- Marvin Minsky’s death from a cerebral hemorrhage sparked discussion on whether hemorrhagic damage undermines the viability of cryopreservation for Alcor members.  
- Participants unpacked the CRISPR patent dispute, citing Eric Lander’s “Heroes of CRISPR” article, Michael Eisen’s rebuttal, PubPeer critiques, and the gender-bias sub-narrative in credit attribution.  
- Sci-Hub access was reported blocked at the University of Sydney; the group noted its dependence on leaked EZproxy credentials and floated the possibility of EZproxy buffer-overflow exploits.  
- DIY bio hardware hacks discussed: repurposing high-voltage DNA-sequencing gel power supplies for micro-capillary electrophoresis and sourcing Hamamatsu photomultiplier tubes on eBay for ultra-low-light sensing.  
- MIT’s “Visual Microphone” technique—extracting audio from silent high-speed or rolling-shutter video—was showcased, along with open-source Eulerian video-magnification code for amplifying imperceptible motion and vital-sign signals.  
- Inspirational open-hardware links shared: a 4-D-printing Vimeo demo of shape-shifting architectures and an IEEE guide to building an electronic bee counter.  
- A Carnegie Mellon open-access PDF, “A Guide to Biology for Computer Scientists,” was circulated as a primer for cross-disciplinary learning.