Seattle’s $15 Minimum Wage May Be Hurting Workers, Report Finds

As companies look for ways to cut costs, Seattle’s $15 minimum wage law may be hurting hourly workers instead of helping them, according to a new report. From a USA Today article: A report (PDF) from the University of Washington (UW), found that when wages increased to $13 in 2016, some companies may have responded by cutting low-wage workers’ hours. The study, which was funded in part by the city of Seattle, found that workers clocked 9 percent fewer hours on average, and earned $125 less each month after the most recent increase. “If you’re a low-skilled worker with one of those jobs, $125 a month is a sizable amount of money, ” Mark Long, a UW public-policy professor and an author of the report told the Seattle Times. “It can be the difference between being able to pay your rent and not being able to pay your rent.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Seattle’s $15 Minimum Wage May Be Hurting Workers, Report Finds

Tuesday’s massive ransomware outbreak was, in fact, something much worse

Enlarge / Code in Tuesday’s attack, shown on the left, was altered to permanently destroy hard drives. (credit: Matt Suiche ) Tuesday’s massive outbreak of malware that shut down computers around the world has been almost universally blamed on ransomware, which by definition seeks to make money by unlocking data held hostage only if victims pay a hefty fee. Now, some researchers are drawing an even bleaker assessment—that the malware was a wiper with the objective of permanently destroying hard drives. Initially, researchers said the malware was a new version of the Petya ransomware that first struck in early 2016 . Later, researchers said it was a new, never-before-seen ransomware package that mimicked some of Petya’s behaviors. With more time to analyze the malware, researchers on Wednesday are highlighting some curious behavior for a piece of malware that was nearly perfect in almost all other respects: its code is so aggressive that it’s impossible for victims to recover their data. In other words, the researchers said, the payload delivered in Tuesday’s outbreak wasn’t ransomware at all. Instead, its true objective was to permanently destroy as many hard drives as possible on infected networks, in much the way the Shamoon disk wiper left a wake of destruction in Saudi Arabia. Some researchers have said Shamoon is likely the work of developers sponsored by an as-yet unidentified country. Researchers analyzing Tuesday’s malware—alternatively dubbed PetyaWrap, NotPetya, and ExPetr—are speculating the ransom note left behind in Tuesday’s attack was, in fact, a hoax intended to capitalize on media interest sparked by last month’s massive WCry outbreak . Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Tuesday’s massive ransomware outbreak was, in fact, something much worse

Contraption to shoot mosquitos with laser beams

In development for several years, the Photonic Fence is an anti-mosquito laser weapon that’s apparently now being tested in a real world situation. I hope when it hits the market it still looks like a crazy contraption from a 1960s science fiction film! From the company site : One potential use of the Photonic Fence is to create a virtual fence that detects insects as they cross its plane. When an invading insect is detected, our software is able to estimate the insect’s size and measure its wing beat frequency. Using this method, not only can the system distinguish between mosquitoes, butterflies, and bumblebees, but it can even determine whether a mosquito is male or female. This is important to know because only female mosquitos bite humans. Once the software establishes that the insect is a valid target, it tracks the mosquito in flight, runs a safety check to ensure no innocent bystanders are in view, and then activates a laser to zap the mosquito. The Photonic Fence could be set along the perimeter of clinics or other strategic areas to control mosquitoes without endangering humans or other animals. From Wired UK : When Intellectual Ventures co-founder and former Microsoft chief technology officer Nathan Myhrvold came up with the idea of a bug-killing fence in 2010, the intention was to use it to improve public health in Sub-Saharan Africa. Now, however, the Photonic Fence has become a commercial project with a particular target: the Asian citrus psyllid. This insect invader has reduced citrus production in Florida by at least 70 per cent over the last 15 years. The device has been installed on a US Department of Agriculture site in the state for its first real-world test. If all goes to plan, Intellectual Ventures aims to market the Photonic Fence to farmers protecting crops from a multitude of other pests.

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Contraption to shoot mosquitos with laser beams

London police arrest four in Windows support scam bust

Enlarge / Customers of the telecommunications and Internet provider TalkTalk are among those who have been targeted in a Windows support scam operation in the UK. London Police announced the arrest of four suspected of involvement with the ring today. (credit: Carl Court/Getty Images) City of London Police, collaborating with Microsoft, have made four arrests as the result of a two-year investigation into rings of “Windows support” fraudsters. The arrests, London Police Commander Dave Clark told the press, “are just the beginning of our work, making the best use of specialist skills and expertise from Microsoft, local police forces, and international partners to tackle a crime that often targets the most vulnerable in our society.” The four suspects—a man and woman working together in Surrey, and another couple working from South Shields, Tyneside, are accused of being involved with a scheme operating out of a call center in India. Their role in the scams is not clear. The scam, similar to the one Ars intercepted in January , seeks to convince would-be victims to install remote-access software on their computers and then to set up recurring credit card billing for technical support or anti-virus software. In these cases, the scammers often posed as employees of the UK Internet service providers BT and TalkTalk, saying that they had been authorized by Microsoft to provide technical support. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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London police arrest four in Windows support scam bust

Vulnerability Discovered In Latest Ubuntu Distributions, Users Advised To Update

Celarent Darii writes: There is a vulnerability in the latest ubuntu distributions due to the DNS resolver included in systemd. The inclusion of the dns resolver was lamented by many on the mailing list, not without cause. All are advised to update their distribution. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Vulnerability Discovered In Latest Ubuntu Distributions, Users Advised To Update

