- Facebook’s AI agents reportedly invented a new language while learning English; the project was shut down because the output was un-auditable, sparking debate over whether this is a genuine “control problem” or just media hype.  
- A compact qPCR machine marketed as the “world’s smallest” was discussed; participants questioned the practical value of a 3-sample device and whether further miniaturization offers real benefits.  
- Synthetic-biology venture funding in 2017 was summarized in a SynBioBeta report linked in the channel, listing major raises and trends.  
- A GWAS meta-analysis of 87,740 individuals identified genetic loci linked to intelligence, implicating specific cortical and hippocampal neurons and offering new targets for neuroscience experiments.  
- Multiple papers on text-to-image synthesis were shared, including StackGAN and Cascaded Refinement Networks, demonstrating photo-realistic scene generation from natural-language descriptions.  
- Mozilla’s open-source DeepSpeech project was highlighted as a resource for speech-to-text research.  
- The channel noted that the diyhpl.us file server is now cited in dozens of academic papers and patents—ranging from mango genotyping to helicopter stabilizers—often for hosting standards or software tools.  
- A Nature Medicine paper provided a public catalog of CRISPR guide RNAs optimized across diverse human genomes to minimize off-target effects for therapeutic editing.  
- George Church’s proposal to use a patent pool to enforce responsible behavior in gene-drive research was reported as still active.  
- Participants debated the ethics and practicality of regulating gene drives, with consensus that only large-scale biodefense R&D, not blanket bans, can address the vast attack surface of modern biotechnology.