- Debian SSH key debacle revisited: participants argued that the 2006-2008 OpenSSL “bug” that limited key entropy to 32 768 possibilities was deliberate sabotage, and pointed to Phuctor’s ongoing factorization of weak keys—including a spectacular case where the same prime was used twice, yielding a trivially factorable modulus.  
- Stanislav “asciilifeform” Datskovskiy’s work was highlighted: the cryptographically-secure version-control system “V”, the Loper-OS ideal-secure-computer essay, and the open-hardware True Random Number Generator “FG” that several users already own.  
- Open-source molecular storage: Helix.works and the MoSS protocol (github.com/Helixworks/helix-dnadrive) were introduced as an open standard for encoding data in DNA, with full documentation at openmoss.org/docs/MoSS.pdf.  
- DIY gene-therapy discussion: two 2017 review papers on delivery and regulation of CRISPR and other programmable genome-editing tools were shared (links via diyhpl.us), along with debate on whether current anabolic-steroid practice could ever be reversed by future pituitary or stem-cell interventions.  
- Myostatin-inhibition project: yashgaroth confirmed active work on a myostatin-blocking therapeutic and responded to a Google-Group query about enzymes for synthetic-biology pathways.  
- Cognitive-enhancement datapoints: modafinil vs. dextroamphetamine effects on humor appreciation during sleep deprivation were linked, plus a user’s fresh prescription for modafinil prompted channel-wide commentary.  
- Funding opportunity: Open Humans announced $5 k micro-grants for projects that extend its personal-data-sharing platform, prompting jokes about grant-writing economics.  
- Bio-boosting duckweed: a paper showed 2-3× biomass increase when the plant-growth-promoting bacterium Acinetobacter calcoaceticus P23 is added to sterile or environmental water cultures.  
- Neoantigen cancer vaccine: Nature paper on a personalized melanoma vaccine that elicits strong, patient-specific immune responses was circulated as a landmark immunotherapy advance.