Ransomware Infects a Hotel’s Key System

An anonymous reader writes: A luxury hotel “paid “thousands” in Bitcoin ransom to cybercriminals who hacked into their electronic key system. The “furious” hotel manager says it’s the third time their electronic system has been attacked, though one local news site reports that “on the fourth attempt the hackers had no chance because the computers had been replaced and the latest security standards integrated, and some networks had been decoupled.” The 111-year-old hotel is now planning to remove all their electronic locks, and return to old-fashioned door locks with real keys. But they’re going public to warn other hotels — some of which they say have also already been hit by ransomware. UPDATE: The hotel’s managing director has clarified today that despite press reports, “We were hacked, but nobody was locked in or out” of their rooms. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Ransomware Infects a Hotel’s Key System

This Tutorial Shows You How to Fake Tilt Shift Videos

You’ve probably seen those fun time lapse videos that make subjects look miniature , like toys or models surrounded by a realistic looking environment. This style requires a tilt shift lens , but this tutorial shows you how to create the effect without one. Read more…

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This Tutorial Shows You How to Fake Tilt Shift Videos

Scientist Investigate A Brand New Form of Matter: Time Crystals

The discovery of “non-equilibrium matter” could re-write the rules of physics. Long-time Slashdot reader jasonbrown quotes ScienceAlert: For months now, there’s been speculation that researchers might have finally created time crystals — strange crystals that have an atomic structure that repeats not just in space, but in time, putting them in perpetual motion without energy. Now it’s official — researchers have just reported in detail how to make and measure these bizarre crystals. And two independent teams of scientists claim they’ve actually created time crystals in the lab based off this blueprint, confirming the existence of an entirely new form of matter. Both teams — one at Harvard and the other at the University of Maryland — have submitted their findings to peer-reviewed publications, according to the article, and “the fact that two separate teams have used the same blueprint to make time crystals out of vastly different systems is promising.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Scientist Investigate A Brand New Form of Matter: Time Crystals

This Raspberry Pi-Powered Magic Mirror Can Be Set Up With One Line of Code

We’ve seen a few different magic mirror projects using a Raspberry Pi, but in the newest issue of MagPi they’ve put together what might as well be the definitive magic mirror guide as it’s easily the simplest one to make for yourself. Read more…

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This Raspberry Pi-Powered Magic Mirror Can Be Set Up With One Line of Code

Google Translate Is About To Get a Lot Better, Thanks To Its Machine Learning Push

Google CEO Sundar Pichai is offering a big new update that should affect anyone who’s ever used Google’s translation services. From a report on CNBC: The new version will be rolling out in 2017 via Google Cloud, Pichai said. “We have improved our translation ability more in one single year than all our improvements over the last 10 years combined, ” Pichai told investors in a quarterly call, after parent company Alphabet reported mixed results. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Google Translate Is About To Get a Lot Better, Thanks To Its Machine Learning Push

This Is Quite Possibly the Ugliest Bug Ever Found Trapped in Amber

Say hello to Aethiocarenus burmanicus , an ancient insect so strange—and so god awfully ugly—its discoverers had to create an entirely new scientific classification to catalogue it. Read more…

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This Is Quite Possibly the Ugliest Bug Ever Found Trapped in Amber

HP Recalls Over 100,000 Laptop Batteries, Here’s How to Check Yours

HP is recalling batteries used in a variety of the company’s laptops because of fire concerns. The affected models include the HP ProBook, HP ENVY, Compaq Presario, and HP Pavillion laptops sold between March 2013 and October 2016. Read more…

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HP Recalls Over 100,000 Laptop Batteries, Here’s How to Check Yours

Apple Seemingly Censors UltraFine 5K Monitor Reviews After Poor Feedback

It appears Apple is filtering and censoring bad reviews of the LG’s UltraFine 5K display. From a report on The Next Web: The deletion was first spotted by a Reddit user four days ago. Though it’s possible the reviews were removed for some other reason, at first glance, it looks like censorship. It’s not a good look for the company. Apple said it was getting out of the monitor business, and instead chose to work more closely with third-party partners, heavily featuring LG’s 5K and 4K UltraFine displays at its recent MacBook Pro unveiling. But then the monitor received multiple negative reviews from users who were experiencing issues such as the screen failing to wake up from sleep. The Reddit post also points out that: “In many cases, attempts to fix the problem through physical reconnection[sic] of the monitor, or manual restarts, have caused the attached Mac to crash, become otherwise unresponsive, or develop problems with the touch bar (where equipped).” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Apple Seemingly Censors UltraFine 5K Monitor Reviews After Poor Feedback

Wine 2.0 Released

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Softpedia: It’s finally here! After so many months of development and hard work, during which over 6, 600 bugs have been patched, the Wine project is happy to announce today, January 24, 2017, the general availability of Wine 2.0. Wine 2.0 is the biggest and most complete version of the open-source software project that allows Linux and macOS users to run applications and games designed only for Microsoft Windows operating systems. As expected, it’s a massive release that includes dozens of improvements and new features, starting with support for Microsoft Office 2013 and 64-bit application support on macOS. Highlights of Wine 2.0 include the implementation of more DirectWrite features, such as drawing of underlines, font fallback support, and improvements to font metrics resolution, font embedding in PDF files, Unicode 9.0.0 support, Retina rendering mode for the macOS graphics driver, and support for gradients in GDI enhanced metafiles. Additional Shader Model 4 and 5 shader instructions have been added to Direct3D 10 and Direct3D 11 implementation, along with support for more graphics cards, support for Direct3D 11 feature levels, full support for the D3DX (Direct3D Extension) 9 effect framework, as well as support for the GStreamer 1.0 multimedia framework. The Gecko engine was updated to Firefox 47, IDN name resolutions are now supported out-of-the-box, and Wine can correctly handle long URLs. The included Mono engine now offers 64-bit support, as well as the debug registers. Other than that, the winebrowser, winhlp32, wineconsole, and reg components received improvements. You can read the full list of features and download Wine 2.0 from WineHQ’s websiteS. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Wine 2.0 Released

Insecure Scientists Build 1000-Watt ‘Super Laser’ 10 Times Stronger Than Stupid Regular Lasers

On Tuesday, an international team of scientists announced they successfully tested “Bivoj, ” a high peak power laser named after a legendary Czech strongman—and boy, they really want you to know it’s really, really strong. Read more…

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Insecure Scientists Build 1000-Watt ‘Super Laser’ 10 Times Stronger Than Stupid Regular Lasers