• A draft RFC (TSH-RFC-2010-12-20.doc) proposes using SHA-256 hashes of DNA sequences as a universal, language-neutral identifier for genetic parts, with open questions about how to define sequence boundaries for hashing.  
• The channel’s own name “#hplusroadmap” was debated as obsolete; a move to the shorter “#hplus” was blocked because the target channel is already registered and Freenode staff have not released it.  
• A “Citizen Science & Participative Health” meet-up scheduled for 21 December in Palo Alto with Jason Bobe and Greg Biggers was announced via the BioCurious calendar.  
• A consolidated list of 2011 conferences relevant to transhumanist and open-science communities was circulated, including Winter Intelligence (FHI, Jan 14-17), US Fab Lab Network (Jan 26-28), Exploring Human Enhancement symposium (Dallas, Apr 8-9), Singularity Summit Milan (May 5), Humanity+ NYC (May 14-15), Maker Faire SF (May 21-22), AGI-4 (Aug 3-7), and SENS5 (Aug 31-Sep 3).  
• Recent DIYbio developments noted: iGEM’s continued growth, a planned London/Cambridge DIYbio workshop in May 2011, and concern over a new Department of Homeland Security liaison assigned to the DIYbio community.  
• Kickstarter was observed to have become the de-facto discovery hub for open-source hardware projects even though it is only a funding platform, while Thingiverse’s catalog of ~5 k designs was judged comparatively small.  
• A Nature paper on “Rapid evolutionary innovation during an Archaean genetic expansion” was shared, together with a Slashdot thread that incorrectly credited MIT with coining the term “Archaean explosion.”  
• Technical help requests included methods for calculating charge distributions from PDB files and estimating Taq polymerase collision rates with nucleotides (~10 k bp/s at 70 °F).  
• Newly posted video archives: full Singularity Summit 2010 talks, Space Manufacturing 14 (SSI) sessions, and assorted open-hardware media collections.