"I'm an evil system tester, thinking up software-breaking situations, and this occasion was no different"

What would life be like without Google if its services were unavailable due to a deliberate act of sabotage?

- By STEVE CASSIDY

How can you get your people – employees, family, relatives – used to the idea that Google might not be available one day? Not just in a regional crash, but offline for days, weeks, months due to a deliberate act of sabotage?

That might have seemed a low risk just five years ago, but these days the world is very different. The need to be at least aware of what fault-tolerant options you can exercise has never been greater, and the emphasis on continuous access as a prerequisite for using cloud services never stronger.

Then there are the human factors. The uncomfortable need some people have for a sense of permanence – without any idea, naturally, as to how that permanence might be achieved, or what it depends on.

Quite by accident, I stumbled on an ideally sized case study this summer. In previous columns I’ve talked about the dangers posed by sub-sea fibre optic cable-cutting, and knowing who has been writing that quirky utility you love so much. But that’s just the start. There are moody, unpredictable presidents, a variety of volcanoes itching to explode, or the literal blast from the past if you grew up in the Cold War: the prospect of a nuclear attack. These situations seem remote but consider the Icelandic eruption I’m not going to spell, any more than you are going to say, that disrupted our lives for a fortnight a few years ago. Anyone got a volcano simulator?

Not me, but I do have the Huawei Pura 80 Pro, the fifth generation of phone the Chinese giant has built outside the warm embrace of Android. This concept arose because the USA and Huawei had a falling-out, but it didn’t take Huawei very long to produce a polished and oddly quite well-served phone ecosystem.