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Comment Re:Wrong (Score 1) 254

by rastan (#42806407) Attached to: New Largest Known Prime Number: 2^57,885,161-1

Actually, only RSA public-key cryptography is based on that asymmetry, and even that is not precisely correct. And RSA is considered the most probable candidate to be broken at some time of the bunch of algorithms that are used. Even ssh uses DSA (at least you should, and not use RSA if you are paranoid) which is based on the assumed difficulty of calculating discrete logarithms in finite fields. If you are even more paranoid, use something that is based on elliptic curves.
Facebook

Facebook To Make Facebook Credits Mandatory For Games 116

Posted by Soulskill from the hope-that's-ok-with-you dept.
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from TechCrunch: "Facebook has confirmed that it is indeed making Facebook Credits mandatory for Games, with the rule going into effect on July 1 2011. Facebook says that Credits will be the exclusive way for users to get their 'real money' into a game, but developers are still allowed to keep their own in-game currencies (FarmBucks, FishPoints, whatever). For example, Zynga can charge you 90 Facebook Credits for 75 CityCash in CityVille. ... The company acknowledges that some developers may not be pleased with the news, explaining this is why it is announcing the news five months in advance, so it can 'have an open conversation with developers.' The rule only applies to Canvas games (games that use Facebook Connect aren't affected), and while it's games only at this part, Facebook says that it eventually would like to see all apps using Facebook Credits. It's a move that's been a long time coming — there has been speculation that Facebook would do this for a year now, spurring plenty of angst in the developer community."
IBM

IBM's Plans For the Cell Processor 124

Posted by Soulskill from the breeding-a-better-hamster dept.
angry tapir writes "Development around the original Cell processor hasn't stalled, and IBM will continue to develop chips and supply hardware for future gaming consoles, a company executive said. IBM is working with gaming machine vendors including Nintendo and Sony, said Jai Menon, CTO of IBM's Systems and Technology Group, during an interview Thursday. 'We want to stay in the business, we intend to stay in the business,' he said. IBM confirmed in a statement that it continues to manufacture the Cell processor for use by Sony in its PlayStation 3. IBM also will continue to invest in Cell as part of its hybrid and multicore chip strategy, Menon said."
Television

Toshiba To Launch No-Glasses 3D TV This Year 218

Posted by Soulskill from the harder-to-hold-than-a-3ds dept.
angry tapir writes "Toshiba is readying two 3D televisions that can produce images with the illusion of depth but don't require the user to wear glasses, the company said Monday. It will launch the televisions in Japan in December. Toshiba will offer a 12-inch model and a 20-inch model. They'll cost around ¥120,000 (US$1,430) and ¥240,000 respectively. Toshiba's new TVs have a thin sheet of small lenses in front of the display. This splits light from the screen and sends it to nine points in front of the TV."
Space

Aging Star System Leaves Strange Death Spiral 79

Posted by Soulskill from the tox-utaht-spotted dept.
jamie tips a post at Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy blog about an extremely unusual astronomical phenomenon originating from a binary system about 3000 light years away. Quoting: "The name of this thing is AFGL 3068. It's been known as a bright infrared source for some time, but images just showed it as a dot. This Hubble image using the Advanced Camera for Surveys reveals an intricate, delicate and exceedingly faint spiral pattern. ... Red giants tend to blow a lot of their outer layers into space in an expanding spherical wind; think of it as a super-solar wind. The star surrounds itself with a cloud of this material, essentially enclosing it in a cocoon. In general the material isn't all that thick, but in some of these stars there is an overabundance of carbon in the outer layers which gets carried along in these winds. ... AFGL 3068 is a carbon star and most likely evolved just like this, but with a difference: it's a binary. As the two stars swing around each other, the wind from the carbon star doesn't expand in a sphere. Instead, we see a spiral pattern as the material expands."
Australia

Fine-Structure Constant Maybe Not So Constant 105

Posted by samzenpus from the variety-is-the-spice-of-life dept.
Kilrah_il writes "The fine-structure constant, a coupling constant characterizing the strength of the electromagnetic interaction, has been measured lately by scientists from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia and has been found to change slightly in light sent from quasars in galaxies as far back as 12 billion years ago. Although the results look promising, caution is advised: 'This would be sensational if it were real, but I'm still not completely convinced that it's not simply systematic errors' in the data, comments cosmologist Max Tegmark of MIT. Craig Hogan of the University of Chicago and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., acknowledges that 'it's a competent team and a thorough analysis.' But because the work has such profound implications for physics and requires such a high level of precision measurements, 'it needs more proof before we'll believe it.'"
Science

First Membrane Controlled By Light Developed 33

Posted by timothy from the my-eyelid-aside dept.
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt: "A new membrane developed at the University of Rochester's Laboratory for Laser Energetics blocks gas from flowing through it when one color of light is shined on its surface, and permits gas to flow through when another color of light is used. It is the first time that scientists have developed a membrane that can be controlled in this way by light."
KDE

KDE SC 4.7 May Use OpenGL 3 For Compositing 187

Posted by timothy from the that's-software-compilation-to-you dept.
An anonymous reader writes "KDE SC 4.5 is about to be released and KDE SC 4.6 is being discussed. However, Martin Graesslin has revealed some details about what they are planning for KDE 4.7. According to Martin's blog post, they are looking at OpenGL 3.0 to provide the compositing effects in KDE SC 4.7. OpenGL 3.0 provides support for frame buffer objects, hardware instancing, vertex array objects, and sRGB framebuffers."
Earth

Nuclear Energy Now More Expensive Than Solar 635

Posted by samzenpus from the sunlight-is-free dept.
js_sebastian writes "According to an article on the New York Times, a historical cross-over has occurred because of the declining costs of solar vs. the increasing costs of nuclear energy: solar, hardly the cheapest of renewable technologies, is now cheaper than nuclear, at around 16 cents per kilowatt hour. Furthermore, the NY Times reports that financial markets will not finance the construction of nuclear power plants unless the risk of default (which is historically as high as 50 percent for the nuclear industry) is externalized to someone else through federal loan guarantees or ratepayer funding. The bottom line seems to be that nuclear is simply not competitive, and the push from the US government to subsidize it seems to be forcing the wrong choice on the market."
Biotech

Fly Eyes Used For Solar Cells 73

Posted by samzenpus from the windows-to-the-power-pole dept.
disco_tracy writes "Researchers took corneas from blow flies, fixed them on a glass substrate, added a polymer to protect the shape and then coated nine-eye arrays in nickel within a vacuum chamber. The result was a master template that retained those useful nanoscale features and can be used to make solar cells."

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