- A DTRA (Defense Threat Reduction Agency) official contacted yashgaroth after his 3-minute presentation, expressing safety concerns about DIY plasmid production; the group debated how to frame the risk level and clarify that the work is BSL-1 except for a small human-experimentation component.  
- kanzure and yashgaroth discussed emphasizing that the project is not formally affiliated with BioCurious and that BioCurious itself is an educational 501(c)(3), not a pure “DIY” lab, to allay regulatory worries.  
- Tukotih, a high-school programmer who arrived via #reddit-nootropics, was welcomed and encouraged to contribute; the channel’s culture of “shame and candy” was jokingly cited as the motivational glue.  
- nmz787 asked about Los-Angeles-area biohacker spaces and events, noting the $42 San Diego Zoo day-pass cost and musing whether Tijuana has any grassroots biology groups.  
- chris_99 shared an in-progress web app for visualizing malware relationships (virusvsvirus.com) and sought samples of the Flame/Skywiper worm, prompting brief discussion of reverse-engineering practices.  
- klafka1 weighed a job offer from a startup whose monetization plan is “burn through VC money,” while noting that his current employer just raised an additional $25 M.  
- brownies posted a randomized, placebo-controlled study finding no evidence that working-memory training improves general intelligence, dampening enthusiasm for cognitive-training apps.  
- Urchin highlighted the upcoming hard-science space-combat game “Torchships” and compared its realistic Newtonian interface to older titles such as Independence War 2 and Babylon 5: Into the Fire.