- The Brain Preservation Prize (brainpreservation.org) is actively raising funds; debate centered on how much neural tissue—cerebellum, spine, peripheral nerves—must be preserved for future mind uploading and personal identity continuity.  
- Randal Koene’s Carbon Copies project (carboncopies.org) is rebooting mind-uploading research with a San Francisco workshop adjacent to the Singularity Summit and a July 17 Teleplace talk.  
- A YAML-based open neuro-anatomy map (github.com/kanzure/brain) was released to provide a machine-readable hierarchy of brain regions for emulation and modeling projects.  
- DIYbio’s growth was assessed: ~1,500 mailing-list members and 40+ press pieces, yet still no widely available open-source wet-lab kits two years after the hype began, prompting calls to “just build the kits ourselves.”  
- A 20-MB archive of #hplusroadmap logs (http://gnusha.org/irclogs.txt) was offered for training higher-order HMMs to resurrect user “ghosts,” and a public meetlog census (http://designfiles.org/~bryan/meetlog/) tracks 210 DIYbio-tagged participants.  
- Telepresence and teledildonics discussions concluded that latency under 100 ms is acceptable on Earth, but reliable, low-cost anthropomorphic robotic hands remain an unsolved problem; historical 1980s personal robots (Hero-1, Gemini, RBX) were reviewed for lessons.  
- Open-hardware pointers included the Ben NanoNote, ArduPilot UAV autopilot, Dangerous Prototypes’ monthly releases, and the defunct Fu-FMe teledildonics rig, alongside ultra-low-cost telepresence concepts using smartphones and RC cars.  
- Recent transhumanist reading list: Peter F. Hamilton’s Commonwealth Saga, the 2009 EU STOA report on converging technologies, Joseph Verdoux’s 2010 paper “Transhumanism, Progress, and the Future,” and criticism of Stephen Wolfram’s complexity-science framing of the Singularity.