Microsoft Office has pretty new icons but they have a fatal flaw

The new icons leave me feeling blue.

Microsoft has even made a video to introduce the new icons

Microsoft has unveiled a new set of icons that the Office apps will start using. Office 365 customers will see their apps switch to the new icons over the next couple of months, as Microsoft continues to refresh the look and feel of its core productivity suite.

The last time the Microsoft Office apps got new icons was 2013, with the same set of icons also used by Office 2016 and the perpetually licensed Office 2019. Since then, Office has got a great deal more mobile with apps for iOS and Android, it gained a bigger Web presence, it added a bunch of collaboration features, and it has seen many of its users switch from the perpetual licenses to the continuously updated Office 365.

The new icons are meant to somehow reflect these changes. The letters adorning each icon have been reduced in size, with the remainder of the space used to show a highly stylized representation of the application. The colors are a bit brighter, too. Oddly, there are already some inconsistencies in the designs; OneDrive doesn't have a letter at all (it's just a cloud), and Skype uses the old proportions, with a letter that's much bigger than any of the others.

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Daily Deals (11-30-2018)

A week after Black Friday, Best Buy, HP and Dell are still running “Cyber Week” sales, which makes today almost as good a day as any to score a pretty good deal on a laptop. Case in point: you can pick up an HP Envy 13t with a Core i7-8550U…

A week after Black Friday, Best Buy, HP and Dell are still running “Cyber Week” sales, which makes today almost as good a day as any to score a pretty good deal on a laptop. Case in point: you can pick up an HP Envy 13t with a Core i7-8550U processor for $700 today, a Dell […]

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Fahrzeugdaten: In China funken Elektroautos nach Hause

Viele Elektroautos können relevante Fahrzeugdaten übertragen, beispielsweise an den Hersteller zur Wartung. In China bekommen Regierungseinrichtungen die Daten. (Elektromobilität, Datenschutz)

Viele Elektroautos können relevante Fahrzeugdaten übertragen, beispielsweise an den Hersteller zur Wartung. In China bekommen Regierungseinrichtungen die Daten. (Elektromobilität, Datenschutz)

CDU-Generalsekretärin: Alle Behördengänge sollen am Smartphone erfolgen können

Die Kandidatin für den Bundesvorsitz der CDU, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, will die digitale Verwaltung über das Smartphone. Die Deutschen verbringen im Jahr 400 Millionen Stunden mit oft sinnlosen Gängen zur Bürokratie. (Smartphone, Handy)

Die Kandidatin für den Bundesvorsitz der CDU, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, will die digitale Verwaltung über das Smartphone. Die Deutschen verbringen im Jahr 400 Millionen Stunden mit oft sinnlosen Gängen zur Bürokratie. (Smartphone, Handy)

Soy milk, almond milk, oat milk. Spider milk?

Wonder how the FDA is going to classify this one.

The spider in question, without its young.

Enlarge / The spider in question, without its young. (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Milk comes from mammals. It’s kind of a distinctly mammalian thing. Even our government knows that. And yet, Chinese scientists have documented jumping spiders that provide their young with droplets of a nutrient-rich fluid from a furrow on the mother’s body. It is the sole nourishment for the spiderlings until they start foraging, and even then they still drink it until they get slightly more mature. Results are reported in Science.

Cockroaches and doves also provide their young with a substance described as “milk,” because it comes from their bodies and provides the exclusive source of sustenance to the young. Cockroach moms deposit this substance into the brood sac where their embryos are developing.

Dove parents—mothers and fathers both—generate crop milk and feed it to the baby birds for their first few days of life, until the babies can digest real food. Crop milk consists of nutrient-filled cells sloughed off in flakes from the inside of the parent birds’ crops, which are under their necks.

