- A 2016 CCS paper from TU-Braunschweig on “Vulnerabilities introduced by migrating to 64-bit platforms” was circulated, warning that recompiling legacy code for 64-bit architectures can silently introduce new security holes.  
- Bruce Schneier’s blog post “Someone Is Learning How to Take Down the Internet” was debated; participants noted the unusually high-quality technical discussion on Schneier’s own site versus the corresponding Hacker News thread.  
- Yelp’s open-source Python tool “undebt” was highlighted as a fast, reliable engine for large-scale automated code refactoring, linked from Eric S. Raymond’s essay “Thinking like a master programmer.”  
- Upcoming conferences DNA23 (Austin, Sept 2016) and FNANO17 were promoted; the DNA22 program PDF was mined for talks on DNA-protein hybrid origami, membrane-spanning DNA nanopores, ribocomputing logic, DNA-brick 3-D structures, DNA-based random-access storage, and controllable ribonucleoprotein motors.  
- A Nature Communications paper (via Sci-Hub) presented a DNA-based molecular logic system that selects and displays the combined result of two input variables, illustrating progress in programmable biochemical circuits.  
- The Azimuth Project’s “Plans of action” wiki page—originally curated by John Baez—was cited as a detailed open-source resource for climate-change mitigation strategies.  
- Geo-engineering vs. mitigation was debated: fenn advocated crash nuclear-reactor builds and polyethylene-sequestering floating islands, while kanzure floated orbital-mechanics approaches.  
- A tweeted claim that buggy fMRI analysis software may have produced 70 % false positives—and thus invalidated 15 years of neuroimaging research—sparked discussion about the lack of source-code validation in scientific instrumentation.  
- Community lore recalled biotech founder Kettner’s criticized plan to couple antibiotic-sensitivity genes with antimicrobial-resistance markers; he reportedly moved to the Church-Boyden lab to work on TdT-based DNA synthesis.  
- A side thread on programming paradigms resurfaced Linus Torvalds’ 2007 anti-C++ rant and Yegor Bugayenko’s critique of object-oriented programming, with tongue-in-cheek promotion of functional-programming evangelism.