Posts by Doctor Syntax

So Windrush happened, and yet UK Home Office immigration data still has 'appalling defects'

"no ID except a paper birth certificate which proves nothing. That's it. How do they prove who they are?"

This goes to the heart of the comment I made about Verify. Has there been any thought given to the meaning of "identity"?

Re: Umm..

"the most incompetant Home Secretary in recorded history becomes PM"

Shall we say the most incompetent up to then? I wouldn't like to decide between her and her successor.

"Ithe Home Office has acknowledged defects in both the system and data. It claimed that its new system, Atlas, will resolve these problems"

What data? They threw the relevant data away. How does a new system deal with that?

You have the right to remain on-prem, but you should really head for the cloud, UK plod told

Fair do's

We call out the police often enough for unlawful data retention etc. Let's give them credit for doing the right thing by being at least cautious here. It might be, of course, caution about the risk of what happens when there's a leak from the traditional misconfigured AWS backup of stuff they shouldn't even be holding.

Re: "But are they competent enough?"

"2) You can outsource the installation and management of the systems - but keep ownership of it, and avoid that sensitive citizens' data are stored by commercial entities"

You also have to hire people with the right skills to manage the outsourcers. The evidence is that those skills are lacking. They may well be the skills needed to make an informed choice between both your options.

Re: Seems the right call

"Moving to the public cloud can be a very costly mistake and it will take years to clean up the mess when the SHTF."

Just think of the "Who, me?".

Canada has lunar dreams as Germany worries about what lies beneath

Re: Actually

And self-hammering sounds like how the drunk got into that state.

5G is 'ready' once you redefine 'ready'... and then redefine 'reality'

Never mind defining "ready" and "reality", has 5G been defined yet?

IR35 contractor tax reforms crawl closer to UK private sector with second consultation

Here's an alternative model.

Income tax is paid on what the engager pays.

Permanence of job and all benefits such as entitlement to holiday pay, sick pay etc. are treated as benefits in kind and subject to additional taxation.

The tax take of the benefits in kind allows the percentages of the various income tax bands to be substantially lowered.

The net outcome could be the same as now for freelancers and permies but the permie tax inspectors can then understand that they and the freelancer are paying the same tax on money received and the extra tax they, the tax inspectors pay is due to the things they get and the freelancer doesn't.

Re: Downvoters, get ready ....

"it's somehow morphed into trying to catch out genuine contractors."

I don't think it was ever any other intent. Or rather, in IR/HMRCs view there never was such a thing as a genuine contractor.

Re: Have I misread this?

No, but you missed this (and so did I):

"Agency pays worker's PSC"

This is HMRC's obfuscation. PSC in HMRC-speak is Personal Service Company. It could, of course be short for Professional Services Company and it would always be better to spell it out fully in this way. Personal service is what HMRC are trying to establish so it's wise not to fall into their trap.

Adding it onto "worker's" further clouds the issue it's a company that's probably at least partly owned by the worker but there might be other shares involved. But why not call it the worker's employer? This captures the other side of the arrangement, the one HMRC doesn't like. It's the company that's actually responsible for paying the worker's salary, including sick pay and everything else.

Re: Tax loss for HMRC

"If I charge the client £30k in VAT, and they claim that back from HMRC"

You do realise, don't you, that your company can reclaim VAT on any business expenditure?

And, in line with my comment to Lee, get your terminology right. You don't charge the client anything, Your company does. Distinguish between yourself and your company. HMRC tries its hardest to confuse that issue because the entirety of IR35 is based on such confusion. Don't fall into their trap.

Re: I love the spectacularly timing of it all

Correct but also irrelevant. That's why I wrote "shares". This is for IR35 purposes which, in the context, is what the OP was asking about. If you own too great a proportion of the shares in the contracting company HMRC will attempt to deem you an employee of the client.

Re: I love the spectacularly timing of it all

"contractors are forced to take everything as 'pay' and not allowed to put aside money in their companies for sick leave, holidays, etc."

