Geek Weekly: Our top tech stories for 18 August 2015

Technology Decisions’ weekly wrap of IT fails, latest tech, new must-have gadgets, ‘computer says no’ moments and more.

Clearance Clarence? The US Federal Aviation Authority is blaming a partial airspace meltdown on the weekend on a software upgrade at an air traffic control radar facility. “The upgrade was designed to provide additional tools for controllers,” the FAA said in a Facebook post. “The FAA has disabled the new features while the agency and its system contractor complete their assessment. There is no indication that the problem is related to any inherent problems with the En Route Automation Modernization system, which has had a greater than 99.99 availability rate since it was completed nationwide earlier this year.” But not everyone was satisfied with the explanation, with the event quickly being dubbed “Flypocalypse” and comments such as this one appearing on Facebook, “Maybe they should have tested it at, I don’t know. Midnight. Not 10.30 am. This is like construction workers doing their work at rush hour.”

IRS hack worse than thought. When the US Internal Revenue Service detected a breach of its computer system in which hundreds of thousands of taxpayer records were stolen, they thought the hack went back as far as February. It turns out now that it began in November last year, raising the total number or private records compromised to 334,000. The IRS says it has traced the attack to cybercrims in Russia. The hackers used the data to convince the IRS to pay out tax refunds, amounting to US$5.8 billion in 2013 alone, according to reports.

The lights are on… and off again. US authorities are looking into thousands of reports of malfunctioning headlights on certain models of Ford and Mercury sedans. Fifteen crashes have been reported, including one in which a car struck a deer after its headlight suddenly turned off without warning.

Windows 10 upgrade anger. Microsoft’s latest operating system has been taken up by tens of millions of people around the world, but not everyone’s happy with the upgrade process. Automatic patch updates have seen some users’ PCs enter continuous reboot loops, while others who live in remote areas — where download charges are high — have complained about receiving huge telco bills.

Sounds like a good idea. Swiss researchers have proposed a two-factor authentication system that uses background noise to verify a person’s identity. It works like this: when you go to log in to a microphone-equipped computer, the Sound-Proof app on your mobile phone will begin listening to ambient sounds in your vicinity. If the sound being picked up by the computer and mobile phone match, it’s assumed that it’s a legitimate log-in attempt.

Road power. The UK is planning to invest £500 million over the next five years to test and deploy roadway charging systems for electric vehicles. This includes a trial that’s soon to begin using a technology called magnetic resonance coupling, wherein cars would draw power from a magnetic field produced by electric cables buried under the road surface. The UK government also said that it plans to install “plug-in charging points every 20 miles on the motorway network as part of the government’s Road Investment Strategy”.

Image courtesy James Wang under CC