Geek Weekly: Technology Decisions' quirky tech stories for 3 November 2015

Technology Decisions’ weekly wrap of IT fails, latest tech, ‘computer says no’ moments and more.

Are we there yet? A research team has found that systemic biases in GPS measurements consistently overstate the distance travelled. So if you’ve gone out for a nice, long, healthy jog (yeah, right), you shouldn’t necessarily trust the distance figure your GPS unit gives you. There are all sorts of reasons for this: uncertainty over the exact position of the satellites, atmospheric effects, your GPS hardware and many more.

The solace of quantum. Aussie researchers at UNSW and the University of Melbourne say they’ve “designed a 3D silicon chip architecture based on single atom quantum bits, which is compatible with atomic-scale fabrication techniques — providing a blueprint to build a large-scale quantum computer”. In other words, they’ve reached an important step towards building supercomputers that will be vastly more powerful than today’s.

Second chance. Hold on to your hats… a huge conference taking place in Geneva this week will discuss the future of the ‘leap second’ — you know, that odd extra second that has to be added to our timekeeping system every now and then. It’s needed because the atomic clocks that run the world’s time system are so much better at keeping time than the old system, which was based on the Earth’s rotation. Leap seconds are occasionally added as a tiny delay to the atomic system to let the Earth-based system catch up. But some say this is a ‘crude hack’, and researchers are trying to work out if there’s a better way, or if we should just not bother with leap seconds at all.

Laptops in orbit. Check out this fascinating video from NASA, explaining the use of computers in space: