Posts by I could be a dog really

Techie traveled 4 hours to fix software that worked perfectly until a new hire used it

Re: I touch it and it breaks!

I REALLY miss my old 17" laptop. My next home one won't be from Apple - they've gone so far off the rails they are out of contention now (non-upgradable memory, non-upgradable storage, fsck that !).

But at work that standard is 13" laptops, which by the time they are rescaled to actually be readable are only of use for parking things like the Skype window on - till that goes away shortly :( Clearly the entire IT section is run by youngsters who don't have eyesight problems ... yet/

Re: PEBCAK

Sadly, in our case "very locked down" systems - and the helldesk people had no way of changing anything like that.

Re: doing so yielded "no coherent feedback at all."

because it needs a prior step explained first

You bring to mind a number of things where on opening the box, one of the first things you find inside is ... instructions on how to open the box correctly.

Re: Manual?

Yeah, in the end all Apple could do is say "this is how a Mac programme should work - and that's how users will expect them to work". The rest was down to market forces - i.e. people told the retards where to stuff their non-standard GUIs

Re: Here I was thinking

the people who had been used to doing things the same way for a long time are highly resistant to learning something new just to accomplish the exact same thing

And they are even more resistant when the "something new" is learning to use a massive, bloatware, probably has a "Kitchen Sink" app somewhere, pile of rubbish that's hard to use for the basic things you want to do - v.s. the "what we're used to" which is a simple tool that does the job it's supposed to simply and well.

Re: Manual?

... detailed UI style guide that app developers were more or less required[2] to adhere to.

...

[2] Hedging because I forget the details of how this was (is?) enforced

IIRC it was volume 3 of "Inside Macintosh",with volumes 1 & 2 being how to actually write code and use the built in APIs.

It wasn't enforced, and couldn't be. Naturally, certain established developers - including Microsoft IIRC - tried to just port from other platforms and do the bare minimum to make it work. That resulted in programs that were modal* and had very non-standard (from the Mac UI PoV) interfaces. Except for very niche programs, the result was "user dissatisfaction" that essentially forced developers to sort things out or see their program die because a different program that people liked using ate their sales.

And that's one (of many) things that really pees me off as I have to use Windows for $dayjob. The way different programs from the same manufacturer (yes, Microshit again) have subtle or major differences in UI. it can be little things like most programs scrolling whatever window is under the mouse pointer - but Excel only scrolls if it's the active window, and it always scrolls if it's the active window. Add in that Excel hides the cell highlighting when not the active window (because you had to switch windows to scroll a different one), and it gets even more annoying. And then you get things like Outlook using totally different keyboard shortcuts to every other MS program - meaning that (since I use a Mac at home, and so have to be coping with two different UIs anyway) use keyboard shortcuts far less than I could simply because it means spending so much time thinking about what the hell I'm currently working on and so what the right shortcut is.

* In 1984 when the Mac came out, most software was modal - i.e. you worked in one mode for one thing, had to exit and enter a different mode to do something else. You could only do what was in the limited menu available in the mode you were working in. Take something simple like editing text. A typical word processor of the day had an edit mode - you opened a document and could edit it, but couldn't print it. To print, you had to save it, exit back to the main menu, and enter a print mode from where you could print a document (which you might have to select and open as it might not be remembered that you'd just been editing it.) The you'd exit the print mode and re-open the document in edit mode, and ...

The Mac introduced modeless operations - you could be typing away in your document and at any time just select Print from the File menu (or hit Cmd-P). For most developers at the time, the idea that the software had to handle user commands whenever the user wanted to use them, rather than when you permitted them, was a major change in thinking - leading to the Mac having a reputation for being hard to program.

Re: doing so yielded "no coherent feedback at all."

I think the problem is more that (except for a few people), writing documentation isn't fun or easy. Plus (over simplifying and applying a lot of generalisation) there's a tendency that people drawn to working in FOSS projects, generally aren't natural candidates for manual/documentation writing. Developing the program/system needs a different skill set to writing documents.

Re: I touch it and it breaks!

We've just got back from a short break, and it's been something of an eye opener for me. SWMBO has health problems which means walking is slow and painful, so we took the wheelchair - lets just say, I normally put on weight through making good use fo the help yourself buffet breakfast, this time I didn't.

Both hotels were accessible - in principle. We even had specific accessible rooms (wet room showers, that sort of thing.

