Posts by Azamino

BT CEO orders staff: Back to the office or risk 'disciplinary action'

Re: Seeing it already

Forgive the cliche but if you want loyalty buy a dog.

The firms gratitude might Olympian but I have metropolitan expenses.

Rest in peace, Queen Elizabeth II – Britain's first high-tech monarch

Re: She was a good one

Simply transfer the powers of the monarch to the Lord Chancellor. Minimal fuss and very efficient... it'll never happen!

Bye bye BoJo: Liz Truss named new UK prime minister

Re: That's It I'm ....

Japan, check the handle, the only downside is that after a couple of months living anywhere else will feel like a downgrade.

Oh, and the cheese supply was atrocious but that may have changed since the recent trade deals.

BOFH and the case of the disappearing teaspoons

Bloody hell!

I noticed the absence of SFTW but not the missing banner (I’m not counting anything that requires scrolling to the very bottom of the page) and the Paris icon clearly shows that time’s arrow is telling me it’s time to knock work on the head. I mean, if I’m missing stuff I’m interested in what has happened to my paid work!!

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch: Now 100,000kg smaller

See above for explanation

Caver Dave posted this link a little higher up the chain:

https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/these-10-rivers-carry-95-of-all-plastic-into-the-ocean/

Worth bearing in mind that some of that plastic will have come from manufacturing processes for goods bound for the West.

COO of failed bio-biz Theranos found guilty on all twelve fraud counts

Re: Methinks it's lawyers all the way down on this one...

Sorry Iron, what is the relevance of their nationalities? The rich are borderless citizens of nowhere, to quote Theresa May.

The sins of the father are not especially relevant either, Enron was a corporation not a crime family, so was the father even involved in the off-balance fraud that brought it down?

Re: Methinks it's lawyers all the way down on this one...

Oomph! There's some heavy handed misogyny in one comment, just maybe accept that a jury heard all the evidence and acted accordingly?

Both have been found guilty but the individual 20 years younger and just a teenager when she met her DotCom millionaire (back when millions were worth something) co-conspirator has been found slightly less culpable.

Japan makes online insults a crime that can earn a year in jail

Re: Japan's efforts to protect online rights might therefore harm its reputation for human rights

Japan was the safest place that I have ever lived, see handle, so whatever they are doing can we have some more of it in London please?

BOFH: Tech helps HR investigate the Boss's devices

Re: Inspirational!

That sounds about right, and often in properly devious ways. One firm I worked for was circling the plughole in 2001 and hired a very enthusiastic Aussie HR chap for an already over-staffed department composed of old friends and old flames of the exec board.

Cue the cuts with said Aussie in the lead sharing the bad news*, while also measuring up his new office as he was clearly expecting to head up HR once the superannuated HR team was shown the door. Barely a year later the fellah was out the door himself, with the old crew still in situ and blaming him for being over-zealous.

* I was in the first batch to go, but cannot complain because at least the firm still had cash for enhanced redundancy packages.

UK Supreme Court snubs Assange anti-extradition bid

Horror optional

Everyone’s watching the Russian invasion of Ukraine and screaming into their hands, yet after 100 days the Russian’s have butchered barely a quarter of those killed in the invasion of Iraq in the same time frame. Like it or not, Assange exposed those illegal deaths in Iraq and the UK and US want to punish him for doing so. In no way does that condone the criminal actions of Putin and his cronies in Ukraine, two wrongs do not make a right.

I have posted here before and had folk question the accuracy of the allegations and take solace from the assurances of others that Wikileaks were wrong. Yet these assurances have never been tested in a court of law which is the very, very, least that anyone could ask for.

Cars in driver-assist mode hit a third of cyclists, all oncoming cars in tests

Re: Try Scooters in Madrid

So your average speed, including stopping for traffic lights, was the same as the cyclist. No hold up at all then for, as sure as death and taxes, there will be another set of lights appearing shortly! This used to amaze me most mornings on my commute, drivers hurtling past just to brake sharply at the next set of traffic lights.

