# Key Points from IRC Discussion

• Participants critiqued the high cost (€1500) of Singularity University Summit Europe, suggesting it primarily targets business people and investors rather than the broader transhumanist community.

• A Google Glass teardown article was shared (http://www.catwig.com/google-glass-teardown/), providing detailed technical analysis of the device's components and construction.

• The conversation revealed significant frustration with academic paper access, leading to technical discussions about improving "paperbot" tools and using services like sci-hub.org to bypass publisher paywalls.

• Kanzure shared pdfparanoia (https://github.com/kanzure/pdfparanoia), a tool for removing identifying watermarks from academic papers, with users testing its effectiveness across different journal formats.

• Researchers discussed gait recognition technology that can identify individuals through smartphone accelerometer data, sharing academic papers on the topic (http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/mfn3/pub/mfn_gait_id.pdf).

• The group debated privacy implications of ubiquitous surveillance, with some arguing that global panopticon surveillance is inevitable due to exponential decreases in the cost of sensors, computation, storage, and bandwidth.

• A novel method for mass-producing high-quality DNA was discussed, referencing research from Karolinska Institutet using oligonucleotides from clonal templates with precisely controlled stoichiometric ratios.