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Math

Submission + - Pac-Man is NP-hard (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "An Italian researcher with a penchant for retro games — or perhaps just looking for an excuse to play games in the name of science! — has used computational complexity theory to decide, once and for all, just how hard video games are. In a truly epic undertaking, Giovanni Viglietta of the University of Pisa has worked out the theoretical difficulty of 13 old games, including Pac-Man, Doom, Lemmings, Prince of Persia, and Boulder Dash. Pac-Man, with its traversal of space, is NP-hard. Doom, on the other hand, is PSPACE-hard."
Censorship

Submission + - Foreign data unsafe from US Patriot Act (smh.com.au)

Submitted by
natecochrane
natecochrane writes: "The world's No.2 law firm warns non-US businesses their data is unsafe from costly and invasive raids by American law enforcement even if they host their data in their own countries. The wide interpretation of the USA Patriot Act ensures US cops can legally demand data from almost anyone, anywhere for any reason and countries and their citizens are largely powerless to resist. The advice has resonance with the arrest this week of Kim "Dotcom" on alleged copyright violations in the US."
Your Rights Online

Submission + - Filesonic removes ability to share files (filesonic.com)

Submitted by
Ihmhi
Ihmhi writes: "In the wake of the Megaupload takedown, Filesonic has elected to take preventative measures against a similar fate. The front page and all files now carry the following message:



All sharing functionality on FileSonic is now disabled. Our service can only be used to upload and retrieve files that you have uploaded personally.

Whether or not this will actually deter the U.S. government from taking action remains to be seen."
Censorship

Submission + - Man Faces Five Years For Atheist Facebook Post

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: 31-year-old Alexander Aan faces a maximum prison sentence of five years for posting "God does not exist" on Facebook. The civil servant was attacked and beaten by an angry mob of dozens who entered his government office at the Dharmasraya Development Planning Board on Wednesday. The Indonesian man was taken into protective police custody Friday since he was afraid of further physical assault.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Slashdot New Database 3

Journal by xwwt

I thought I would mention one of the key activities we have been working on in recent months is our infrastructure. For a long time now, and like many companies, we have been living on older hardware and software. After some solid work by our engineers, esp. PerlJedi we finally got our DB upgraded.
User Journal

Journal Journal: New DB 1

Journal by PerlJedi

Slashdot is now running on upgrade database backend software, and new hardware. Anecdotal evidence suggests improved performance. Was anybody worried? I wasn't. Next week, updated front end web servers!
Linux

Submission + - An Open-Source, Reverse-Engineered Mali GPU Driver (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Next month at FOSDEM there will be an announcement of a fully open-source and reverse-engineered ARM Mali graphics driver for Android / Linux. This driver, according to Phoronix, is said to support OpenGL ES and other functionality from reverse engineering the official ARM Linux driver. Will this mark a change for open-source graphics drivers on ARM, just as the Radeon did for x86 Linux?
Space

Submission + - Project Bifrost: (Fission) Rockets of the Future? (discovery.com)

Submitted by
astroengine
astroengine writes: "Researchers from Icarus Interstellar Inc. and General Propulsion Science have announced their intention to pursue the development of Nuclear Thermal Rockets and other fission-based space technologies. The aim? To revolutionize space travel, ultimately paving the way to the goal of sending a probe to another star."
Open Source

Submission + - Open-source wearable platform - The FLORA (adafruit.com)

Submitted by
ptorrone
ptorrone writes: "Limor "Ladyada" Fried's NYC based Open-source electronic's studio, Adafruit, today announced their new open wearable platform called the FLORA (blog post & video). The FLORA is Arduino compatible as well as supporting a variety of sensors and add-on devices including: Bluetooth, GPS, 3-axis accelerometer, compass module, flex sensor, piezo, IR LED, push button, embroidered + capacitive keypad, OLED and more. The first round of hardware is in the hands of testers to create wearable projects."
Mozilla

Submission + - Mozilla Offers Alternative to OpenID (net-security.org)

Submitted by
Orome1
Orome1 writes: "Mozilla has been working for a while now on a new browser-based system for identifying and authenticating users it calls BrowserID, but its only this month that all of its sites have finally been outfitted with the technology. Mozilla aims for BrowserID to become a more secure alternative to OpenID, the decentralized authentication system offered to users of popular sites such as Google, Yahoo!, PayPal, MySpace and others."

Submission + - Massive sunspot headed towards earth. (adorraeli.com)

Submitted by parallel_prankster
parallel_prankster writes: NY Times reports that a huge sunspot unleashed a blob of charged plasma Thursday that space weather watchers predict will blast past the Earth on Sunday. Satellite operators and power companies are keeping a close eye on the incoming cloud, which could distort the Earth’s magnetic field and disrupt radio communications, especially at higher latitudes. The huge blob of charged gas spotted by NASA satellites is speeding toward Earth at more than 2 million mph. The most damaging solar discharges, which are very rare, can zoom at speeds more than twice that fast. A better link with some animation is available here
The Military

Submission + - DoD Using Plant DNA to Combat Counterfeit Parts (wired.com)

Submitted by smitty777
smitty777 writes: Highlighting another unique way to use cutting edge DNA technology, the US Department of Defense has a new weapont to combat counterfiet parts: plant DNA. This article discusses how plant DNA can be used to make an almost (1 in 1 trillion) unique code for parts identification. This nifty graphic shows some of the ways this could be done; bolts with DNA-marked coating, invisible barcodes, and flourescing inks are some of the possible applications. In a similar but unrelated project, World Micro has a different solution to detect counterfeit items in the military that have been "blacktopped", where items have been re-surfaced to allow remarking.

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