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This week we look at the benefits of hiring a hacker, a history of the microprocessor in pictures, and modern robots designed to do a job, but never rebel.

The chairs of the W3C's HTML Working Group have presented a plan to approve a stable HTML5 specification before the end of 2014. The plan proposes to formally define a stable set of features as HTML 5.0, but when the HTML Working Group will approve this plan is as yet unknown. Features for which no stable specification is available by then could be moved to an extended "HTML 5.1" set of features that could be completed by 2016.

We take a look at the steps needed to create a unified directory that you can use from any of your multi-boot installations

Speed is essential in multimedia, graphics and signal processing. Sometimes programmers resort to assembly language to get every last bit of speed out of their machines. GCC offers an intermediate between assembly and standard C that can get you more speed and processor features without having to go all the way to assembly language: compiler intrinsics. This article discusses GCC's compiler intrinsics, emphasizing vector processing on three platforms: X86 (using MMX, SSE and SSE2); Motorola, now Freescale (using Altivec); and ARM Cortex-A (using Neon). We conclude with some debugging tips and references.

Similarly to current versions of Mac OS X and Windows, Linux is now capable of a hybrid sleep state. The 3.6 kernel also provides improved random data and reduces the work load of EFI bootloaders.

Canonical, through Jon Melamut, announced on September 20th that they will plan to implement support for Secure Boot in the upcoming Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) operating system.

I applaud the European Union for trying to persuade Microsoft Corporation to allow more competition in Windows 8. However, they are trying to solve the wrong problem. In The Linux Week in Review 45, I will give give my opinion as to what problem we should REALLY be trying to solve.

While the default settings should be good enough for most people, there are still a few things you can tweak to spice up your desktop distribution running Cinnamon 1.6.

This tutorial explains how to use the GeoIP module with nginx on Ubuntu 12.04 to find out where your visitors come from. The GeoIP module sets multiple variables like $geoip_country_name, $geoip_country_code, $geoip_city, etc. that you can use in your PHP scripts or directly in your nginx configuration, for example to serve content in different languages based on the user's country.

Lawyer/law professor Mark Lemley has argued for years that, even as there are very clear problems with software patents, the answer is not to merely exclude software from being patentable.

The GNOME Project unleashed a few minutes ago, September 20th, the immediate availability for download and testing of the Release Candidate version of the upcoming GNOME 3.6 desktop environment.

With flexible I/O options and Linux capability, the Raspberry Pi offers enormous potential for hardware development. Andrew Back takes us through the possibilities with his hardware-hacking getting-started guide for the credit-card-sized Linux computer.

GCC 4.7.2 has been released with fixes for regressions and serious bugs on GCC 4.7...

Want your site to look good, even though you're not a designer? Try a design framework.

The Freedreno reverse-engineered open-source ARM graphics driver continues to advance...

For those not in Germany this week for XDC2012 and/or Oktoberfest, here are some new benchmarks to look at of the AMD FX-8150 "Bulldozer" processor on the Linux kernels from Linux 3.0 through the current Linux 3.6 kernel that's currently under development...

Swiss Federal Railways wants compensation for use of its iconic design.

Apple added a Clock app to the iPad in iOS 6, but the company may get into trouble for the visual look of the app's analog-style clock face. According to Swiss newspaper Tages Anzeiger, Apple's designers copied the iconic—and trademarked—look of the Swiss Federal Railway (Schweizerische Bundesbahnen, or SBB) clocks used in train stations all over Switzerland. And the SBB wants Apple to pay up.

Unity 6.6.0 has just been uploaded to the Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal proposed repositories, bringing some polish for various aspects like the Dash Previews, animations, 2 new default lenses and more.

From Ruby hacks to enterprise apps Dreamforce 2012 Heroku's core fanbase of Ruby on Rails hipsters must be mortified. Since being bought by Salesforce.com in 2010, the platform as a service (PaaS) vendor has steadily added support for more languages – including boring old Java – and as of this week's Dreamforce 2012 conference in San Francisco, it's even started muttering the e-word.…

Bodhi Linux is great for Netbooks because it is quick, has a clean interface and maximises screen space.