- GitHub launched a 3-D file viewer and diff tool for STL and other CAD formats, using csgtool (a C library with Ruby FFI bindings) to render and compare 3-D models directly in the browser.  
- The NCBI Sequence Read Archive (SRA) format was revealed to be undocumented; its specification exists only in the SRA toolkit source code, and the official extraction tool is ~50× slower than BWA mapping and ~1,000× slower than gunzip.  
- A Czech hackerspace group (pasky, chido, kyknos, Jenda`) joined the channel after word spread on their biolab IRC, bringing fresh interest in open biohacking and paper access.  
- Paperbot’s libgen integration was praised for reliably retrieving Nature Methods and other paywalled articles, although occasional 206 Partial Content errors and PLOS ONE translator issues were noted.  
- Discussion highlighted the absurdity of mandatory submission to an unsupported, opaque file format (SRA) due to NCBI budget cuts, prompting calls for reverse engineering or adoption of open alternatives like FASTQ.gz or BAM.  
- A SIGGRAPH Asia 2013 video on “3-Sweep” demonstrated extracting editable 3-D objects from a single photo, sparking excitement about rapid 3-D asset creation for printing and VR.  
- JavaScript’s lack of true integers resurfaced as a pain point, with the reminder that only 53-bit precision is available via IEEE-754 doubles.  
- Channel members curated beach-reading queues for Android reverse-engineering, requesting book recommendations beyond existing PDF collections of smali, dex, and Java references.