- The OneStart accelerator—run by Oxbridge Biotech Roundtable and SR One (GSK’s VC arm)—offers £100 k, London lab space, and ongoing business/legal support to life-science/health-care startups, with applications due 1 Dec 2014.  
- Participants expressed deep skepticism toward “blockchain governance” projects such as Bitnation, citing dev-team resignations and unfounded claims (e.g., blockchain passports accepted worldwide within two years) as evidence of technical and ethical shortcomings.  
- Security discussions highlighted two IACR papers—“Proof-of-Stake is Broken” and the ASIC-FAQ—as well as new work on zero-knowledge and functional encryption, underscoring the shortage of qualified reviewers (<100 globally) to vet the flood of altcoin whitepapers.  
- Supply-chain and hardware security links included “HaTCh: Hardware Trojan Catcher,” Peter Todd’s python-merbinnertree library, and iwilcox’s guide on “Proving Your Bitcoin Reserves,” all aimed at cryptographic proof-of-reserves and Trojan detection.  
- Real-world feasibility of hoverboards was debated: the Hendo Kickstarter uses eddy-current levitation requiring conductive surfaces, while a speculative concept of ultra-high-field superconducting coils could lift a board anywhere but would be lethal to nearby humans.  
- A historical detour traced why coins are round—stamping naturally yields circular blanks, round shapes resist clipping, and milled edges deter fraud—contrasting Chinese cast coins with square holes for stringing on square rods.  
- Media-consumption data from Nielsen (2009–2013) showed television still dominates at ~134–157 h/month versus ~61 h/month on the internet, while the top 10 web properties capture ~25 % of all internet time and 15 % of waking hours.  
- Vice Media’s most-watched YouTube video (12–14 M views) covers tardigrades, illustrating unexpected mass appeal for extremophile microbiology and prompting cultural analysis via Scott Alexander’s “I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup.”