The fun when you have to present the RFID keycard to open the door, shove or pull it open against a heavy closer, and get SWMBO pushed far enough to hold it open while we get through ... is "interesting." I really don't know how someone self propelling a manual wheelchair could do it.

The upside is that we found people surprisingly helpful - apart from the Passenger Assist people who failed to turn up at our local train station as booked, meaning that SWMBO had to struggle down and up the steps to use the subway.

Re: PEBCAK

Er no, it's not PEBCAK. Windows is basically totally f****ing s**t at handling desktop changes.

Can't speak for Linux (or rather, any of the Linux supported desktop managers) as I don't (yet) use that. On a Mac, unplug a monitor, or multiple monitors (e.g. if you unplug a dock) and everything moves onto whatever desktop is left. Plug things back in, and everything (mostly) moves back to both the position and size it was (Apple Mail annoyingly doesn't put the message list columns back to their previous width).

Windows 10, carnage. Unplug a monitor/monitors - stuff (mostly) moves onto the desktop that's left (e.g. onto the laptop's built in screen which is (in desktop pixels) significantly smaller than the external monitor. Plug external monito(s) back in, everything jumps to the primary monitor, with smaller windows (they got reduced in size to fit the laptop screen) - and this includes stuff (like my Skype window) which I previously had on the laptop screen. Cue lots of cursing and manually putting everything back where it used to be. This is "especially irritating" when, as I had with a previous work laptop, when waking from display sleep - it thinks the external monitor has gone, resizes/repositions everything, then wakes the external display (or it's driver ?) up, so when you unlock the screen you find it all screwed up for the umpteenth time today.

Yes another function where "Windows is S**t" should be the sticker on the box.

Huawei chair says the future of comms is fiber-to-the-room, which China has and the rest of us don’t

Re: FTTR? Really?

That's what we'd call FTTP - the fact that for some, an apartment is one room doesn't really change that.

Boffins devise voice-altering tech to jam 'vishing' schemes

Re: Solution

I have told them all multiple times, to not block, but return their main reception number as the CLI, as I believe most PABX allow

There are a number of good reasons why certain organisations block numbers - the main one being privacy. Having the phone light up with "it's the clap clinic* calling" is a bit privacy breaking in a multi-person household. Even a generic "main number for the site" can be quite revealing - given how the tendency has been to centralise certain services at a small number of high specialism sites (the modern NHS isn't what's depicted in The Royal any more.)

In some places, the NHS** has setup a single number that's used as a presentation number for "many" services in the area. So getting a call from that number really doesn't give any clue as to the nature of the call.

* OK, I made that up for dramatic effect.

** Yes, I know there is no such thing as "the NHS". So typically this might be a trust and all the sites/services run by it.

/e/ OS 3.0: Slightly less clunky, slightly more private

Re: google free phone

That's a bit like saying you can avoid having your right hand cut off by offering your left hand instead. While Apple isn't in the same league as Google, the i-stuff ecosystem is an even more closed walled garden, and still has data slurpage and privacy intrusion.

Microsoft brings 365 suite on-prem as part of sovereign cloud push

Re: Time is a flat circle

Which is why so many governments do exactly that

Re: Time is a flat circle

But that wouldn't have given MS quite the same size of gravy train.

Logitech's latest keyboard and mouse combo is wired, quiet, and suspiciously sensible

Re: Why didn't they plug the mouse into the keyboard

USB ports on the old Apple keyboards, which ran at USB 1 speeds

Well considering USB 1 was all there was when the old USB Apple keyboards were first designed, that's not all that surprising. When the iMac came out, the USB ports ran at a heady 12mbps. That seems, and was, very slow by today's standards, but in a world of dial-up internet (56kbps max), LocalTalk (230kbps IIRC), Ethernet 10mbps for a few very well off people who could afford it), and floppy disks - it was something of a leap forward.

And it did what it was supposed to do - allow you to plug keyboard and mouse into one port of the computer.

The far more annoying "feature" for me was the non-standard plug & socket they used, which IIRC was to prevent you using anything but Apple's USB extension lead. I guess that was to avoid people using cheap (i.e. thin wires) leads, not have enough power for reliable operations, and then slag Apple off because of it. Which reminds me, I recall it was very easy to get a pop up message along the lines of "are you 'avving a larf mate, I can't power that device you've just plugged in" using the sockets on the keyboard.

