Posts by Archie Crane

Equifax CEO falls on his sword weeks after credit biz admits mega-breach

Warning: Pun ahead

Given that they breached the personal info of nearly *144* million US citizens - does that count as GROSS incompetence?

Cable cutter nutters chase underwater conspiracies

Cutter nutter should target sitcom clutter

Where's the cable that brings all the crap American TV shows and old Lucille Show re-runs into the UK?

Brrringg-ding-ding-ding-ding;

..just getting the old chainsaw ready

HMRC offers £20k reward for ID goldmine CDs

Enclosed is your reward cheque

Just imagine it:

"Dear person who recoverered our embarrasing lost data and saved our skins; enclosed is the monetary reward we promised":

A cheque for £8,670

That's £20,000 minus 40% PAYE,

Minus NIC employers and employee's contributions (we have classified you as an employee for tax purposes as you were essentially working for us in finding the missing data)

Minus CGT - as you didn't really do much work in finding the disks, plus the asset concerned was someone else's intellectual property upon which you have profited by reselling it back to the original owners.

Minus 17.5% VAT; we have taken the liberty of registering you for VAT, in case you fancy having a go at recovering all the other personal data we've lost; which would put your turnover over the VAT registration threshold.

Total deductions: £11,330. Total takehome: £8,670

Kind regards and thanks again.

Yours

HMRC

Astronauts chuck fridge off space station

Galactic fly-tipping is the least environmentally polluting thing they do...

The space shuttle uses about 2.3 million pounds of solid propellant in the

launch boosters and about 1.2 million pounds of liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen in the main engines. The latter only produce water vapour but the boosters use potassium perchlorate (KClO4) and powdered aluminum in the solid boosters. The combustion products are potassium chloride and aluminum oxide.

Multiply all that by the number of space launches since the 1950's, then add in a few other propellants like kerosine, and it becomes clear that the odd fridge or two lobbed out the back of a space station starts to look almost 'green' by comparison!