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• Linux Vim Editor Tips and Tricks Save Time Through Macros and Bookmarks (Linux Today)

   MyLinuxBook: In this article, we will discuss some impressive features of vim editor that can help you save a lot of time while working on vim.

• Will Robots Take Over the Data Center? (Slashdot)
  1sockchuck writes "Robotics are beginning to be integrated into data center management, creating the potential for a fully automated, robot-driven data center. What might a robot-controlled 'lights-out' data center look like? The racks will be taller, as robotics systems can reach higher to manage servers. Robotic equipment would be mounted on rails that allow them to find and move hardware. Early examples of this are seen in tape libraries, but the concepts could be applied to other data center equipment. Amazon and Google are said to be among those looking at ways to create a fully automated data center. AOL says it has already built an unmanned data center. Data Center Knowledge looks at the challenges and opportunities in robot-controlled data centers, including how staff roles would evolve."

  

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• Power company targeted by 10,000 cyberattacks per month (Ars Technica)
  Electric grid is under daily assault, Congressional report finds.
• Eric Schmidt: Google Will Continue Investing In UK Even If Taxes Raised (Slashdot)
  DavidGilbert99 writes "Eric Schmidt hasn't changed his stance on Google's tax policies in the UK but has said that even if the tax legislation changes in the UK it will continue to invest in the country because 'we love the UK.' Gushing about its relationship with the UK, Schmidt said: 'Google will invest in the UK no matter what you guys do, because the UK is just too important for us. The citizens are too important for us and in our view we provide too much good.'" (Beware the auto-playing video advertisements). This after writing an Op-Ed lamenting the complexity of international taxes.

  

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• Unity Game Engine Goes Free For iOS, Android And BlackBerry 10 Developers (Linux Today)

  TechCrunch: Use of Unity tech is now free on both mobile platforms.

• OSI President Questions WebM Patent License Compatibility with Open Source (Slashdot)
  Via the H comes a report that the Simon Phipps, current President of the Open Source Initiative, thinks that the VP8 patent Cross-license agreeement Google brokered with the MPEG-LA is incompatible with the Open Source definition. The primary problems are that the license is not sub-licensable and only covers certain uses, leading to conflict with OSD clauses five, six, and seven. Phipps concludes: "As a consequence, I suggest the license is flawed when considered in relation to open source projects and is likely to be negatively received by many communities that value software freedom. Doubtless a case can be made that the patent license is optional, but I suspect the community issues may remain. Once again we're left with our fingers crossed. Google's making the right noises, but this draft agreement seems like a particularly unworkable approach for free and open source software. Its failure to allow sublicensing seems like a major flaw. Even if this doesn't result in a requirement for all end-users to sign the agreement, the discrepancies between this document and the OSD leave it disruptive to open source adoption of VP8."

  

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• Opera for Android goes off-roading (Linux Today)

  CNET: Opera has graduated from beta (with Webkit under the hood) and brings new discovery and data-saving features.

• Ask Slashdot: What Makes a Great Hackathon? (Slashdot)
  beaverdownunder writes "I recently attended a 'hackathon' that was really just another pitching contest, and out of frustration am tempted to organize an event myself that is better suited to developers and far less entrepreneur-centric than some of the latest offerings. What I'd like to know from the /. community is, what would you like to see in a hackathon? What are some good hackathons you've attended that weren't just thinly-veiled pitch-development workshops? I have an idea around assigning attendees to quasi-random teams based on their skill sets, then giving them 48 hours to complete a serious coding / engineering challenge (probably in the not-for-profit space) — but maybe you've got some better ideas?"

  

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• Several senior HTC employees depart following HTC First disaster (Ars Technica)
  HTC's recent efforts to compete with Samsung are falling flat.
• Thousands of Whistle Blowers Vulnerable After Anonymous Hacks SAPS (Slashdot)
  First time accepted submitter fezzzz writes "Anonymous performed a data dump of hundreds of whistle blowers' private details in an attempt to show their unhappiness with the SAPS (South African Police Service) for the Marikana shooting. In so doing, the identities of nearly 16,000 South Africans who lodged a complaint with police on their website, provided tip-offs, or reported crimes are now publicly available." Reader krunster also submitted a slightly more in depth article on the breach.

