• The Human Brain Project’s Neuromorphic Computing Platform offers two complementary systems: a 10⁴× real-time mixed-signal physical emulator optimized for plasticity and learning studies, and a real-time digital multicore system designed for robotics-grade hard real-time performance.

• Participants argued that the true bottleneck for whole-brain emulation is not the ≈300 000 PB/yr storage requirement but the lack of high-quality electrophysiology data for thousands of distinct neuron types; Kwabena Boahen’s hybrid neuromorphic hardware (Spaun/Spinnaker lineage) was judged more promising than generic exascale supercomputers for achieving real-time brain-scale emulation.

• Channelpedia, a curated database of ≈180 000 ion-channel abstracts, was highlighted as an under-exploited resource that could seed detailed, biologically grounded neuron models.

• Brainwallet security was dissected: memorizing high-entropy passphrases is impractical, so offline JavaScript generators and paper wallets with QR codes are common work-arounds; links to the auditable GitHub mirror (https://github.com/brainwallet/brainwallet.github.com) and an alternative implementation (http://ms-brainwallet.github.io) were shared.

• Skepticism was voiced about media hype surrounding large-scale brain initiatives (BRAIN, HBP), with the caution that political promises of imminent disease cures often exceed scientific deliverables, yet the influx of funding is still welcomed by researchers.

• A philosophical split emerged over whether “mind” or “consciousness” is a scientifically meaningful concept, with one participant dismissing it as unscientific while another argued that subjective experience is real and that transcending humanity requires addressing social, ideological, and psychological limits, not just biological ones.

• Practical neuro-tech: polaritonics hardware for non-invasive hemoencephalography was described as a “dope system” for brain monitoring.

• Compiler and reverse-engineering notes: LLVM documentation was reviewed as a hedge against writing another code generator, and it was noted that RAR archives embed a Turing-complete x86-like virtual machine (RarVM) with open-source tools (rarvmtools) available for experimentation.