- DIY tDCS can be built for < $50 with basic soldering; the primary risk is minor skin burns rather than brain damage, but participants still urge due diligence.  
- A transgene-free CRISPR-Cas protocol for RNA-guided deletions in nematodes was shared, emphasizing high specificity and whole-genome sequencing validation.  
- xp_prg demonstrated a decade-in-the-making browser-based “DIY-bio expert system” (Prolog engine in demo_es.js) at http://plnkr.co/edit/yuZkr6VoKWswAp7KM3mt?p=preview; debate ensued over whether to turn it into an IRC bot (#DIYBIOHALP) or integrate it with the DIYbio FAQ at http://diyhpl.us/wiki/diybio/faq.  
- Channel members critiqued modern hackathons as corporate recruiting fairs dominated by college-age web developers, contrasting the term “hacker” with its older subversive meaning.  
- A large Russian technical book library was linked: http://slib.phys.msu.ru/sl/.  
- Tor exit-node operators discussed ongoing DoS attacks and VPS hosting strategies amid freenode’s IP-blocking policies.  
- paperbot served paywalled papers on request, including a Genetics paper on “Multiparent Advanced Generation Inter-Cross” and an ACM data-structure paper on arc insertion and regular path finding.