  

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• Tim Cook confirms: Apple spending $100 million to build new Macs in Texas (Ars Technica)
  No word on whether they'll be bigger than current Macs.
• Some Scientists Question Whether Quantum Computer Really Is Quantum (Slashdot)
  gbrumfiel writes "Last week, Google and NASA announced a partnership to buy a new quantum computer from Canadian firm D-Wave Systems. But NPR news reports that many scientists are still questioning whether new machine really is quantum. Long-time critic and computer scientist Scott Aaronson has a long post detailing the current state of affairs. At issue is whether the 512 quantum bits at the processor's core are 'entangled' together. Measuring that entanglement directly destroys it, so D-Wave has had a hard time convincing skeptics. As with all things quantum mechanical, the devil is in the details. Still it may not matter: D-Wave's machine appears to be far faster at solving certain kinds of problems (PDF), regardless of how it works."

  

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• Top Ten Sleeper Distros (Linux Today)

  LinuxAdvocates:I tend to think of only a few Distributions which have a lot of potential under the hood and are categorized as 'sleepers'. 

• A day at the Bay Area Maker Faire, the greatest show-and-tell on Earth (Ars Technica)
  Open-source hardware and software cuts, creates, rolls, and goes to space.
• Motorola beats attorney-owned patent company at trial over Bluetooth (Ars Technica)
  Lawyer claimed he had invented a new kind of headset; jury was unimpressed.

• Debian GNU/Hurd 2013 Released (Slashdot)
  jrepin writes "The GNU Hurd is the GNU project's replacement for the Unix kernel. It is a collection of servers that run on the Mach microkernel to implement file systems, network protocols, file access control, and other features that are implemented by the Unix kernel or similar kernels (such as Linux). The Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2013. This is a snapshot of Debian 'sid' at the time of the Debian 'wheezy' release (May 2013), so it is mostly based on the same sources. Debian GNU/Hurd is currently available for the i386 architecture with more than 10,000 software packages available (more than 75% of the Debian archive)."

  

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• Distribution Release: siduction 13.1.0 (DistroWatch)
  Ferdinand Thommes has announced the release of siduction 13.1.0, a Linux distribution based on Debian's (once again unfrozen) "Unstable" branch. This is the project's first release that also includes an edition with GNOME 3. From the release notes: "We are very happy to present to you the final....
• Xbox One: No Always-Online Requirement, But Needs To Phone Home (Slashdot)
  An anonymous reader writes "The Xbox One was revealed earlier, and Kotaku was able to get some answers about the always-online rumors that plagued the console before its announcement. Microsoft VP Phil Harrison said Xbox One doesn't need a constant connection in order to play games, and you won't be dropped from single-player games if your connection cuts out. However, it does require check-ins with Microsoft servers. This echoes the Xbox One FAQ, which cryptically says, "No, it does not have to be always connected, but Xbox One does require a connection to the Internet." The number Harrison gave was once every 24 hours, but Microsoft's PR department was quick to say that was just one potential scenario, not a certainty. Microsoft also provided half-answers about how used games and game sharing would work. Players will be able to take a game to a friend's house and play it (using their profile, at least). Players will also have some mechanism to trade and sell used games, but it's not yet clear exactly how it would work. If one player uses a disc to install a game on their Xbox One, then gives the disc to a friend, the friend will be able to install it, but needs to pay full price to play it. That scenario, however, assumes both players want to own the game — the second one would essentially be a unique copy. Microsoft said they have a plan for trading used games, which would involve deactivating the game on the original owner's console, but they aren't willing to elaborate yet." Several publications have hands-on reports with the new hardware: Engadget, Ars Technica, Gizmodo.

  

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• No Open Source Project Should Be an Island (Linux Today)

   OStatic: The topic of collaboration on open source projects needs to extend to cross-project collaboration.

• DDOS as Civil Disobedience (Schneier on Security)

  For a while now, I have been thinking about what civil disobedience looks like in the Internet Age. Certainly DDOS attacks, and politically motivated hacking in general, is a part of that. This is one of the reasons I found Molly Sauter's recent thesis, "Distributed Denial of Service Actions and the Challenge of Civil Disobedience on the Internet," so interesting:

  Abstract: This thesis examines the history, development, theory, and practice of distributed denial of service actions as a tactic of political activism. DDOS actions have been used in online political activism since the early 1990s, though the tactic has recently attracted significant public attention with the actions of Anonymous and Operation Payback in December 2010. Guiding this work is the overarching question of how civil disobedience and disruptive activism can be practiced in the current online space. The internet acts as a vital arena of communication, self expression, and interpersonal organizing. When there is a message to convey, words to get out, people to organize, many will turn to the internet as the zone of that activity. Online, people sign petitions, investigate stories and rumors, amplify links and videos, donate money, and show their support for causes in a variety of ways. But as familiar and widely accepted activist tools -- petitions, fundraisers, mass letter-writing, call-in campaigns and others -- find equivalent practices in the online space, is there also room for the tactics of disruption and civil disobedience that are equally familiar from the realm of street marches, occupations, and sit-ins? This thesis grounds activist DDOS historically, focusing on early deployments of the tactic as well as modern instances to trace its development over time, both in theory and in practice. Through that examination, as well as tool design and development, participant identity, and state and corporate responses, this thesis presents an account of the development and current state of activist DDOS actions. It ends by presenting an analytical framework for the analysis of activist DDOS actions.

