- Intel Optane memory is phase-change based, but participants noted rumors of two distinct physical implementations—only one being the “real” design—highlighting uncertainty about the underlying technology.  
- Upcoming memory subsystems are expected to provide full DRAM encryption with keys stored in the subsystem or possibly in a TPM, raising questions about hardware-level security architectures.  
- Discussion of FDA over-regulation included examples such as LASIK eye surgery, gene therapies, medical apps, and even genetically modified pets like GloFish, with participants arguing the agency is excessively risk-averse.  
- A link to Scott Alexander’s essay “The Atomic Bomb Considered as Hungarian High-School Science Fair Project” was shared to illustrate the outsized impact of the Hungarian “Martians” (e.g., von Neumann, Teller, Szilard) on 20th-century science and technology.  
- Recent papers and blog posts circulated: François Chollet’s “The Measure of Intelligence” (arXiv:1911.01547), a Phys.org article on artificial molecular self-assembly pathways, and FloydHub’s tutorial on knowledge distillation for compressing neural networks.  
- A talk by Tommy Wood titled “Lies, Damn Lies, and Genetics” (AHS19) was highlighted; it critiques the use of risk/odds ratios in consumer genetics because effect sizes expressed in standard deviations would reveal the triviality of most reported associations.  
- Participants debated the societal implications if embryo-selection companies like Genomic Prediction became mainstream, considering whether assortative mating would converge on a narrow “ideal” phenotype versus continued genetic diversity through experimentation and non-selected reproduction.