Geek Weekly: Our top weird tech stories for 30 October

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

A major malfunction. An unmanned Antares rocket carrying a Cygnus cargo craft bound for the International Space Station exploded in a ball of flame just seconds after launch from the US east coast on Wednesday morning, Australian time. The US$200 million dollar, partially insured rocket and the Cygnus were destroyed. The launch pad was damaged too:

“Tonight’s events show the difficulties in doing the task of delivering cargo to the space station,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator of NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate. “We have confidence we can understand the problems and get back flying when we’re ready to fly.”

The disaster put us in mind of the maiden flight of the European Ariane V rocket back in 1996, which also had an untimely end due to a crazy software error:

Summoning the demon. Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal and now head honcho at Tesla Motors and SpaceX, is worried that we’re in danger of building the perfect beast in the form of artificial intelligence (AI). During a filmed interview for MIT at the Centennial Symposium, Musk was asked by an audience member to give his opinion on the future of AI. “With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon,” said Musk. “In all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it’s like, ‘Yeah, he’s sure he can control the demon.’ Doesn’t work out.” Your editor happens to sort of agree, having been scared stiff by reading the novel Colossus (later made into a movie) in his childhood - it’s a kind of 1984 for the IT age. Trust me, it’s chilling stuff.

And if that’s not scary enough. James Cameron, of Titanic and Terminator fame, says he won’t use a smartphone as he doesn’t want to be caught in the Skynet - the evil computer network in Terminator that’s set on wiping us out. “You’re toast,” he joked at a recent 30th anniversary screening of the film. “Apple has enough people with their devices being tracked by the government. Every place you go with that thing they know exactly where you are … Skynet has already won … Everyone is already wired to their computers.”

Don’t bank on it. Oops. ANZ bank this week accidentally released a spreadsheet of company profits, just four days before they were supposed to be released to the market. The bank was forced to suspend trading for the rest of the day and claimed that the numbers were “partial analytical data only” and wouldn’t make much difference. Westpac did a similar thing back in 2005.

No signal. Some nong with too much time on his or her hands decided it would be fun to set up what was probably a mobile hot spot at Los Angeles International Airport on Sunday, naming the connection the “Al Qaeda Free Terror Network”. A passenger spotted it, leading to an aircraft having to return to the gate and a search for the originator of the bogus network.

Diagnosis? Dodgy data … A problem with Queensland’s MetaVision health software resulted in patients potentially being given the wrong medicines or doses during an 18-month period. The German maker of the software, iMDsoft, says it has already delivered a fix to Queensland Health.

… and heart-stopping hacks. The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is becoming increasingly concerned about the potential for hackers to exploit vulnerabilities in medical devices, whether they’re on a trolley by your bedside in hospital or buried deep inside your chest. The agency has even set up an ‘Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team’ that’s looking into units made by some of the world’s biggest medical devices companies. Let’s hope the hackers never get into the machine that goes ‘bing’!