• A participant is raising $50–100 k by August 2018 to bootstrap a graphene-production startup; the group identified solarnetone in #freesem as a contact who already runs a low-cost graphene machine that reportedly uses ethene/ethyne detonation cycles to yield graphene powder.  

• Catalog’s DNA-storage architecture was dissected: instead of one-bit-per-base encoding, the company concatenates billions of short (≤ 30-mer) prefabricated DNA fragments via enzymatic recombination to map data into multidimensional matrices—an approach that diverges sharply from conventional schemes.  

• IARPA’s DNA data-storage program deadline was extended to early August 2018, though participants noted confusion between submission and closing dates.  

• NanoEngineer-1 (NE1) was criticized as “convoluted and poorly designed”; after a Python 3/PyQt5 port, contributors recommend rebuilding the chemistry engine on modern open-source libraries and decoupling state representation from view logic rather than continuing to patch the legacy codebase.  

• A link to Bornholt et al.’s open-source “bin-to-dna” DNA-encoding algorithm sparked debate on redundancy requirements; consensus held that DNA itself is stable for decades when dry, so error rates hinge on the specific read/write technology rather than the molecule.  

• Cosmetic skin-lightening genetics were explored: over 150 genes influence pigmentation, albinism is genetically simple but risks visual-system side effects, and any safe intervention should target only epidermal melanocytes to avoid disrupting optical development.  

• Participants shared PMC2793097, a review on physiological regulators of skin pigmentation, and discussed collagen’s contribution to lighter skin appearance and the vascular etiology of periorbital dark circles.  

• Lightning Network security proposals included HSMs that sign only monotonically increasing balance states and a scheme to pre-sign transaction batches in one HSM session followed by gradual release.  

• Scaling Bitcoin 2018 Tokyo issued a call-for-papers with an approaching submission deadline via EasyChair.