But all of that pales into insignificance if I mention the outright failure - I give you the "hockey puck" round mouse, now that was truly awful.

Re: Why didn't they plug the mouse into the keyboard

I have seen keyboards with built in USB hub, but they are few and far between. As you suggest, it would make life a lot easier for a lot of people - especially those who have to constantly switch between computers, or using laptops with less ports than required.

I suspect it's part of the "why spend the few pennies on something few will use" cost engineering process.

EU Advocate General advises top court to toss Google appeal against €4B fine

Re: I have a better idea

No, very bad idea.

It's easy to use the "they can afford it" argument in this case, but where do you draw the threshold ? Say you or I were found guilty of something we were sure we didn't do, and fined. If you apply the same rule, and it has to be the same for everyone, then we'd be stuck with finding a potentially large amount of money - perhaps having to sell assets in order to get it. If, some years later, it turns out that we were innocent after all, then we can't really be compensated for the state/legal system having stuffed us - and we can't recover the assets we had to sell.

Of course, shortening the process significantly would help. It's hard to see how some of these cases take as long as they do.

Google's unloved plan to fix web permissions gathers support

Re: Google Garbage

I've given you an upvote, but disagree on some bits.

I too tend to take an "if Google want it, it's probably not for our benefit" attitude, but being a bit more realistic that's probably not completely fair. Elsewhere I'm on IETF mailing lists related to IPv6, and while some of what Google does is a right p.i.t.a. (actively blocking DHCPv6 in Android), some of the things they do are clearly aimed at making sure users do get a good experience and/or rolling back on opportunities for bad people to do bad stuff.

Taking that DHCPv6 issue. It's a p.i.t.a. for anyone who needs to manage their network (which some do have to for legal reasons) - they have to choose between being able to do so and allowing Android users to use it, and that's the case regardless of the type of network. So, Google==bad ? But look into the reasons, and it does make sense in the mobile world. In the mobile world, DHCP is not able to quickly reconfigure things as the network changes - e.g. IPv6 prefix changes as your phone roams between networks. So they took the position that by only supporting SLAAC where things can be quickly reconfigured, it would improve the user experience ... for mobile users. So for mobile users, it's a very sensible and positive position. So Google==good ?

But it's an absolute stance, and AIUI they have even pressured hardware manufacturers to block DHCPv6 packets in the hardware, thus actively preventing those for whom that default isn't right from installing a third party package to fix it. So now Google==good or bad depending on the use case !

Coming back to the specific example in the article, I can believe that it's a genuine attempt to improve the user experience. In this forum we are (mostly, I assume) a self selected bunch of fairly tech savvy people, for whom this is "so what's the problem" level of difficulty. Most users aren't like us, this is "my ****ing computer won't work, I can't get into the call, I'm ready to toss it out of the window" level of difficulty. Go and search for Wes Borg Internet Helpdesk - it's a really funny take on tech support and user capability, even if it is quite dated now, but it does show the demographic this sort of thing is aimed at. Will bad people abuse it ? Of course they will - is there anything they won't. But that's not a reason to not try and improve on the current situation where (I suspect) most people have their camera and mic set to allowed globally - just because that's the easiest way to get rid of the pesky questions.

User demanded a ‘wireless’ computer and was outraged when its battery died

But this is the UK, where most of us are only just getting a copper free connection. Until quite recently (as in, THIS year), in my town the only (wired) options were BT Openretch, and ... err that's it. And FTTC (a.k.a. VDSL2) maxes out at a smidgen under 80Mbps downstream if you are close enough to the green box that you could reach out fo the window and plug a cable directly into it - before getting my FTTC connection last month, I only got about 35Mbps due to line length.

Then suddenly we have a choice of two fibre networks - Openretch and Fibrus.

Neat idea, but ...

In my experience, some people (thankfully, SWMBO doesn't read this site), seem incapable of actually doing that. E.g., away on a 3 day business trip, SWMBO calls me to say there's no hot water. I ask her what lights are showing on the boiler - and she completely fails to mention the big (significantly bigger than all the rest) red one right in the middle !

Or the reverse - client complains that their internet is not what it's supposed to be. Pay a visit to find they are running a speed test over WiFi and so it maxes out at around 50-something Mbps. Connect laptop to router via cable, low and behold, they get the 70-something Mbps the FTTC connection is supposed to give them.

