I've been dealing with fanboys for as long as I'm an OSNews editor - made worse by the fact that I don't really have a strong allegiance to any platform, and therefore, tend to criticise and praise each of them at the same time, on a weekly basis. This means I have to deal with all manner of fanboys, and while it sometimes can be quite tiring, it's just kind of adorable most of the time.

The other side of the coin is being accused of being biased for or against something. I used to maintain a list of all the companies and products I was accused of being biased for or against. Interestingly enough, all of the companies and products mentioned appeared in both the biased for and biased against column. In other words, I was biased for and against every single company and product mentioned on OSNews at the same time.

In the meantime, out in the real world, I try to use as many different products from as many different companies as (financially) possible, so that I gather as much as real-world experience as I can. So, in the past 18-24 months, I've bought a Nexus 7, HTC 8X Windows Phone, Surface RT, iMac, Find 5 (Android), a self-built Windows 8 PC, Nokia E7 (Symbian), iPhone 5S, Jolla, and only last week I added a Nokia N9 to my collection. On top of that, I've used a whole bunch of other classic devices to further expand my horizon. I love technology, regardless of brand or platform.

So yes, I've probably had more experience with fanboys than just about anyone here on OSNews. However, the things I've had to deal with are minute compared to the things people like Joshua Topolsky from The Verge has had to deal with.

The gist of this somewhat random collection of words: be happy OSNews is a relatively small, niche site. Sure, we get into our (in the grand scheme of things, pointless) debates, but at least virtually every regular commenter here displays a reasonable amount of intelligence and restraint. We could do a whole lot worse.

Windows 8.x is just fine. Nothing's wrong with it. It's all the users' fault. Windows 8.x is just fine. Nothing's wrong with it. It's all the users' fault. Windows 8.x is just fine. Nothing's wrong with it. It's all the users' fault. Windows 8.x is just fine. Nothing's wrong with it. It's all the users' fault.

We report regularly about Visopsys - one of the few hobby operating systems that survived where virtually all the others (SkyOS, Syllable, etc.) died out. They've got a new website, which seems like a nice occasion to give it some attention again.

Linux kernel 3.13 has been released. This release includes are nftables, the successor of iptables, a revamp of the block layer designed for high-performance SSDs, a power capping framework to cap power consumption in Intel RAPL devices, improved squashfs performance, AMD Radeon power management enabled by default and automatic AMD Radeon GPU switching, improved NUMA and hugepage performance , TCP Fast Open enabled by default, support for NFC payments, support for the High-availability Seamless Redundancy protocol, new drivers and many other small improvements. Here's the full list of changes.

Yeah! I mean, who wants Gmail, Google Search, Chrome, Android, YouTube, AdWords, Google Apps, Maps, and so on, and so forth. All useless stuff nobody wants!

How dare Google focus on more than immediate financial gain, and instead focus on trying to make the roads safer, or helping diabetics, or trying to explore the potential applications of wearable computing! All activities of every company ever should always and exclusively be focussed on immediate financial gain and shareholder returns, or else they'll get brilliant bloggers who contribute so much to the world complaining they can't spend their money right now, right away, now, now!

Google's 'moonshots', or the stuff Microsoft does at Microsoft Research, might not immediately satisfy the grubby little hands of entitled consumers, but thank god they're doing it.

Still Android's biggest weakness. Baby steps are made, but a solution there is not.

The NYT lists the changes. It's insubstantial.

I have no idea if these kinds of wearable technology - like Glass, and now this - are the future or not, but if they are, then Google is clearly quite, quite ahead of the curve.

This is quite, quite an amazing journey.

Valve has been listening to the feedback they've been getting, including the complaints people have had about the lack of a proper digital, 4-way pad, and now they are set to replace the touchscreen on the controller with a set of 8 individual buttons. (source: Gamespot).

In other news, Valve's Anna Sweet tried to alleviate the concerns various parties have expressed and confirmed that their plan is to bring music, TV and movies on the platform in a streaming form, making it suitable for more than just gaming.

The operating system will be optimized for Java applications "by exposing OS internals and direct access for page tables, scheduling decisions and the raw IO layer". It will not be restricted to only Java applications though and will run JavaScript, Scala, Clojure, JRuby, Jython and more on JVM. Surprisingly, C is also supported.

OSv promises "Zero OS management" with "no need for administration, template management, configuration and tuning". Common Java framework integration consists of "frameworks such as Tomcat, JBoss, SpringSource . Common open source technologies such as Hadoop and NoSQL are being optimized and integrated to run on top of OSv."

Stefano Mosconi (CTO of Jolla) gives a review of the past year, talking about decisions and developments in the company such as changing the SoC manufacturer for their first handset, switching to Wayland with Qt5 for Sailfish and opening their Web store and co-creation site.

Paul Thurrott on the next version of Windows and the future of the platform.

With even Paul Thurrott claiming Windows is in trouble, it becomes virtually impossible to deny it is so.