Posts by Doctor Syntax

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

Re: I had one of these at the time

"But being only 16 at the time, I was distracted by a girl carrying a bottle of cider and never quite got round to signing up to save humanity."

Wise decision. You had a better chance of achieving something.

Re: Cocking up personal data

"are you sure this isn't your address?"

It's blind assumption that anything coming up on the screen must be right.

I had something similar with a life insurance company. They must have entered DoBs all numerically, swapped day and month and the numpty on the other end of the phone insisted that I'd survived a couple of decades of marriage not knowing SWMBO's correct birthday.

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.

Is this the way the cookie wall crumbles? Dutch data watchdog says nee to take-it-or-leave-it consent

Re: I just surf privately now

I doubt they're worried. They'll have more domains tomorrow.

Re: Good

"Yes, I visited a local paper site and had to manually disable over 70 cookies in the preferences pane. There was no option to disable all."

You're missing the real issue here. You should have been offered the option to enable them individually.

Dear Britain's mast-fearing Nimbys: Do you want your phone to work or not?

Re: Stop making sense!

"they're likely to routinely be closer to other powerful sources (such as WiFi-routers)"

To say nothing of their own phones when they stick them next to their heads and, of course, the worse the path from phone to base station the more the power it puts out. Perhaps phones do affect brains one way or another.

"Backhaul is expensive, too."

This one always intrigued me: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.5494957,-1.9675032,3a,15y,58.25h,96.1t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sGSfPDHEKArHePtmHLEdwMg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en

As far as I can make out that little square dish (it used to be a round one) is the backhaul. It points directly at Holme Moss but from there the mast below the VHF antenna is below the horizon. I can only assume there's a matching dish right at the top above the big VHF cylinder.

And do they give the farm an internet connection off it?

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

If you're an employee it should still be worrying. Even if you got your cut it should be worrying when you're left carrying the can.

Re: Remind me

"I use the term allegedly as no one mentioned in any article ever saw his body."

Either way, he's not going to be able to sue you.

Re: Remind me

"most of them are far older"

And in far less suspicious circumstances.

"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.

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

RAF Northolt had occasional flights to & from N Ireland for ministers and senior London based staff. They were ad hoc based on the travel requirements of those people but anyone else travelling between the two was supposed to use any spare seat if there was a flight due. It tended to have effects such as arriving military side, Aldergove, car still parked at Belfast City.

I rolled up for one of these journeys to discover that the VIP had cancelled but the plane still had to return to Northolt. Along with me were some engineers from Wang who had a contract for WP kit with NIO. NIO weren't going to pay airline fares to them when there was space on the VIP flight. When we got to Northolt there was a slight confusion as the VIP needed to justify the flight wasn't on it. In the end I, a humble SSO, being the only NIO person involved, had to sign some sort of receipt for the aircraft - or maybe just the flight. I can't remember but I think the official car to central London was still available - ISTR the Wang guys leaving separately.

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.

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!

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.