Posts by Insert sadsack pun here

I was fired for telling ICO of Serco track and trace data breach, claims sacked worker

Re: Companies House

They're all microcontractors supposedly controlled by people in the Philippines to "avoid" NI contributions for the reasons set out at the foot of the article. Private Eye and the Guardian have been covering this.

Re: Whistleblower protection

Yes. The point of the case is that the company that fired her was not the company engaged in wrongdoing, and she is not therefore protected from adverse action by her employer. Whistleblowing laws in this country are rubbish.

UK's Vodafone network runs trials on standalone 5G in London, Manchester and Cardiff

This is good news for mobile workers and those with poor broadband connections. I imagine the signal strength and reliability will only improve the more people are vaccinated too.

Google gets into the international money transfer business, one-way out of the USA

Re: Why does Google need Western Union?

Google doesn't want to be in the regulated financial sector and doesn't have any of the incredibly expensive and complicated back office functions that it would need to run a money transfer business.

UK prime minister Boris Johnson reluctant to reveal his involvement in the OneWeb deal

Re: Clueless

"The old style Conservatives were at least reasonably sensible, and also listened to business, and people who could advise them properly..."

You're romanticising the past. The Tories have always had swivel-eyed loons like Harvey Proctor and Norman Tebbit, and shameless opportunist bullshitters like Ian Hamilton and Jonathan Aitken.

To be fair, the Lord is my shepherd, not Boris "£50m on Joanne Lumley's Bridge is fine, but child abuse inquiries is spunking money up the wall" Johnson.

UK Department of Health's joint venture with Sopra Steria names 19 vendors to epic £1bn hardware framework

Sopra Steria is the same bunch of moneygrabbing wankers that runs the outsourced document scanning and biometrics capture service for the Home Office. "Well, Sir, we understand you'd like to renew your visa to stay with your children and job in the UK. Would you like an ultra-premium appointment with a coffee near where you live for £700, or would you like a free appointment in six weeks' time at 2am in Belfast? That's on top of the £2000 you just paid the Home Office, obviously..."

Global tat supply line clogged as Suez Canal authorities come to aid of wedged 18-brontosaurus container ship

Re: What a relief!

Only wankers love flags.

"How much does the fattest one weigh ?"

A bit more than 1 StBgr (standard badger).

University of the Highlands and Islands shuts down campuses as it deals with 'ongoing cyber incident'

"It's like your insurance company negotiating with burglars."

...which us exactly what happens with high end art thieves. They sit tight for a couple of years and then contact an intermediary who brokers a sale back to the rightful owner.

Mobile World Congress seemingly serious about in-person Barcelona event in June, shares safety plan

Re: Hubris, meet nemesis

Who do they think is going to attend? I don't think any large employers are going to be at the "send people to Barcelona for a week" stage by June, even if the organisers would be ready to accept their delegates.

Prime suspect: Amazon India apologises for offensive scenes in political thriller

Re: I guess it depends on your goal

"But has [mockery] ever convinced a believer?"

What makes you think I'm trying to convince you?

Re: This ain't America

"In this monkey see monkey do world the copycats will do far more damage"

Well, what kind of idiot would put a copycat among monkeys? Everyone knows you're only supposed to put the cat amongst the pigeons unless you're some kind of pigdog. God help the sheep in wolves' clothing that act like a bull in the hand that's worth two in the bush.

Day 5 of Openreach strikes: No use of tech company toilets. No water. Fresh dates outlined

Re: Covid restrictions on access?

I think there was a pretty clear statement from BT management: piss off and piss somewhere else!

In the old days, coups started by seizing TV and radio stations. Now they crimp the internet at 3am

Telenor...

...is a Norwegian company, isn't it?

Is there a suggestion that they were complicit in, or required to assist, the junta's interference with connectivity?

TikTok to be hit by a UK class-action-style lawsuit backed by the Children's Commissioner

Re: New Business Model

The fact you describe a litigation funder as a hedge fund suggests you don't know what either of those things is.

Google says it’s the cleanest cloud, also reveals deal with Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company for new cloud region

Those human rights abuses are paid for using the money earned from selling fossil fuels.

Taiwan’s Wistron says iPhone factory riot won’t cause significant impact to its business

Is that link to Wistron's announcement working for anyone else? It's just leading me to text that says "year can't be empty".

British voyeur escapes US extradition over 770 cases of webcam malware

Re: Stay At Home

On what basis are you - some anonymous geezer on the internet that's read an article on El Reg - better placed to judge whether the defendant is autistic than the geezer who literally wrote the book on autism and who's actually examined the guy?

https://g.co/kgs/2x945J

What does my neighbour's Tesla have in common with a stairlift?

"it's getting closer to home for the old nations in Europe, with exploratory digs looking promising in Portugal..."