I worked a racking and stacking gig (de-comm / shift / re-comm) for the better part of a year back in the noughties. A large part of the job was driving a van out to the new data centre in Camberwell and it was exactly the same story but with higher speeds.

No help for IT contractors on IR35 tax errors

Re: Employers NI

You hit the nail on the head.

What hurts is that so many members of the establishment made their own money using Ltd companies for their newspaper columns, consultancy gigs etc but once they're rich it's suddenly time to pull up the ladders and deny the rest of us the chance!

It happens again and again, be it free university education, tax relief on buy-to-let mortgages, NS&I bonds that tracked inflation [1), those in power take full advantage on the way up and then slam the doors shut.

1 - https://www.nsandi.com/help/manage-your-savings/maturing-investments/index-linked-savings-certificates

UK's new Brexit Freedom Bill promises already-slated GDPR reform, easier gene editing rules

Re: Dead cats and red meat

You'll have your dead cat in your red meat and you'll enjoy it too young Cupboard.

Honestly, the gov't gives you a bonafide Brexit benefit and you turn your nose up at it!

HMRC tool for measuring IR35 status is so great, employers are ditching it in their droves

Optional

Paying salary directly into your pension is a great idea as it saves you both employers and employees National Insurance contributions. It is one way to keep more of your money when working via an umbrella company.

Obviously this locks the cash away until you are ready to pull down your pension, but once you have passed your annual £7,500 NI allowance it will save you 25% in combined contributions plus your PAYE tax rate of 20% or 40%.

Tech Bro CEO lays off 900 people in Zoom call and makes himself the victim

Timing

Hey, the guy may be an arse but at least he told people before Xmas and, hopefully, in time to prevent a spending splurge.

Robo-Shinkansen rolls slowly – for now – across 5km of Japan

Re: Afraid of the car

If you are a tourist you will qualify for the Japan Rail pass, which is an absolute bargain, imagine a two week whole of UK travelcard for circa £240. Living there makes it a lot more expensive, in 2019 my round trip Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Tokyo cost me more than the JR Pass.

Driving in Japan is pretty straightforward, my only gripe being the traffic lights hoist in the sky rather than being on the street. Overnight on-street parking was not permitted in Aoba-Ku, where I lived, which made car ownership really expensive, I was advised that it would cost circa £200 a month to rent a space. On the bright side it reduced the amount of traffic when I had to hire a car and streets are just much nicer when not lined with cars.

International Space Station fires rockets to dodge chunk of destroyed Chinese satellite

Re: Misleading headline!

Given that Zheng was a eunuch, the existence of his progeny would be impressive enough if they got no further than the end of the street!

Assange psychiatrist misled judge over parentage of his kids, US tells High Court

Re: Putting Assange aside.

Do you have any proof of that allegation?

I have yet to read of any convincing examples of people being killed due to leaks released by Assange.

In the meantime we are still waiting on the serious allegations of war crimes reveals by WikiLeaks to be tested in a court of law.

UK science suffers as lawmakers continue to dither over Brexit negotiations

Re: Negotiating...

It is passing strange that since large numbers of workers left the UK due to Brexit and / or COVID, the laws of supply and demand have pushed up wages, yet the arrival of large numbers of workers from the EU failed to have any effect on those very same laws of supply and demand.

Maybe you need to be a highly educated / compensated Nobel prize winning economist to understand this conundrum!

Spot the dog? No, we couldn't either because Spot is a robot employed by United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority

The problem with nuclear summed up in one throwaway phrase .....

"...... a care and maintenance phase from 2033 to 2104"

By which time the benefactors of the energy produced will be long deceased and the cost of disposal firmly on the shoulders of those who saw no benefit.

Oh the humanity: McDonald's out of milkshakes across Great Britain

Re: A number of sound decisions?

In 1991 ex-RTC guys were able to easily find work as HGV drivers on £30K a year, thirty years later it is still paying £30k a year!

