- A New Scientist article reported the creation of a “digital cerebellum” implanted in a rat, prompting a search for the underlying paper and a link to earlier foundational work by Verschure & Mintz (2001) on real-time neural prostheses.  
- Discussion of Eugene Podkletnov’s antigravity claim and the 0.0025 % superluminal-neutrino anomaly served as cautionary examples of how sensational results are publicized even when the effect size is tiny.  
- MakerBot’s new $10 M funding round and rumored TV show were noted, with speculation that most of the money will go to rapid hiring rather than hardware advances.  
- A heated governance conflict erupted in the open-source hardware community: Phillip Torrone publicly asked Bruce Perens to stop using the “Open Source Hardware” logo, while SparkFun’s CEO sided against Perens, highlighting long-standing distrust of Perens’ leadership style.  
- Bruce Perens solicited articles for a forthcoming open-hardware technical journal; participants considered submitting pieces on SKDB or LoLcad to document open-source CAD and manufacturing toolchains.  
- Server-administration chatter detailed the rollout of private Git repositories on diyhpl.us via the “piny” system, including permission flags (0660 vs 0777), SSL redirection, and anonymous SSH account provisioning.  
- A side debate on the pain of large (500 MB) TIFF files in scientific imaging underscored the lack of memory-efficient, arbitrary-colorspace alternatives to ImageMagick.  
- Links shared included Robin Hanson’s “friends” list of futurists, a satirical “Startup Kool-Aid” site mocking Thiel’s “20 Under 20” program, and exoplanet news estimating that one-third of Sun-like stars host Earth-sized planets.