‘God’ defence rejected

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24 January 2012
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In Weird
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A mother and daughter told a court only God had the authority to order them to pull down an illegal extension to their South Golden Beach property, but the magistrate took a different view.

In a hearing at Mullumbimby Local Court on Thursday, Byron Shire Council argued the downstairs area of the property was not approved to live in as part of the original development consent and it should be demolished.

The council’s governance manager, Ralph James, said despite several requests over the past two years, the property owner had not taken any reasonable steps to get the downstairs development approved or cease use of the area — via redwolf.newsvine.com

DreamHost resets customer FTP passwords following database breach

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24 January 2012
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In Technology
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Los Angeles-based Web hosting firm DreamHost reset the FTP and shell access passwords for all of its customers on Friday after detecting unauthorised activity within one of its databases.

One of DreamHost’s database servers was illegally accessed using an exploit that was not previously known or prevented by our layered security systems in place, said DreamHost’s CEO, Simon Anderson, in a blog post on Saturday.

Even though it couldn’t be blocked, the unauthorised access was detected by one of the company’s intrusion detection systems (IDS), allowing its security team to react quickly and take the necessary mitigation steps.

The company notified its customers about the security breach via email and informed them that only passwords used for FTP and shell access were affected by the breach. Billing or personal information was not exposed, DreamHost said — via redwolf.newsvine.com

New Righthaven offers hosting service

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24 January 2012
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In Technology
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After snatching a notorious copyright troll’s name at auction, a Swiss company is turning Righthaven.com into a web hosting service. The intended customers? Publishers worried about the kind of abusive legal threats spewed out by the domain’s previous owner.

The Swiss courts don’t play games and registrars here cannot be scared, said Stefan Thalberg of Ort Cloud, an ISP based in Zürich. Frivolous plaintiffs will find little comfort here.

With hosting in Switzerland and planned in Iceland, the new Righthaven promises infrajuridsictional infrastructure — in other words, uptime that would require international co-operation to bring down — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Google Tweaks Search Results to Punish Ad-Heavy Websites

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24 January 2012
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In Technology
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Google has tweaked its search algorithm to punish websites with excessive advertising above-the-fold, that is, websites that stack the top of the page with nothing but advertisements.

According to Google, rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away. To help users get to that content, Google may drop ad-heavy websites from its search results.

Google says that the change will only affect about one in 100 searches, and emphasizes that websites using what Google’s Distinguished Engineer and SEO guru Matt Cutts calls ads above-the-fold to a normal degree will not be affected — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Stem cells may aid vision in blind people

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24 January 2012
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In Health, Science
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Two legally blind women appeared to gain some vision after receiving an experimental treatment using embryonic stem cells, scientists have reported.

Last year, each patient was injected in one eye with cells derived from embryonic stem cells at the University of California, Los Angeles. One patient had the dry form of age-related macular degeneration, the most common cause of blindness. The other had a rare disorder known as Stargardt disease that causes serious vision loss. There’s no cure for either eye problem.

After four months, both showed some improvement in reading progressively smaller letters on an eye chart. The Stargardt patient, a graphic artist in Los Angeles, went from seeing no letters at all to being able to read five of the largest letters — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Octopus Chair / Maximo Riera

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24 January 2012
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In Design, Wildlife
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Created by Spanish artist Maximo Riera, The Octopus Chair waves a dismissive tentacle at questions like WTF!?, Why? and Where on earth would I put it?. Who cares if it doesn’t match your other flat-packed fjürniture? So what if it costs more than Captain Nemo’s submarine? We guarantee almost any problem can be overcome when you have an enormous octopus watching your back — via Firebox.com

Harleyton 45 / Nick Roskelley

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23 January 2012
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In Design
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Nick Roskelley calls his creation the Harleyton 45 a rolling amalgamation consisting of a 45-cubic-inch (750cc) Harley-Davidson flathead V-twin housed in a 1960s Norton Featherbed frame. The engine, of 1942 vintage, was originally found in a WLC model, the Canadian-spec army bike, one of 90,000 military motorcycles Harley built during the war — via Bike EXIF

Why Facebook Is Never Safe

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23 January 2012
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In Technology
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How to use Facebook safely: Here’s the easy solution: don’t fucking surveil yourself! If you want to stay safe on Facebook, the answer is, you should not use it, and don’t tag people! There are benefits of using it, there are tradeoffs, but in the long run I think it’s going to be pretty bad that you gave a bunch of capitalists all your private information where the US government asserts and has the right to read it without a warrant and with the ability to gag the corporate.

What’s the greatest database of Jews on the planet? Facebook. What will happen when you want the biggest database of leftists on the planet? Or right wing people? That’s really, really scary, so one way to not be part of that dataset is to not put yourself in it voluntarily, and to chastise people who only hang out with you to tag you in Facebook as a sort of conspicuous consumption of the 21st Century say: Hey, if that’s all you get out of our friendship then go fuck yourself! — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Craft, Wildlife

Bronze Octopus Ear Cuff / Marty Bobroskie

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23 January 2012
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In Craft, Wildlife
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This solid antique bronze Octopus ear cuff gently grips the edge of your ear, it’s graceful and fluid tentacles flow both up and down along the contour of your ear. It is carefully detailed on the back side with all his suction cups and can be worn on either the left or the right ear — via Etsy

All-white blackbird photographed

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23 January 2012
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In Science, Wildlife
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This unusual blackbird is attracting bird watchers to a Nottinghamshire country park.

