# Key Points from IRC Discussion on March 31, 2016

* A discussion about open access research occurred, with kanzure sharing an article titled "Open Access Could Transform Drug Discovery: A Case Study of JQ1" and a Washington Post article about a student who put 50 million stolen research articles online for free access.

* The conversation highlighted the financial aspects of academic publishing, with kanzure noting that PLoS (Public Library of Science) makes approximately $45 million per year in revenue.

* Users discussed sci-hub.io and Library Genesis (http://gen.lib.rus.ec/) as alternatives for accessing academic papers, with kanzure pointing out that sci-hub had been in the paperbot source code for years.

* A research project on "Quadcopter Navigation in the Forest using Deep Neural Networks" was shared, featuring autonomous drones navigating through forest environments using neural networks.

* The group discussed a novel keyboard design called "Furikku" (later revealed to be an April Fool's joke) that determines which key is pressed based on the angle at which the key is hit, with some suggesting it could be improved with e-ink key labels.

* There was criticism of journalism around open access, with one user criticizing the Washington Post's counterargument to free papers as weak, quoting "Life is a bitter mystery. We can't give everything away for free. It's not that kind of country."