biomass - Slashdot User

Submission + - Flaw In New Visa Card System (wired.com)

Submitted by biomass on Monday November 03, 2014 @03:22PM

biomass writes: According to researchers at Newcastle University in the UK, the card system developed by VISA for use in the United Kingdom fails to recognize transactions made in non-UK foreign currencies and can therefore be tricked into approving any transaction up to 999,999.99.

Comment Success in Stages (Score 1) 287

by biomass on Thursday October 23, 2014 @02:35AM (#48210543) Attached to: Will the Google Car Turn Out To Be the Apple Newton of Automobiles?

I for one am interested in a car that can self drive on freeways and would prefer to drive myself in town.
It seems that freeways are a simplified problem, being easier to map (and update), no stop lights, no cross streets, ...
Hopefully the freeway self driver will be a practical target for the near future.

Astonishing Speedup In Solving Linear SDD Systems 157

Posted by kdawson on Friday October 22, 2010 @10:00AM from the want-to-see-it-again? dept.

eldavojohn writes "A new paper (PDF) out of Carnegie Mellon University shows how to solve symmetric diagonally dominant linear systems much faster than before. The technique employs graph theory, randomized algorithms, and linear algebra to achieve an astonishing advantage over current methods to solve such systems. From the article: 'The result is a significant decrease in computer run times. The Gaussian elimination algorithm runs in time proportional to s^3, where s is the size of the SDD system as measured by the number of terms in the system, even when s is not much bigger the number of variables. The new algorithm, by comparison, has a run time of s*[log(s)]^2. That means, if s = 1 million, that the new algorithm run time would be about a billion times faster than Gaussian elimination.' Developers out there who maintain matrix packages and linear algebra tools might want to take a peak at the paper. Anyone who has modeled real-world systems will be able to tell you that speedups in linear algebra algorithms have a weighty effect on efficiency in simulations — especially as one approaches the theoretical limits of optimality. This research is currently being presented at the IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science."

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