Unless things have changed from my day the weasel word "deemed" was used. They're deemed to take everything as pay for purposes of taxation but they can leave however much of the post-tax in the company as they want to pay sick leave etc. Yup, that makes perfect sense if you're a weasel.

Re: Companies will take the easy & safe choices

I always reckoned when IR35 was introduced we should have had a whip-round and contributed a Bernie to Labour. The advantage of a Bernie, of course, was that eventually you got it refunded.

Re: I love the spectacularly timing of it all

"Not sure you're getting the concept of risk."

I read that post as explaining - correctly - how the freelancing company manages the risk. The well managed freelancing company deals with the risk not by sharing it nor by insuring it (as you point out, that's not possible for the typical single consultant company) but by putting money aside to continue paying its employee when there are no billable hours, either by being sick, on holiday or being on the bench.

Right from the start or IR 35 this has been misunderstood. Primarolo described it as "treating their companies as money boxes". Well, a moneybox is where money's saved against a rainy day. It's the means by which the company stays solvent. It is good management.

In fact, I'd suggest it's a good test of whether the company is being run as a genuine company; if it's being managed prudently in this way it's the genuine article, if it's a direct conduit through which the money travels from client to worker scarcely touching the sides then IR35 might be appropriate.

There's also a corollary. If we add an expectation that the worker will be paid NMW or living wage and build up reserves then the rate must be some margin above that. If the client pays less than that then they have an employee. Not a deemed employee catching the rough from both sides. A genuine on the books employee, benefits such as holiday pay, sick pay, redundancy the lot paid by the client, PAYE handled by the client, employer's NI paid by the client.

From the engager's point of view they then can't get away with shoving off the provision of benefits and pay rock-bottom rates: either they have a company providing services at a reasonable rate or thay have an employee. In fact it was dealing with the sort of abuses that we see so much of now that was a paper-thin excuse for IR35.

Re: I love the spectacularly timing of it all

Maybe it's time to investigate what the minimum number of people is to form a "company"*, set that up as a collective and proceed as before. From experience it also seriously cuts down on the costs of a better, collective liability insurance.

* Why the quotes. If it's registered at Companies House it's a company, if it isn't it isn't.

If you mean to be big enough to be outside the scope of IR35 ISTR that 20% holding of shares was the critical factor which implies a five person company but I'm not sure whether it was 20% or less or less than 20%. If some or all the shares were held by a spouse that would probably be considered a beneficial holding although there'd be scope for that being argued if the spouse were also providing billable time.

Re: Not again!

"they are all employing you, contract or not."

Not in this context. "Employ" has a specific meaning. It means that the person employed is an employee. Even if you start thinking in a more generic way such as "We employed a waterfall development approach" as soon as it's a person you're thinking about you're probably half way to coming to the narrow conclusion without even giving the matter due consideration. Worst of all, in any sort of tax investigation if you use the term in the loose sense to an inspector or a tribunal it'll be leapt on and taken literally.

To help you understand lets say ClientCo has 50 workers bodyshopped in by BigCo amd one worker bodyshopped in by LittleCo which he happens to own? Would you say the 50 are employed by ClientCo? Say the project was wound down and there's only one worker now bodyshopped inby BigCo; would you say they were employed by ClientCo? If BigCo's employee isn't employed by ClientCo why is LittleCo's employee?

Not again!

"Broadly, IR35 reforms shift responsibility for determining tax status from the employee to the employer."

The entire basis of IR35 is determination of employment status. If you start by deciding that the client is an employer you've prejudged the whole thing.

Is it too much to ask that el Reg uses status-neutral terminology such as "engager"?

Silent Merc, holy e-car... What is that terrible sound?

Re: Whatever they do, it will make sod all difference

"their ability to turn on their heel and walk straight into the road is remarkable."

And cyclists never do the equivalent of this?

"Nearly all modern EV/PHEVs typically come with pedestrian/cyclist sensors to mitigate frontal impacts too."

They only mitigate them if they're switched on. Not that Uber were to blame. Not at all. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47468391

Adi Shamir visa snub: US govt slammed after the S in RSA blocked from his own RSA conf

Re: So where would they move it to?

