9 Mar 2016

And Then A New App...

Further to the news of an impending new app, Am I Dead Yet, I left in the comments at Head Rambles, I have an exciting update to report relating to the app.

There’s news that the app developers, two kids ‘working’ from the back bedroom of No 6 Acacia Avenue, in a small town very close to nowhere, have sold all rights to the unfinished app to an HMG IT department who plan to further refine the app for use by Work and Pensions. The amount paid hasn’t been disclosed, but a government insider suggested the price was “...in the very high millions.”

A spokesperson for Work and Pensions said their IT department had been trying for many years to devise a software solution for determining the correct payments of the state pension in relation to cutting down the waste suffered when pensions are paid, sometimes for weeks, when a pensioner had, in fact, died, but it was found that nobody in the IT division could write an app. The potential for the teenagers app was quickly seen by a senior member of the IT department and thus the app purchased.

The speaky person said the idea was to modify the app to enable all pensioners to access the app on a daily basis and thus declare remotely that they are alive so ensuring their state pension will be paid. Failure to access the app for three consecutive days would result in pension cancellation. The finalised app would require the input of a fingerprint which would be compared against an old folk fingerprint database. It’s hoped this database will be finalised and ready for first inputs sometime in 2035.

Even at this early stage problems have been highlighted by old people that will take time to iron out. The main problem being that the app would be open to fraud as it would be possible for a family member, or close friend, to keep a deceased person for several weeks, in a suitably ventilated room, and just press the dead finger on the smartphone app. Some could go to the length of just keeping a finger in the freezer.

With the above in mind, it’s understood that coupled with fingerprint input, retina recognition technology will also be incorporated along with temperature sensitivity so the use of frozen fingers would be detected. Thermal imaging technology is soon to be built into all CCTV in the country thus they’ll be able to detect and record the average core temperature of the elderly then, for further accuracy, this will be refined to give the average core temperature of an elderly person living alone in an unheated apartment through the month of January.

According to the Pensions Department spokesperson the cost of the fingerprint, retina and heat database should cost, at todays costings, no more than three times the estimated cost of HS2 with a further yearly cost of keeping the database updated at no more that eighteen million pounds. He further stated it would be the responsibility of everyone, upon reaching state pension age, to ensure they have given their finger and eye prints to the government and acquired a smartphone and the app. None compliance will result in no state pension.

“This may sound like a lot of money” the Minister for Work and Pensions said, “but when the system is up and running, sometime in 2043, and tax payers see the many tens of hundreds of pounds we save annually from pension payments that were being wrongly made to dead folk, they’ll see it as money well squan... spent. The old may feel that having to interface with a smartphone daily is an inconvenience but we, along with Public health, see it as giving the elderly a great incentive to get up every day.”

The government spokesperson took the opportunity to stress to the elderly, although he didn’t want to scare anyone, that if we leave the EU the cost of the daily phone call could rise astronomically thus putting yet further pressure on their state pension.

The two young app writers were unavailable for comment owing to them and their families repeatedly laughing themselves into unconsciousness.

Quote;  Helen Hayes.

“Age is not important unless you're a cheese.”

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