PARTINGSHOTS
122 OCTOBER2020|COMPUTERSHOPPER|ISSUE392
Zygote
Theinformationsuperhighway isgoingunderground,and ifyouthoughtthestenchof the
internetwasbad before,justwaittillyourconnectionhasbeendraggedthroughthesewer
and this triggers warning alarms
that go off via giant monitors.
Amazon has declared that it
wants to make Distance
Assistance open source,which is
very nice.But Zygote recalls that
the company has just been sued
by warehouse staff forallegedly
poor working conditions that
failed to protect them from the
virus, which is not very nice.
Meanwhile,anamendment to
the Weights and Measures Act
has just updated the legal
definition of ametre forall
citizens of the United Kingdom.
This is how the government is
helping us to understand how far
to sitfrom an adjacent customer
down at the local boozer.
“One metre is the SI unit of
length, definedbytakingthe
fixed numericalvalue of the
speed of lightinvacuum ctobe
299 792 458 when expressed in
the unit m/s, where the second
is defined by taking thefixed
numerical value of the caesium
frequency deltaVCS, the
unperturbed ground-state
hyperfine transition frequency
of the caesium 133 atom, to be
9192 631 770 when expressed
in the unit Hz, which is equal to
sminus 1.”
Zygotetruststhis is clear.
TOTAL XXXX UP
Lion is Australia’s biggest
brewery empire,and it produces
the iconic XXXX brand. According
to theSydneyMorningHerald,
the whole continent is being
threatened by aterrible beer
shortage because of amalicious
cyber attack.
Lion issued ashort statement
to saythat its IT teams and
expert advisors always work
round the clock to investigate
such issues, but it seems that
always working round the clock is
not quiteenough. Less than a
week after its statement was
issued, Lion suffered asecond
attack, and this time it came with
aransomware demand forthe
equivalent of half amillion quid.
The brewery has been forced
to suspendproduction, and the
company hopes that its shares
don’t head down under.
TAXE-RANK
Everybody knows that the tax
affairs of the world’s tech giants
are often accompanied by arank
smell. In which case,Zygote
would like to tell you astory.
Once upon atime,there wasa
pioneering tech company called
Yahoo!. Three years ago,itwas
sold foralot of moneytoanother
tech company called Verizon. It
promptly renamed it Altaba and
flogged it off to the e-commerce
giant Alibaba foralot more
money. In fact, the sum involved
was so huge and the paper trail
was so tortuous that the US tax
authorities have only just
managed to catch up.
Now Uncle Sam is suing the
parent company for$1bn in
income tax forlast year alone.
This is on topofanunpaid tax
bill of $7bn dating back to 2013.
As Benjamin Franklin almost said,
“Nothing is certain except the
smell of death and taxes.”
I’LL BE BACK
As any sci-fi fanwill attest,
Skynet is the autonomous
artificial intelligence system
famous forspawning Arnold
Schwarzenegger as the
Terminator and destroying the
human race in aglobal nuclear
war on 29th August 1997.
Unfortunately,nobody at the
Ministry of Defence (MoD)
seems to have seen the movie.
In five years’ time,the UK
military satellitesystem will be
replaced at acost of £6bn, and
the MoD has shortlisted four
companies to tender forthe
work. Because government
communications can’t be trusted
to foreign folk,anautonomous
artificial intelligence system is
required to be supplied by
home-grown boffins.
Zygotehates to be responsible
foraspoiler alert, so will simply
report that the name of the
project signed off by permanent
secretary Stephen Lovegrove is,
you guessed it, Skynet.
HIGH HOPES
The Department forDigital,
Culture,Media and Sport has
pledged to provide full-fibre
communications forthe whole
nation. The closing datefor
evidence on how to achieve this
goal is 4th September.
One of the current front-
runners proposes ascheme
to give broadband providers
access to the vast labyrinth of
our underground sewage system,
and treat it as aready-made
networkthrough which to run
their services.
The government minister
responsible is Matt Warman, who
reminds Zygote of oneofthose
weird-looking cuddly toys you
can winatthe funfair but would
rather not. He says, “It makes
both economic and common
sense forfirms rolling out gigabit
broadband to make use of the
infrastructure that already exists
across the country.This will help
them avoid the high costs and
disruption of having to dig or
build their own, and ultimately
benefit consumers.”
Foronce,nobody can refute
the fact that this proposal is
absolutely full of crap.
WE’LL METRE GAIN
It seems that Amazon
employees are unable to work
out what ametre is, and so
theyneed abit of assistance
with their social distancing.
To help them out, the mighty
Amazon has commissioned its
robotics division to produce a
system called Distance
Assistance and install it in its
huge distribution centres.
Live cameras track the
location of everyone in the
warehouse,and machine-
learning routines produce a
real-time virtual reality display
with ahalo of virtuous green
surrounding each individual.
If anyone gets tooclose for
comfort theyare regarded as
apotential Covid-19 hazard,
and the good circle of green
turns intoabad circle of red,
