Geek Weekly: Technology Decisions' quirky tech stories for 8 December 2015

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

Don’t burn the salad. Inspired by his father’s difficulties with making a cup of tea, a 15-year-old US boy has developed a microwave oven system that intelligently cooks according to the mix of food on the plate. Shahir Rahman, both of whose parents are engineers at Intel, taught himself programming and then enlisted the aid of some of his parent’s co-workers to develop sensors and algorithms that tell the oven how much to blast the food with microwaves so that the meat is cooked properly but the salad is untouched.

Kittens versus Star Wars robots. We don’t need to describe this one to you. Just enjoy the video:

MIDAS well not have the best. A computer system intended to improve the way the US Government pays farmers is now two years overdue, US$140 million over budget and only 20% operational, according to a Government Accountability Office report. Known as MIDAS — Modernise and Innovate the Delivery of Agricultural Systems — the US$500 million system is unable to exchange data between various agricultural agencies. “I’m generating the same information three different times,” Blake Hurst, president of the Missouri Farm Bureau, told NET Nebraska. “I’m generating it to FSA and then I’m taking it to an insurance agent in small-town Missouri who’s entering it by hand for RMA. And all the time I’ve got a thumb drive with all that information already on it.”

On second thoughts. The world body responsible for timekeeping has decided to defer until 2023 a decision on whether to do away with the ‘leap second’. Leap seconds are introduced into the worldwide atomic timekeeping system from time to time (no pun intended) as a delay that lets the rotation of the Earth catch up. If needed, they’re added at the stroke of midnight on 30 June or 31 December.

NASA’s new robot. Meet the R5:Valkyrie, NASA’s latest humanoid robot. Do these things freak you out as much as they do us?: