# Key Ideas from #hplusroadmap IRC Discussions

• A nematode mind uploading project was discussed, referencing work by Eugen Leitl and Randal A. Koene (now at Halcyon Molecular), showing early practical attempts at whole-brain emulation research.

• Participants explored creating an open hardware cooperative with a novel funding model using microgrants starting at $50 and doubling with each successful project, alongside a business proposal to sell RepRap 3D printers to fund full-time open hardware development.

• The group identified a significant problem in the open hardware movement: many projects claiming to be "open" fail to actually publish their designs, making true open source hardware difficult to identify and reproduce.

• Technical discussions included microfluidics experimentation with SU-8 photoresist, paper-based microfluidics for PCR applications, and various DIY science kit concepts including microbial fuel cells and Arduino-based microscopes.

• Kanzure shared having acquired the entire Extropian mailing list archives (dating to 1991), containing early transhumanist discussions about immortality and self-transformation, along with remarkably accurate predictions about technologies like PDAs and software agents.

• The community debated software platforms for developing the "skdb package format" that would allow importing Python modules representing hardware, showing efforts to create standardized representations of physical objects in code.