- Video-game “gold farming” was cited as paying workers a larger share of revenue than fair-trade coffee, with a 2016 estimate of ~$20 billion in skin-gambling turnover (Ars Technica article referenced).  
- AMD ROCm 1.9 was noted as upcoming in August 2018, adding Ubuntu 18.04 LTS support; participants discussed whether ROCm will ever run on mainline Linux kernels.  
- Open-source DNA microarray/inkjet synthesis was revisited: links to the old “Pogo” software (bioinformatics.org/pogo) and Bryan Bishop’s synthesis notes (diyhpl.us/wiki/dna/synthesis/notes/) were shared, but no one reported having built working hardware.  
- Two recent micro-injection/electroporation papers were highlighted: a JoVE protocol for in-vivo mouse-testis electroporation and a Nature Nanotechnology paper on “nanochannel electroporation” for precise single-cell biomolecule delivery.  
- GP-Write project received criticism as “spam,” while a Nature news piece on refurbishing second-hand DNA sequencers was circulated as a cost-reduction strategy.  
- “Ligero: Lightweight sublinear arguments without a trusted setup” (2017) was linked as a notable zero-knowledge SNARK alternative.  
- The “Biointelligence Explosion” manifesto/website (biointelligence-explosion.com) was briefly promoted.