Geek Weekly: Technology Decisions' quirky tech stories for 29 September

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

Russia gives up on Tor. After being given the go-ahead to try and crack the Tor network, Russia’s Central Research Institute of Economics, Informatics, and Control Systems is now desperately trying to drop the project. The country’s interior ministry had offered a US$59,000 reward to anyone who breached the network, but the Central Research Institute is now reportedly prepared to pay a law firm US$150,000 to get it off the hook.

Mind control #1. Are you reading my mind? You could well be, if you’re taking part in research at the University of Washington. Without going into too many details (you can read more here), scientists have used EEG skull caps and flashing LED lights to transfer meaningful answers in response to questions between two participants in the experiment. It’s easier to understand if you watch this short video:

Mind control #2. That’s all we need. Airborne killer sharks being directed by mind control. Well, sort of. With a simple electronics kit and a bit of know-how, some US researchers have shown how easy it is to hook your brain up to wires and control one of those floating shark toys. And then they got back to some real work.

Mind control #3. And this is what mind control is really about. Researchers have reported in Nature Medicine that they’ve enabled a person suffering from ALS (also known as motor neurone disease) to type at six words per minute, using electrodes implanted into the subject’s brain. ALS is what physicist Stephen Hawking has. Around 2 in 100,000 people are born diagnosed with it each year in the US and Europe.

Roo-robots! Finally, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania are playing around with robots that can hop a bit like kangaroos, or maybe bilbies. It’s all in the tail, you know. We think it’s kinda cool.