- A paper on arXiv (0806.3792) proposes using heart-lung machines to oxygenate blood so that humans could survive in space without pressurized suits, sparking discussion about vacuum exposure versus lung dysfunction as the primary barrier.  
- FunctionCAD, a GUI front-end for the VOICED ontology that lets users wire functional nodes together, was located at http://function.device.mst.edu:16080/FunctionCAD/; its source is available via git://repository.desktop.umr.edu/…/FunctionCAD but the public tarball is broken and needs local fixes (e.g., std::abs namespace issues).  
- A long debate on RDF URI references examined whether local-file URIs can be safely embedded in XML/RDF packages; pointers included W3C specs, IBM developer notes, and critiques such as “Where RDF falls short: URIs, local files, and the structure of everything.”  
- Alexander Bolonkin’s other arXiv papers (0812.0588, etc.) were highlighted for radical infrastructure ideas—e.g., “oil pipelines in the sky”—that participants thought might aid seasteading or other large-scale engineering projects.  
- The Singularity Institute issued a call for papers on “Technological Singularity and Acceleration Studies,” linked at http://www.singinst.org/blog/2008/12/07/call-for-papers-technological-singularity-and-acceleration-studies/.  
- A side thread on Debian’s evolution quoted dpkg developer Ian Jackson criticizing apt and describing how Debian’s inertia-driven governance makes change difficult; archives were pulled from debianplanet.org and Slashdot.  
- Neal Stephenson’s 1996 Wired feature “Mother Earth Mother Board” (wired.com archive) was re-shared as a definitive history of global submarine cable systems.  
- Practical Linux setup advice filled the evening: gene migrated to Ubuntu, wrestled with manual vs. guided disk partitioning, and was pointed to Wubi and rsync-based automatic backups.