Posts by Doctor Syntax

Sure, we've got a problem but we don't really want to spend any money on the tech guy you're sending to fix it

Re: Moving countries but no-one knew

"tthe manager who had sent me off in such a hurry had gone off on holiday"

Cause and effect.

"I'm going on holiday as from tonight so I'll spend the rest of the day without time to think properly making all the decisions I should have spent the last two weeks making and I'll screw them up." Seen it before. In fact it was the stress experienced from that at the hands of a client project manager that made me decide that once the current projects were done it was time to retire.

Re: Travelling to client sites

"3 days spent with the most awful jet lag"

Are you sure it was all jet lag? After all, you went to a Rugby match.

What happens when security devices are insecure? Choose the nuclear option

Re: government security advice

"Her Majesties Government's latest advice on cyber security. Keep your systems patched and all apps up to date recommend HMG."

That'll be the HMG all of whose websites appear to be in perpetual beta.

Tech security at Equifax was so diabolical, senators want to pass US laws making its incompetence illegal

Re: We don't need more regulation

"What we need is for actual real consequences for companies who are shown to be negligent."

Yes. It's called regulation.

For a company so removed from any situation where they don't interact directly with the people whose data they are collecting there's no chance for market forces to operate on them. In that case the only consequences that can happen are legal sanctions. You don't have legal sanctions imposed out of thin air just because it becomes obvious that someone did something bad or was negligent in some way, at least not in a free society. It requires that they have breached some specific legal restriction.

It makes no sense to call for "real consequences" and then say we don't need more regulation. If there are currently no real consequences for breaches like this it's a clear indication that more regulation is needed.

Sadly the continued existence of Facebook and the like shows that that market forces don't seem to have much influence even when there is direct interaction.

Re: Why would they do anything?

"Why bother?"

Because it's a regulatory requirement to operate. Or at least it should be. The article suggests that the message is finally getting through to legislators.

IT guy at US govt fraud watchdog stole 16 computers from... US govt fraud watchdog

"risk of purchasing duplicate or unneeded software,"

They make it sound like that happens by accident. How dare they belittle the efforts of software salespeople like that!

While this CEO may be stiff, his customers are rather stuffed: Quadriga wallets finally cracked open – nothing inside

"Quadriga wallets finally cracked open"

Password guessed as "So long suckers"?

The EY report also notes that the auditors have not found any formal financial records held by the company. To date, the outfit has been "unable to locate or provide any such records."

I don't suppose it had many employees but did none of them consider that a bit strange? Or even worrying?

Re: Remind me

"dunning-krugerrands"

Well played, sir.

Microsoft flings the Windows Calculator source at GitHub

Re: Working on that now!

"I suppose THAT could be ported to windows, if it hasn't been already..."

Very likely the KDE calculator already has.

Re: Is this a boiling frog experiment ?

If it is baroque make it swing. RIP Jaques Loussier.

Tim Apple. Larry Oracle. Ginni Layoffs: It works so why the heck not?

When people call Linus Linux he can tell them that's his surname.

UK's ICO event on targeted ads opens floor to the adtech industry: Anybody? No? Speak for 10 minutes. Hello?

Not speaking speaks volumes.

'Java 9, it did break some things,' Oracle bod admits to devs still clinging to version 8

"Unfortunately, The Register can't run an article that says 'Java now more free than ever'. People won't click on it."

Oh, go on. You know you want to.

Re: "little used apis"

"I can't even finish on a joke"

You could have moved the bit about everyone should be writing web apps down to the end.

Re: Updates

"But then the fskers in marketing decided that we should have big number changes because that is what sells, etc."

It might sell to manglement but to those who've had their fingers burned a few times it's a big warning sign.

Hipster whines at tech mag for using his pic to imply hipsters look the same, discovers pic was of an entirely different hipster

Re: Wow

"Neither is the haircut he and other bearded ones regularly get"

Spot the built-in assumption.

Re: Combined reply :)

"the snot catcher nose rings through the philtrum are even uglier especially on a girl."

So is a beard.

You won't get Huawei with this, America! Chinese giant sues US government over 'unconstitutional' ban

Re: I don't think that will happen

"I wonder if there is a possibility of a defamation suit though"

And not just in the US. As the US has been telling other countries they should forbid Huawei kit in their countries there should be a possibility of defamation in each of those countries.

Re: I don't think that will happen

"and by that default to American companies"

I'm sure Huawei will have an American registered subsidiary.

Uber won't face criminal charges after its robo-car killed woman crossing street

Re: Humans

"If this were a normal car the woman would still have died"

Prove it.

"They likely do not have the facilities to audit the code."

Why should they need to? Car did X. How it did X is irrelevant. The only thing to decide is whether doing X is illegal. What's more, if the driver/minder was a Uber employee Uber should share responsibility for any actions or inactions on their part.

Re: New???

" If the system incorrectly performs emergency breaking then you're very likely to end up with a car in the back of you "

Only if the car behind is too close in which case that's the car behind or its driver's responsibility (depending on whether the car behind was also "autonomous").

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

Re: Any chance.....

From your link:

‘When the mistake was identified in October 2015, we wrote to Mr Herbert to acknowledge the error and apologise.’

My mother taught me that saying sorry means you won't do it again. Home Office? Yea, right.

"Does the Home Office official"

And who might that be? After the shit hit the fan I suspect all the paperwork about it suffered the same fate as the cards themselves.

"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?

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.