• A Forbes article revealed that a regular #hplusroadmap participant will publicly demonstrate a security flaw affecting four million hotel keycard locks, underscoring the channel’s role in practical security research.

• Genomic data economics were dissected: a single Illumina GAIIx run (~50 GB raw) now fits on a 2 TB drive and costs only ~$5/month on EC2, making storage trivial compared with the $50 k sequencing price; compression techniques (gzip, bzip2, 2-bit encoding, and the assembler-based “quip”) and the Genomic Standards Consortium’s proposal to discard reads and re-sequence rather than archive were debated.

• Data-transfer strategies for petabyte-scale genomics were proposed: OC-192/OC-768 fiber already outruns sequencing throughput, so reference-based transfer (shipping only diffs against a standard genome) could replace full-genome shipping; Google’s former “ship-us-a-drive” program and Backblaze’s ultra-low-cost backup service were cited as potential archival disruptors.

• A Nature Protocols paper on transcranial ultrasonic neuromodulation (Tyler et al., 2011) was shared at http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/neuro/ultrasound/; participants noted the absence of a promised 2012 follow-up after the lab received DARPA funding, raising concerns about publication delays tied to national-security restrictions.

• Commercial algae biofuel production was analyzed: the main bottlenecks remain energy-intensive cell lysis for oil extraction and the need for engineered strains that continuously secrete hydrocarbons; Amyris and LS9 were highlighted as leaders using GM cyanobacteria that excrete fuel directly, eliminating destructive harvesting.

• Ethical debate erupted over a Sacramento Bee report that UC Davis neurosurgeons allegedly caused brain infections in glioblastoma patients, with one participant arguing that terminal patients “might as well experiment,” while others referenced mind-control implant conspiracy theories as a counter-narrative.

• Practical scripting advice circulated on automating web-form logins, including locating hidden “sid” session-ID fields, precise cookie handling, and matching exact form field order and content-type headers.