After news of the settlement between Sony and George Hotz came out, we had a few unhappy people complaining about how Hotz would now keep all the money donated to him, that he would run off to some tropical island, never to be heard from again. Well, as it turns out, Hotz has actually kept his word: he donated all the leftover donated money to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

systemd, the new init system created by Lennart Poettering, has added a couple of interesting features. First, he has added support for chroot-style isolation capabilities, but instead of chroot he used the powerful per-process filesystem and PID namespaces supported by the Linux kernel. Second, he has added a new tool, systemd-analyze, which shows how much time took each service to start, so you can optimize your bootup time easily. It can even create simple bootchart-style graphs.

So, Google has been working on setting up an internet music service for a while now, and we even know some of the details about what Google wants it to look like. Sadly, however, rumour has it the negotiations with the music industry have been so frustrating, Google is contemplating abandoning the entire project altogether. This has led some to wonder - why doesn't Google, or a consortium of technology companies, just buy the music industry outright?

"Research In Motion Ltd. is considering a bid for Nortel Networks Corp.'s portfolio of wireless technology patents that would top Google Inc.'s $900 million offer, two people familiar with the plans said. RIM, maker of the BlackBerry smartphone, is weighing an offer that would keep Google from gaining control of about 6,000 Nortel patents and patent applications, said the people, who couldn't be identified because the plans aren't public. A group of technology companies, including mobile-phone makers, may also bid on the patents to stop Google, two people said. RIM, based in Waterloo, Ontario, is considering joining the group, one person said. Nortel's patents would allow buyers to control and license technology used in BlackBerrys, Apple Inc.'s iPhone, and devices that run on Google's Android operating system."

"The team led by security expert Joanna Rutkowska has released the first beta version of the Qubes OS Linux distribution. The operating system can also be installed on a USB stick thanks to its new installer. Qubes aims to provide security through virtualisation. It uses a Xen hypervisor to run applications in separate virtual machines based on Fedora 14. As a result, online banking data are not at risk when a game running in its own VM turns out to be a trojan."

I couldn't get into it yesterday, but today is a new day, and I've got my coffee ready. So, let's dive into reviews of RIM's new toy, the PlayBook. Since my overall opinion on the whole tablet thing can be best summarised as 'meh', my interest regarding the PlayBook focusses mostly on its QNX operating system. As a long-time fan and even regular user of this wonderful piece of technology 'back in the day', I'm interested in what the reviews have to say about it.

"BlackBerry maker Research In Motion launched its new PlayBook tablet computer Thursday amid poor reviews and a scramble to make more third-party applications, big hurdles to overcome if it is to compete in the hot market dominated by the iPad. The Waterloo, Ont., firm is pulling out all the stops to encourage development of apps - the games and tools that tie users to their tablets. Steps include loosening the company's own strict app-building rules, as well as the recent decision to support applications built for Google Inc.'s Android platform."

"Google got off to a mixed start under its new chief executive, co-founder Larry Page, as first-quarter revenue increased 27 percent while profit fell short of analyst expectations. Google reported that net income in the quarter rose 17 percent to $2.3 billion, or $7.04 cents a share, from $1.96 billion, or $6.06 a share in the year-ago quarter. The company said revenue climbed to $8.58 billion from $6.77 billion. Google’s adjusted income of $8.08 was just below the expectations of Wall Street analysts. They had forecast $8.11 cents a share on that basis, according to a survey of analysts by Thomson Reuters."

New open source projects have been launched by KDE developers aimed at bringing a consistent user interface across a varied of touch screen interfaces like tablets and entertainment devices and take data integration to a new level. The new Plasma Active and Contour projects were developed to offer a new user experience for tablets, smartphones and set top boxes.

It looks like Microsoft's "shhh... let's not leak our hard work" plea to Windows 8 testers has fallen on deaf ears, as an early development milestone of Windows 8 was leaked in the wild. The shots are remarkably boring, since it looks exactly like Windows 7. Duh.

No April Foolery: The Portable C Compiler version 1.0 was released on April 1st! As with so many things BSD, this project proves that good code is timeless and can benefit from literally generations of review. It can build the majority of the BSD base systems (C++ code aside) and is undergoing continuous improvement.

Intel is establishing a joint innovation center with Tencent, one of China's largest Internet firms, to develop products and services around the chip maker's MeeGo mobile operating system and devices using its Atom processors. The new partnership could help Intel to promote MeeGo in China, along with its Atom-based microprocessors.

So, have you installed Internet Explorer 9 yet on your Windows machine? No? Well, feel assured in the knowledge that at MIX11 today, Microsoft announced Internet Explorer 10, while also pushing out the very first preview release. Also, IE10 (can I call it IEX? Can I? Can I?) was demonstrated running on Windows for ARM.

"San Francisco–Red Hat is the strongest Linux company in the world when it comes to servers, but it has almost no presence on the desktop. That will be changing in 2012 with the reintroduction of a Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environments-based virtual desktop infrastructure."