• PZ Myers’ Pharyngula blog post dismissing whole-brain emulation sparked controversy after deleting comments—including one from mind-uploading researcher Randal Koene—prompting channel members to debate where open critique of mind-uploading skepticism can still occur without censorship.

• A 164 MB curated Android malware archive (BaseBridge, YZHC, PJApps, Geinimi, Kmin) plus reverse-engineering slides and the contagio mini-dump blog were shared as resources for security researchers studying mobile threats.

• Kanzure proposed building an automated “rate-limit taster” that empirically maps a remote service’s throttling rules (requests/minute, ban duration, IP limits) to maximize scraping throughput without triggering blocks.

• Steve Mann’s early wearable-visor experiments were recalled as a cautionary tale: long-term immersion in a 2-D mediated view reportedly caused temporary nausea when returning to normal 3-D perception, illustrating sensory-plasticity risks of persistent AR.

• nmz787 floated the idea of a webinar on wavelet theory for signal denoising and sought collaborators in the DC/Virginia area, pointing to DIYbio contacts in Warsaw, VA and HacDC.

• Python environment automation was discussed through tools like virtualenv-burrito, virtualenvwrapper hooks, autoenv, and tmux-tmuxinator recipes for instant, reproducible Django development setups.

• Git workflow best practices circulated, including a “git pretty” flowchart clarifying when rebase becomes dangerous and curated .gitignore templates from GitHub.

• tmux was recommended over GNU screen for terminal multiplexing, praised for greater internal consistency and reliability.