After a few relatively small changes and not-so-earth-shattering features, the Windows 8 blog has now unveiled something many of you will surely appreciate: Hyper-V, Microsoft's hypervisor-based virtualisation software, will be integrated into the client releases of Windows 8 - not just the server releases.

Microsoft has announced today that it has reached patent licensing agreements with Acer and ViewSonic that cover Android smart phones and tablets. These companies join HTC in paying Microsoft for each deployed Android device. Microsoft's strategic approach to Android is very different from Apple's. Where Apple is attempting to stop or otherwise delay the deployment of Android devices Microsoft is lining their coffers with royalties paid by OEMs for the privilege of shipping them. It's a strategy that is already generating more profit for Microsoft the its less then successful Windows Phone platform and could contribute dramatically to Microsofts bottom line going forward.

The MorphOS Team has just released an update to the MorphOS 2 SDK. The archive comes with a brand new programmer's editor offering autocomplete, syntax highlighting, jumping to definitions, declarations and documentation, etc for C based projects. Scribble's display layer is based on a port of the well known Scintilla engine. You can see Scribble in action in this video. The full news item can be found here.

"The typical way to increase capacity on a network is to add more infrastructure, but that's an expensive undertaking. It can also be time consuming and frustrating for network operators who have to get permission to put up new towers, or dig up the ground to lay cables. This is especially true in heavily populated areas where more antennas and traffic disruption are not what anyone wants to see. Rice University has come up with a groundbreaking solution, though. One that promises to at least double the capacity of existing networks with the addition of minimal extra hardware. That solution is full duplex wireless communication. This isn't a new concept, but one that hasn't been possible until now due to the inherent obstacles it throws up."

"Baidu, a company primarily known for its search engine in China, has announced that it is launching a new mobile operating system: Yi. The new OS is to be forked off of Android and Baidu will be providing its own apps and services in lieu of Google's apps. Those apps should include Baidu-based maps, ebooks, downloadable music, cloud storage, and cloud backup. There will also apparently be a custom SDK and app store for the platform."

"There's confusion - way too much confusion - about my status at TechCrunch and TechCrunch's status at Aol after last week's announcement that I was launching a venture fund, partially backed by Aol. The multiple conflicting statements made by Aol on Thursday and Friday of last week are evidence of that confusion, but that isn't the core issue. My employment relationship with TechCrunch and Aol is not the core issue. The only issue being discussed at this point, the only issue that matters, is TechCrunch editorial independence and self determination. Regardless of my role, if any, going forward. I believe that Aol should be held to their promise when they acquired us to give TechCrunch complete editorial independence." I honestly don't care about TechCrunch all that much (more ads, Siegler, and nonsense than actual content), but still - raise your hand if you're surprised by this. AOL is pure, concentrated evil.

In the US wireless market, AT&T is currently attempting to buy T-Mobile to create one heck of a behemoth wireless provider. While earlier this week the US government already filed a lawsuit to block the merger, citing antitrust concerns, US carrier Sprint has now also filed a lawsuit to block the merger.

Thanks to the hard work of Google Summer of Code student Mike Smith, a set of early VirtualBox guest addition drivers are now available for the Haiku operating system. Information, source code, and a binary package can be found on the haiku-development mailing list.

So, people from within Iran have hacked the Dutch company DigiNotar, allowing them to issue fake certificates so they could listen in on Iranian dissidents and other organisation within Iran. This is a very simplified version of the story, since it's all quite complicated and I honestly don't even understand all of it. In any case, DigiNotar detected the intrusion July 19, but didn't really do anything with it until it all blew up in their face this past week. Now, the Dutch government has taken over operational management of DigiNotar... But as a Dutch citizen, that doesn't really fill me with confidence, because, well - whenever the Dutch government does anything even remotely related to IT technology, they mess it up. And mess it up bad.

The number of rogue SSL certificates issued by Dutch CA DigiNotar has balooned from one to a couple dozen to over 250 to 531 in just a few days. As Jacob Appelbaum of the Tor project shared the full list of the rogue certificates, it became clear that fraudulent certificates for domains of a number of intelligence agencies from around the world were also issued during the CA's compromise - including the CIA, MI6 and Mossad. Additional targeted domains include Facebook, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Skype, Twitter, Tor, Wordpress and many others.

"As mentioned before, the original multi-monitor survey had some serious flaws, which means that its results should be used with caution. I don't know if I can gather people around this again, but I wanted to try an updated, much cleaned up version of the survey, with results distributed in public domain just as before. Here it is." (from The OS-periment)

"Okay, it's been about one week and there are not much answers anymore, so it's time to thank everyone who participated, close this survey, and publish the results, along with some interpretation." Everything is released under Creative Commons CC0 license, so anyone interested, please help yourself.

"At the beginning of this year, the Plasma team was itching to extend Plasma's coverage of the device spectrum. We already had Desktop and Netbook interfaces, and while maintaining and incrementally improving those, we wanted to show case the possibilities of Plasma by creating a full fledged touch interface for devices."

So, I kind of mocked this story yesterday, but today an interesting twist has emerged which puts the story in an entirely different light. This week, CNet reported a story about how Apple is working with the San Francisco Police Department to retrieve a lost iPhone 5 prototype. The police and Apple apparently traced the phone to someone's house, and showed up on his doorstep, threatening him and his family. The only problem - the SFPD has no record of any house search or of the case in general - raising the question whether Apple employees falsely impersonated the SFPD, which happens to be a serious crime in California. Update: While I was busy sleeping, the story changed a little bit, but it's still far too shady. After conferring with Apple, the SFPD now states four police officers were involved, and that only the two Apple employees entered Calderon's house. However, Calderon had no idea these two were private non-police people, since he claims they did not identify themselves as Apple employees. Had he known, he would not have let them search his house. So, update or no, Apple employees still impersonated police officers, and issued threats to intimidate Calderon into letting them search his house - without a warrant. I don't understand how people can just accept this sort of behaviour. Don't you have rights in the US? Update II: Perfect summary.