am in two minds about the new seppuku control and jack layouts.

part of me (the moogy part into all things early 70s analog synth) really likes the jack sockets face up like that. looks like a classic patch-cable moog or banana-cable ens synth (or the eurorack synth modules analog synth-heads still rave over). i think i might try it on my next diy build to see how i get on with it. for a change.
my reservations about it are that a synthy way of arranging things suits eurorack and moogs because they are table or vertically mounted and controls are adjusted with fingers not feet. in that context controls and jack sockets can get away with being so close to each other. but am not sure i'd want knobs and stomp switches so close on a badly-lit stage floor.

seppuku's pots look like good-enough basic cheap steel-shaft jobs, which may bend but probably not snap like the plastic ones (unless you really stamp on them). so snapping shafts not a major liability. the issue really being more that if you are trying to press down on a stop and you've got a couple of control knobs under your feet at the same time, that stomp switch is not going to go down and you are going to miss your mark. that's why i keep pot and stomp switches far apart anyway.
if jack sockets are side-mounted that allows all the controls to go up inch and gives the stompee far more boot clearance. ergonomic thing. but from an aesthetic rather than practical perspective i think i know where ug might be coming from when he says he likes the sockets like that, and i have to say i like it too.
re the use of the swastika (a lucky symbol in various eastern religions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika), that could be coming from a few different directions; cheap attention-seeking, an attempt to reassign it more positive connotations, or an attempt to dilute its threat value through banal over-exposure in contexts it can have no plausible threat value.
i think the british punks of the seventies put that one to bed years ago. the smarter ones (i think it came from mclaren, westwood and reid, the original culture jammers) were coming at it from all three directions at once, and never saying which, much to the infuriation of the british media. the thicker punks just saw the shock potential and thought it an easy attention-button to press (lots of their parents would have fought in ww2). but it was being used in all three ways at the time.
personally speaking, i'd like to see it so over-exposed and commonplace that it either becomes as meaningless and unthreatening as the converse star or a 'parking' sign. or entirely revalued for the lucky symbol it still is among the more postive cultures that still use it. liberate it and reassign it a new value free of the gas chamber associations. maybe there should be a swastika emoticon on ilf that people can use for any random meaning we can think to reassign to it. do our bit to revalue it. it's all dependent on what value you or your culture chooses to give it. which you can go with or against.
i suspect seppuku is using it in all the three ways i listed above, and a few more besides. just like he uses his PT2399s. what he does with the swastika as a graphic motif reflects what he does with his PT2399s in a circuit context. corrupt, disrupt, invert, pervert...
so even though his soldering may border on the side of 'crimes against humanity' i strongly doubt his graphics are inspired by the same level of misanthropy.