Posts by LucreLout

Amazing, cool, wow: Humans naturally use POSITIVE words, and that is GOOD

Re: Note to the first three commentards

"Mr Smith, the lab has delivered the results of your test in record time. Their service levels are astonighingly high and the quality of their results is unimpeachable. You, sir, are HIV positive."

All positive sounding words, but Mr Smiths life just got flushed down the crapper.

I know some pessimists and I know some optimists. The pessimists are happy for the wild eyed optimists to remain so; the optimists are unhappy that the miserable pessimists aren't more optimistic. Who's right?

World's mega-rich tax dodge exposed: Meet the HSBC IT bloke at the heart of damning leak

Re: Appropriate

Stealing someone's life savings is a very bad crime and is certainly extremely traumatic for the victim. When it's perpetrated by people in a position of trust, it's even worse

I agree completely. Thing is though, that taxes are levied upon money earned and owned by the target of that taxation. It is not stolen from others. This tax, were it definitively due, would not make a single penny difference to your tax rate: the scale of waste is unimaginable and this but a drop in that ocean.

Outright loss of my assets would be distressing, and I'm too old now to recover the lost ground. I'll take that everytime rather than harm come to my family.... so even though your point about harm is relevant, it is not of the same scale. Not even remotely. Hopefully you already know that.

Re: Appropriate

Maybe banks (and other companies) eventually will learn who actually holds the safe keys

That would be genuinely brilliant were it to happen, but sadly, I can't envisage a time when it will come to pass. This, absolutely will not bring forth that day.

Here in Italy banks create separate companies to hire and manage their IT people using the "metal and mechanical" workers contracts

Here in the UK they just outsource us all to India.

My professionalism is mine because it is immutable. The employer can't change it.

Re: Appropriate

Sometimes you know all you could do is talk to journalists or legal authorities... otherwise you would just get fired and with nothing in your hands to help yourself.

Had he done that you may have a point. Instead what he sought to do was hawk the loot to the highest bidder. That's just plain theft right there.

ETA: As I mentioned in another post, the defining difference is that as far as I'm aware Snowden made absolutely no effort to profit from his actions. That places him in a category well above this petty thief.

Re: Appropriate

I also take the view that embezzling billions can destroy lives as much as aggravated assault, rape and even murder.

Then your view is badly out of whack with reality and you should see someone about it. Seriously.

Your definition of tax avoidance, evasion, and embezzlement are wildly inaccurate too.

Re: Appropriate

"People like this give the industry a very bad name."

No, the industry gives itself a bad name.

I was referring to the IT industry. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

They may like to dance along the avoidance/evasion line, but to everyone else, it's just evasion.

The legal/illegal line you mean? It is an important distinction.

presumably he felt that the authorities would be unable to obtain the data with a warrant, because it would either be hidden, or deleted if such a warrant was presented

Not so. He would simply have cached his loot internally instead of externally, thus not violating anyones privacy. He may well turn out to be wrong and some of those whose details he has leaked may have complied fully with the law.

A warrant is only of use if the person/entity on the receiving end feels like obeying the law.

If he had enough access to the data to copy it externally he could have just as easily hidden an internal copy and given the location to law enforcement.

Your reasonong is just an excuse because you dislike tax avoidance. This was an invasion of privacy of the individuals about whom he stole the data. That's all it is. There's zero moral or legal justification for his actions.

Falciani is a petty criminal, nothing more; stealing from his employer and trying to profit by selling his stolen goods. He's just another data thief, no better or worse than any other. Trying to wrap it up in a bow and call it "preventing tax evasion" is missing the point: he had no requirement to sell the data to outside parties, or even move it beyond his corporate firewall. Just another thief trying to excuse his greed.

The data Snowden stole would have been of far greater value, but I've not read a single report of his trying to sell it (and that would have been real easy for the NSA to set up). I might disagree with his actions, but I certainly wouldn't call into question his belief that he was doing the right thing, and I'd certainly not suggest he profitted from it personally.

Re: Appropriate

There was no need to report his concerns to management

Professionalism requires that he follow the internal process first. It also requires that he not steal the client data. People like this give the industry a very bad name.