They'd better hope Mozambique and Angola don't hear about it - otherwise they might think about repaying the favour of imperialism by "civilising" Portugal for its mineral wealth.

Facebook crushed rivals to maintain an illegal monopoly, the entire United States yells in Zuckerberg’s face

Re: How many US states?

I have reviewed the complaint. The plaintiffs are Guam and DC (not states, obviously) and all 50 states EXCEPT Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and South Dakota.

The Attorneys-General of all four states that did not join the action are Republican. One of them, Jason Ravnsborg of SD, killed a man three months ago because he was "distracted" while driving. He left the scene and later borrowed the personal car of the local sheriff to return home - highly irregular. A police investigation is ongoing.

Ad banned for suggesting London black cabs have properties that prevent the spread of coronavirus

Re: Seems a bit harsh

Well, yeah, no-one is disagreeing with that. It's just that that wasn't what the bleeding ad said!

Transport for London dangles £1.1bn carrot in pursuit of suppliers for new revenue collection deal

Re: London?

Moscow is 12.4 million.

London is 9.3 million.

Black Lives Matter protester ID'd from Twitter photo via facial-recog system secretly used by US law enforcement

Re: NOFRILLS

tbf it's pretty much "knicker frills" already

Re: @Mark It doesn't matter... well sort of...

I like the way you've leapt ahead of the criminal trial to decide that the person charged is actually the person in the Twitter photograph, that the guy in the Twitter photograph is the guy who punched a cop, that a cop was actually punched, and that the punch was actually illegal (instead of, for example, self-defence against an assault).

French services outfit Atos told to pay $855m in trade secret pinching case

Is the PDF link in the fifth or sixth para working for anyone? It's just taking me to an image of a rather fine vulture.

https://www.theregister.com/Design/graphics/std/default.jpg

Pakistan calls on Facebook to extend holocaust denial ban into Islamophobia crackdown

We just had a whole bunch of Buddhists and Christians being equally awful to Muslims and other Christians, and that's after two or three centuries of Christians doing awful things to people overseasI have no time for religion of any stripe, but Christians have nothing to be smug about here.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/rohingya-burma-myanmar-children-beheaded-burned-alive-refugees-bangladesh-a7926521.html

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srebrenica_massacre

"Pakistan’s science and technology minister, told local outlet Arab News..."

Arab News ain't local to Pakistan. It's based in Saudi Arabia, about 2000km away. Bulgaria and the UK are just as far away.

Congrats, Meg Whitman, another multi-billion-dollar write-off for the CV: Her web vid upstart Quibi implodes

I'm not a TV or movie buff at all, but I know that Elba, Witherspoon, Hemsworth and Kardashian are the names of big showbiz stars. Idris Elba has been the star of numerous BBC/ITV one hour prime time dramas, as well as the best season of The Wire.

Software billionaire accused of hiding $2bn in income from IRS – potentially the largest tax scam in US history

Re: One is not cognizant of the details of the US justice system

There are many factors that determine whether someone should get bail. I don't know this guy specifically, but a pension-age man with ties to the local community (family, residence, faith community, cat, dog...), no particular foreign connections (dual citizenship, property abroad, family abroad), and no prior history of breaching bail conditions who is accused of a non-violent offence ought usually to be in with a good shot at bail.

More generally, the US is in the midst of a very sensible movement away from cash bail. It effectively privatises the pre-trial monitoring system and it ends up with poor people and people of colour being banged up for bad reasons. Innocent people who can't afford bail are pleading guilty to avoid remand. People on remand are spending more time incarcerated before trial than their sentence would have been. It's madness.

See this about one third down: https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual-26-release-and-detention-pending-judicial-proceedings-18-usc-3141-et

https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-activism/where-bail-funds-go-from-here

Cross-border digital payment system, championed by Saudi Arabia, gets green light... and yellow card from G7

Re: I find Visa and Mastercard work perfectly well cross boarder

Transferwise, Mastercard and Visa are perfectly good, but they're not accessible to the unbanked, and they require the user to have a bank account already.

Google contractor HCL America accused of retaliating against unionized techies by shifting US jobs to Poland

Re: quite literally he did

Were any of those jobs returning from overseas as a result of something that Trump did?

Re: Unions

"The rantings of "Red Ken" at Ford..."

You're getting your leftie boogiemen mixed up. Red Ken was Ken Livingstone, the leader of the Greater London Council. Red Robbo was the trades union leader who was at British Leyland, not Ford. Not surprising you're getting confused as all this stuff happened half a century ago.

Re: IT skills are fungible

"Lower regulation / less red tape, it's as simple as that."

You're bonkers or maybe just ill-informed. The Chinese economy is highly regulated and there is a lot of red tape. It's just that that control is not exercised for the benefit of workers, consumers, citizens or the environment, that's all.

