- A pre-print on medRxiv (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.01.20049478v1) reported that countries using the BCG tuberculosis vaccine had COVID-19-attributable mortality 5.8-times lower than non-BCG countries after adjusting for economic status and age structure, prompting calls for randomized trials.  
- The Coronavirus Tech Handbook (https://coronavirustechhandbook.com/home) and the CORD-19 open-research dataset (https://pages.semanticscholar.org/coronavirus-research) were shared as centralized resources for pandemic-related technology and literature.  
- Discussion of a Chinese paper suggesting SARS-CoV-2 dissociates iron from heme porphyrin was supported by a 1998 study on iron-superoxide dismutase in Mycobacterium bovis BCG (https://cvi.asm.org/content/5/6/784.short) and a Jordanian spectroscopic study on azithromycin–iron(II) interactions.  
- Participants debated open-source video-conferencing alternatives to Zoom; Jitsi was recommended but noted to lack stream multiplexing/transcoding, causing scalability issues on low-power devices.  
- The DIYTranshumanism wiki added a new transcript of Russell O’Connor’s 2019 talk on “Simplicity,” a language for formally-verified smart contracts (http://diyhpl.us/diyhpluswiki/transcripts/cryptoeconomic-systems/2019/2019-10-15-russell-oconnor-simplicity/).  
- A reverse-engineering blog post dissecting a Saturn V rocket circuit board was circulated (http://www.righto.com/2020/04/a-circuit-board-from-saturn-v-rocket.html).  
- The term “Nanopunk” was introduced as an emerging sci-fi subgenre focused on ubiquitous nanotechnology; Wikipedia’s entry was referenced (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk_derivatives#Nanopunk).