Meet the American Who Designed North Korea's Atrocious Website [North Korea]

Just yesterday we learned that North Korea paid only fifteen bucks for its website. Now we get the reaction of Robert Westmore, the unwitting man behind the design. More »

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Personal Finance Roundup - The Consumerist

5 Hypothetical New Taxes That Americans Actually Support [Moneyland] "Here are five possible new taxes that, at least in theory, get plenty of support."

10 Tips for Landing the Perfect House-Sitting Gig [Wise Bread] "How to effectively land and enjoy a house-sitting job."

80-20 Your Finances [Free Money Finance] "If you simply focus on a few key steps and apply them faithfully over time, you can become wealthy."

4% solution for retirement doesn't fit all [Market Watch] "The 4% withdrawal strategy, a strategy used to produce income in retirement by many financial advisers and do-it-yourselfers, is, to put it bluntly, oversimplistic."

10 Things Online Data Collectors Won't Say [Smart Money] "They know your online browsing secrets. We reveal their hidden tactics."

?FREE MONEY FINANCE

From ConsumerReports.org:

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Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie: Inside the Proposal!

Nothing like calling a Jolie-Pitt family meeting for the announcement that the celebrity gossip world had longingly been waiting - and hoping - for.

On a recent spring day, Brad Pitt gathered Maddox, 10, Pax, 8, Zahara, 7, Shiloh, 5, and twins Vivienne and Knox, 3, to present their mom with something.

That would be a tablet-shaped diamond engagement ring, estimated at 16 carats and worth $500,000, and which he helped design with jeweler Robert Procop.

"Angelina cried and smiled" at the proposal, a confidante says. Aww.

The children, who had been eager for their parents to wed after seven years together, were equally overjoyed to see Brad and Angelina engaged.

The source adds. "Everyone hugged once she put [the ring] on. She went around and showed it to each of the kids, one by one. It was magical."

As the world now knows, Jolie, 36, quietly debuted that long-awaited ring at an April 11 private viewing at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Procop and then Pitt's manager confirmed the engagement days later. Now, "Angie considers herself bonded to Brad for life," adds the source.

Speaking of which ... do you think they'll last?

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The Real Jon Jones: A documentary takes a closer look at the champ (VIDEO)

Heading into his UFC 145 title bout with Rashad Evans, Jon Jones discusses his road to success and his journey as a son, brother, fighter, and father. Watch the whole documentary as it takes you through the many aspects of his life.

Part 1: Take a journey to Jones' hometown of Binghamton, New York where we learn about his upbringing, early life and family values.

Part 2: Jones talks about a family tragedy and how the event has shaped him as a person and as a fighter. Jones openly discusses religion and how it affects his outlook on life. We take a peek into his early career and the events that led up to his UFC light heavyweight championship.

Part 3: A look into the career ofJones and the criticism that follows him. "Is Jon Jones cocky"? Jones answers with confidence about himself as a person and as an athlete.

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PTC Bashes Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 as Sexist, Promiscuous

It has a stupid title, we can all agree on that.

But the Parents Television Council believes the problems with Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 - a new ABC sitcom that stars Krysten Ritter as a mean young woman in New York City and James Van Der Beek as her BFF - go far beyond it's name.

In a new statement, the PTCs says this series "is a sexist mixed-bag of hedonism, drug-use, alcohol abuse (including the main character plying a 13-year-old boy with alcohol to get him drunk) and explicit levels of promiscuity that are shocking even by today’s broadcast TV standards.”

The organization is urging advertisers AT&T and Volkswagen to boycott the program.

The PTC, of course, once trashed Glee for its depiction of teenage sex and also bashed Rihanna for her "Man Down" video.

What do you think? Is Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 inappropriate television?

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StopTheHacker Web-Malware Scanning

You've installed antivirus protection for your company's PCs and set it to scan regularly, right? StopTheHacker Web-Malware Scanning (from $10/month) extends similar protection to your company's website. Depending on the level of service you choose, it will check whether your site has been blacklisted, detect known Web-based malware, detect as-yet-unknown Web threats, protect your corporate Facebook page, and even fix found threats automatically.

This is important stuff. A hack attack on your company website can be devastating. Customers won't thank you for infesting their PCs with drive-by downloads. Google and others may blacklist your site, marking it as dangerous in search results; getting off the blacklist can take time. Peter Jensen, CEO of StopTheHacker, states that at any given time 2.5 to 5 percent of all websites are infested with malware, and 75 percent are vulnerable to malware attack.