Selling hardware on a pay-per-use or subscription model is a 'lie' created by marketing bods

Re: CapEx vs OpEx

"If I buy a machine as a capital expense I have to pay property taxes on it every year..."

What are you talking about, a property tax on IT products?

From the Department of WCGW: An app-controlled polycarbonate lock with no manual override/physical key

On the subject of #bizlifehustle quotes on LinkedIn, the only one I have ever been inspired by was

"It's not my successful friends who are posting inspirational quotes".

UK ISP TalkTalk confirms it will MullMull go-private takeover offer valuing it at £1.1bn

If only there were some kind of well-connected person they could hire as new CEO, maybe someone who's just delivered a major success in the public sector and has a positive image on the market?

Hydrogen-powered train tested on Britain's railway tracks as diesel alternative

Re: Unloved?

The article is not incorrect..."later morphed into Thameslink after the reopening of a disused tunnel under the central London river."

Clearly, the author is referring to the mighty River Fleet here, not the Thames.

Singapore Airlines turns A380 into a restaurant, delivers plane food to homes

Re: Among the odder products of the COVID-19 pandemic are “flights to nowhere”

JFK has had communist rail transit for 17 years: monorail to Jamaica train station and then LIRR to Manhattan. It works pretty well! Even before that there was a bus to the subway (which tbf was a long ride into Manhattan). LGA has always had communist bus transport too - bus to Bryant Park/Port Authority or a fairly rubbish bus to 125th St or Astoria.

Flying camera drones, cuddly Echo gadgets... it's all a smoke screen for Amazon to lead you gently down the Sidewalk – and you'll probably like it

Re: It helps to have the world's wussiest burglar break into your house...

I'm a police sceptic, but when someone kicked in my neighbour's door a couple of months ago, there were three carloads of them searching the house Tasers drawn within 3 mins of being called. I appreciate this is anecdata and YMMV...

Uber allowed to continue operating in English capital after winning appeal against Transport for London

Black cabs in London are mostly driven by owner operators. They didn't have billions of Saudi dollars to invest or manage online platforms or to suck up seemingly infinite losses until a greater fool is located. There are some platforms that work with black cabs now.

Re: Uber drivers earn below minimum wage

Delivery riders pay about a grand a year for insurance - but most of them PAYG or combine it with their scooter rental. They, too, are getting smashed between the rock of Deliveroo/Just Eat and the hard place of scooter rental companies.

Re: I wonder whether this has anything to do ...

If only there were some way for people to know the judge's reasons for their decision! Maybe the judge could prepare some sort of summary, and then journalists from online publications could include a hyperlink to it in their reporting.

"sustain the cab via only a single approved company that can repair/maintain/test them that does nothing else, and rules on what cabs are allowed or not..."

Eh? You sure about that? There are tons of black taxi repair places.

Too many staff have privileged work accounts for no good reason, reckon IT bods

Re: Employ people you trust, trust people you employ

"'Employ people you trust, trust people you employ' "

I don't disagree with this, but it's easier if you're running a startup and can choose your employee from scratch. If I'm a lowly IT Security director of a company with thousands of employees, some of which are absolute donkeys (me included), I can't just go out and terminate or train all the people I don't trust. I have to have some kind of systems controls to limit the damage.

UK ICO fines biz profiteering from COVID-19 crisis by sending unsolicited marketing texts to Joe Public

Re: "feather its own pockets"

No point in moaning about it - they'll just sweep it under the blanket. It's not like anyone got fleeced out of their nest egg.

Hong Kong wants to teach kids more STEM – once it's defined what that is

"Also in the review: an admission that teachers will need more training to teach STEM and understand how to weave it into the curriculum"

You're too cynical here and when you say teachers "aren't up to the job". Of course when you change the curriculum around and introduce new content you have to train the teachers on how to do it. That's no different from needing to train people when you introduce new machinery or software in other workplaces. It's not an admission and doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the existing workforce because they don't already know how to do something that hasn't even been agreed upon yet!

Nokia rolls out midrange 5G mobile, but will struggle to fight off Motorola and pals. Plus: New platform for suits with bulk-ordered SIMs

Paul Gascoigne is a mentally ill alcoholic. Poking fun at the self-important and powerful is part of the reason I love El Reg, but mocking the afflicted is uncool.

.uk registry operator Nominet responds to renewed criticism – by silencing its critics

Re: What has Russell Haworth achieved in 5 years?

A 30% raise to 593,000 quid, apparently!!!

What the hell is going on with .uk? Dozens of domain names sold in error, then reversed, but we'll say no more about it, says oversight org

Re: Business as usual these day?

"One person who bagged one of the erroneously transferred .uk domain names is even standing for Nominet’s board in an election due to start next week."

That is a remarkably unfortunate coincidence.