People use Twitter, Google, and Facebook to break the law every day. Would you feel it right and proper for someone in their IT department to arbitrarily decide, based upon zero legal expertise within your jursidiction, that you might be one of them, and steal all of your data and hawk it around the world?

He wasn't trying to prevent tax evasion, he was trying to profit from data theft. No better or worse than the card scammers and id fraudsters.

He needed to go right to the appropriate legal authorities.

If, after following the internal procedures, he felt the law was being broken, then yes, he should have gone to the authorities, but that does not excuse, justify, or even require that he steal the client data. The authorities can legally obtain it with a warrant.

execute people for large-scale financial crime

I hear ya... but first lets have the death penalty for murder, rape, and noncing... crimes that actually do real world harm, before we get to worrying about money. Or, you could take the civilised view that having the state murder people doesn't set the best of examples to society.

Re: I'm way too poor to avoid tax

I'm way too poor to avoid tax

It's illegal, for me.

Well, you're wrong about that. All avoidance is legal, it's only evasion that is not. From what I've read of the HSBC thing, that smells like evasion, but I'd need to see the paperwork.

Got a pension (public sector or defined contribution), an ISA, or use your tax free earnings allowance? That's all tax avoidance.

Tax evasion is illegal, tax avoidance by definition is not.

Basic minimum income is a BRILLIANT idea. Small problem: it doesn't work as planned

Re: Incentives for sterilization?

appeal to those lines of descent who expect to do forms of work that have now disappeared, and that raise people to think of bettering themselves as betraying their class

I don't understand this. I mean, I understand your message, but I don't understand why people do that to their kids.

Grandad was a miner. Grandad #2 worked the ships. Dad was a factory worker. I was raised with a few "rules" regarding work....

I was expected to do it until I retired. It wasn't going to be optional.

I was raised to respect the working man whatever their job. [1]

I was told education was the key to getting a better job than dad had (our familial industries no longer existing), and that I should get the best job I could and do it the best way I knew how.

My family is as working class as you'll find on these shores... back when the middle classes didn't confuse working class with welfare class. I work in the City. My family are rather happy about that.

[1] - The phrase was "working man" but it was understood this applied across both genders.

Re: @JS001 The devil is in the details

Which is nonsensical in an economy where work is scarce.

Where's that then? We've had several million East Europeans move here and find work despite English being their second language. So it would be the height of stupidity to imply that work in the UK is scarce. It's evidentially untrue.

Dissidents and dealers rejoice! Droid app hides your stash in plain sight

You are kidding. Right??

data would be encrypted using Facebook's Conceal API

It's Feb 9th, not Apr 1st.

It's not just me that sees this as vaguely lacking in credibility, is it?

Ross Ulbricht, in the library, with the laptop: Silk Road boss found GUILTY of all charges

Re: Idiots!

I have a longer post below on this, but I can't help thinking that a sensible person of high intelligence in today's IT world is going to be able to earn millions over a legal career

A lot of money over a working life, or a lot of money in a very short space of time while still young. The two have materially different worth due to the time value of money and frictional costs.

I can't help but feel that when the current wave of developers and security professionals get scrapped at 50ish, that there's going to be an explosion in this type of crime.

Re: Idiots!

He did take a lot of steps to stay anonymous - but to be caught he only had to mess up once.

That's why I suggested he should have got out at a couple of bar, rather than aiming at ever higher numbers.

Option 1) - Retire to somewhere sunny with a few million behind you, and while away your days with pretty girls on the beach.

Option 2) - Shoot for the moon and get caught, and spend most of your life in jail as someones bitch.

Seemed like an easy choice to me. How much is enough?

Idiots!

"The internet is not what it seems," Dratel said in his closing argument on Tuesday

Well, yeah, it certainly wasn't what it seemed to your client. For some inexplicable reason he thought he was anonymous.

True anonymity takes a lot of determined effort, research, and preparation. You can't just tick a box that says "Post anonymously?".

Having gone to all the trouble of being anonymous, surely it would be sensible to then not be greedy and run the site beyond the short term - just make your million or two, and then shut it down. Someone else will be along in a few hours to start another and they'll end up keeping law enforcement busy in your place.

'Tech' City hasn't got proper broadband and it's like BT doesn't CARE

Re: Good ol' Emily

Emily! Look! It's a white van, with a cross of St. George on it!

