Stillwater, MN: the Stillwater Lift Bridge got stuck in the open position for more than two hours this week after its controlling computer got “confused”. According to Minnesota Department of Transportation spokeswoman Mary McFarland-Brooks, the computer “said that the bridge was both open to boat traffic and available to motorists at the same time, which obviously couldn’t be the case.” Although strong winds were thought to have played a part in the incident, a reboot of the computer fixed the problem and had motorists on their way again.

Meanwhile, in Japan last week, Hitachi announced that they had discovered a programming fault in software used to measure the impact of earthquakes on pipes at atomic power stations. The fault allowed the software to underestimate the impact of earthquakes on steel pipes in eight nuclear reactors. Good job it wasn’t anything important. The software has been in place and monitoring the pipes since 1980. Test results using corrected software indicated that there were no problems with the pipes.