- A Microsoft Research paper titled “Euclid Writes an Algorithm: A Fairytale” was circulated as a narrative introduction to formal verification and algorithmic correctness, while Daniel J. Bernstein’s slide deck “Making sure crypto stays insecure” was highlighted for its critique of persistent cryptographic weaknesses.  
- Bitcoin’s security model was questioned through Lear Bahack’s analysis showing that transaction-reversal probability does not necessarily decay exponentially with block depth once difficulty-adjustment dynamics are considered.  
- Participants sketched a proxy-based architecture for distributed academic-paper crawling in which university users’ phones or desktops quietly fetch paywalled PDFs in the background and serve them to peers, while debating legal exposure and dismissing Tor, Freenet, Filecoin, Storj, and Maidsafe as slow or broken.  
- The Transcriptic cloud-lab API was discussed as a JSON protocol for remote molecular cloning, sequencing, and storage workflows at ~$2–$3 per run, with speculation about replacing graduate-student labor via a Lisp-like synthesis language.  
- A half-serious DIY biology proposal emerged to engineer bacteria that precipitate salt and CO₂ into insoluble minerals while releasing chlorine radicals, aiming to desalinate water and sequester carbon in a single organism.  
- Einstein’s brain was noted to have an unusually high glia-to-neuron ratio in the left angular gyrus, and human astrocytes are 27× larger than mouse astrocytes, prompting speculation that glial hypertrophy could be a target for cognitive enhancement via identifiable mRNA transcripts.