Wait... THIS is the same vaccuous empty suited trougher responsible for that? FFS. Labour needs to take a good long hard look at itself and make some changes.

No more political dynasties, no more ex-union leaders, no more career politicians, and abso-feckin-loutely no more lawyers!! You're supposed to be the party for the people, and you'll only be able to regain that by becoming the party OF the people, which, you're an awful long way away from being.

'Revenge p0rn' kingpin Kevin Bollaert faces 20 years in jail

The 'bankers' get nothing

LucreLouts fork of Godwins law:

The more posts a thread attracts, the greater the probability of a comparisson involving "the bankers".

You've just Louted the thread and lost any credibility the rest of your argument might once have had.

Re: People CAN change their minds.

My point is that at some point in the future - after we have split, my ex might regret posting the photos and want them taken down. Let's say I still have an active login to the site and can remove them or request them to be removed. Great.

BUT, what is my ex decides to go to the police and claim that I never had permission in the first place? With these laws, it's not just a matter of taking things down as I would then be accused of a serious crime and be facing jail. Who does the burden of proof fall on? You might say that it is up to me to prove that I have permission but seeing as this is crime - with serious penalties - shouldn't I be innocent until proven guilty?

Perhaps the simplest answer would be to ensure that any account registration and uploading is conducted in the name of the person being photographed, and using their PC and internet connection? The Shaggy defence then becomes both true, and viable, whatever else your ex suggests.

Re: He's getting off too easy

Besides, all the females I'm related to, even the in-laws, will come after you with serious weaponry, screw the legal system.

I'm sure many of the ladies gifted a starring role in his little hell circle have brothers, boyfriends, fathers etc who are perfectly capable of that kind of justice - the problem will have been finding the cowardly little beggars running the sites.

I've been around computers longer than a good number of El Reg readers have been breathing, and I'd have to do some serious research to be able to trace someone behind a .onion site. I might well simply be unable to do so. I'd bet most of the families involved simply couldn't find this joker or I have no doubt he'd have already met with the kind of justice you speak of.

I think his sad pathetic life alone in jail as someone's girlfriend will do him wonders.

Girlfriend might be putting it nicely... he's going to get passed around like a spliff at a party.

I have absolutely no sympathy for this A hole. He's just bottom-feeding scum.

Completely agree. The impact on his victims must have been devastating.

I'm not wholly convinced that 20 years is a reasonable sentance. I'd have expected some deterrent level jail time, but would have thought 10 years should get the message across. These, after all, are not hardened criminals, just inadequate little boys upset that some girls didn't like them. I'm sure the money element was secondary to the mysoginy.

I do hope the asshats submitting the content are getting a little nervous now though. There's hopefully scope for some sort of aiding and abetting type charges in the pipeline.

Accused Silk Road boss's lawyer insists he was just a fall guy

Re: Effective "a big boy did it and ran away" defenses require...

I hope he hasn't paid his lawyer very much. He'd hardly have had a worse outcome had he literally employed the Chewbacca defence.

Look out - it's a Goober! Google's über-Uber robo apptaxi ploy

Re: I'd be more shocked

People will still own their own and in fact will own more as people who can't drive will be able to use one.

I'll buy one, IF they ever work (as in it literally drives itself without me at the controls). My 3 hour 15 minute a day commute would suddenly become productive, and at a price point of say £20k, represents only the next 3 or 4 years season ticket.

Summoning one is unlikely to be cost effective for 80ish miles per day five days per week.

What it will do is kill off taxi drivers, truck drivers and car park attendants.

Train drivers too. There's no way to keep all that infrastructure running when people can pay about the same to be driven to work in a guaranteed seat, which is clean, air conditioned, and always on time. That's quite without the notion of changing public transport type several times on a convoluted route pre-determined by the public transport planners.

Depending on the flexibility of large employers, it could ameliorate rush hour a little, as with onboard wifi, I could work on my way to work, so set off a little later. Worst case I use the time to sleep, study, or relax in front of a movie.

I'll still keep my manual cars for fun driving, but commuting into London by car just isn't fun. And it's not a lot better on the train/tube.

