• The Emotiv EPOC EEG headset encrypts its raw EEG stream with AES on a Microchip dsPIC33FJ128GP802 DSP; rather than brute-forcing the key, an open-source effort is replacing the stock firmware with an unencrypted version to give researchers direct access to brain data.

• SKDB, the proposed “hardware package manager,” is debating whether to abandon its custom dependency model for dpkg/apt; objections center on apt’s need for root privileges and its inability to model physical constraints such as finite inventory, cost, and shipping delays.

• A heated exchange in the RepRap/MakerBot community defended STL meshes as “good enough” for 3-D printing, while critics argued STL strips design intent, curves, and color; a compromise proposal is a “linker” that compiles higher-level parametric CAD sources into final meshes only at build time.

• ikiwiki plus git is being explored as a static-site generator for hardware packages, leveraging ymlfront metadata and command-line tools to match user inventory against package requirements despite ambiguous part names (e.g., “24-inch sander” vs. “disk sander”).

• A 30 GB torrent mirror of Nature journal papers is maintained; wget scripts were tuned to skip the large archive so daily “new additions” fetches remain fast.

• Self-experimenters reported wide variability in melatonin effectiveness for circadian control, including one case of a natural 28-hour sleep cycle that continually drifts across the clock.

• A one-liner for lossless concatenation of AVI files using mencoder (`cat *.avi > big.avi; mencoder -ovc copy -oac copy -forceidx`) was shared, alongside complaints about HandBrake CLI limitations.

• Links circulated include Rosetta Design Group’s new literature review on protein modeling and design algorithms and a NextBigFuture article on “see-through opaque materials” that describes optical techniques for imaging inside highly scattering media.