Levels of Service
StopTheHacker offers a free service that does nothing but keep track of blacklists and warn you any time your site gets blacklisted. Of course, once you've been blacklisted you're already in trouble, but knowing it happened is better than sailing along in blissful ignorance.

At the basic $10 per month protection level, StopTheHacker regularly checks all pages on your site for known viruses and Web-based malware. If the scan finds that a threat has been injected into your website's code it reports on the source of the problem, right down to the offending lines of code. You also get a "StopTheHacker Trust Seal" to display on your site.

The $20 per month Professional subscription adds advanced detection of threats that aren't already known, using artificial intelligence techniques. At this level you can request automatic cleaning of any found malware?very handy if your small business doesn't have an in-house Web designer. You'll also get protection for the corporate Facebook wall.

The one additional service you'll get by going for the $50 per month Business level is a scan for vulnerabilities. Besides scanning for known and unknown threats, StopTheHacker will analyze your website for apps and components that are out of date and therefore insecure. Finally, at the $100/month Enterprise level, experts from StopTheHacker will perform annual security audit on your site, spending a day consulting with your webmasters.

The $20 per month subscription appears to offer the most bang for the buck, and indeed, StopTheHacker identifies it as "most popular."

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King.com videogames overtake Electronic Arts on Facebook

LONDON (Reuters) - European start-up King.com has overtaken video-games giant Electronic Arts on Facebook, with almost 10 million people every day now playing its games that include Bubble Witch Saga on the social network.

The nine-year old company has experienced an explosion in popularity since launching on Facebook little over a year ago with its saga games, in which players move through a competitive landscape and pass their friends on the way.

The games appeal to a growing trend for players, more and more of them female, to play puzzle games with their friends in short bursts, especially as games are increasingly played on the move on phones or tablets to kill spare minutes.

Bubble Witch Saga, King.com's top Facebook game, now has more daily players than Zynga's hit game Farmville, in which players have to invest longer periods of time in activities like planting virtual crops and raising livestock.

King.com's sixth Facebook saga game, Candy Crush Saga, has already acquired nearly half a million daily users since its launch last week, according to Facebook metrics firm AppData.

Zynga, with almost 80 Facebook games including titles that span other genres like Texas HoldEm Poker and Mafia Wars, is still by far the most popular games developer on the site, with 65 million daily users of its apps.

Apart from Zynga, only German social games firm Wooga, whose most popular game is Diamond Dash, in which players compete to tap on gems of the same color for 60 seconds, how has more daily players on Facebook.

"Our ultimate ambition is to be the leader in our segment of games for the casual social player, mainly female, social and mobile," King.com's chief executive and co-founder Riccardo Zacconi said in an interview with Reuters.

"Our target is to reach Zynga."

IPO

Zynga went public late last year in a high-profile initial public offering that raised $1 billion, and Zacconi is also eyeing a possible IPO next year, although he said no decision had yet been taken and he declined to estimate King.com's value.

"The market is changing very fast. There will be consolidation, and we want to have a war chest," he said. "We are preparing the company."

Makers of games and other Facebook applications are currently changing hands for large sums.

Facebook last week bought Instagram, a two-year-old photo-sharing application developer with about 30 million users, for $1 billion, while Zynga bought OMGPOP, maker of the popular game "Draw Something", for about $200 million last month.

Zynga is now trying to reduce its dependence on Facebook with a new gaming network of its own that it launched last month.

Zacconi said King.com was thinking carefully about whether to join. "Zynga is going from being a games developer, a competitor, to being a platform. There are many things we need to understand regarding this move."

King.com, which is older than Facebook, has had its own website since launch. It is aimed at players who want to play competitively with strangers and may spend several hours a day on the site.

The company, whose main offices are in London and Stockholm, had some 300,000 games being played monthly on King.com before the Facebook launch early last year. Now about 2.5 billion King.com games are being played every month.

Mobile is the next frontier for King.com, and it is about to launch its most popular games for Apple and Google phones and tablets so that players can pick up games on their mobile devices where they left off on their desktop.

"It can be in a couple of weeks, it can be in three weeks," said Zacconi. "It's close, quite close, but we launch the game when it's ready. It's launched when it's perfect." ($1 = 0.7644 euros)

(Reporting by Georgina Prodhan; Editing by Louise Heavens)

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