Posts by fix

UK arrests five for selling 'dodgy' point of sale software

Re: designed and sold electronic sales suppression systems internationally

Maybe it's not looking for a Brexit angle in almost everything, instead it's because almost everything has been damaged by Brexit?

HMRC: Contractors, don't worry about IR35 reforms in private sector 'cos it all went so well in public sector

Re: Typical DoubleSpeak from the government.

You maths is not complete either

That jump to the 40% tax level at about 50k kicks in regardless of choosing the NI / Income tax or the CT / Dividend route.

Want to feel old? Aussie cyclist draws Nirvana baby in Strava on streets of Adelaide because Nevermind is 30

Re: 30 years ?

And such a shame that you have the total inability recognise a joke?

Unfortunately that's not something you get taught at school.

Tech contractor loses IR35 tribunal appeal: 'Right' to substitute didn't mean he could, say judges

Re: A couple of things here I'm surprised about

Is this the same entropy that ^^ above^^ was saying " I want too is not a mature arguement", now talking about mummies shoulder ?

Very mature.

Facial recog firm Clearview hit with complaints in France, Austria, Italy, Greece and the UK

Re: Clearview provides search services to law enforcement agencies

Unfortunately I can only down vote you once.

My privacy should be my choice.

Apple stung for $308m in battle over patent used in FairPlay DRM software

40 years, that's a Mickey Mouse attempt at hanging onto stuff, Disney have that way outclassed.

https://lucentem.com/2018/12/05/disney-vs-the-public-domain-how-mickey-mouse-continues-to-protect-his-copyright/

Ministry of Defence tells contractors not to answer certain UK census questions over security fears

Re: I wonder if they're hiring delivery drivers for the sorting office that serves CHR32?

Looks like it:

Ascension Island, Tristan da Cunha and Saint Helena all issue their own postage stamps, which provide a significant income. The three territories each have their own Royal Mail postal code:

Ascension Island: ASCN 1ZZ

Saint Helena: STHL 1ZZ

Tristan da Cunha: TDCU 1ZZ

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Helena,_Ascension_and_Tristan_da_Cunha

UK tax collector won't probe businesses for compliance with IR35 rules unless there's reason to suspect naughtiness

Re: What's that smell?

No, Tesco's have been supplying goods to you (and millions of others), not services, totally different ball game.

Re: What's that smell?

If you've been providing services to Bob's Bolts Ltd for 10 years straight then it's a pretty long stretch to say you're really a contractor.

Showering malware-laced laptops on UK schools is the wrong way to teach them about cybersecurity

Re: Government inquiry

Actually it's worth recognising the difference between the government ministers and the civil service at that point.

The Government will absolutely say 'lessons have been learnt' (again), no one at ministerial level will receive the slightest slap on the wrist, and civil servants trying to follow u-turn after u-turn will be blamed for the situation.

Nothing new.

CEST la vie: HMRC admits controversial IR35 status checker returns undecided verdict in nearly 20% of cases

Re: Ok, Ok.. can someone own up please?

That's probably why we have to pay for Professional Liability Insurance (amongst other things.)

Court orders encrypted email biz Tutanota to build a backdoor in user's mailbox, founder says 'this is absurd'

Re: Dear Courts. No. Go away.

The problem with your argument there is that the software was already written, and the requested emails encrypted BEFORE the legal request was made.

Perhaps you should add 4. Jump back in time to meet the NEW legal request.

UK Court of Appeal rebukes Home Office for exceeding its powers with bunkum 'national security' GSM gateway ban

Re: oh no

A pastime that's becoming increasingly attractive, glad I have a 90's bike with very little in the way of electronics to make the journey on.

UK tech supply chain in dark over Brexit preparations months ahead of final heave-ho

Re: Oven Ready Deal

Only if they are chlorinated oven ready turkeys :-(

Four years after Europe sorted this, America is still going around in circles on data privacy in stuffy hearings

Re: Ownership of personal data

I think that the personal freedom and responsibility approach would make sense IF you could personally decide not to share you data easily.

However the larger tech companies, and also some fairly unheard of tracking companies have gone to great lengths to prevent people from choosing not to share their data.

This goes from simple items like FB trackers on sites that are not FB, and track people that are not even FB users, to some analytical techniques that will try and ID a user that has browsed in private, with DNT enabled, and has clearly indicated that they wish not to be tracked. These techniques include trying to fingerprint the user from other browser details that are leaked, and even down to the way they move the mouse on the page.

https://www.cs.sjsu.edu/faculty/pollett/papers/shivanipaper.pdf

When data companies are trying this hard to break any attempt by the users to have their own privacy then personal freedom and responsibility have nothing to do with it.

That is why we need protection from these companies who will not, in the slightest, respect our personal freedom or choices.

Brit MPs vote down bid to delay IR35 reforms, press ahead with new tax rules for private-sector contractors

Re: Contractors already pay more tax

You've conveniently forgotten to allow for contractor expenses such as accountancy and insurance, and also an allowance for those between contract gaps etc. Apart from that nicely detailed maths, shame you've not included all the numbers.

And we now go live to Apple v Corellium, where the iTitan is still lobbing copyright fireballs at the virtual iPhone upstart

Re: I'm over the top

But they are not cutting into sales? They are not selling iDevices, they are letting people play with iOS, which is not something Apple sells?

With the 6T, OnePlus hopes to shed 'cheeky upstart' tag and launch assault on flagships

Re: No headphone jack

The downside of that £6 bit of tat from Amazon is that it will contain the cheapest, nastiest, noisiest DAC on the planet to hit that cost point.

I guess we've never met, as I am in the the 'niche' that uses a portable DAC / AMP (Fiio Q1 in my case), and it sounds soooooooo much better than that Amazon adaptor will.

MPs: Lack of technical skills for Brexit could create 'damaging, unmanageable muddle'

Public Sector/ IR35

No one seems to have mentioned Public SectorIT projects also being hampered by them being blanket declared within IR35 for any contract resource.

Many contractors I know will now longer consider Public Sector work if there is any Private Sector role also available that suits their skills.

Cassini probe's death dive to send data at just 27 kilobits per second

send data at *just* 27 kilobits per second

It's not that long since I would have been delighted if my USRobotics modem would be running at that speed from my house to the local ISP.

To be doing that from Saturn, with kit that has been up there for so long, is still a remarkable achievement.

All involved deserve a well earned beer!

Gov workers told their social posts are more believable than politicians' statements

1984

Minitrue is here ....

CMD.EXE gets first makeover in 20 years in new Windows 10 build

Brief ?

Now there is a blast from the past, got to be almost 20 years since I last used that!

Cheeky IT rival parks 'we're hiring' van outside 'vote Tory' firm Storm Technologies

@sabroni

How would he and his wife pay just 10% on a dividend of 1M each?

Dividends are paid from profit by the Ltd, so 20% Corporation Tax will have been paid before it can be a distributed as a dividend.

When the dividend is paid out, there is a 5K allowance, but after that a 7.5% dividend tax rate applies to the rest, and any amount above about 40K (presuming they have no salary at all) will still be hit for higher rate income tax as well.

Unless you know otherwise? (In which case please explain.)

Trump, Brexit, and Cambridge Analytica – not quite the dystopia you're looking for

'False' problem?

Not sure I'm seeing the problem the same way as others here :-(

It's certainly not (imo) rigging an election, that's done by fiddling with ballots, prevent certain groups from voting, or directly threatening groups to vote a specific way 'or else'

This is targeted advertising, finding a group of people who are likely to be susceptible to a certain message and then giving them that message.

This method is available to every political party and leaning, so all can use it to deliver their message to the groups they think will appreciate it most.

The article infers that it's a cheap way to get a message across, so in fact you could argue that it levels the playing field, it's not just the player with the most advertising pounds that wins any more.

Whatever your personal feelings on both the Trump and Brexit result, surely the smaller parties having access to spread their message as readily as a larger well funded party is a good thing?

UCLA shooter: I killed my prof over code theft

Re: @Paul Crawford re: guns.

The problem I have with your argument is that in all the examples you give a tool is being mis-used to do someone harm, and also it needs a much closer and physical approach to achieve that harm, which then entails the risk of losing a physical fight.

A Gun is the only object in your list that is expressly designed to do another person harm whilst still staying at a safe distance yourself, thus making it a lot easier to harm someone else without entailing any personal risk.

If someone had to use one of the alternative methods you list, then a lot of potentials killers would think twice and back off.

That's the real problem with guns, it makes it too easy for a coward to intimidate or kill someone that they won't take on face to face.

Ada Lovelace Day: Meet the 6 women who gave you the 'computer'

Re: There's one very important woman missing from that list.

Same here, have an upvote ;-)

Must try HARDER, infosec lads: We're RUBBISH at killing ZOMBIES

Re: Sueball

You forgot your troll icon !

INVASION of the UNDEAD ANDROIDS: Hackers can pwn 'nearly all' devices

Re: Mmm

For a very neat reason :-)

The XBMC remote has the facility to put received text messages up as a banner on the XBMC device that your mobile is remotely controlling ..... couldn't do that if it was unable to read them first on the phone.

US Navy coughs $34.5m for hyper-kill railgun that DOESN'T self-destruct

Re: Cooling

Salt water should not be a problem.

You don't pump the sea-water directly through the weapon, you would use some other liquid that transfers heat well and doesn't cause corrosion, and pump that through a nice big heat sink, say the hull ?

Hitch climate tax to the actual climate, says top economist

No Chance.

Not a chance of that happening!

It's far too sensible, and can't be swayed / abused, since it would be linked to a measurable, verifiable quantity.

No-one in government or the climate business is going to want something that transparent.

Opera joins Google/Apple in-crowd with shift to WebKit and Chromium

@scrote

Having one rendering engine does have advantages though, at the moment as a web dev you end up writing a page that has to try it's best to play happily with several different engines, removing that complexity would make web development faster / cheaper.

EDF: We'll raise bills 11% - but only 2% is due to energy costs!

None-Oil Options

But none of this extra funding gained by hiking the energy cost is going towards Nuclear :-( In this country at least.

Where are all the decent handheld scribbling tools?

Transformer

No, not a robot in disguise!

Asus, with detachable keyboard, a tablet when you want it, a laptop when you want a keyboard, and with the keyboard, excellent battery life.