- A consumer-grade underwater drone/ROV, the $2.5 k iBubble camera (optional tether), was highlighted as a “Subnautica-like” tool that could have served for real-time tile inspection on the Space Shuttle, prompting discussion of NASA’s SPHERES (Synchronized Position Hold Engage and Reorient Experimental Satellites) as a parallel zero-g robotics testbed.  
- Participants lamented that the CUBES zero-g drone project—intended for similar inspection tasks—appears to have been erased from the current timeline, illustrating how speculative or alternate-history technologies are tracked in the community.  
- A practical crypto-commerce thread emerged around paying an electronics vendor via the Lightning Network; users reported poor UX, 15-minute payment windows, and the need for better “5-minute” onboarding guides.  
- Technical recommendations for usable Lightning setups included running Umbrel on a Raspberry Pi 4 with BTCPayServer, and the DGLab “Hack0” hardware wallet (disclosure: a participant works for DGLab).  
- The state of Lightning tooling was summarized as “still a JavaScript proof-of-concept,” with Electrum noted to lack channel-routing capabilities, underscoring ongoing friction between open-source ideals and everyday usability in decentralized finance.