- Historical linguistics: Google Books N-gram data show “meme” (coined 1976 by Dawkins) and “nanotechnology” rising sharply after 1986, with the Foresight Institute credited for popularizing the latter term.  
- Hardware Singularity debate: new multi-state synapse findings fuel speculation that analog memristor circuits could outpace Kurzweil’s digital-only timeline, while quantum-computing hype (D-Wave) and Penrose-style “quantum soul” claims are dismissed.  
- DIY-bio ecosystem: London Hackspace is highlighted as an active hub; a recorded talk by “bugs” on biohacking is available on YouTube.  
- SKDB revival: the open-source hardware package manager is being rebooted with a v0.1 client that resolves dependencies and fetches packages; the immediate plan is to package ~10 simple OpenSCAD designs (e.g., from the MCAD GitHub repo) with metadata.yaml files.  
- Packaging best-practice checklist: every hardware project should ship metadata.yaml, parametric CAD source (not just STL), human-readable and machine-parsable build instructions, unit tests, and interface-compatibility code.  
- Git-driven workflow: plain Git repos are preferred over archive files to preserve version control and diffs; server-side hooks will auto-render SCAD previews on every commit.  
- Infrastructure choices: Debian’s apt and RPM are mined for dependency-resolution ideas; openmanufacturing@googlegroups.com is the current mailing list, but a dedicated SKDB list is planned once spam-resistant hosting is ready.  
- Curated BOM resources: links to FabLab, TechShop, and eMachineShop BOM comparisons are offered as starter datasets for populating SKDB with essential hardware “ghost” packages (hammers, screws, motors, etc.).