"Frankly I can't imagine why anyone would try to organise an international event in the USA nowadays."

Given the previous reports of problems getting travel to such events (maybe even to this one) in previous years I'm surprised they even chose the US this year.

You. Shall. Not. Pass... word: Soon, you may be logging into websites using just your phone, face, fingerprint or token

Re: The difference between something like this fob and the yale-type key that I use to open my door

"From the outside, it could look identical to a Yale-type lock"

Except for the need for an electrical supply. Even if it has no wires and no batteries the solar panel might be a clue.

The real problem with what's commonly meant by "Yale-type" locks* is a lock that takes a key on the outside and has a simple knob on the inside. It holds the door closed but if there's a glass panel near the lock, either in the door or beside it don't regard the door as locked. Just because a door looks locked it doesn't mean it is.

In the present context consider the screen saver. If the login requires 2FA because password isn't enough have you remembered to require 2FA to unlock the screen-saver? And have you then required the H/W device to be removed after login to prevent it being left in place when the screen-saver is in operation?

* Yale also make multi-lever deadlocks.

"Looking ahead, you'll get to worry about losing your physical hardware key rather than losing the secrecy protecting your passwords through a poorly secured server."

You'll also have to worry about the H/W key failing. You'll have to hope that the next computer, phone or whatever still has the slot that your key requires. It's not as if manufacturers would ever decide to eliminate connectors is it? And what happens when you're sitting on the end of a KVM switch with only a keyboard and mouse?

SPOILER alert, literally: Intel CPUs afflicted with simple data-spewing spec-exec vulnerability

Re: I'm disappointed

Make deadlines realistic.

Re: It's interesting...

"We now run our own code on other people's computers, and other people run their code on our computers - with or without our permission."

And that code gets increasingly bloated.

UK tech has a month left to bare gender pay gaps, but less than a fifth of firms have ponied up

Re: Sewage Disposal

"I quickly realised that it was a sh!t job"

By definition.

Re: Love the handle, BTW Mr Longshaft

"There's something about the tech industry that really wakes people up to the fact that it's how good you are at your job and what you can do, rather than who you are and what you pretend that you can do."

It doesn't wake the bean-counters up to that.

Re: This is the "pay gap" that ignores the job title right?

"It would be really nice if I was paid as much as my wife who works less hours than me in a week."

But is she an engineer or someone who deals with serious stuff like HR or accounts?

Ah, this military GPS system looks shoddy but expensive. Shall we try to break it?

Re: Sorry, but...

"Have you ever met service personnel?"

A few NCOs who were ex-IED displosal. Great guys.

Also been in a few situations where an armed escort was necessary.

OTOH my last week in forensic science started with 2 days flying over to Fort George to give evidence against a squaddie who'd broken into the NAAFI. They thought they were being considerate with the extra day but I could have done with that day in the office finishing off my writing up. It also reminded me that it's unwise to go drinking with Army sergeants, especially SIB.

That's a nice ski speaker you've got there. Shame if it got pwned

Re: Unpleasantly surprised

"I hate to think what other issues the site also has"

Has Bobby Tables bought a set?

Re: Because skiing or snowboarding aren't dangerous enough already?

"4% of turnover sounds quite expensive."

And not acting when you discover the problem is the sort of action that gets pushed into the top tier. It's also possible that they're not a big enough company to be 4%ers. The flat rate can be a lot more than 4% for small businesses if it ever gets applied.

Two in five 'AI startups' essentially have no AI, mega-survey of nearly 3,000 upstarts finds

Re: Who needs stuff?

"Well if you can be a ferry company without any ferries then why can't you be an AI company without AI?"

There's such a thing as leasing. I wonder how many ferry companies actually running ferry services are without ferries on this basis. Quite a few, I suspect. Ditto airlines without aircraft.

I wonder if this is a successful ploy by the ERG made credible by Grayling's involvement. No, of course we won't need extra ferry sailings and extra ports to handle them; it's all going swimmingly.

"Modern marketing represents a sweet-spot for AI"

They do seem made for each other. One way or another...

