Geek Weekly: Our top weird tech stories for 14 May 2015

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

Poker-faced PCs. We’ve looked at people vs the machine in poker games before. Well now we can report that machines haven’t quite taken over just yet. A recent battle pitted four of the top 10 poker players in the world against a program called Claudico, involving 80,000 hands of poker over two weeks. We’re pleased to report that the humans came out on top, but only just - in fact, the difference in winnings was so small as to be insignificant, and the organisers have called it a draw. So it won’t be long now until the rotten machines comfortably surpass us in this field of endeavour, too. Oh, the humanity!

Catch my identity if you can. And you should be able to, easily, said Frank Abagnale, the crook turned cop who was the subject of the movie Catch me if you can. Abagnale, who went on a five-year identity scam spree in the 1960s before eventually becoming a consultant to the FBI, told the Secure 360 conference in the US that “I have never witnessed, nor will I live long enough to witness, a more simplistic crime than me stealing your identity. That would be like you asking me to count to three. One, two, three. That simple.” He said it is far easier now for crooks to steal identities than it was in ‘his day’, when information was primarily hardcopy-based.

Electric eel to explore planets. NASA is working on a flexible, eel-like robot that could one day explore the sub-surface oceans of Jupiter’s moon, Europa. The researchers want to use in situ magnetic fields to power the robot, which would use some of the power to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen and use it as rocket fuel and oxidiser, respectively, to propel itself. But that’s not all - the eel’s skin would be electroluminescent in order to light up its surroundings. It sounds more like a squid than an eel. And we’ve said it before - in the science fiction film/book, 2010: Odyssey Two, the earthlings are cautioned: “All the worlds are yours, except Europa - attempt no landings there.” So they can’t say they haven’t been warned.

Autonomous trucking. Truck manufacturer Freightliner has revealed its latest big rig, the Inspiration, a prototype that is designed to drive fully autonomously on highways, and in fact has been licensed to do so in Nevada. This comes after 16,000 kilometres of test drives. And here’s something else: Freightliner launched the truck at a special event at the famous Hoover Dam in the USA, which featured a light show project onto the dam’s huge concrete wall - the equivalent of 87 IMAX screens. The launch now holds the world record for the highest-ever light projection power level