Geek Weekly: Our top weird tech stories for 9 October

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

Fat-finger earthquake hits stock exchange. It was a lucky save. Before any damage could be done, someone spotted a clearly inadvertent order for US$617 billion of shares in Toyota, Honda, Canon, Sony and 40 other companies on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. An unidentified trader put the value of the transaction into the wrong field (number of shares). Such over-the-counter trades can be cancelled at any time during trading hours if shown to be incorrect.

Nobel Prize for blue LED inventors. You see them everywhere these days, but time was when making a blue-light LED was beyond everyone’s capabilities. The same went for white-light LEDs. Enter Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amao and Shuji Nakamura, who in the 1980s and 1990s developed the technology to make the tiny light-emitting devices produce a blue glow. And it was this blue glow which, when combined with other colours, produces white light. Take a bow, gentlemen.

Electric cars 90% autonomous next year. So says Elon Musk, boss of electric car company Tesla. Or at least, “a Tesla car next year will probably be 90% capable of autopilot. Like, so 90% of your miles can be on auto. For sure, highway travel,” he told CNN. He’s confident, that’s for sure. But there’s no doubt that such vehicles are coming. A new report forecasts the market for hybrid and pure electric land, water and air vehicles over the next decade - US$533 billion, they say.

A 1960s view of today’s computers. Take a look at this video from around 1966, which showed what we could expect from our home computers in the year 1999. We like the “electronic correspondence machine, or home post office, which allows for instant written communication between individuals anywhere in the world”:

Sneaky, snaky robot can stand on its own two feet. Or on its head and its tail, to be more exact. Watch and be amazed: