- OpenCog’s AGI roadmap hinges on rewriting its opaque C++/Python modules in an internal language (“combo”) so the system can apply the same learning algorithms to its own code, enabling recursive self-improvement.  
- A rough model suggests that even with today’s largest clusters, each self-improvement loop would take months, pushing a hard takeoff decades away; however, 30 years of hardware scaling could compress that to seconds, intensifying calls to build aligned AGI now rather than wait for “FAI theory.”  
- Bitfury’s 16 nm Bitcoin ASIC highlighted the widening gap between proprietary and open hardware, as only Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, Samsung, and Qualcomm are known to have access to that process node.  
- A paper on reversing hair greying via autologous adipose mesenchymal stem-cell transplants was circulated as a concrete, serendipitous anti-aging result, reinforcing DIY-bio interest in stem-cell therapies.  
- Evidence that RNA can move from soma to germline via tumor-derived exosomes challenges the central dogma and suggests new, non-DNA mechanisms of heritable information transfer.  
- Participants sketched a rapid Dyson-sphere strategy: a graphene-density shell at 1 AU built from a single Pallas-mass asteroid in ~10 years, followed by self-replicating fleets that colonize 3–4 new stars per decade.  
- A macroscopic von Neumann replicator design was proposed that uses plasma mass-spectrometry plus 3-D printing to refine any rock into pure elements in ~3 years, with ~2 % current refining efficiency and high waste-heat.  
- DIY isotope separation was estimated to let small actors enrich 10 g of U-235 from granite for ~$20 k if efficiency improves, raising proliferation and existential-risk concerns.  
- Over 4,700 PDFs linked in channel history were batch-downloaded for offline archival, with ~1,500 hosted on diyhpl.us and heybryan.org.