- A curated Boston/Cambridge transhumanist contact map was circulated, spanning MIT Media Lab, Ed Boyden & Adam Marblestone’s Synthetic Neurobiology group, George Church’s labs, DIYbio spaces (BOSSLab, FabLab), and crypto/computation researchers like David Vorick.  
- Marblestone’s 2014 paper “Designing Scalable Biological Interfaces” was flagged as a foundational text for next-generation, high-density brain–computer interface architectures.  
- An open-source electroporator nicknamed “shock wand” is in active development: first version will use standard cuvettes; future iterations will integrate motorized pipette electrodes for automated single-cell transfection.  
- A $3 k open-source qPCR machine (Open qPCR Kickstarter, AngelList: Chai) was cited as proof that aggressively low-cost bio-instruments can displace legacy lab hardware despite Chinese-manufacturing QC hurdles.  
- A $24 Weefun wrist-voice-recorder (48 h storage / 20 h battery) was ordered to prototype 24/7 personal audio logging, with the long-term goal of real-time NLP processing for just-in-time information delivery.  
- The “meetlog” challenge was framed: how to mine 15 years of manually tagged IRC & email logs to build an AI relevance-ranking system that automatically reminds users which topics to share with which collaborators.  
- A Taylor & Francis paper (DOI 10.1080/15592294.2015.1062207) on trans-generational epigenetic inheritance was shared as ammunition against “Lamarckian denialists.”  
- Troubleshooting terminal-transferase DNA synthesis: orientation conflicts arise when TdT-generated strands serve as templates for nicking-enzyme amplification; possible fixes include hairpin extensions or alternative chemistries.  
- Discussion of quantum-chemistry tooling: PyQuante is Python 2-only and unmaintained; serious work uses C/C++/Fortran engines (e.g., CHARMM) with Python bindings; NanoEngineer (NE) was mentioned as another Python-friendly molecular-dynamics option.  
- A call went out for microcontrollers that combine an on-chip Programmable Gain Amplifier (PGA) for pre-ADC signal conditioning with MicroPython support, aimed at compact, hackable bio-sensing devices.