I am a remainer but for years cheap labour kept down wages and that left some people behind, many of whom will have voted out.

Fingers crossed that firms will perk up and start looking for tech to boost productivity, but its just as likely that the Road Hauliers Association etc will lobby for cheaper labourer to be brought in from somewhere else.

More than half of companies rethinking back-to-office plans amid variant uncertainty and vaccine mandates – survey

Re: Convenience

Fully understand your painful experience with public transport when living in the middle of nowhere and with little choice about it. Yours is a good example of why a minority of people need to drive regularly. Thankfully, 85% or so of the great British public live in urban / suburban areas and should have a choice between where they live / work and how they travel between the two.

More working from home remains my preference, even though it does not apply to me as i need to be in the shop where all the kit is. Luckily I can afford to live close enough to work to cycle in most days and, on occasion, bus in and walk home via a few hostelries on a Friday.

Cop drone crashes into flight instructor's airplane

Jeez!

..... the authorities finally have a proven, documented example of a drone damaging a civilian aircraft and all you can do is moan!

Seriously, now the police can spend shed loads of cash on new toys, err, tools to enforce the laws that will inevitably be brought in to tackle this menace.

84-year-old fined €250,000 for keeping Nazi war machines – including tank – in basement

Re: Shhh...

The Judge was clearly not a Cat person ....

MHV reference

Ecuador shreds Julian Assange's citizenship

Time flies

Hard to believe that it was more than ten years ago that wikileaks released the footage of the Americans killing those Reuters journalists in cold blood.

Far too easy to acknowledge that the no one has seen the inside of a courtroom for those offences.

BOFH: I'm so pleased to be on the call, Boss. No, of course this isn't a recording

90 days

I was going to say that Dave might not look so legendary when he has to leave Spain after 90 days ... but then it occurred to me that someone willing to pinch a bunch of laptops will probably not be too worried about ignoring immigration rules either.

Japanese bank botched data migration, which somehow turned its ATMs into card-eating monsters

Re: Like a box of clowns being slowly immolated.

You are wholly right about the banks, I still remember the monthly ritual of loading my GAICA pre-payment card to then pay my rent because I was not trusted with a credit / debit card.

But, yeah, leaving Japan still ranks as possibly the stupidest decision I ever made, and there's some tough competition for that distinction!

Splunk junks 'hanging' processes, suggests you don't 'hit' a key: More peaceful words now preferred in docs

Almost there ...

Zero was first used as a number in India, as defined by Brahmagupta in the 7th Century. So yes to appropriation but from India not Arabia.

Citibank accidentally wired $500m back to lenders in user-interface super-gaffe – and judge says it can't be undone

Re: "six-eyes" policy

Wholly correct about staff growing sloppy Chairo. I worked for a bank which went from two approvals in Change Management to five and the quality dropped like a stone. I once accidentally submitted my template rather than the actual change and it went thru!

The old system was not perfect though. They had the most awful habit of sitting on change requests until they had expired, so no approval but no rejection either. This helped them hit some ill-defined performance SLA that made no sense to anyone.

48-hour strike action: Openreach repayment project engineers confirm it's on

It's great to hear that you are so clearly on the best side of the bell curve in all aspects of your work Lee!

What would you suggest to someone nearer the middle, perhaps with a mortgage and a couple of kids? Because unionised industries do tend to pay better for the majority (not all) of the staff.

Thankfully I'm FIRE'd, though still working because I lack the imagination to do anything else during this pandemic, but not everyone is so fortunate.

Re: Smells like manure

Just look at what happened at BA, where the staff were split between new and old contacts. The new contracts did not receive any of the expenses etc that the staff on the old contract were entitled to. Consequently BA management played one group off against the other and both groups ended up worse off.

Divide and conquer. Nothing new in this particular playbook.

Web prank horror: Man shot dead while pretending to rob someone at knife-point for a YouTube video

Re: @File_id.diz OMG

No time to load yet time to disengage a childproof lock ... are you sure about that?

