This Week in Tech - October 29, 2021

In a week of news absolutely dominated by the budget, here is the Resonance team’s selection of stories that may have slipped under your radar. Enjoy!

Tesco’s outage 

Because businesses that rely heavily on a strong supply of HGV drivers didn’t have it tough enough already, last weekend, Tesco’s online service suffered an outage following a suspected hack. It remains unclear if this was a ransomware attempt or bad actors simply being nefarious, with the supermarket chain providing slim details on the efforts made to compromise their IT system. Thankfully, the nation’s second-best meal deal provider (first place is Sainsburys) managed to restore their online grocery function on Monday.

I look forward to writing about another prominent business being cyber attacked next week.

Amazon to host British Intelligence’s intelligence

In a move likely to raise a few eyebrows over data sovereignty, AWS has been given a contract to host the data of British intelligence agencies, MI5, MI6 and GCHQ. The deal is estimated to be worth up to £1 billion over the next 10 years and is symbolic of a growing number of government agreements with big tech being done in private. Judi Dench’s M is probably rolling in her grave right now.

Oh, to be the richest man in the world

Since departing Amazon, Jeff Bezos has clearly been left with far too much time on his hands. So much so that he’s come up with the grand idea of building a village in, wait for it, SPACE.

In a project dubbed Orbital Reef, a name that sounds like something a 14 year old calls their first band, the venture is proposed to be a space station made up of various businesses that can come together to do research and production. It may sound fanciful but as long as they’ve got their toilets in working order they’re already miles ahead of the competition.