# Summary of IRC Log from December 4, 2016

• A new paper on "Rapidly evolving homing CRISPR barcodes" was shared, describing a technique for engineering evolving DNA barcodes in living cells using a homing guide RNA scaffold that directs the Cas9-hgRNA complex to target its own DNA locus, allowing for lineage tracing and cellular barcoding applications.

• A discussion about TLSNotary (PageSigner) took place, noting its unusual architecture that relies on an "oracle" hosted on Amazon AWS for verification purposes.

• A user sought help with calculating the electrostatic surface area of codeine using PDB files and APBS software, with another user suggesting the "fenics" software as a potential alternative approach.

• A paper titled "Brain Computation Is Organized via Power-of-Two-Based Permutation Logic" was shared via a Hacker News link, suggesting a mathematical organization principle for neural computation.

• References were made to Ted Chiang's short stories, particularly "Story of Your Life," with users sharing archive links to preserve access to these works.

• A brief discussion about metallic hydrogen occurred, with mention of a recent paper on arxiv showing the formation of metallic phase hydrogen on Earth using a diamond anvil.

• Kevin Kelly's 2016 book "The Inevitable" was referenced, which forecasts twelve technological forces predicted to shape the next thirty years.