• Brain Corporation secured Qualcomm Ventures Series B funding and a multi-year R&D contract to scale a 40-person team focused on spiking-neuron motor-control models, while Scholarpedia’s new “Brain Corporation Prize” was criticized for restricting authorship to pre-approved “world-class experts,” highlighting gate-keeping in open computational-neuroscience publishing.

• Participants circulated working FTP links that briefly exposed IEEE, Wiley, Bentham, ACS, AIP and Elsevier paywalled repositories, and a security researcher released a redacted log of IEEE credentials, underscoring ongoing tension between open-access advocacy and publisher paywalls.

• The Wikipedia “Biohacking” entry was slated for mass reversion to remove lifestyle-marketing figures (Dave Asprey, Tim Ferriss) and fringe IQ-boost claims, aiming to refocus the page on DIYbio, genetic engineering and open-source biotechnology.

• LS9’s newly opened Florida biorefinery—using engineered bacteria to produce oil at industrial scale—was cited as evidence that synthetic biology is moving from lab research to commercial deployment, while OpenBiotech.com was introduced with the goal of collapsing reagent prices via open-source sequences and proteins, though skepticism was voiced about added value versus existing public databases.

• A 200-day self-experiment combining 30 mg/day noopept with 250 mg Cognizin (citicoline) and 250 mg Alpha-GPC was reported to yield strong antidepressant effects and reduced rumination but no clear productivity gain, prompting discussion of the narrow therapeutic window and the equivalence of cheaper choline-citrate versus Alpha-GPC.

• Technical threads explored the limits of RepRap-style self-replication, noting that 3-D-printed plastic parts are trivial compared to non-printable motors, metal components and electronics, and questioned whether MakerBot’s Bre Pettis fosters a “Steve Jobs-like” style-over-substance culture in consumer 3-D printing.

• Background papers on natural competence and lateral gene transfer in Acinetobacter and E. coli were shared as foundational reading for DIY horizontal-gene-transfer projects, while the provocative 2011 H+ Magazine article “Mutate or Die”—proposing a DIY gene gun to insert celebrity fecal DNA into human testicles—was cited as an example of boundary-pushing bio-art/biohacking discourse.