Obama's budget packs HUGE tax breaks for poor widdle tech giants

Re: Implement a 'Stagnation' tax

If the various governments weren't gagging for cash and could afford to wait longer, they could implement a tax that ticks upward by (say) 1% for each year profits sit in an offshore location doing nothing.

The first issue here is, as you say, governments are gagging for cash. The second issue is that they have no claim, legal, moral, or otherwise, on that money unless & until it is repatriated to their jurisdiction.

If they had the funds to stand their ground, I'd be interested to see what the big corporates did.

Simple, they'd relocate their HQ off shore too and pay zero tax to the country trying to tax them too hard.

Governments of all colours are going to have to get used to the idea that they need to produce a lot more output with a lot less input. Civil servants need to take the idea to heart, as do councils, and start waking up to the new relaity. There's no money tree, and people have hit the limit of what they are willing to pay, as have corporations.

Whether you want to be or not, your country is in a global competition for corporate tax revenues. You can't just take ever more from them because you want a new train set, or to buy more votes with larger welfare handouts. They'll just move and leave you with 100% of nothing.

Re: highway fund, hell no

Whilst conceptually simple, there is the unresolved problem that governments and their civil administrations everywhere are formed of the dishonest and the retarded, meaning that running a balanced budget has a probability similar to that of hell freezing over.

Harsh, but completely fair.

Re: hmm

Get together with all the other countries that these big corporations are using tax rules to profit shift their money around before slotting it into a bank in a tax haven somewhere and charge those corporations with tax evasion, present the banks with various warrants and seize the money from the tax haven and spread it around the countries who are owed billions in taxes.

Your first problem is that no tax is owed. The money is where it is entirely legally, and it has all required taxes paid upon it.

Your second problem, is that soverign nations won't like other nations seizing their wealth, which is legally resident there, in compliance with all international laws.

Your third problem is that you don't seem to comprehend the difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion. One is legal, sensible, and desirable, the other is not. You'll note that there is no moral component to avoidance.

Chipotle insider trading: Disproving the efficient markets hypothesis

Re: Oxfam

To simplify my previous post:

Piketty argues that if r > g eventually g will be prementantly below r. The rich will always become richer and the poor unable to catch up.

He's quite obviously wrong, for several reasons, though that doesn't mean I disagree that the rich will get richer. They will. But so will the poor. I'd rather be poor now than rich 200 years ago. Poor 200 years from now will look like a lottery win by comparison to that.

So why is Piketty definitively wrong?

r > g isn't half as relevant as the fact that (r+g) > g.

Any public sector worker earning more than 25k will accrue a pension that will derive an income greater than minimum wage, thus making it impossible for those on minimum wage to catch up even if they invest all of their income and the public sector staffer spends all of theirs.

In essence, the game is over before it starts, as those at the bottom must be left behind for as long as we have investments or savings of any type. They will, however, be dragged along at a slower pace, with welfare ensuring that those falling behind today live a lifestyle that was beyond even the richest 200 years previous.

Re: non sequitur

Mental exercise - what if, over a decade, all social programs were phased out, all tax rates were lowered proportional by the amount spent on them, and replaced with mandatory donations to charities of the taxpayer's choosing in the same portion of income.

There'd be lots of starving former diversity co-ordinators roaming the streets. Other than that, I'd imagine things like ex-servicemen would receive significantly enhanced treatment, and stuff like left wing pressure groups would see funding shortfalls (lots of environmental groups, anti-car / smoking lobbies are propped up with public funds: See Brake for a citation).

Re: Oxfam

Piketty argues that ...

I'm going to be polite and assume you're citing Piketty without having actually read his text. So many of the left have taken this book and ran with it as though it were a previously undiscovered work of Marx; never having read it, much less understood it, and repeating half baked exptrapolations from the Guardian (which regular readers of this site really ought to know isn't a good idea, given it's somewhat lax approach to journalistic integrity vs agendas and the willfully ignorant repetition of same).

Piketty is widely viewed as flawed, having in essence started with his conclusion, then sought facts with which to bolster his view. I forget the author, but there is an expression for this type of work - "Statistics are used much like a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination". That's quite aside from his numbers not adding up, which may most politely be viewed as a basic error rather than an intentional deception.

