No way to make plasma glass anymore, which is sad.
Edit: Also the new Mining Drills are simple to use. Drag it somewhere, drag two braces facing it and wrench in the braces.
Turning on the Mining Drill and it'll begin extracting ore from the ground, the ores it extracts are based on chance which means it's not uncommon to get a couple of diamonds. Eventually the area will be depleted and you'll need to drag the drill and its braces to a new location.
The Mining Drill comes with a regular power cell, a micro-laser, matter bin and capacitator. There are high-powered cells that spawn next to the mining drills.
I've not proven this, but I'm guessing replacing the micro-laser with a superior version will increase mining speed, replacing the matter bin increases the drill's capacity. Not sure what replacing the capacitator would do.
It's very good way to mine.