
Ok, so you hacked my OneDrive....
61 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Nov 2017
Reminds me of the time my wife came home with a Christmas tree a few inches too tall for our hallway. I wandered off to the garage to get a suitable saw, only to amble back in and find Mrs Skint brandishing her secateurs, about to lop off the top 12" of tree.
This is up there in the Skint family annals with the tale of the sprouts she boiled without water that same Christmas.
Neither of us drink these days. Life is so much more predictable without the gin.
Why am I reminded of Monty Python's Meaning of Life at this point?
" Ah, I see you have the machine that goes 'ping!'. This is my favourite. You see, we lease this back from the company we sold it to - that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account."
When this outbreak was but a babe in arms, a chap stopping off for a skiing holiday in the French Alps happened to bring an unexpected gift back with him from Singapore.
He was staying with an ex-pat family, their children being pupils at the local school. One 9-year-old member of the British family was infected.
The response of the French authorities in closing schools and isolating families was swift. It took them 2 months to complete their review of the efficacy of this. In a small and tight-knit community at the top of a closed valley (I'm a frequent visitor to the village and in regular contact with a number of the locals and they *really* took the isolation thing seriously).
End result, no other children were infected, despite the 9-year-old having attended both the village school and two trips out to other schools in the next town down the mountain.
Further studies suggest children aren't passing it on, which is..... hard to fathom.
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-no-child-known-to-have-passed-covid-19-to-adults-global-study-finds-11981111
I've supplied a bunch of decent 24" monitors, keyboards, mice etc (you try using MS Project on a 13" laptop), a Draytek 4g router (and appropriate data package), cabling and christ knows what else on my latest gig. If HMRC so much as whisper "IR35" at me I shall get Mr Beretta out, scatter a selection of 12G cartridges on the desk and have a rather brief and pointed conversation with them.
100% this. And while we're at it, how many times do we actually *need* to be on site for work, vs times clients or bosses demand/expect it despite it adding no value.
But we must consume....
Hopefully a few folk will pick up on this theme and maybe we'll see less pointless travel. I live in hope.
Perfectly summed up.
HMRC have created a test where the person answering the question has absolutely no incentive to agree the Contractor is outside IR35. The only possibly beneficiary of determining outside IR35 is the contractor, but the risk if you get that wrong sits with the client.
Granted that is a simplistic take on it, as there are other risks to saying "everyone is inside IR35", like not getting the right resource at the right price, but from a very binary cash/risk perspective, it's a no-brainer for the client.
I'm trying to think of a non-employment scenario as an example that mirrors this mendacity, but am struggling as it's so fundamentally obtuse!
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Similar issue in my car, made worse when you turn on the adaptive speed limiter that *does* reduce your speed to match the limit as you pass a sign.
Unfortunately it chose to read a 50 marker on the back of a lorry on the motorway, causing the car to brake unexpectedly from the 70 I had been doing.
It also dislikes large, light coloured vehicles parked on the near-side on gentle right hand bends, although only on bright, sunny days.
In these situations it likes slamming the brakes on to avoid the collision that wasn't going to happen.
First "feature" now turned off. It still gets stuff wrong, but just flashes annoyingly rather than attempting to insert my tailgate into the bonnet of the following vehicle. Second feature dialed back to least sensitive, notionally reducing the protection offered as the car will brake later and harder if I miss something going on in front of me, but actually increasing my safety by not activating erroneously.
Autonomous vehicles may be coming, but they're a way off yet.
Keith's antics made it acceptable for a whole generation of guys to unleash the bendy bits ( I think they're called "knees" and "elbows" ) in what can loosely be described as dancing. For allowing us to express ourselves and communicate in this way, we thank you. Although my wife has never quite forgiven the number of times I've managed to stand on her feet in the process.
Keith, if only you could have spoken to someone last night. Us blokes are a bit rubbish like that. So to anyone out there feeling a bit lost right now, if you feel the need to talk to someone, know that there's always someone who will listen:
Calm - https://www.thecalmzone.net
Mind - https://www.mind.org.uk
Samaritans - https://www.samaritans.org
Worth noting that he's been out on bail, albeit with some pretty debilitating conditions, since August 2017. Adding this to correct the assumption that he's still banged up. To all intents he's still being denied his liberty, as he is unable to leave the US and has had restrictions placed on his use of technology and the internet that effectively prevent him working or even helping build his defence case.
He's worth a follow on Twitter, if you're into the twitterings. @malwaretechblog
If it helps, I'm a Programme Manager (Project Manager squared) and I'd fund that.
The amount of deliveries that have fallen on their arse because of this kind of thinking.... Perhaps that's how I got demoted and now actually have to deal with the PHBs as the Developers' Champion?
About 3 weeks ago I was notified of two suspicious transactions by BarclayCard; one for close on £1000 for events through another ticket sales company and one for car insurance (yes, really!)
The last transaction prior to these? Ticketmaster on 23rd February.
Smoking gun anyone?
It rather looks like the bad actors gathered data for at least 3 months before they swung into action and started selling the details. On the plus side, both the merchants in this case were keen to take action to cancel the purchases (invalidating tickets and insurance) and were proactive in referring the matter to their internal fraud teams and local police. Barclays had already put chargeback in place, but was nice to see the merchants taking an active stance.
Not often I say this, but beers for Barclays.