- Oxford Nanopore’s MinION pocket DNA sequencer was identified as a low-cost, invite-only tool that could enable truly anonymous personal genomics once it ships, with prices “dropping exponentially.”  
- A PET-imaging study (SciVerse link) found that higher striatal dopamine D2-receptor availability in the dorsal putamen correlates with greater “flow” proneness (r = 0.41), offering a neurochemical target for cognitive-enhancement experiments.  
- Participants hypothesized that restoring youthful DNA-methylation patterns in minimally damaged cells could serve as a systemic anti-aging intervention.  
- A speculative design for a short-barrel, revolver-action, self-loading shotgun optimized for close-range defense—featuring a wide spread pattern to remove aiming errors—was proposed.  
- The channel debated optimal learning strategy: whether to diversify across piano, programming, and science simultaneously or to master one domain before branching out.  
- Arguments weighed the immediate psychological and health benefits of learning motor-skill-heavy activities like piano against the possibility that future neural uploads could render such training obsolete.  
- Consensus held that the underlying computational thinking matters more than language choice; Python was recommended for its scientific ecosystem, C/C++ for low-level work, and MongoDB for web/data applications.  
- Concrete starter projects were suggested: implement an HTTP server in assembly (link: http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/server.s), write a chess engine, or build a simple Android app before committing to specializations like Django, Rails, or neuroscience software.