# IRC Log Summary - February 28, 2011

* kanzure mentioned that Ed Boyden (likely the MIT neuroscientist) would be giving a TED talk that year, indicating ongoing interest in neurotechnology within the community.

* A discussion occurred about "Open Industrial," a project seeking funding from Peter Thiel's 20under20 program, described as aiming to become "GitHub+Thingiverse for open source hardware" and eventually an incubator for open source hardware projects.

* The Open Industrial project founder expressed ambitious goals of developing an open source mass spectrometer with thousands of contributors within 10 months, drawing skepticism from some channel members.

* kanzure announced that Tom McCabe was voted in as executive director of Humanity+, and mentioned that he (kanzure) was leaving the organization, noting they hadn't paid his bill.

* A brief reference was made to potential "singinst embezzlement/fraud" (likely referring to the Singularity Institute), though no details were provided in the log.

* There was a short discussion about open hardware presentations at an upcoming BIL conference, with one participant (Tyrant) mentioning a strategic approach to patents - only patenting technologies with significant funding potential that could support other open source work.