Not an issue really.
Suggestion 1 : You don't use the new 1.8 skin method on 1.8-pre 1
Suggestion 2 : If you read tutorials about 1.8 skin creation, all the tutorials are wrong.
I created my 1.8 skin with GIMP and a 3D skin view to see if it was good. You don't have to duplicate arm and leg to the new area for these parts : you have to do a little modification.
If you think it's a bug, so all the people that use the new method have to recreate theirs skins again.
Not an issue/bug according to me. It seems that you don't use the new 1.8 skin layout. This new skin method permits to personalise all the parts of your body instead of duplicate some parts.
If you don't create some parts, it will replace it by black areas.
Issue confirmed in my side
Same with seeds for chicken
Not really a duplicate of MC-64472, we got in the second and last crash report the message "Description: Watching Server".
Server in 14w31a was stopped automatically at the second crash report and not on the first crash report that contains the message "Description: Exception in server tick loop".
Can confirm this issue in 15w50a. All people here have the bug and marking the status as "Works As Intended" isn't normal. Here is a part of my log :
174 warning messages in the log in one second : a record ... . Do you want to apply a solution for this ?