Product Spec APIs and the Israel SKU Puzzle

Can you look up technical specifications for any piece of hardware by manufacturer part number? The answer is yes — but the tools were built for procurement engineers, not home inventory enthusiasts. Herman walks through the ecosystem of component databases like Octopart and SnapEDA, consumer product catalogs like Icecat, and open-source solutions like Part-DB. Then the conversation turns to the Israel SKU problem: why products sold in Israel carry unique local part numbers that don't resolve on global databases, and how to work around it using distributor catalogs, regulatory labels, and web scraping.