Geek Weekly: Our top weird tech stories for 4 August 2015
Technology Decisions’ weekly wrap of IT fails, latest tech, new must-have gadgets, ‘computer says no’ moments and more.
Don’t shoot! Researchers have shown how easy it is to hack into Wi-Fi-enabled rifles and cause them to change their aim. Watch how they did it:
FBI “not ready” for cyberthreats. That’s because it don’t have enough people to do the job. And that’s because, it says, it doesn’t have enough money. A recent Department of Justice report says that the crime-fighting organisation deliberately hired less-than-ideal staff in order to save some dollars, and left unfilled 52 of the 134 computer scientist slots it was supposed to fill. Lucky for us they’re only looking for cybercrims and not rifle hackers.
Robot baseball umpires. We’ve all become used to electronic systems deciding whether balls are in or out in tennis. Now there’s a system that does it for baseball. Where will it end?
Bye-bye bank branches. Smartphones equipped with banking apps will lead to the slow death of bank branches, according to research led by UBS analysts. Local banks expect 11%, or about 600, branches to close in coming years. The researchers say that within 3 years, the percentage of banking done on smartphones will almost double from the present 25% to 46%.
Firefox barks at Windows. Windows 10 is out and about, and the people behind the Firefox browser are not happy. They say that the Win 10 upgrade process is too opaque, preventing users from opting out of standard settings such as using Windows’ new browser, Edge. They might be right, but to paraphrase Mandy Rice-Davies, “They would say that, wouldn’t they?”
Where do supercomputers go to die? To a crushing yard, it seems. At least, that’s what happens to US supercomputers that have worked on classified projects. Apparently they need to pulverised, even the chips, so that national secrets can’t be gleaned from them. Or perhaps they only go to such lengths because the FBI can’t keep on top of the cybercrims?
Robots versus people. No, it’s not baseball this time, but badminton. Watch the robots take on the humans:
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