My only shooting experiences have been in the cadets and then the odd clay pigeon shoot with work, but at no point did we ever leave weapons loaded. I was under the impression that after pointing it at someone, leaving it loaded was the next worst behaviour.

We regret to inform you the professor teaching your online course is already dead

Role of the lecturer

This lad is barking up the wrong tree. The whole point of university is that you set out to discover your own subject. While some skills have to be taught, hence medical school, you go to Uni' to read your subject. Professors and faculty are there to steer you and monitor your progress via seminars / tutorials but you are expected to absorb the subject yourself, as opposed to school where you are taught the facts as seen fit by the exam board.

Conversely, professors and researchers are primarily there to extend the subject, not teach students.

A bridge too far: Passengers on Sydney's new ferries would get 'their heads knocked off' on upper deck, say politicos

Thinking outside the box

Don't waste your time raising the bridges, simply flood the bottom few decks of the ferry so that it floats much, much, lower in the water.

Obvious icon!

Brit bank Barclays probed amid claims bosses used high-tech to spy on staff, measure productivity

Necessary evil

Any office operating a hotdesk policy needs to know the utilisation of desks, we have a live system that updates a noticeboard in reception so that staff know where they can find a seat (admittedly far less of a problem nowadays). The kit used to measure that usage is the flipside to being allowed / instructed to work from home at least two days a week.

No excuse for prying though.

'I'm telling you, I haven't got an iPad!' – Sent from my iPad

Humans are strange creatures

Not strictly speaking an IT issue, but it fits in with the general trend of denial / feigned ignorance.

Decades ago I was working for a quango and in one corner of the office a floor box fuse started regularly blowing and knocking out the kit on a bank of desks. There was much investigation, switching to alternative floor boxes, splitting the kit between different floor boxes etc, but we never got to the bottom of it and were unable to reproduce it ourselves. Then the problem seemed to go away.

All was finally explained when an office junior chose her leaving drinks as the ideal time to name and shame her team leader for plugging in a hot-air fan heater which would run for a while and then blow the fuse.Turns out that this individual knew not to use the heater, so hid it out of sight before I or the facilities manager arrived to investigate. Why her staff, who must have been pretty pissed off by the outages, never dobbed her in is another mystery.

Rental electric scooters to clutter UK street scenes after Department of Transport gives year-long trial the thumbs-up

Re: No they're not an effective means to reduce car traffic

Anti-social behaviour, blocking the pavement, parking on the pavement ... are you writing about scooter users or Audi drivers?

Luckily, no one would ever dream of downloading and printing off a Lime sticker to stick to their own scooter, would they ...?

These scooters are not for me, but if it frees up a seat on the bus or a parking space at the station, I'm all for other people using them.

Frenchman scores €50k compensation for suffering 'bore-out' at work after bosses gave him 'menial' tasks

Re: Sooo....

There was a persistent rumour at Morse (later 2E2) that rather than taking disciplinary action, miscreants would be sent to work on the ‘airports’ contract. Which involved schlepping round the M25 to the London airports for purposes never explicitly stated, until they got sick of the traffic and moved elsewhere.

I never met anyone who had worked on said contract, and those telling me were usually so inept that surely had it existed they would be on it!

What do you call megabucks Microsoft? No really, it's not a joke. El Reg needs you

From Beast of Redmond to ...

With a hat tip to the recent past - Neo-Beast.

UK political parties fall over themselves to win tech contractor vote by pledging to review IR35

No real contractor ...

... has just one customer for years on end.

Those of us who contract for anywhere between a weekend and six months at a time are not going to be affected by IR35.

Whilst those who stick to one client, who have to request annual leave from said client (as opposed to simply telling them that you're not available on those dates), who work the hours they're told etc are going to come unstuck.

BOFH: On a sunny day like this one, the concrete dries so much more quickly

Growth

The problem with any fiddle is that it just gets bigger (ooer!).

By now they’ll be billing for enough staples to end obesity in America twice over!