- Google recently disabled the /embed/ URL trick that allowed lightweight retrieval of YouTube video titles, forcing users back to the heavier watch?v= endpoint and illustrating the company’s habit of breaking stable web interfaces.  
- Participants debated whether any customer can truly avoid being a “product,” with one side arguing that even paid services monetize user data while the other emphasized the qualitative difference between selling a service and selling user attention/data to advertisers.  
- Digital microfluidics (DMF) was introduced as a lab-on-a-chip paradigm that manipulates discrete microdroplets via patterned electrodes, contrasting with continuous-flow microfluidics.  
- Optoelectrowetting (OEW) was highlighted as a favorite technique: droplets are actuated by light patterns projected from an LCD or cellphone screen, offering low-power, high-resolution control.  
- A concrete application proposed is using single-sided continuous optoelectrowetting (SCOEW) to synthesize DNA oligos directly on the device and then merge droplets in parallel to assemble larger DNA constructs.