Official dates for 2014 Global Training Days have been announced. Friday, February 28 (or Saturday, March 1). Friday, May 30 (or Saturday, May 31). Friday, August 29 (or Saturday, August 30). Friday, November 14 (or Saturday, November 15).
Changes are being made around the alpha releases of Drupal 8. The week before each release only critical and major patches will be committed. After an alpha release a "disruption week" will follow when more complex patches can be committed to D8.
Gábor Hojtsy explains why Drupal Dev Days in Szeged is a big deal. Sounds like an epic code sprint with two core committers(Alex Pott and Nathaniel Catchpole) on site and Angie Byron working from home.
"Global Sprint Weekend is a worldwide event you can participate in. Small local sprints in lots of locations, over the same time period: Saturday and Sunday January 25 and 26, 2014. These sprints will usually be 2-15 people in one location, together, working to make Drupal better."
"If you are running a Drupal 6 site on PHP 4.x, we suggest you look at your hosting situation as it is likely there are other outdated (and possibly insecure) components involved in your environment as well."
Drupal 8 will have an migration path for D6 & D7! Say goodbye to hook_update_N() for major version upgrades. I think this is a really good move and will be a big win for Drupal 8 upgrades.