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Windows 10 v1809: Intel unterstützt Universal Modern Drivers

Alle kommenden Treiber für Intels integrierte Grafikeinheiten sind Universal Windows Drivers, da diese für Windows 10 v1809 erforderlich geworden sind. Obskur: Das Control-Panel muss einzeln über den Store heruntergeladen werden, zudem klappt eine Inf-…

Alle kommenden Treiber für Intels integrierte Grafikeinheiten sind Universal Windows Drivers, da diese für Windows 10 v1809 erforderlich geworden sind. Obskur: Das Control-Panel muss einzeln über den Store heruntergeladen werden, zudem klappt eine Inf-Installation nicht mehr. (Grafiktreiber, Microsoft)

E Ink unveils JustWrite tech for writing on digital paper

E Ink is probably best known for making the black and white screens found in eReaders like the Amazon Kindle. But the company also makes color screens for digital signage (and some tablets/eBook devices), and its black and white screens sometimes show …

E Ink is probably best known for making the black and white screens found in eReaders like the Amazon Kindle. But the company also makes color screens for digital signage (and some tablets/eBook devices), and its black and white screens sometimes show up in surprising places. So what’s next from E Ink? A new technology that […]

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Archaeologists map centuries of history beneath world’s oldest cathedral

With lasers and radar, archaeologists map centuries of buried Roman history.

Digital reconstruction of the original basilica.

Enlarge / Digital reconstruction of the original basilica. (credit: Lateran Project, Newcastle University)

The Archbasilica of St. John Lateran doesn’t quite look its age. The basilica, where the Pope presides in his role as Archbishop of Rome, was already ancient when it was rebuilt in the 1650s. Its walls still hold some of the original material used to build the cathedral under Emperor Constantine in 312 CE. And beneath the modern church lies the original Roman foundation. Excavations since the 1700s have opened up a network of dark, cramped spaces called scavi beneath the four-hectare site of the cathedral.

Centuries of Roman history lie buried in the darkness in layers stretching down to 8.5 meters (27.89 feet) below the modern floor of the cathedral, and the subterranean archaeological sites are like a honeycomb through the city’s Caelian Hill. Now, using a combination of laser scanning and ground-penetrating radar, archeologists have made a complete map of the site.

Basilica, now in 3D

Much of what’s in the scavi has been excavated and studied before, but Lateran Project co-director Ian Haynes and his colleagues say their work is the first detailed survey of the entire underground complex of ruins. They started mapping the exposed sites in the scavi with laser scans in 2012. That work, now completed, allows them to create a digital map of everything that’s currently visible thanks to the old excavations.

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Scientists, ethicists slam decisions behind gene-edited twins

The Chinese government has already shut down any further work by He Jiankui.

Chinese geneticist He Jiankui speaks during the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing at the University of Hong Kong days after the Chinese geneticist claimed to have altered the genes of the embryo of a pair of twin girls before birth, prompting outcry from scientists of the field.

Enlarge / Chinese geneticist He Jiankui speaks during the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing at the University of Hong Kong days after the Chinese geneticist claimed to have altered the genes of the embryo of a pair of twin girls before birth, prompting outcry from scientists of the field. (credit: S.C. Leung/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

As more details regarding the first gene-edited humans are released, things continue to look worse. The researcher who claimed the advance, He Jiankui, has now given a public talk that includes many details on the changes made at the DNA level. The details make a couple of things clear: we don't know whether the editing will protect the two children from HIV infections, and we can't tell whether any areas of the genome have been damaged by the procedure.

All of that raises even further questions as to whether He followed ethical guidelines when performing the work and getting consent from the parents. And, more generally, nobody is sure why He chose to ignore a strong consensus that the procedure wasn't yet ready for use in humans. In response to the outcry, the Chinese government has shut down all further research by He, even as it was revealed that a third gene-edited baby may be on the way.

While the US already has rules in place that are intended to keep research like He's from happening, a legal scholar Ars spoke with suggested there may be a loophole that could allow something similar here. In light of that, it's important to understand the big picture He has potentially altered. What exactly happened in China and why does it concern so many in the scientific community?

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CPU-Befehlssatz: Linux Foundation will RISC-V-Konsortium unterstützen

Die Linux und die RISC-V Foundation wollen künftig gemeinsam die Arbeit an der freien CPU-Befehlssatzarchitektur voranbringen. Die Linux Foundation will dafür vor allem ihre über die Jahre gewachsenen Ressourcen einbringen und die Community stärker ein…

Die Linux und die RISC-V Foundation wollen künftig gemeinsam die Arbeit an der freien CPU-Befehlssatzarchitektur voranbringen. Die Linux Foundation will dafür vor allem ihre über die Jahre gewachsenen Ressourcen einbringen und die Community stärker einbinden. (RISCV, Prozessor)