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Submission + - LibreOffice Site Experiences Major Design Change (muktware.com)

Submitted by sfcrazy
sfcrazy writes: LibreOffice team is on 'fire'. After releasing 4.0 which is a 'completely' different office suite than OpenOffice. The team has revamped the LibreOffice.org, bidding goodbye to the 'boring' and aged design. The new design is jazzy and reflects how aggressive the 'new' LibreOffice community is /a>, shedding the old brand image it inherited from the doomed OpenOffice. This change also gives a hint that the UI of this popular open source office suite may also get the same make-over
Security

Submission + - George W. Bush Nude Self-Portraits Revealed by Hacker (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by
DavidGilbert99
DavidGilbert99 writes: "George W. Bush is known for many things. his love of painting himself while washing is not one. Until now. A hacker has obtained sensitive and personal Bush family emails including portriats W painted of himself while in the shower and in the bath.

Besides the obvious embarrassment suffered, the hacker also revealed email conversations about the grave ill health of W's father as well as addresses, emails and mobile phone numbers for dozens of Bush family members."

Submission + - U.S. officials fault FAA for missing 787 battery risk (startribune.com)

Submitted by kemarnhan
kemarnhan writes: The nation’s top transportation safety official said Thursday that the Federal Aviation Administration accepted test results from Boeing in 2007 that failed to properly assess the risks of smoke or fire leaking from the batteries on Boeing’s new 787 jets. Deborah Hersman, the chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, told reporters that the problems seemed to have originated in the battery, when one of the eight cells had a short circuit and the fire spread to the rest of the cells. But she said that Boeing’s tests showed no indication that the new lithium-ion batteries on its 787 planes could erupt in flames and concluded they were likely to emit smoke less than once in every 10 million flight hours.
Bug

Submission + - Facebook tries to takeover the world with a redirection bug (news.com.au)

Submitted by johnsnails
johnsnails writes: Some of the biggest news sites in the world disappeared today when Facebook took over the internet with a redirection bug.

Visitors to sites such as The Washington Post, BuzzFeed, the Gawker network, NBC News and News.com.au were immediately transferred to a Facebook error page upon loading their intended site.
EU

Submission + - European Human Right Courts rules file-sharing human right (falkvinge.net) 2

Submitted by
swinferno
swinferno writes: "The European Court of Human Rights has declared that the copyright monopoly stands in direct conflict with fundamental Human Rights, as defined in the European Union and elsewhere. This means that as of today, nobody sharing culture in the EU may be convicted just for breaking the copyright monopoly law; the bar for convicting was raised considerably. This can be expected to have far-reaching implications, not just judicially, but in confirming that the copyright monopoly stands at odds with human rights."
Linux

Submission + - Moving Linux Console to the Userspace (phoronix.com) 2

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: David Herrmann has provided an update on his ambitious initiative to kill of the Linux kernel console. Herrmann has long been working on making the Linux kernel CONFIG_VT option unnecessary for providing a Linux console by punting it off to user-space. The Linux kernel VT console hasn't been changed much in the past two decades and Herrmann is hoping to see it replaced with a user-space solution he's been developing that would allow for multi-seat support, a hardware-accelerated console, full internalization, and other features.

Submission + - Fox News: US Solar Energy Investment Less than Germany because US has Less Sun (slate.com)

Submitted by Andy Prough
Andy Prough writes: Apparently those wise folks at Fox have figured out America's reluctance to invest as much money in solar energy as Germany — the Germans simply have more sun! Well, as Will Oremus from Slate points out, according to the US Dept. of Energy's Solar Resource map comparison of the US and Germany, nothing could be farther from the truth — Germany receives as much sunlight as the least lit US state — Alaska.

Submission + - Cluster of 35 Ancient Pyramids and Graves Discovered in Sudan

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: About 2,000 years ago, a kingdom named Kush flourished in what is now known as Sudan. Sharing a border with Egypt, the people of Kush were highly influenced by the other civilization. The result was that they built pyramids: lots of them. At one particular site known as Sedeinga, pyramid building continued for centuries. Now archaeologists have unearthed at least 35 of these small pyramids along with graves.

