- The Kickstarter “Glowing Plants – Natural Lighting with No Electricity” campaign was critiqued for overstating its practical utility, while its founder Antony Evans (ex-Senstore/Singularity University) was cited as an example of SU-affiliated entrepreneurs pivoting between high-profile but short-lived bio/quantified-self projects.

- Participants weighed the legal and ethical trade-offs of large-scale scientific-literature archiving: Cathal Garvey warned that mass downloads could trigger CFAA felony charges, whereas others framed the practice as ethically justified civil disobedience; meanwhile, Kanzure acquired 20 TB of new storage for an open-science mirror intended to preserve both public-domain and paywalled content.

- The channel’s “paperbot” was actively used to retrieve paywalled papers from Wiley, Science, and ASME, with SSL-handshake errors circumvented by falling back to HTTP, illustrating the group’s routine reliance on automated paywall evasion for research access.

- A DIY gene-design tool named “PySplicer” was reported ready for synthesis after adding filters for mRNA secondary-structure avoidance, RNase E sites, and BioBrick restriction enzymes, demonstrating incremental but concrete progress in open-source synthetic biology workflows.

- Practical 3-D printing advice was shared: OpenSCAD for simple parametric modeling, BRL-CAD for generative art, and slic3r plus RepRap firmware for slicing and control, reflecting the community’s integration of open hardware into bio- and neuro-tech prototyping.

- Street-price data on cognitive enhancers were compared—modafinil $300–$1,026/month, armodafinil ~$500/month, Adderall $200–$300/month—alongside user anecdotes of measured typing-speed gains of 20–30 wpm on Adderall, highlighting ongoing self-experimentation and insurance-coverage frustrations.

- Kanzure showcased a rigorous Pokémon Crystal ROM-hacking project featuring ~100 k lines of custom assembly, automated disassemblers, and test suites, illustrating how the same reverse-engineering discipline applied to consumer software is repurposed for open-source bio and neuro projects.