Geek Weekly: Our top weird tech stories for 23 October

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

Big data doubts. Will society experience an ‘epidemic of false positives’ out of the growth of big data? Michael Jordan thinks it might. In an interview, the Pehong Chen Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Berkeley says that, “When you have large amounts of data, your appetite for hypotheses tends to get even larger. And if it’s growing faster than the statistical strength of the data, then many of your inferences are likely to be false. They are likely to be white noise.”

Spy versus spy. Maxwell Smart and CONTROL couldn’t have done it better. Australia’s domestic spy agency, ASIO, apparently accidentally tapped its own phones during a security operation. In doing so it breached the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act. But at least it had the decency to dob itself in in the agency’s annual report. Sorry about that chief.

Satellite settles into slot. Optus’s latest communications satellite, Optus 10, is slowly drifting towards its final orbital destination, approximately 36,000 kilometres above the equator (making it a geostationary satellite) at a longitude of 164° east. Satellites such as these generally are initially placed into temporary locations while post-launch testing is completed, before being allowed to ‘drift’ to their final orbital slots.

Energy networks exposed. US-based cybersecurity firm Infracritical has blown the lid on the number of internet-exposed industrial systems. Using a search engine called Shodan, the firm scanned the internet and (by the time they stopped) came up with 2.2 million IP addresses at energy-related locations, such as wind farms, water purification plants and electrical substations. The company blames lax security on the part of manufacturers of industrial control systems. Infracritical even set up its own test device with only light security to see whether it would be discovered by would-be hackers - it was attacked within two hours. In fact, over a span of four days, it registered more than 4000 attacks.

Get out of jail free code. A ‘computer error’ has resulted in a member of the Pink Panther organised crime network being set free from gaol three years early. The Serbian national was supposed to be released in 2017, but the error meant he walked free in June this year.

Robotic race car. Audi is testing a GPS-guided robotic race car that can zoom around the race track with centimetre precision. We’d like to see it tackle Mount Panorama:

Use the Force. Finally, check out this video of Star Wars-like drone races:

Image courtesy Juanedc.com under CC