- FinalSpark’s NeuroPlatform uses living brain organoids as processors, but participants note the system has not yet achieved even basic speech-recognition tasks, highlighting a gap between biological potential and demonstrated performance.  
- A new class of “gels” (likely neuromorphic hydrogels) is argued to offer several orders of magnitude more addressable computational elements than current organoids, with an arXiv pre-print (2210.02913) cited as the most advanced example.  
- Debate centers on whether organoids merely need better I/O preprocessing (e.g., cochlea-like front-ends) or whether fundamentally denser substrates such as gels are required to reach useful cognitive or sensory benchmarks.  
- Nudge (nudge.com) was introduced as an additional commercial entrant in the low-intensity transcranial ultrasound stimulation space, expanding the toolkit for non-invasive neuromodulation.  
- A Roots of Progress write-up linked from the channel claims that Mars terraforming could be achieved “in our lifetimes,” framing it as a tractable engineering project rather than a multi-century aspiration.  
- Channel logistics: the #hplusroadmap community remains primarily IRC-based (16-year history), with newer Discord and Matrix bridges documented at diyhpl.us/wiki/hplusroadmap for direct access.