- Russian transhumanists scored a publicity win by landing on the front page of LiveJournal, highlighting the global reach of grassroots futurist communities.  
- A New York Times piece on DIYbio’s shift “from geek to chic” prominently featured Joseph Jackson’s Kickstarter campaign that raised $35 k and name-checked DIYbio groups in Bangalore, Seattle and Paris.  
- Nick Bostrom’s new book “Human Enhancement” (Oxford University Press) was announced, framing the ethical debate around cognitive and physical augmentation technologies.  
- Nature covered the emergence of “genome bloggers” who mine open ancestry data, illustrating how hobbyists are adding depth and democratizing personal genomics.  
- A real-time iPhone translation app (Word Lens by QuestVisual) was hailed as a near-magical AR tool that could justify buying the device.  
- Facebook’s global friendship map (3.9 MB high-res image) was dissected for geopolitical insights, noting sparse adoption in China and parts of Africa.  
- Annotatr, a post-publication peer-review web app built on Google App Engine, was introduced as an experiment in open, post-hoc scientific commentary.  
- Skeinosaur—an open-source knitting machine derivative of RepRap—was linked on GitHub, extending the reprap ecosystem into textiles.  
- Ongoing frustration with human embodiment surfaced in a lament about the slow progress toward mind uploading, underscoring the channel’s existential undercurrent.