Re: calling a USB cable for their phone a "charger"

Or USB data blocker

Anyway the state picks up the tab unless your rich

Actually, the state picks up the tab if you are more or less f'ing destitute. You really do not have to have much by way of assets before the state does not pick up the tab - and don't forget, "assets" includes your home. Even where the state does pick up the tab, it may not meet all the costs, so you end up having to pay out of your state pension - hopefully having a little "pocket money" left over. And yes, I do know people who literally only had pocket money left.

Also, you may have seen announcements about care home fees getting a lifetime cap and thought - great, there'll be something left after my house is sold to leave to the kids. Think again, that cap only applies to the care element - the hotel element is uncapped.

VMware and Siemens spar over where to stage software licence showdown

Re: Still using VMWare and Oracle and Unity...

I was first thinking of it as a variation of Stockholm syndrome, but that's not quite the right description. After a bit more looking, I think traumatic bonding is more like it.

But in a business sense, I think there's an element of "this hurts, but to change will hurt more" (a finance version of traumatic bonding ?) - and the longer things go on, the more entrenched the tech becomes, and the more it will hurt to change. If you look at how MS has got to where it is (I'm not familiar enough with VMware to comment on that), it's slowly moved the goalposts over time, each time the change has been detrimental to users, but it's been small enough not to trigger the "f*** this, they've gone too far this time" response - and also over time they've carefully crafted an intricate web of interdependency designed top make it ever harder for any third party to replace any of the tools in the MS ecosystem (thus making it almost an "all or nothing" choice whether to move to something else.)

In the case of Adobe, they got to where they were by providing damn good tools - to the point that they were the de-facto standard in the creative industry. But then they did a big-bang switch to subscriptions and the users found they didn't have any other viable options than to go with it or quit the industry.

Your ransomware nightmare just came true – now what?

Re: Stop paying. Stop making excuses for piss-poor IT.

Wearing a previous job hat, our company was owned by a US company. In the US they have the Sarbanes-Oxley act* (though I wonder how long before that gets quietly scrapped in the current political environment), which essentially says "the big cheese has to sign off the accounts as accurate, and if it turns out that they weren't, then he's in the manure and possibly the slammer". As our accounts lead into their accounts, for him to sign that "these are true" statement, he needs to know that it applies to us as well. And so it fed down to us, and yes, our bosses in the US did send in auditors to make sure our systems were all in order and our accounts could be trusted.

The threat of big personal fines or even prison does tend to concentrate minds - and that does tend to flow downhill.

* Sarbanes-Oxley was brought in after "yet more" big collapses (Enron, WorldCom) where it turned out the accounts, signed off by the auditors, were a blend of pixie dust and unicorn poo - i.e. a complete and utter fabrication that any half competent auditor with both eyes closed should have been able to see.

Techie traced cables from basement to maternity ward and onto a roof, before a car crash revealed the problem

Never underestimate the helpfulness of users who see a lonely network cable end which "should obviously be plugged into something". Said network cable was there for a laptop user (back in the days when they weren't 2-a-penny), and the "something" was a spare port on a small switch in the corner of the office because the developer put too few connections in. Cue network falling over, and me getting sent to site when their new techs were unable to diagnose the problem.

Re: At my last place....

Not quite that drastic, but a few years ago we had an optical link with a client, and I had enough time spare to be playing with Nagios and Cacti. So naturally enough, I started collecting link stats from the optical units. When you looked at the graphs, there was a clear diurnal variation in signal strength - but I was never able to pin it down to 1) sunlight into the face of one unit, or 2) tiny variation in unit aim due to thermal movement of the steel structure it was attached to.

Ship abandoned off Alaska after electric cars on board catch fire

Re: Tesla that burned so hot, it melted part of the road

I had a slightly different "issue" going back a while ...

Driving "sedately" (especially at little over tickover power when green-laning in an old Land Rover) and the engine gets a bit cold in the cylinders. So all that oil coming up past the "very worn" rings and bores doesn't get burned off - and you get a bit "blue smokey", for some reason, my mates all made be bring up the tail end !

Then get back to the tarmac, floor it (but bear in mind, it only had 40hp/ton when new with an unworn engine, so rice pudding skins were safe), and all that accumulated oil burns off ...

Cue an effect not dissimilar to a warship making smoke, when I was definitely made to bring up the rear - no-one would drive behind me.

Not that many years later, I gave that engine away as part of a deal for some work on a more powerful (or less unpowerful) turbo engine. The guy complained that he had to bore the cylinders out +40thou to clear the wear step.

Wanted: IT manager for UK government agency – £60k

Indeed, the Alpha scheme which is the only one anyone has been allowed to join for some years is just that - career average.

As said, each year you get a proportion of your salary added to what you'll get in pension - so the more you earn, the faster it goes up. Also each year, there's an uplift to the value to cater for inflation. So the more you earn, and the longer you are in, the more you get at the end of it. In a lot of ways it fairer than final salary - with final salary, if you manage a big boost in the last few years you get disproportionately more than you've earned, or if you pay stagnates (or even drops) you lose out. And if you take full or partial early retirement you get hit a lot harder in Alpha than people did under the old Classic scheme - I won't be able to afford partial early retirement like some of my older colleagues.

But that headline grabbing "employer contribution" is entirely imaginary - and that's where part of the problem lies. Just like National Insurance, it's a big Ponzi scheme that would be illegal if it weren't the government running it. When I get to retire (in [redacted, but down to digits on one hand now] years and [redacted] days, but I'm not counting) there won't be some pot of money funding my pension like my other private sector ones - it'll be those who are still working (some of whom haven't even got to working age yet) who will be paying it through their taxes. Like other areas of life, governments around the world (it's not just a UK issue) are seeing that as time goes on there'll be less people working and having to pay for more people who are retired - and that's what's driving retirement ages up, but politically that can't be done as fast as the beancounters are warning it has to be done.

And on that, reflect that only a generation or two ago, as a man you were statistically doing reasonably well to even reach 65. That retirement age has only gone up a few years (I get to go at 67, I believe it's 68 for anyone younger) and you are a bit unlucky if you don't live to at least a few years past that.

Ex-NSA bad-guy hunter listened to Scattered Spider's fake help-desk calls: 'Those guys are good'

Am I the only one who thinks part of the problem is "convenience" ?

I bet many of these orgs run a mainly MS estate, with everything tied into one AD. So compromise an account and you have access to everything in the entire estate that the account has access to - and if the account is an admin level account, all the better. Yes, SSO is really convenient, but against that, if systems are at least partially isolated, with different accounts for different systems, it provides some defence from criminals simply strolling around your entire estate without any further effort on their part needed.

I didn't know about that, really useful.

But something else to keep in mind - call from a different phone/line !

Some of the scammers have developed the trick of not hanging up, but spotting when you do. On a traditional landline, the connection stays up as long as the caller stays on - the recipient can hang up, pick up the phone again, and still be connected to the caller. So the scammer spots when you hang up, then plays dial tone until they hear dialled digits - at which point a different person can take over with "Thank you for calling $bank, how can I help you". A really good scammer might even have encouraged you to call back at the number on your card, and ask for Fred on extension 2345 - so the fake receptionist can "transfer" you to "Fred" and you think you really are talking to someone at the real bank.

Another idea just came to mind. If the scammer were able to infiltrate the banks (now almost certainly IP based) phone system and register as an extension, no one is going to check in their internal directory so see if there really is a Fred at extension 2345 - they'll just transfer the call to 2345 and put you through to the scammer.

Apple slams door on Fortnite's stateside iOS comeback

Re: Easy

Just stop using Apple. Arrogant control freak arsehole of a company.

A user can make that choice.

But if you are providing something, lets say ... a game. And if you want people to be able to buy it and play it, then you have to make it available to play on the devices the user actually have. So as a game vendor, you have a choice - either provide it for Apple devices, or cut out all Apple users from your potential customer base.

And of course, if you are brave enough to walk away from a substantial part of your market, you are then competing not just on "how good is your game" - but also on "how good is your game, and can you persuade people to play it instead of another one where their friends are also using it on Apple devices". There's a network effect - if a sizeable section of your friends are Apple users, as a group you are more likely to play games available on Apple as well as other platforms than you are to be playing different games on different platforms (and that's especially true if it's a networked game).

Re: More game playing on both sides

If your app *needs* to be updated that regularly your architecture is shit. Content updates should be applied through data, not executable code.

Just be aware that there are some things that are prohibited in Apple's ecosystem - one of them being "code that runs other code not part of the app" - such as emulators and the like. So it's quite likely that some parts of the game would be considered by Apple to fall under this and so cause it to be banned.

