- The “idiot index” was introduced as a cost-efficiency metric that compares a component’s total production cost to the cost of its raw materials; a high index is meant to trigger a five-step optimization algorithm (Question, Delete, Simplify, Accelerate, Automate) rather than indicate stupidity, because value can reside almost entirely in processing rather than materials (e.g., ultrapure silicon for chip fabrication).  
- Participants debated the rigidity of bioRxiv’s submission rules, with one claim that the platform will not assign a DOI unless the authors already possess a journal acceptance letter, highlighting frustration over the difficulty and cost of obtaining DOIs compared to the trivial cost of minting URLs.  
- A proposal for “librarians, but on a blockchain” was floated, followed by skepticism that blockchains are unnecessarily constrained and expensive for social-good archiving; an alternative suggestion was to teach people and software to use magnet: URLs for decentralized access.  
- RangerMauve described an upcoming artist-focused archive that will initially use a traditional metadata database but may later publish metadata on-chain, while leveraging indexed peer-to-peer databases to avoid the centralization and cost issues common in blockchain projects.  
- Recent funding and research links shared include: (1) a Cell paper showing mTOR activity regulates the pace of human blastocyst-stage development, (2) Nuclera’s $75 M raise to accelerate protein expression and purification for drug discovery, and (3) an invitation to the November 8 Aaron Swartz statue unveiling in San Francisco.