Ransomware crook’s email provider shuts down account, so now no one can pay their ransom

Yesterday’s massive ransomware outbreak of a mutant, NSA-supercharged strain of the Petya malware is still spreading, but the malware’s author made a mere $10K off it and will likely not see a penny more, because Posteo, the German email provider the crook used for ransom payment negotiations, shut down their account. (more…)

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Ransomware crook’s email provider shuts down account, so now no one can pay their ransom

Théoriz recreates the Holodeck with AR tech and projectors

If you had to list the most mind-blowing tech demos in recent memory, Microsoft’s Hololens AR headset would need to be included, as would its projector-enhanced Illumiroom . A company called Théoriz from Lyon, France has married both of those things to create a “mixed reality room” that uses projector tech, motion tracking and augmented reality together. Its latest technology demo video made it seem like we’re closer to Star Trek ‘s Holodeck than ever before, so we went to take a closer look. Théoriz is located at the ” Pole Pixel , ” a sprawling collection of studios east of Lyon used by Panavision and other cinema companies. The company’s mission is as much artistic as tech-oriented, so the engineers are both bohemian and code-savvy. “We are a team mostly composed of creative engineers, ” says Th éoriz co-founder David-Alexandre Chanel. “Engineers who have an artistic sensibility and also do good code.” To wit, the company has created some very technical and very whimsical projects, including an art installation called ” Doors ” featuring portals that open up to an infinite space and change perspective as the viewer moves, and ” Are You my Friend , ” an industrial robot that communicates with the exhibit-goers via a keyboard. Art aside, the mixed reality room tech is impressive. The team tracks the camera (typically a RED model that can record and output in real time) with an HTC Vive Tracker , and feeds the data to a computer running the Unity game engine . That generates digital environments like flying space skulls, a Minecraft-like room with holes that open up on the floor and geometric shapes that interact with actors to form stairs, wells or small hills. The computer syncs everything together, so that when the camera operator pans or tilts, the Unity scenes tilt or pan to match. Those are then beamed into the room via six projectors — four for the floors, and two on the walls. At the same time, three Kinect-style 3D cameras, combined with Théoriz’s in-house “Augmenta” system, detect the position of the actors so they can interact with the environment. Everything must be processed and played back in real-time by the Unity based system, something that required some clever coding and computing horsepower. In the resulting videos, live actors interact seamlessly with virtual environments, creating a hallucinogenic effect. “It’s called mixed reality because we use and merge things from the virtual world with reality, ” says Chanel. For instance, dancers can make the walls “move” with their movements and bat away flying asteroids. In the latest demo video (above), actors interact with bizarre geometric environments, opening up holes in the floor where they move and walking up fake stairs. Though most of the tech is off the shelf, none of it is intended for consumers — at least, not yet. For now, the company wants to just sell its services for things like music videos, dance performances, art installations and other live events. At the same time, they’re improving the tech to make it more realistic and immersive. “We think that by changing the content creation process, we can open new creative possibilities and achieve unprecedented kind[s] of visuals, ” says Chanel. The next project will test everything Th éoriz has learned so far, both artistically and technically. “We’re trying for the first time to show an artistic video with two dancers, ” Chanel says. “And they’re going to dance and interact in the virtual world, moving through different kinds of totally surreal scenes.” Eventually, Théoriz might make its software available to other companies, but for now it’s just trying to make its services more compelling for artists and audiences. “It’s a new field, ” says Chanel. “We still have to evangelize it and create demand so it can eventually find its place.” And the best way to do that? “Seduce the audience with something new, poetic and unexpected, ” he says. Source: Théoriz

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Théoriz recreates the Holodeck with AR tech and projectors

Explore the world’s largest cave, including 360-degree video

YouTuber Oxalis shared Ryan Deboodt’s gorgeous footage of the world’s largest cave , Vietnam’s Hang Son Doong. (more…)

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Explore the world’s largest cave, including 360-degree video

World’s First Floating Windfarm To Take Shape Off Coast of Scotland

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The world’s first floating windfarm has taken to the seas in a sign that a technology once confined to research and development drawing boards is finally ready to unlock expanses of ocean for generating renewable power. After two turbines were floated this week, five now bob gently in the deep waters of a fjord on the western coast of Norway ready to be tugged across the North Sea to their final destination off north-east Scotland. The ~$256 million Hywind project is unusual not just because of the pioneering technology involved, which uses a 78-meter-tall underwater ballast and three mooring lines that will be attached to the seabed to keep the turbines upright. It is also notable because the developer is not a renewable energy firm but Norway’s Statoil, which is looking to diversify away from carbon-based fuels. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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World’s First Floating Windfarm To Take Shape Off Coast of Scotland

Britain’s Newest Warship Runs Windows XP, Raising Cyber Attack Fears

Chrisq shares a report from The Telegraph: Fears have been raised that Britain’s largest ever warship could be vulnerable to cyber attacks after it emerged it appears to be running the outdated Microsoft Windows XP. A defense source told The telegraph that some of the on-boar hardware and software “would have been good in 2004” when the carrier was designed, “but now seems rather antiquated.” However, he added that HMS Queen Elizabeth is due to be given a computer refit within a decade. And senior officers said they will have cyber specialists on board to defend the carrier from such attacks. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Britain’s Newest Warship Runs Windows XP, Raising Cyber Attack Fears