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A HAL moment for earthlings. – By Aubrey Joachim Most baby boomers would remember watching the then futuristic sci-fi movie “2001: A Space Odyssey”. One of the scenes towards the end of the movie show one of the astronauts who ventures outside the spacecraft to repair a communications antenna being locked out of the craft by the ‘intelligent’ computer HAL. The astronaut slowly drifts off into the black openness of space. Most of the other crew are also killed inside the craft. Basically HAL’s programmed instructions to protect certain mission secrets from the crew conflicts with its loyalty to the crew. Sounds familiar? 2.39 p.m. AEST July 19th, 2024: Computer systems across various establishments started failing. The blue ‘screen of death’ brought shivers down people’s spines. Within hours, word was filtering from across the globe – Planet Earth was literally shutting down! Persons could not transact at various service centres, ...