- A new energy claim was circulated asserting that 1 kJ can be extracted from 1 L of salt water, as reported at http://www.physorg.com/news171102611.html.  
- SKDB, the open-source “apt-get for hardware” project, received several commits: thread-dimension diagrams were added, graceful degradation when the igraph library is missing was implemented, unit-test coverage improved, and the README updated.  
- A split between SKDB and the Tangible Bit project was disclosed; disagreements over data-handling philosophy (manual entry vs automated extraction) led Tangible Bit to resume independent development.  
- Practical barriers to SKDB adoption were discussed, including the difficulty of installing the igraph graph-library on Ubuntu and the lack of open-source importers for proprietary CAD formats such as SolidWorks’ .SLDPRT.  
- New resources shared include an alternative to arXiv at http://vixra.org, a complete collection of U.S. military specifications at http://www.everyspec.com/MIL-SPECS/, and free electronics-training videos at http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/videos.  
- Make Magazine’s blog post on “pattern kits for Gingery machines” (http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/09/pattern_kits_for_gingery_machines.html) was proposed as a candidate SKDB hardware package.  
- Backblaze’s open-sourced 67-TB storage pod design (http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/petabytes-on-a-budget-how-to-build-cheap-cloud-storage/) was noted as valuable but locked in SolidWorks formats, underscoring the need for CAD-format converters.  
- A 3-D design file for Backblaze’s third-generation open-source “Storage Pod” (22 TB per drive) was shared, sparking debate on whether a single 4-U chassis could reach 1 PB; participants concluded current drive densities fall short.  
- A Phys.org article reporting the experimental observation of magnetic monopoles in spin-ice materials was circulated, prompting speculation about their potential use in ultra-dense data storage or novel computing architectures.