• LedgerX, a CFTC-regulated bitcoin-derivatives clearing house, announced it had already traded more than USD 1 million in its first week, underscoring growing institutional adoption of crypto derivatives.

• A living wiki of open-source DNA-synthesizer designs—complete with protocols, parts lists, and assembly notes—was shared as a resource for building low-cost benchtop oligo synthesizers.

• Newcomer expertise in plant cell culture and transformation was welcomed; the group pointed to Addgene, BioBricks, the OpenPlant initiative, and Counter Culture Labs’ Arabidopsis work as starting points for collaboration.

• Long-term, low-cost bacterial strain storage was debated: glycerol stocks at –80 °C (with a proposed DIY mini –80 °C freezer), stab cultures in agar, and Bacillus subtilis endospores as room-temperature DNA archives were all weighed.

• 3Scan’s CEO was met in person, prompting a request for references on destructive whole-brain electron-microscopy connectomics; the channel supplied transcripts and literature on verifiable brain preservation and serial EM imaging.

• A comprehensive PDF on bioactive milk components was circulated, highlighting dietary opioids such as β-casomorphins and their potential μ-opioid receptor activity.

• Mozilla’s open-source RNNoise project—deep-learning-based real-time noise suppression—was showcased as a practical example of neural-network deployment in consumer software.

• DARPA’s SDR Hackfest series was announced; one participant confirmed attendance while others planned to follow remotely.

• DIYbio meetups in Madison and Milwaukee were noted: Madison’s group is inactive, whereas Milwaukee’s DHMN chapter is forming a new biohacking subgroup.

• A brief discussion on Keras repositories tied to research papers revealed the absence of a single canonical index, prompting a call for community curation.