Re: Efficient Markets Hypothesis ...

At this point, someone might be tempted to ask how come stock options traders make or lose money, given that they all price their options with Black-Scholes.

At this point someone more cynical than I might mention the book "When genius failed" regarding events at LTCM, and someone truly cynical might suggest looking at the senior staff roster of said company.

They also might mention that Black-Scholes is the least worst way of pricing an option, rather than being a flawless calculation. Sort of like VaR calculations, or many others used in the finance industry.

Can't afford a BMW or Roller? Just HACK its doors open!

Re: Lunacy

If the insurance was pushed up a staggering amount for cars like this, that can be stolen *easily* by someone with a £50 OBDII bit of kit, people would stop buying them as the premiums would be so high.

That's exactly what happened with the old Escort / Sierra Cossie. So trivial to steal that people could no longer get insurance (well, not up north anyway) which forced the manufacturers to start taking the issue seriously.

The same thing will happen this time around. BMW seem to be leading the charge, being vulnerable to literally every major vehicle related exploit of the past few years. And this after they spent almost 2 years denying there actually was a problem.

UK official LOSES Mark Duggan shooting discs IN THE POST

Lessons will not be learned

I can confidently predict that absolutely nothing of consequence will happen to anyone in regard to this loss. If, and let us not prejudge the quality of the coverup before it is completed, the data was not encrypted then people must be sacked and told to find careers outside of the public sector.

If the public sector cannot be trusted with the data they demand from us, and all evidence available shows that they cannot, and they are unwilling to take professional responsibility for their lack of basic competence, then we must enshrine in law a new criminal offence. Losses of sensitive data should ordinarily result in convictions and jail time. We are, after all, compelled to provide this data, so it's not like we can simply use another provider.

Google forced to – wah! – OBEY the LAW with privacy policy tweaks

Maybe the wording will be slightly different but I doubt they outline exactly what they do with it otherwise people could be horrified.

I don't disagree, but I think some people, who like myself, have a casual interest in Big Data (tm), would be absolutely amazed and fascinated by what they do with it. I might even be willing to give out more data than I do now depending on how intrusive I found their processing.

Privacy is good. So is convenience. If I knew that Goog would do nothing with my location data other than things I approved of, and a little adveritise as that is their raison d'etre, then I might give them access to it and let them make my life more convenient.

At the moment, Goog (and others) behave as if they have something to hide because they are ashamed of what they do with our data. Sort of makes them hard to trust with still more of it.

Does Big Tech hire white boys ahead of more skilled black people and/or women?

Re: Jesus wept! @sabroni

See, it's racists like you that ARE the problem.

Re: Just wait until YOU are classed as TOO SKILLED (read: too old)

I spent 2.5 years applying to jobs, and was 55 when I started.

Yes, it's one of those things that makes me glad my government keep pushing back the retirement age. The idea that we can all just work longer is ok, provided there are actual opportunities to do so.

In the IT dept where I work we have published stats for number of women, number of ethnic minroties, number of gay or transgender people, etc etc. The one thing we don't have any metric for is the number of coal face staff (coders, sysadmins etc) over 50.

I really don't relish the idea of spending 5-10 years on the scrap heap before I can take my private pension that I paid for. I also don't see how watching Dad fail to land a job despite having state of the art skills and a whole career full of experience is going to encourage my kids into coding. Is anyone from the government listening?!

Paris because some careers last a lot longer than anyone expected.

20 years, near enough...

... that I've been working in the industry, and 30 that I've been coding. In all of that time, I've never seen a single case of racism or sexism relating to hiring other than a preference to hire non-whites and women because it plays to the diversity stats.

What I have seen at a variety of companies, is barely disgused ageism, and several cases where the interviewers have remarked that a candidate is "too old to be current". Seemingly, the fact that the grey haired 40 something had been doing the job commercially longer than the fetus interviewing him had been alive counted for nothing. Experience is not a bar to learning or to staying up to date, but a lack of experience is likely to retard the pace said fetus can aquire and make appropriate use of new skills.

