Ah yes, why not? The last time we did this, it was March 2009, so it's been two years since we offered a little insight into what kind of operating systems and browsers you, dear readers, are using. In those two years, a lot has changed. I will also explain why in the few cases that OSNews does host video, I will host it in WebM.

The C++ programming language is about to be updated, as the ISO steering committee for the language has approved the final draft specifying its next version. The ISO/IEC Information Technology Task Force will review the steering committee's Final Draft International Standard will review and, barring any complications, publish the draft later this year. It will be known as C++ 2011.

Yahoo plans to release some technologies, including storage technologies, to the open source community, a senior executive of the company said. These are systems that Yahoo built to help it handle large numbers of users on its websites, but that don't necessarily give it a competitive advantage, said David Chaiken, chief architect at Yahoo, in an interview in Bangalore on Friday.

The ReactOS team has released ReactOS 0.3.13. "This version continues building on the work first previewed in 0.3.12, ranging from memory management improvements to better sound and display control. A Coverity scan also occurred between 0.3.12 and 0.3.13, helping the team clean up potential security holes and also help improve general stability by enforcing more care in memory operations." The detailed 0.3.13 changelog is also available.

About one month ago, I've posted an OSnews Asks item asking for details on how interrupts work on various architectures. Since then, I've been reading the manuals and comments, and have extracted what I found to be a summary of the specifics of each architecture. I've then written my first attempt at a portable interrupt handling model based on this data for my pet OS. Now I contribute this back to OSnews, so that these resources get more exposure for those who are interested.

When you run smbd -V on your Snow Leopard installation, you'll see it's running SAMBA version 3.0.28a-apple. While I'm not sure how much difference the "-apple" makes, version 3.0.28a is old. Very old. In other words, it's riddled with bugs. Apple hasn't updated SAMBA in 3 years, and for Lion, they're dumping it altogether for something homegrown. The reason? SAMBA is now GPLv3.

Samsung has developed a completely transparent solar-powered monitor that's designed to be used with ambient light. Though they're marketing it as a television, it's almost certainly going to be used initially as displays in commercial areas, and it apparently is also a touch-screen, opening it up for the coolest kind of kiosk you've ever used. See a video after the jump.

The Linux Foundation has announced MeeGo TV working group ,the goal of which is to "help drive the evolution of MeeGo within the television ecosystem and provide an open framework for industry creativity and innovation".

Research In Motion has just dropped a pretty major bombshell about its PlayBook tablet. Rumours were heard before, but now it's official: the PlayBook, which runs QNX, will be able to run Android applications. On top of that, and less surprisingly, support for BlackBerry Java applications has also been added, as well as a native C/C++ SDK alongside the already supported HTML5/AIR/Flash environments.

Yesterday, we linked to a story about the most recent allegations Sony made against George 'GeoHot' Hotz in their ongoing court case. Supposedly, Hotz has sabotaged the hardware he had to hand over, and he had fled the country to further stifle the court case, among other things. Hotz' lawyer, as well as Hotz himself, have responded to these allegations. The gist? They're all nonsense.

A new set of x264 and vpxenc encoder benchmarks have been published. The new benchmarks address many of the concerns raised in the comments about the methodology used in the previous article, such as using SSIM for quality measurement. Theora is also included in these tests.

"Sony has filed a new document arguing that the legal action against the noted hacker George Hotz should proceed in California. One of the arguments Hotz's legal team made against California's jurisdiction was the lack of a PlayStation Network account, which means he didn't agree to the Terms of Service, but now the company claims to have 'proof' that Hotz did in fact have a PSN account. An interview with a company based in California, and the number of downloads from California, are being used as evidence."

"Does $75 trillion even exist? The thirteen record companies that are suing file-sharing company Lime Wire for copyright infringement certainly thought so. When they won a summary judgment ruling last May they demanded damages that could reach this mind-boggling amount, which is more than five times the national debt. Manhattan federal district court judge Kimba Wood, however, saw things differently. She labeled the record companies' damages request 'absurd' and contrary to copyright laws in a 14-page opinion." Wait, this is only five time the US national debt? Fascinating.

"A federal judge rejected Google's $125 million class-action settlement with authors and publishers, delivering a blow to the company's ambitious plan to build the world's largest digital library and bookstore. Judge Denny Chin of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York said that the settlement went too far in granting Google rights to profit from books without the permission of copyright owners, and that it was 'not fair, adequate and reasonable'." Here is a desk. Please to bang head against it repeatedly until world starts making sense.