  One of the problems with the legal system is that it doesn't make any differentiation between civil disobedience and "normal" criminal activity on the Internet, though it does in the real world.

• Linux Kernel 3.0.78 LTS Brings Better Radeon Drivers (Linux Today)

   Softpedia: Linux kernel 3.0.78 includes an updated DRM driver for Radeon graphics cards, improvements to the x86 and PowerPC architectures

• Debian GNU/Hurd 2013 Release Brings New Packages (Phoronix)
  While it wasn't part of the Debian 7.0 Wheezy release earlier this month, the GNU non-Linux folks have now put out Debian GNU/Hurd 2013. This operating system pairs the Debian user-land with the GNU Hurd kernel...
• Ask Slashdot: Moving From Contract Developers To Hiring One In-House? (Slashdot)
  An anonymous reader writes "I run a small software consulting company who outsources most of its work to contractors. I market myself as being able to handle any technical project, but only really take the fun ones, then shop it around to developers who are interested. I write excellent product specs, provide bug tracking & source control and in general am a programming project manager with empathy for developers. I don't ask them to work weekends and I provide detailed, reproducible bug reports and I pay on time. The only 'rule' (if you can call it that) is: I do not pay for bugs. Developers can make more work for themselves by causing bugs, and with the specifications I write there is no excuse for not testing their code. Developers are always fine with it until we get toward the end of a project and the customer is complaining about bugs. Then all of a sudden I am asking my contractors to work for 'free' and they can make more money elsewhere. Ugh. Every project ends up being a battle, so, I think the solution is to finally hire someone full-time and pay for everything (bugs or not) and just keep them busy. But how can I make that transition? The guy I'd need to hire would have to know a lot of languages and be proficient in all of them. Plus, I can't afford to pay someone $100k/year right now. Ideas?"

  

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• Best Linux Distro For a New User? (Linux Today)

   FOSSforce: These days there are a lot of "user friendly" distros - all with a little different take on what constitutes friendliness.

• Intel Ultrabook Performance Is Faster With Mesa 9.2 (Phoronix)
  For those that were turned on by the recent Radeon Gallium3D performance improvements found in Mesa 9.2 but are Intel Linux graphics users rather than AMD, there's good news too. Here's some benchmarks showing off nice Intel OpenGL performance improvements found with Mesa 9.2 for an ASUS Ultrabook with HD 4000 "Ivy Bridge" graphics...

• Development Release: SparkyLinux 3.0 Beta 1 (DistroWatch)
  Paweł Pijanowski has announced that the first beta release of SparkyLinux 3.0, a lightweight distribution based on Debian's "Testing" branch, is available for download and testing: "SparkyLinux 3.0 beta 1, code name 'Annagerman', is ready for testing. SparkyLinux 3 provides a few big changes, such as: over 20....
• Quadcopter Drone Network Will Transport Supplies For Disaster Relief (Slashdot)
  kkleiner writes "A startup called Matternet is building a network of quadcopter drones to deliver vital goods to remote areas and emergency supplies to disaster-stricken areas. The installation of solar-powered fueling station and an operating system to allow for communications with local aviation authorities will allow the network to be available around the clock and in the farthest reaches of the world. 'Matternet’s drone network has three key components. First, the drones—custom-built autonomous electric quadcopters with GPS and sensors, capable of carrying a few kilos up to 10 kilometers (and more as the tech advances). Next, the firm will set up a network of solar-powered charging stations where drones autonomously drop off dead batteries and pick up charged ones. A drone battery that can travel 10 km need not limit the drone itself to 10 km — rather, these drones can theoretically travel the whole network by swapping out batteries. The final component will be an operating system to orchestrate the drone web, share information with aviation authorities, and fly missions 24/7/365.'"

  

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• Firefox 23 set to boost open source dev tools (Linux Today)

  InternetNews: From the 'Descendants of View Source' files:

• Hot Relocation HDD To SSD Support For Btrfs (Phoronix)
  In working to enhance the performance of the Btrfs file-system in cases where certain data/files are frequently used, a set of patches for providing hot relocation support has been posted...
• Microsoft talks about Xbox One’s internals, while disclosing nothing (Ars Technica)
  Eight cores, six operations per CPU cycle, 200GB of bandwidth. But does it mean anything?