SOLID is just the same in C# or Java as it was in C++. An observer pattern is the same basic construct in any language. Good GUI design principles are more or less identical now that they're called Ux than they were when they were called HCI. Once you've a couple of decades coding, picking up a different toolset or technique is childsplay. I needed to learn to write Android apps, so needed to learn some Java first. 4 months on, I won't pretend my Java is world class, but it is better code than any of my colleagues with fewer than 5 to 7 years experience are turning out, and my Android skills are progressing at pace.

Wikileaks: We DO NOT approve of OUR secret stuff being LEAKED

Dear Mr Assange

Nobody cares!! You're not relevant anymore. Snowden showed us what a revelation is in terms of leaking files, the best you've managed is to get Brad Manning locked up forever and yourself confined to a couch until you realise you're already in jail, and go face your rape charges. That is all.

Anyone anywhere engaging in any communication of any form that you are not happy for the authorities to read should learn to use encryption, anonymous remailers, secure service providers (Gmail. Really??), and then assume your privacy is compromised anyway.

Cubans defy government's home internet ban with secret home-made network

Re: A matter of time

I'd like to tour the island and see the birds and the city of Matanzas, but I'm too old to take chances with our State Dept.

Perhaps you should view yourself as too old to wait for political intransigence and ineptitude?

Cuba is a fantastic country, populated in the main by wonderful people, and is well worth a visit; especially before anything changes. If you go, pay a visit to the museum of the revolution: you'll still only get one side of the argument, but it will be the opposite side to that with which you grew up (it was for me anyway), and any debate can only truly be said to be settled once both viewpoints are understood.

Re: A matter of time

a communist nation less than 100 miles from the U.S., that has outlasted 9 presidential administrations is an embarrassment of a high order. Drug-cartel-co-opted "democracies," si, commie nations, no.

The experience of Hong Kong SAR and mainland China would seem to show that the best way to reform communism is to expose the people living under it to a little capitalism. You can't do that with the sanctions in place around Cuba.

The current Cuba administration are dying, literally. Having so successfully eliminated any political opposition, including from within their own party, the Castro family & friends have scant choice for people to take over from them at the end of their days. Change will come soon, and when it begins it will move far quicker than most expect.

Cuba won't become another American state, but it should become a major and strategic trading partner. The politics of the past generations should die with them.

Re: No wonder Obama wants to thaw relations

Cuba wouldn't be worth it to build a full cellular network; most of the people are poor

The people are poor because of the sanctions that see very little imported. An end to economic sanctions would see the wealth of the Cuban people soar alomst overnight.

Sure, there are two sides to every story, more when you include both sets of intelligence services, so you can view the sanctions as justified or not depending on what you believe. I personally believe the sanctions are there mostly because Cuba under Castro declined to honour the notes Batista had just swapped for dollars in Florida, seeing as how he stole them from Cuba on his way out. If that belief is correct, then the economic potential for ending sanctions and signing free trade agreements between NAFTA and Cuba would likely over shadow the original loss. Win, win - regardless of politics.

Jellybean upgrade too hard for Choc Factory, but not for YOU

I could so easily have this wrong...

.... as I've only just started looking at Android, but are there not versions available for embedded systems? Surely Goog doesn't expect everyone to upgrade these because they don't want to spend a few days patching their code?

The release cycle for android versions has been as impressive as it has been relentless. While backward compatibility should be broken where required, that doesn't relieve Goog of the requirement to patch retrospectively.

That aside I'm really quite impressed with Android Studio, and the whole setup around AVDs.

Uber isn't limited by the taxi market: It's limited by the Electronic Thumb market

Re: Tragedy of the commons

massive expansion in Uber cars at the expense of public transport will cause more congestion on the roads

Yes, and no. It's estimate that at rush hour 1/3rd of traffic is looking for a place to park. If Uber expands only at the expense of public transport then yes congestion must increase, though since much of that is an artificial construct to disincentivise car use in favour of public transport, it is readily manageable. It is more likely that Uber will also grow at the expense of private car ownership - especailly inner cities such as London.

If the market can only bear 1000 drivers and there's 2000 drives, well, then, 1000 of them will go bust and (should) realise they're in the wrong job and move into something else.

I upvoted you because I agree with most of what you say, especially for whom the regulation exists to protect. To expand your point above though...