Submission + - The paradox of Julian Assange and Wikileaks

Submitted by
schnell
schnell writes: "The New Statesman is publishing a new in-depth article that examines in detail the seemingly paradoxical nature of Wikileaks' brave mission of public transparency with the private opaqueness of Julian Assange's leadership. On one hand, Wikileaks created "a transparency mechanism to hold governments and corporations to account" when nobody else could or would. On the other hand, Wikileaks itself was "guilty of the same obfuscation and misinformation as those it sought to expose, while its supporters are expected to follow, unquestioningly, in blinkered, cultish devotion." If Wikileaks performs a public service exposing the secrets of others but censors its own secrets, does it really matter? Or are the ethics of the organization and its leader inseparable?"
Android

Submission + - Fragmentation Leads To Android Insecurities

Submitted by Rick Zeman
Rick Zeman writes: The Washington Post writes about how vendor fragmentation leads to security vulnerabilities and other exploits. This situation is "...making the world’s most popular mobile operating system more vulnerable than its rivals to hackers, scam artists and a growing universe of malicious software" unlike Apple's iOS which they note has widely available updates several times a year. In light of many companies' Bring Your Own Device initiatives “You have potentially millions of Androids making their way into the work space, accessing confidential documents,” said Christopher Soghoian, a former Federal Trade Commission technology expert who now works for the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s like a really dry forest, and it’s just waiting for a match.”

Submission + - European Court of Human Rights finds against copyright law (falkvinge.net) 1

Submitted by admiral snackbar
admiral snackbar writes: The European Court of Human Rights has declared that the copyright monopoly stands in direct conflict with fundamental Human Rights, as defined in the European Union and elsewhere. This means that as of today, nobody sharing culture in the EU may be convicted just for breaking the copyright monopoly law; the bar for convicting was raised considerably.

Submission + - Radical new Space drive (wired.co.uk) 2

Submitted by Noctis-Kaban
Noctis-Kaban writes: Scientists in China have built and tested a radical new space drive. Although the thrust it produces may not be enough to lift your mobile phone, it looks like it could radically change the satellite industry. Satellites are just the start: with superconducting components, this technology could generate the thrust to drive everything from deep space probes to flying cars. And it all started with a British engineer whose invention was ignored and ridiculed in his home country.
Biotech

Submission + - Did viruses evolve from an extinct domain of life? (bytesizebio.net)

Submitted by Shipud
Shipud writes: A study was recently published by a group from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign . The authors analyzed the structures of proteins found in the genomes of organisms from the three domains of life. Those domains are eukarya which includes all plant, animals, fungi and some microbes; bacteria, and archaea which is a group of single-celled microorganisms distinct from eukarya and bacteria. The researchers also included a group of viruses known as NCLDVs (Nucelocyptoplasmic Large DNA viruses), Their conclusion is these viruses may have evolved from a, now extinct, fourth domain of life. Viruses are not considered to be alive, or even to have a place on the universal tree of life, by most researchers. So their claim has far-reaching consequences in our understanding of the origins of life.
Politics

Submission + - First city in the United States to pass an anti-drone resolution (aljazeera.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Charlottesville, Virginia is the first city in the United States to pass an anti-drone resolution. The writing of the resolution coincides with a leaked memo outlining the legal case for drone strikes on US citizens and a Federal Aviation Administration plan to allow the deployment of some 30,000 domestic drones.
Movies

Submission + - UK Court: MPAA Not Entitled To Profits From Piracy (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruh
jfruh writes: "The MPAA and other entertainment industry groups have been locked for years in a legal struggle against Newzbin2, a Usenet-indexing site. The MPAA contends that, since Newzbin2 profits from making it easier for users to find pirated movies online, the MPAA can sue to take those profits on behalf of its members, who produced that content in the first place. But a British court has rejected that argument."

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