Geek Weekly: Our top weird tech stories for 11 June 2015
Technology Decisions’ weekly wrap of IT fails, latest tech, new must-have gadgets, ‘computer says no’ moments and more.
Apple investigated for potential violations. Attorneys general in two US states are looking into whether Apple has broken antitrust statutes in setting up its Apple Music streaming service. In particular, they’re looking at whether the tech giant brought pressure to bear on music companies, or whether there has been any price collusion, to the detriment of other online music services such as Spotify.
Lost classic game to be released. Way back in 1989, a game called Chip’s Challenge was released for the short-lived Atari Lynx, and then ported to Windows in 1991. An unexpected hit, the game was quickly modified by enthusiasts who introduced new levels of complexity to it. A sequel was produced in 1999 but never released - for very strange reasons. But now it’s finally going to see the light of day.
Failure creates a stink. What happens when a sewage system computer’s battery backup fails? Almost 40,000 litres of raw sewage gets dumped into the local river, that’s what.
On the trail of Chinese hackers. US authorities would like to get their hands on five Chinese nationals, accused of hacking into and stealing commercially sensitive documents from several major US companies. But there’s little chance of that ever happening, and the attacks just keep coming. “Clearly the situation has gotten worse, not better,” said Virgil Gligor, who co-directs Carnegie Mellon University’s computer security research centre, known as CyLab. “We made access to services and databases and connectivity so convenient that it is also convenient for our adversaries.”
The ticket time machine. Thousands of New Zealanders recently received emailed reminders about upcoming train journeys. That’s nice. The only problem is that the journeys in question had already occurred… years ago. KiwiRail said a glitch during a system upgrade saw thousands of old emails sent out again, leading to some understandable confusion.
Do you like lasers? If you do, then these two videos are for you. But don’t try this at home.
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