The answer to that is to roll up the code into a new version of the app and release that - which Apple has also blocked.

How sticky notes saved 'the single biggest digital program in the world'

Re: UC was a nightmare for many people who had to use it.

And you think Reform will do a better job of implementing a massive IT project ?

OK, so if implementing a massive new system like this - do you a) wait till every function is finished, then BOOM switch everything over and hope it works, or b) switch things over in stages so you can minimise the risks & problems ?

If your friend had both elements of ESA and PIP moved over at once, and it went wrong and left him with nothing for a bit, then you'd (I assume) be shouting about how bad that was. My assumption is that when they've switched over that part of ESA, they'll move onto another benefit, and eventually your friend will be on just UC.

Unending ransomware attacks are a symptom, not the sickness

Re: Would the "thumb down" please elaborate?

Not the downvoter, but ...

FOSS is not some magic silver bullet - it contains bugs or compromises as well (to pick just 2 random examples). OK, so the code is available for you to check - who actually does ? Who is actually capable of doing so ? Just switching to FOSS does not automatically make the whole system more secure.

If can make it more secure, if you do the gruntwork of maintaining an accurate software BoM (that means following the dependency trail right down to the last small component maintained by some bloke in Nebraska), and carefully checking the provenance of every item on it. But few projects can or will do all that.

And then, do you trust your tools ?

But yes, IF you do it properly, then FOSS can be more secure than closed proprietary software. But lets face it, the subject of the article is around the industry NOT doing the basics of security properly.

openSUSE deep sixes Deepin desktop over security stink

Re: Change....

Yellow Dog on an old G4

Now you've hit the nostalgia button

People find amazing ways to break computers. Cats are even more creative

Re: rotating cat

An explanation I read from a long time ago (no, no reference/citation) was that a falling cat needs time to orientate itself. Over short falls, it doesn't have this time so could land any way up and thus suffer injury. Above that, it has time so can land on it's feet which it is evolved to do. But (this one I heard from a vet) above a certain height, that's going to vary by cat, they are able to land but suffer lower jaw injuries as there's a limit to their ability to arrest the downward velocity - especially of the head.

I have seen (probably on the gogglebox) slow motion video of a falling cat - and it's amazing to see how it twists and turns it's body until it's the right way up.

UK's smaller broadband operators face tough road ahead, consolidation possible

Re: The telephone Network

Only 6 weeks ? You lucky b'stard !

Re: Regulator more like collaborator

I've just ditched PlusNet after many years (and was with Demon before ADSL came along). Since they became part of BT they just went downhill - picking up speed in the race to outdo BT on being rubbish. The final straw was having been part of their IPv6 trial over a decade ago, they still haven't managed it.

Microsoft gets twitchy over talk of Europe's tech independence

Re: I'll believe it when I see it.

In our world - complain and you are just ignored (really, I have, and have been ghosted).

As for "trialled for a year, button to click, blah, blah" - nah, in our case, software updates itself (annoyingly, they usually set the "will up date by" to the same day as it rolls out, so F-U if you happen to have a busy day and deadlines), then you find it's changed appearance. Outlook was just one example. Excel has changed appearance as well - no idea why, it's just changed.

OK, some of these changes are not that important - I hated Outlook before, I hate it now - but they are "annoying" changes that appear to have no function other than to further annoy the users who already hate the pile of manure foisted on us.

Re: Convincing users

exactly what does Microsoft offer that is novel or unique?

Integration.

You hand over some cash every month, you get a suite of stuff that appears to the user as if it works together. We all know it's a pile of rotting {insert derogatory terms here} underneath, all held together with gaffer tape and wishful thinking, but it does mostly "just work".

Yes, it's possible to replicate most of it, to some extent, but that's a heck of a lot of work. What you'll struggle to manage is seamless login across all devices & services, files transparently synced wherever you log in, files that multiple people can work on simultaneously (yes, that's actually quite a nifty feature in Excel when working with a shared file), and stuff like that.

Re: I'll believe it when I see it.

Except that ignores the "Oh, everything looks different this morning" effect of MS's approach to changing stuff when it feels like it regardless of what it's customersvictims think.

HMRC's Making Tax Digital scheme also made tax more expensive – by £300M

Re: When?

