In preparation for the upcoming release of Qt 5.1, the alpha release of this first major update to the Qt5 tool-kit is now available…
Read more at Phoronix
Red Hat, Google and Others Take Aim at Patent Trolls
In a very long comments document submitted to both the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice, several companies, including Red Hat, are urging arms of the U.S. government to take stronger action against patent trolls. Google, BlackBerry and EarthLink are on board with Red Hat in the effort, which takes a strong stance against against companies that abuse patents for financial gains.
According to the Google Public Policy blog:
“Today, we submitted comments together with BlackBerry, EarthLink and Red Hat to the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice on the growing harm caused by patent assertion entities (more widely known as patent trolls).
Read more at Ostatic
Google Compute Engine Expands, Features Lower Pricing
At the Google I/O conference last year, company officials announced a big next step for the company–the public availability of the Google Compute Engine public cloud service (following much beta testing). Compute Engine placed the company in direct competition with Amazon Web Services (AWS), and represented a strong step into the Infrastructure-as-a-Service space. In recent months, many third parties have popped up with services surrounding the platform.
Now, after nine months since Compute Engine was announced, Google Compute Engine has become available to all customers who sign up for Google’s Gold Support package, which starts at $400 a month. Google has also announced a 4 percent reduction on all Compute Engine pricing.
Read more at Ostatic
Distribution Release: PCLinuxOS 2013.04
Bill Reynolds has announced the release of PCLinuxOS 2013.04, an updated version of the project’s rolling-release desktop Linux distribution featuring the latest KDE: “PCLinuxOS KDE, MiniME, and FullMonty 2013.04 are now available for download. These are 32-bit quarterly update ISO images which can also be installed on 64-bit….
Read more at DistroWatch
SUSE Sponsors New Hardware for the Open Build Service
Over the last year, the Open Build Service (OBS) reference server, a service to build and distribute packages from sources in an automatic, consistent and reproducible way, has been flooded with new packages, new distributions and even entire new architectures, deluging its build servers with compilation jobs. But spring is coming: SUSE has has just sponsored a rack server with some serious compute power for us to speed up your compilations. OBS will kick into high gear again!
Read more at openSUSE News
Facebook Home Beta Leaks, Can Be Installed on Nexus 4
MoDaCo has just leaked a pre-release version of Facebook Home. Set for launch on April 12th, Facebook’s new launcher will initially only be compatible with five handsets, but MoDaCo says this pre-release version works on a wide range of devices including the Nexus 4.
There are a few caveats: Facebook’s new “Chat Heads” feature isn’t working, and the maximum supported resolution is 1280 x 768. It’s also a little difficult to get up and running in the first place, although it doesn’t require any major trickery aside from enabling “install from unknown sources” in Android’s settings menu. As the beta apps don’t require root, risks to your phone should be minimal, but being pre-release software don’t expect the most stable experience. If…
Read more at The Verge