# Key Points from #hplusroadmap IRC Discussions

• Participants discussed cutting-edge genetic engineering, sharing scientific papers on CRISPR/Cas9 genome engineering technology, demonstrating the channel's focus on emerging biotechnology.

• The group debated open source hardware documentation standards, with criticism of "design by committee" approaches and discussion of existing solutions like SKDB (Simple Knowledge Database), which uses git repositories to standardize hardware documentation including bills of materials and metadata.

• Technical challenges of creating hardware package managers (similar to software's apt-get) were explored, highlighting difficulties in standardizing hardware components with proper dependency management and the gap between human-readable instructions versus machine-readable specifications.

• Bitcoin's evolution was referenced, including its price increase from $0.0038 in 2010, alongside discussions of its pseudonymous rather than anonymous nature, as transactions can be traced through the blockchain without careful wallet management.

• Participants analyzed drone technology, specifically the AR.Drone quadrotor, discussing potential modifications for continuous flight through battery swapping or docking stations, and comparing quadrotor designs (better for hovering/precision) versus fixed-wing aircraft (better for range/payload).

• Academic paper management tools were shared, including Zotero for reference management, paperbot for automated collection, and pdfparanoia for removing identifying watermarks from PDFs, reflecting the community's focus on open access to scientific knowledge.