- CRISPRcon 2018 (Boston, 4–5 June) featured a panel on the “democratization of gene editing”; Feng Zhang told the audience that editing a human embryo to term is already “feasible—the technology is there now.”  
- A new small-molecule route to total control of fat-cell fate was shared: “Total control of fat cells from adipogenesis to apoptosis using a xanthene analog” (PMC5459503).  
- ToorCamp 2018 slides on “Nanofabrication at Home” describe a hackerspace-friendly method for making atomically sharp tungsten field-emission electron emitters without the usual multi-kilodollar replacement cost.  
- Supporting resources for DIY tungsten emitters were posted: Surface Science Network wiki page on tungsten-wire recrystallization and related forum thread.  
- Lightning Labs published a technical post on routing in the Lightning Network (blog.lightning.engineering, 30 May 2018).  
- “Dandelion++: Lightweight cryptocurrency networking with formal anonymity guarantees” (arXiv:1805.11060) was circulated as a privacy upgrade for P2P crypto networks.  
- Apple confirmed deprecation of OpenGL in favor of the proprietary Metal API, prompting debate over vendor lock-in versus performance gains; Metal shipped in 2014, predating DirectX 12 (2015) and Vulkan (2016).