Surely the 1000 you get left with are the 1000 that are least able to do something else, or who are willing to work the most hours to generate that income? The most tired and least able doesn't sound like a good mix for any regulated industry.

Thailand: 'The nail that sticks up gets hammered down'

Seeing people back here working 12 hours a day so that they can afford a small house, I couldn't blame him.

Being one of them, I can't blame him at all. It sounds nice.

I just wonder though, if the web dev was legally working remotely, or simply forgot to mention it to the Thai authorities and was living on a tourist visa. These things matter when you need to educate your child, or locate medical care.

Wish I'd done it in my 20s either way though!

Why so tax-shy, big tech firms? – Bank of England governor

Re: Shorter work week

Does Honey Boo Boo's mom get an equal share to Elon Musk?

I truly have no clue what a Honey Boo Boo is, but sense that your point my be profound.

Re: Shorter work week

If you choose to work to have a better life, your stipend drops by 0.5 units for every unit you earn.

The difficulty with that is, once AI passes your level of IQ, there will be progressively fewer paid opportunities. Eventually none. You'll not have the choice to work for a better life.

Obviously, your views on the likelihood of AI surpassing an average human IQ at a similar price point will inform how concerned or not you are by that prospect.

Re: What about the workers

Currently, youth unemployment is 50% in Greece and 25% in Spain.

This will be as unpopular as herpes, but if the current situation persists such that it is the new normal, then the only logical choice is to cease child related benefits such that the birth rate drops. Producing something that you have a surplus of, and which costs you a lot of money in social provision, would seem illogical.

Re: What about the workers

But many tradishional "white collar" jobs have thought themselves safe. What Mark Carney was warning about was that those types of jobs will be in the firing line

Agreed. I don't think Carneys warning was about bankers, only that he viewed senior roles to not be immune. I'll take a punt that the first programmer clever enough to get AI working such that it can replace humans with cognitive jobs will be clever enough to realise they have written their final program. We'll all be gone before the guys at the top, on that I'll give you a cast iron guarantee.

Re: Fiduciary Duty

What I mean by this is if Companies along with individuals do not pay their "fair share" in taxes then in effect society will breakdown.. We will have no schools, police, healthcare, transport....

UK companies are in global competition for revenues with other companies located in China, America, India, etc etc... The whole world, in fact. If a company in the UK goes bust, or is bought out by another entity held in another jurisdiction (Lets say Apple or Facebook buy out a smaller UK company) then the tax paid in the UK drops to zero.

It is not the job, remit, or entitlement of companies located abroad to give the least little care to the funding of social spending within the UK. Companies within the UK are competing with that fact every day, so they follow the law and pay the taxes that are due, but no more.

CSR is about branding. It is not about social responsibility, sadly.

Do we think Boards of companies exploit increasingly questionable tax laws because of Shareholder pressure or are they driven by greed and personal incentive plans?

I'm not sure any board is driven by only one thing. I'm sure you're right and each of the things you state play a part. However, I'd say the overwhelming desire of the board is to keep the company profitable, competetive, and independant (most critically of all), because without that they won't be governing and so any other change they wish to make will be impossible, regardless of its motive being greed, shareholder pressure etc.

Re: Fiduciary Duty

Shareholders mostly seem to think that profits, and hence dividends + share value are the be all and end all of fiduciary duty.

Why do you buy shares?

I buy them to make money, mostly in my pension to pay for my retirement, but still, making money is the only reason I buy them. I have other small investments in stuff like wind farms for affecting socially useful change (or not, depending on your view, but there's nothing wrong with a hedge ;-) My charitable donations are how I achieve any altruistic good that I might do, not by buying equities.

If I think I can make more money selling my shares in company X and buying them in company Y, then that's what I do. The timescales I consider are next quarter, next year, and next decade. I have investments made for each time horizon, but all of them are based solely upon what I think will pay out the most over that term.

Paying significantly more taxes than legally required would tend to limit the ability of an investment to perform in the next quarter, and probably the next year. So I'd probably sell the stock or vote to change the leadership.

keeping the company afloat is probably the most important duty of the board

I've seen some efficient ways of doing this, and some creative ways of doing this, but what I've never seen is a way of doing this by paying more tax than required. If the company has surplus capital then that should rightly be returned to the shareholders via dividends.