7th October randomness (By K)

IT:

Scout: Sys-Adminless Hosted Server Monitoring, Built on Ruby

How Ruby is Beating Python in the Battle for the Soul of System Administration

The Global Interpreter Lock and Ruby concurrency

What's new in Cassandra 1.0: Improved memory and disk space management

Massive Decrease in Memory Usage With Redis 2.4

Transactions Without Transactions with MongoDB

Autism Traits Prove Valuable for Software Testing

The Benefits and Dangers of using Opensource Java Libraries and Frameworks

Java and Rails integration with JAX-RS and ActiveResource

Time-zone database used by Unix shut down due to IP litigation

Business/Finance:

Bank injects £75bn into economy

Recovery prospects look brightest for Aussie dollar

Scott McNealy's startup: Hash tags, polls on steroids

Facebook launches its own universal translator

Facebook scam: R.I.P. Steve Jobs

Distributors worse than piracy: Miramax

Rdio launches free, non-ad-supported streaming for US users, meter to keep you in check

Spotify streaming hits the living room on the latest $99 WDTV Live, WDTV Live Hub

U.S. Congress freezes $200 million in aid to Palestinians

World food prices seen falling more in September

8coupons And CityPockets Team Up To Let Users Organize, Resell, And Create Their Own Daily Deals

Other:

France acts against net pirates

Tough guy actor Napier dies at 75

40 delicious Vietnamese dishes

Weekly Volcano Report, From Space

Can Relativity Explain Faster Than Light Particles?

Does Italian Demo Show Cold Fusion, or Snake Oil?

Arthur C. Nielsen Jr., leader of TV ratings and market research firm, dies at 92

This 20kW Power Plant Flies Itself

F-18 Pulls Up At The Last Minute To Avoid Smashing Sailors

Italian Wikipedia replaces every page with free speech protest

It’s official: Learning languages makes you smarter

Hitler Finds Out There’s No iPhone 5

Scores dead as army and deserters clash; U.N. says 2,900 killed in Syria crackdown

Old nuclear power plant transformed into a theme park and hotel

New device to generate electricity from human breathing