UK.gov's Verify has 'significantly' missed every target, groans spending watchdog

Re: GDS were slightly overambitious

And ensure all the white space is Government approved white space?

Re: What a surprise!

"For the people who designed the system, registering is easy"

They are born administrators who horde, classify and can instantly lay their hands on any piece of paper they need. Archaeologists classify people according to their material culture. These people are the Chitty People.

Re: The default way for people to prove their identity

"Banks don't want to deal with people who have no money and live in areas where nobody has any money."

People, even with money, don't like having no banks where they live. It hasn't stopped the banks closing branches.

"HMRC said it didn't adopt Verify because the system couldn't deal with business customers or people acting on behalf of someone else"

About as clear an indication as you can get to a lack of requirements gathering.

I wonder if they even asked themselves "what's identity?".

When 2FA means sweet FA privacy: Facebook admits it slurps mobe numbers for more than just profile security

Re: So whats the solution?

"So what are my options?"

Refuse to do business with most of them. You don't need to set up an account if you walk into a shop to buy something. Why should you need to set up an account to make a one-off or occasional purchase online? Just set up accounts when it makes sense.

Re: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

"This title is currently not avaiable for purchase"

As per a considerable percentage of "hits" from Amazon searches.

"I've never put any address details or phone details in"

I don't think you need to.

Re: Possibly Microsoft too

"Now who did the vendor get my number from?"

Possibly from another vendor (not necessarily on ebay) to whom you gave your number in the past. DHL the match it up with your address.

Given that delivery drivers frequently have problems reading a house name written in 6" high letters beside the gate I find it useful that that happens.

Re: "better quality than the witless drivel vomited out by commercial radio?"

here radio ads have to be smart enough to keep the listener "engaged"

If I find that all ads are smart enough to result in the radio being flipped over to a Beeb programme, usually Radio 3.

Re: And they have all those phonebooks nice data anyway....

I don't know where you're based but here in the UK the current DPA, which enforces as much of GDPR as HMG decides it can't avoid, is actually the third (unless I missed one along the way). It tightens things up and increases penalties but the principles of data protection have been in place in legislation since the 1980s. I assume thinks are much the same for the older members of the EU and also for the new members but possibly with a shorter time-frame.

"Judging by the downvotes, in case people have misunderstood that, these are names of android apps which allow access to Facebook without the Facebook apps' tentacles in your phone."

More likely they understood that. The downvotes would have been for the notion of using Facebook at all.

Re: The 2FA isn't really optional anymore either

People really shouldn't don't have to engage in spycraft to stay in touch with their family though.

Just use the phone to talk to the family instead of using it as a burner to install FB. Famlies kept in touch before Facebook existed and they'll still be able to do so after it disappears from the face of the Earth - which will happen as soon as people realise they don't really need it.

Hurrah for Apollo 9: It has been 50 years since 'nauts first took a Lunar Module out for a spin

Re: Robotics

"you'd have been regarded as nuts if you said that in 50 years we still wouldn't have walked on Mars"

Even more so if you'd said there'd been no visits to the moon since 1972.

Linux 5.0 is out except it's really 4.21 because Linus 'ran out of fingers and toes' to count on

"Well, as Windows fans will be well aware, 5.0 is ... the moment at which Microsoft abandoned such numbering for its server products. There is thankfully no sign of Torvalds adopting a similar approach with Linux."

I should think not. In the Unix world we're made of sterner stuff. 5.0 is quite a modest version number.

Civil servants 'Sir Humphrey' their way through grilling on UK.gov's digital transformation

Not really Sir Humphrey standard.

When coming into government Hacker recalled Humphrey before a Committee and said he'd answered all his (Hacker's) questions. "I'm glad you thought so, Minister."

Official science: Massive asteroids are so difficult to destroy, Bruce Willis wouldn't stand a chance

“We used to believe that the larger the object, the more easily it would break, because bigger objects are more likely to have flaws,”

For a moment I hoped they were going to say they'd been up there tapping a sample with a hammer.

Disappointment - it's just another simulaton.