PARTINGSHOTS
130 MAY2020|COMPUTERSHOPPER|ISSUE387
Zygote
Facialrecognitiontechnologyisbeing rolledoutacrossLondon,despiteevidencefromthe
US that it’s awasteof time andmoney.ZygotewondersiftheMet knowswhatit’sdoing
seven years ago and assembled a
database of 65,000 suspicious
folk, using spy-bots, smartphones,
tabletsand trafficcameras. Images
were run against the mugshots of
known criminals looking for
matches, but not asingle arrest
has been made as aresult.
Meanwhile,the Met’s
assistant commissioner Nick
Ephgrave declares, “This is an
important development forthe
Met, and one which is vital in
assisting us in bearing down on
violence.Asamodern police
force,Ibelieve we have aduty
to use new technologies to
keep people safeinLondon.
Independent research has shown
that the public support us.”
Zygotedeclares that the
public maynot support the
project if theyknewabout the
costs and results of the San
Diego fiasco.
DICK’S ON
Dixons has recruited Lindsay
Haselhurst from Kingfisher as
chiefsupply-chain officer.Her job
is to deliver a“brilliant end-to-end
customer experience”, andshe’s
off to agreat start at the retail
empire,which includes PC World,
Currys and Carphone Warehouse.
First thing in the morning,
Dixons filed that group revenue
had risen 2% during its peak
trading period. In the afternoon,
it issued aslight correction.
Sales had in fact not risen by 2%,
but dropped by 2%.
Now,Dixons has been slapped
with apenalty of £500,000 from
the Information Commissioner’s
Office after failing to keep hackers
out of itssales tills. No fewer than
14 million customer records have
been compromised, including
chip and PIN cards, account
numbers, expiry dates, cardholder
names, postal addresses, email
addresses, phone numbers, dates
of birth and failed credit-check
details. That’s some end-to-end
customer experience.
ISPY
Stanford University scientists
have developed asmart system
forseeing round corners, which
Zygotewillattempt to explain in
simple language.OK, here goes.
First you see an object, then
you hit it with alaser beam at an
angle.The laser gets reflected on
to anotherobject around a
corner that you can’t see.The
light from the object you can’t
see is bounced back to the object
you can see.Amachine-learning
system is connected to acamera
looking at the object you can see,
which views it as apattern created
by interference from light leaving
the laser against the reflection of
the object you can’t see.The
pattern is fedthrough aneural
network to reconstruct the image
of the object you can’t see.Bingo!
The scientists believe that the
system will be used forsafetyin
self-driving cars. Zygote believes
it will be used by alot of people
to spotalot of otherpeople
round corners, and shoot them.
SIGN LANGUAGE
The health secretary is called
Matt Hancock, or at least he was
at the time of writing, and he has
promised £40m forasingle
sign-on system specially designed
to be used by any doctor each
time theysee any patient.
This is because,“NHS staff
currently have to log in to
multiple computer programs
when tending to apatient,
with each program requiring its
own login details. Some staff
need to log in to as many as 15
different systems.”Crikey!
That’s terrible,Matt.
But Zygote would like to
remind you of the following
facts. Your promised moneyis
not new,itcomes from the
existing 2020-2021 budget. No ifs,
no buts. Apart from that, the
overwhelming majority of GPsare
independent contractors, not
NHS staff,and your Department
of Health and Social Security
refuses to confirm that any
moneyfor this project will come
from the so-called GP-IT Futures
Framework. So who exactly is
this non-existent new money
supposed to benefit?
SEEWEED
Thirty thousand cannabis users in
Maryland, Ohio and Colorado
received an unexpected present
last Christmas. Their free gift was
delivered by adatabase running on
an Amazon WebServices storage
bucket owned by THSuite.
The unprotected software
package decided to publish their
names and addresses on the
internet, along with details of the
exact amount of marijuana they
were in thehabit of consuming.
When Zygote asked if usage
was limited to medicinal purposes,
the response was “yeah, man, too
much”. Speakingofwhich...
WHISPERING GRASS
Boffins at Plant-E in Holland and
Lacuna Space in Oxfordshire have
collaborated to generate
electricity from living grass.
As long as alittle containerof
the green stuff has enough water
to keep growing, it is capable of
generating 0.2mW of power,and
happily sends 50-bytemessages
of information to an overhead
satelliteonacontinualbasis. No
batteries, no solar power,nowind
generatorrequired, just abasic
sensor in abiodegradable pot.
Zygotebelieves this is an
important achievement with
some fascinating implications.
Forexample,plantscan be made
to tweet from any of the moister
regions on the planet, without
the need forhumans to visit a
remotelocation to change
batteries. One obvious application
is that if asignal stops, then the
plant will report its own death
through lack of water.Orlocusts.
FACE OFF
In the same week that the
Metropolitan Police announces
the operational use of live facial
recognition in London, the city of
San Diego,California, announces
that its massively expensive facial
recognition system is being
scrapped as awaste of time,
effortand money.
The Californian cops set up
their network of 1,300cameras