MTD (making tax digital) is about bringing in digital submission (from approved software, keying in data from your spreadsheet, or even bit of paper, isn't allowed) every quarter. The claim is that this will give HMRC more current information, and benefit businesses from having a better idea how things are going. I call male bovine manure on all their claims - I know how my rental business is going - if the tenant pays the rent, it's doing well, if they don't it's doing badly, if I have some big bills (e.g. for new windows or a boiler) it's not doing to well either.

The plan is that if you have a business then eventually you'll come under MTD - it started at the VAT threshold, and worked itself down, and (from memory) in a few years it'll get down to just something like 10K gross income from rent to trigger MTD.

It's interesting to read that there are outfits that will allow you to type in the figures like we'd do for the online SA form, and they'll submit it. Seems like money for old rope. I'm sure we'll soon have complaints like I've heard about from the USA where software suppliers went (still go ?) to great lengths to hide the free or low cost options while pushing everyone to expensive subscriptions - apparently everyone over there has to do an IRS return, our HMRC couldn't cope if everyone had to do a Self Assessment !

Re: Post

I send anything by recorded delivery - and then print out the PoD as it disappears from Royal Mail's site after a couple of months.

Also, by law, if you have proof of posting, then the item is deemed to have been delivered (next working day for first class, in 3 days for second class). We all know that's rubbish these days, but that's the presumption in law - and why they won't use anything other than standard post when sending things as it's up to you to prove you didn't receive something (at all, or by a certain date).

Re: Utter stupidity

Actually, that latter bit is not allowed as I read about it. What HMRC claims is that by forcing you to manage your business with proper accounting software you will make less mistakes - which you can probably interpret as "pay more tax". And by doing quarterly returns, you'll have a better view of your business - which is also ... rubbish.

But as I read them, you are explicitly not allowed to use "something else" and just copy the figures into a form as that's prone to mistakes - and if you believe that with a straight face, I've got a spare bridge to sell you.

For now. Under MTD (making tax digital) you'll have to do 5. 4 of them (the quarterly entries) will serve no purpose whatsoever, the 5th will be the 1 you do now.

Techie solved supposed software problem by waving his arms in the air

Re: I am surprised that a software dude...

Unless you work for MS, in which case you just change the industry standard to dark.

Re: I was called in ...

powered from different phases of a three phase supply... yeah... not good

YMMV depending where you are, but here in blighty it makes SFA difference - most large offices have stuff spread across multiple phases. The biggest risk is actually to maintenance people since it means that (for example) there may be 415V between two wires in the back of a multi-circuit light switch rather than just 240V. The earthing is shared, as is the neutral (but the neutral is considered a "live" connection anyway in terms of insulation etc. required by regulations).

What DOES matter on a large site is earth differentials - the bigger the site, the more "earth" at one point can differ from "earth" at a different point. Within one building it tends to be limited as they'll share a common MET (main earth terminal), but when you get to multiple buildings, they can have separate feeds from the incoming switchboard. So, within one building, a fault on a circuit will momentarily put voltage onto the earth for that circuits and also the MET - but as everything shares the same MET then that's not a problem. But when there's a fault in one building, all the (e.g.) computers in that with serial links into another building will see that MET voltage imposed onto the serial lines - and "poof", the magic smoke is let out.

For best results, have a lightning strike to ground close to the site - that creates massive voltage gradients, and allows the magic smoke to be let out of equipment within the one building as well. That's where (as mentioned) optical isolation is "a good idea".

It's also worth remembering that when lightning strikes, the rate of rise of voltage and current is so fast that thick cables become high impedances. So it's no good fitting a load of surge protectors - and having a bonding cable from them going to the MET at the other end of the building, the inductance will stop it doing much when lightning strikes.

Cook'd: Judge says Apple lied to court in Epic case, asks Feds to mull criminal charges

What you are missing is that Apple are wanting this fee from everyone - even people who do not want to use any of Apple's services. They put hard roadblocks in place to actively prevent vendors who want to do something else from not using Apple's services. That's what the legal action was about - the "you WILL use our services even if you don't want to and we'll charge you 30% for using something you don't want to use" aspect of the closed Apple ecosystem.

When the court declared this illegal, they employed malicious compliance - i.e. they appeared at first sight to comply with the order, but made it so difficult & expensive that in practice it's a pyrrhic victory. So the judge has looked at the evidence, and decided that Apple really were taking the urine - hence the strong language.