The bird is leucistic, which is a genetic mutation that prevents pigments from being deposited normally in its feathers.

It has been residing for the last four years in the woodland of Rufford Abbey Country Park.

Each year, observers say, it has steadily shed its black feathers for white feathers.

Park rangers took this picture of the blackbird — which is now completely white with no visible pigmented feathers — in the summer of 2011.

Leucistic birds are often very vulnerable to predators, because of their bright white plumage. So the park’s managers are urging birdwatchers to keep an eye out for this unusual blackbird — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Cosmetic surgeons call for surgery adverts ban

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23 January 2012
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In Health, Politics
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Cosmetic surgery advertising should be banned and annual checks carried out on surgeons, the industry has said.

The British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS) wants measures including increased regulation of the cowboy market in the UK.

Prof Sir Bruce Keogh is leading a government review of the trade after the PIP breast implants scandal.

Sir Bruce has said an insurance scheme for the sector, similar to that in the travel industry, could be introduced — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Apple, America and a Squeezed Middle Class

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23 January 2012
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In Business, Technology
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Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, few are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas.

Why can’t that work come home? Mr Obama asked.

Mr Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. Those jobs aren’t coming back, he said, according to another dinner guest.

The president’s question touched upon a central conviction at Apple. It isn’t just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that Made in the USA is no longer a viable option for most Apple products — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Goldfish Salvation / Riusuke Fukahori

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23 January 2012
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In Art, Wildlife
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Artist Riusuke Fukahori’s London debut exhibition Goldfish Salvation transforms ICN gallery into the world of goldfish. When struggling with artistic vision, Fukahori’s pet goldfish became his inspiration and ever since his passion and lifelong theme. His unique style of painting uses acrylic on clear resin which is poured into containers, resulting in a three-dimensional appearance and lifelike vitality

Bird book sells for $7.5m

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22 January 2012
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In History, Wildlife
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A rare first edition of the John James Audubon book The Birds of America, featuring more than 1000 exquisite illustrations by the great naturalist, has sold for $US7.9 million ($7.5 million) at auction in New York.

The sale at Christie’s was within the $US7 million to $US10 million pre-sale estimate and was the third-highest amount paid at auction for a printed book, a spokeswoman said.

In 2010 Sotheby’s sold another first edition of the book for a record $US11.5 million.

The buyer on Friday was identified as an American private collector — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Julian Assange: The Rolling Stone Interview

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22 January 2012
3 min read
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In Politics, Rights, Technology
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At 40, the WikiLeaks founder comes across more like an embattled rebel commander than a hacker or journalist. He’s become better at handling the media – more willing to answer questions than he used to be, less likely to storm off during interviews — but the protracted legal battle has left him isolated, broke and vulnerable. Assange recently spoke to someone he calls a Western intelligence source, and he asked the official about his fate. Will he ever be a free man again, allowed to return to his native Australia, to come and go as he pleases? He told me I was fucked, Assange says.

Are you fucked? I ask.

Assange pauses and looks out the window. The house is surrounded by rolling fields and quiet woods, but they offer him little in the way of escape. The British Supreme Court will hear his extradition appeal on 1 February — but even if he wins, he will likely still remain a wanted man. Interpol has issued a so-called red notice for his arrest on behalf of Swedish authorities for questioning in connection with a number of sexual offences — Qaddafi, accused of war crimes, earned only an orange notice — and the US government has branded him a high-tech terrorist, unleashing a massive and unprecedented investigation designed to depict Assange’s journalism as a form of international espionage. Ever since November 2010, when WikiLeaks embarrassed and infuriated the world’s governments with the release of what became known as Cablegate, some 250,000 classified diplomatic cables from more than 150 countries, the group’s supporters have found themselves detained at airports, subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury, and ordered to turn over their Twitter accounts and emails to authorities — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Undercover police had children with activists

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21 January 2012
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In Rights
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Two undercover police officers secretly fathered children with political campaigners they had been sent to spy on and later disappeared completely from the lives of their offspring, the Guardian can reveal.

In both cases, the children have grown up not knowing that their biological fathers — whom they have not seen in decades — were police officers who had adopted fake identities to infiltrate activist groups. Both men have concealed their true identities from the children’s mothers for many years — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Johann Hari leaves the Independent after plagiarism storm

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21 January 2012
43 second read
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In Business
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Johann Hari, the journalist at the Independent who was suspended for plagiarism, has announced that he will not return to the newspaper.

Hari had been undergoing retraining in the United States and was expected to return to the Independent next month but said on his personal website that he did not want to see colleagues taking the blame for his mistakes — via redwolf.newsvine.com

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