Geek Weekly: Our top weird tech stories for 2 July 2015

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

Did you notice the leap second? You might be forgiven for not having noticed that yesterday was one second longer than usual. Leap seconds are introduced occasionally in order to keep our timekeeping system — based on highly accurate atomic clocks — in sync with the rotation of the Earth, which is not highly accurate; or at least, not as accurate as those clocks. The Earth’s rotation is slowly slowing, by about 2 milliseconds per day per century. In other words, if you come back 100 years from now, the day will be longer by about 2 milliseconds. Leap seconds are introduced into the atomic clock system in order to ‘wait’ one second while the Earth catches up.

You’ve seen The Imitation Game. Now read what the man himself, Alan Turing, had to say about computer intelligence… especially artificial intelligence.

Rocket science. Rocket company SpaceX suffered another failure on the weekend, when its latest Falcon 9 launch vehicle — filled with supplies and equipment for the International Space Station — blew up shortly after launch. An “overpressure event” in the second stage was the initial diagnosis. It’s a shame, as it was a great looking launch up to about the 148-second mark.

Apple in the naughty corner. An appeals court in the US has upheld a ruling that says Apple worked with book publishers to conspire to raise the price of digital books. “We conclude that the district court’s decision that Apple orchestrated a horizontal conspiracy among the publisher defendants to raise e-book prices is amply supported and well reasoned, and that the agreement unreasonably restrained trade,” said the appeals court’s decision.

Yelp blames Google. Research led by a Columbia university law professor and paid for by search engine Yelp suggests that Google is altering search results to emphasise its own content. Google has countered by saying in a statement, “This isn’t new… Yelp’s been making these arguments to regulators, and demanding higher placement in search results, for the past five years. This latest study is based on a flawed methodology that focuses on results for just a handful of cherry-picked queries.

This is amazing. Check out this short video of tiny 3D plasma objects floating and dancing in mid-air, thanks to femtosecond lasers. The laser beam ionises air molecules, making them glow. What’s more, you can even touch them and feel them.

The Imitation Game image courtesy The Weinstein Company.