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Submission + - Programmer Interrupted (ninlabs.com)

Submitted by gameweld
gameweld writes: Some key findings from a study of 10,000 programming sessions recorded from 86 programmers using Eclipse and Visual Studio:
A programmer takes between 10-15 minutes to start editing code after resuming work from an interruption.
When interrupted during an edit of a method, only 10% of times did a programmer resume work in less than a minute.
A programmer is likely to get just one uninterrupted 2-hour session in a day.
Education

Submission + - German science minister stripped of her PhD (nature.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In a move likely to have major political implications, the University of Düsseldorf has revoked the doctoral degree of Germany’s science and education minister, Annette Schavan. The commitee investigating allegations of plagiarism came to the conclusion that she "systematically and deliberately claimed as her own intellectual achievements which she had in fact not produced herself". Schavan wants to appeal the decision in court and has not resigned from her post so far.
Security

Submission + - Raspberry Pi used for prototype hardware laptop docking station backdoor (nccgroup.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: At Black Hat Europe in March a security researcher from NCC Group will show how a Raspberry Pi can be used as a hardware backdoor when built into a modified laptop docking station. While details on their blog are a little light at the moment it shows how versatile the platform is and the diverse applications outside of learning..
Intel

Submission + - Intel Gigabit NIC Packet of Death (krisk.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: All it takes is a quick Google search to see that the Intel 82574L ethernet controller has had at least a few problems. Including, but not necessarily limited to, EEPROM issues, ASPM bugs, MSI-X quirks, etc. We spent several months dealing with each and every one of these. We thought we were done.

Using Ostinato I was able to craft various versions of this packet — an HTTP POST, ICMP echo-request, etc. Pretty much whatever I wanted. With a modified HTTP server configured to generate the data at byte value (based on headers, host, etc) you could easily configure an HTTP 200 response to contain the packet of death — and kill client machines behind firewalls!
IOS

Submission + - Hidden 'radio' buttons discovered in Apple's iOS 6.1 (cnet.com)

Submitted by tad001
tad001 writes: C|NET is reporting 'Discovered last night within a freshly jailbroken iPad: a set of buttons and code references for "radio," a feature found in iTunes on Macs and PCs, but not on the iPad or iPhone.' ... 'The buttons hint at Apple's much-rumored radio service, a product that will let people stream music much like they do on the popular Pandora service, but with deep ties to Apple's iTunes library.' ... 'The discovery follows a high-profile jailbreak of iOS 6.1, the updated system software Apple released just last week. A team of developers came up with a tool that gives users deep system-level access to do things like install applications from third-party app stores, change the look and feel of iOS, and add new software features.'
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."
Science

Submission + - Gut Bacteria Liberate Hidden Toxins Found In Grains (acs.org)

Submitted by
MTorrice
MTorrice writes: "Crops such as wheat and corn sometimes harbor chemicals from molds that grow on the plants. Some of these compounds are seemingly harmless derivatives of toxins produced by the fungi. For the first time, researchers have shown that human gut bacteria can break down these compounds and release the toxins, which can cause gastrointestinal and neurological damage in people. The findings suggest that these masked toxins may not stay hidden within our digestive tracts, and that government agencies may need to regulate the chemicals, the researchers say."
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Games Workshop bullies author over use of the words "space marine" (boingboing.net)

Submitted by
jzoetewey
jzoetewey writes: "An author I know (MCA Hogarth) recently had her book "Spots the Space Marine" taken off Amazon because Games Workshop claimed it violated their trademark. The interesting thing? Their trademark doesn't include ebooks or novels. Unfortunately, she doesn't have the money to fight them.

Plus the idea of a space marine was around long before they were.

Anyway, Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing has written something about it:"
Security

Submission + - Nearly a third of all computers are infected with malware (net-security.org)

Submitted by
Orome1
Orome1 writes: "PandaLabs released its annual security report which details an extremely interesting year of data theft, social networking attacks and cyber-warfare. The most devastating news? 31.98 percent of all computers scanned around the world had malware. In 2012, Trojans dominated the threat landscape more than ever before. Three out of every four malware infections were caused by Trojans (76.56 percent). One of the reasons for this growth was the increased use of exploit kits such as Black Hole, which are capable of exploiting multiple system vulnerabilities to infect computers automatically without user intervention. Viruses came second (8 percent), whereas worms dropped to third place accounting for 6.44 percent of all infections."
IT

Submission + - Kaspersky outage 2-4-2013. Update causes XP machines to drop off Internet (kaspersky.com)

Submitted by
DrStoooopid
DrStoooopid writes: "At approximately 5pm EST on 2/4/2013, a virus engine update caused the majority of XP machines worldwide to spontaneously drop off the internet.

A poorly executed update failed to cater to the numerous Windows XP computers all over the world. Call volumes were so intense that Kaspersky's phone systems ground to a screeching halt.

A new patch was pushed the following morning forcing many IT employees to physically touch all the machines in their care, rather than use the administration kit to deploy the new patch."
Crime

Submission + - Cybercrime ring stole $200M, invented 7,000 fake IDs, thousands of credit cards (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "The FBI today said it broke up what it called one of the largest credit card, cyber-fraud schemes in its history — a $200M scam that created more than 7,000 false identities and tens of thousands of fake credit cards. The FBI said it arrested 13 people involved in the scam the agency said maintained more than 1,800 "drop addresses," located across the country including houses, apartments, and post office boxes, which they used as the mailing addresses of the false identities."
Medicine

Submission + - New anatomical structure discovered and described in human spine (utexas.edu)

Submitted by mkortsha
mkortsha writes: Researchers at The University of California, San Francisco have discovered a new anatomical feature of the human spine. Using micro-CT imaging technology the scientists were able to clearly image the presence of a secondary endplate layer in some spinal specimens. The double layer appears to provide additional support to the spinal endplate, which may help protect the vertebral body in case of endplate damage.

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