- Kuratas, a 4-m-tall Japanese rideable mecha built by Suidobashi Heavy Industry, was confirmed as a real product rather than an internet joke; promotional video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iZ0WuNvHr8.  
- A new “Transhuman Visions 2.0 – East Bay” conference was announced for 2014, seeking speakers and co-sponsors; details at http://hplusmagazine.com/2014/01/09/transhuman-visions-2-0-east-bay-conference-humanity-speakers-and-co-sponsorship/.  
- Discussion critiqued mainstream “futurology” communities (e.g., Reddit’s r/futurology and #futurology on Snoonet) as superficial, sensationalist, and focused on social-media metrics rather than deep technical topics like open-source GSM coprocessors or BSD userspace.  
- Participants contrasted IRC’s real-time, in-depth collaboration with the shallow “think for ten seconds, post for karma” culture of larger online forums.  
- Paperbot delivered a requested research paper via LibGen: DOI 10.1177/0269881113513851 from Journal of Psychopharmacology (abstract at http://jop.sagepub.com/content/28/1/62.abstract).