# Summary of IRC Log from #hplusroadmap (May 9, 2016)

• A discussion about steroid use in sports was shared, with links to a CBS report about Russian gold medalists and a YouTube interview about steroid use in athletics.

• Kanzure and others discussed the feasibility of building a DNA synthesizer using inkjet technology for oligo printing, with debate about the technical challenges of moving from "a flat surface with 100 million dots" to automated pipetting for gibson assembly.

• The conversation explored the time constraints of micropipetting (estimated at 100,000 operations at 1 second each) and whether multiple centimeter travel at ~10 micron steps could be accomplished in ~1 second.

• A critique was shared of John Clark's argument about the brain's "master learning algorithm," with counterpoints that 750 megabytes of genetic code is actually quite complex when considering the interactions with nucleic acids, amino acids, and other biological components.

• Participants discussed the importance of comparative neuroanatomy data and connectomics research, with links shared to papers about predicting neural connectomes and generating statistical connectomes from morphological data.

• A brief mention was made about developing an "open source Google Now" concept, suggesting ongoing interest in open alternatives to proprietary AI assistants.