Geek Weekly: Our top weird tech stories for 9 April

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

Breach response brings bouquets. A breach of one of Linux Australia’s servers has been notified to users in what some have called ‘exemplary transparency’. The breach occurred on a system that holds data for the organisation’s annual conferences and the PyCon conference. President Joshua Hesketh told those on the Linux-aus mailing list that names, contact details and hashed passwords were exposed, but that credit card details weren’t, as the latter are handled by the third-party payment gateway company.

Analyse this. Google’s Analytics platform went down for four hours on Tuesday, with the company saying that the majority of its Analytics customers would have been effected. Those customers have around 32 million websites. The problem was soon resolved, but came only days after the company’s Gmail service went down over the Easter long weekend.

No awards here. A trouble-plagued CA$182m integrated case management system for the British Columbia government is so on the nose at the moment that is has been withdrawn from the shortlist of finalists for the Premier’s Awards of Innovation and Excellence. An auditor’s report found that development of the system, which has taken seven years so far, has failed to replace the majority of the old system.

If you can’t take the heat… As many as two million of Irish telco Three’s customers were left without service on Monday after overheating led to an electrical failure in a data centre. Service was restored after about 10 hours.

US power grid under attack. The USA’s outdated electric power grid is coming under sustained attack from hackers, reports say. While the grid has not yet been brought down, its obsolete design means it is highly vulnerable to attack. There were 151 ‘cyber incidents’ in 2013, and the Edison Electric Institute says the problem is now even worse.

Driven to distraction. A major glitch in the Texas Department of Public Safety’s computer system has meant that thousands of motorists have been driving around without valid driver’s licences. The glitch prevented data entered into the online renewal system from making its way into the department’s licensing system