Geek Weekly: Technology Decisions' quirky tech stories for 1 December 2015

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

Pay up or else. One of those computer ‘glitches’ has been blamed for drivers in the ACT being sent letters telling them that their licences would be cancelled unless they paid overdue fines. The only problem was, the fines were old — 8 years old — and had already been paid. Officials have blamed the blooper on a database merger that didn’t quite go as expected. Not happy, Jan.

Meanwhile, in Ireland. More than 1200 drivers who undertook their final driving test — a theory questionnaire via computer — were failed when they should have passed, following an IT blunder. On one of the test’s questions, ticking the right answer returned an indication of ‘incorrect’ rather than ‘correct’. More than 600 people were forced to re-sit the exam. The error was introduced into the system in June but was not spotted until November.

Billion-dollar blunder. A woman in Hawaii was shocked to find recently that her bank had recorded two debits against her account, each of them for more than US$710 billion. A similar US$710 billion debit was found on a Hawaiian man’s bank account. “I saw these massive numbers and my first thought was ‘Well, my wife is going to kill me,’” George Smith told TV station KHON2.

Now that’s just showing off. Lucas Etter, a 14-year-old boy, has set a new world record for solving a mixed-up Rubik’s cube in 4.904 seconds. Read about it here, and then watch it happen: