelism is achieved, speculating that a 512×512 aperture grid plus extremely uniform magnetic lenses (Helmholtz, Maxwell, or even spherical coils) keeps all beams evenly focused and current-matched.  
- The discussion linked to SPIE paper 9985-33 for technical details and to several Wikipedia articles on Rogowski, Helmholtz, Maxwell, and spherical coils as background on generating uniform magnetic fields.  
- A side thread cited historical critiques of the Club of Rome’s “Limits to Growth” report, noting its influence on China’s one-child policy and the resulting demographic imbalance of 62 million “missing” women.  
- nmz787 floated a personal plan to move to Boise, Idaho, to pursue a Materials-Science PhD with a nanomaterials/nanofab group that is part of the newly formed Nucleic Acid Memory Institute, soliciting community feedback on the idea.