I don’t thing, this sounds like "broken record", it is quite relevant point. LAC just keeps their progress (if any) quite private. It is not simple task even to find, where this lab is located in Reno, leaving aside how far they got.

Unless somebody tracks down, where these guys go for lunch and makes notes of their debates, we have to wait till they public DFS. Considering current share price and the spike of PLL, I am bit nervous to make any speculative trades.

One is clear: they managed to extract lithium out of the mud. At least that can be concluded from the fact, that they got samples.  However, they probably struggle to scale it up (apart of that, plus maybe financing, I don’t see any other reason to hold the DFS back). Have you seen that "cup of coffee" picture in their presentation? Is this possible to turn this into a large scale operation processing like 500k tons of clay? I have no idea, I just know, that it is possible to leach gold out of the ore, but that is quite environment unfriendly operation and LAC does not plan to do it exactly this way.