* Posts by DavCrav

3894 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Nov 2007

UK mobe network Three's profits hit by IT upgrade costs

DavCrav

"How does owning 15% make you a minnow when compared to someone who has only 9%?"

My guess, typo. 1) the numbers don't add to anywhere near 100%, and 2) Voda doesn't own 9%.

Edit: article has since been corrected. It's 29%.

Cyborg fined for riding train without valid ticket

DavCrav

Re: Jenny Agutter wearing that short dress

"Dammit, now I need a cold shower...."

That post should come with a trigger warning. Our bloody boiler broke last night and we have no hot water or heating.

Fun fact of the day: Voice recognition tech is naturally sexist

DavCrav

"This isn't true, they just scatter it differently. Some other commentard was able to provide a bit more information on how this is dealt with in the photographic industry."

I would have thought that black surfaces reflect less light than white ones. In particular, in low light levels, it's harder to spot black people in real life than white people.

DavCrav

"It’s an inherent technical problem down to the fact that females generally have higher pitched voices. They also tend to be quieter and sound more “breathy”."

So in other words, women can't speak as clearly as men, on average. It's like saying facial recognition programs have trouble with black faces because they scatter less light, so in training that's fine because there's a big spotlight, but in real life it doesn't work as well, and can never work as well.

This beautifully complements an article in The Guardian the other day that stated that algorithms favour white men because there aren't enough female coders, along with a lot more idiotic garbage.

Google to 'forget me' man: Have you forgotten what you said earlier?

DavCrav

Re: Journalists in court

"I was listening to an interview with Ian Hislop (as editor of Private Eye) He said he was amazed at how infrequently journalists now attend court hearings. He thought that journalists are shying away from stories that require more than five minutes work as many people are only interested in reading a few lines about a story before getting bored and moving on."

Also because it's fairly hard. You have to be careful and make sure you don't accidentally break the law. Easier to write an article 'Ten things you wouldn't believe have an effect on the Moon'.

DavCrav

"Let's burn all the newspaper archives while were at it shall we ?"

If you really want to find out about someone's past, can you? Yes. Should anyone who knows you be able to find out all about stuff from decades ago at the click of a button? I don't see that one myself.

DavCrav

Re: Add spent convictions to the discrimination legislation

"Add discriminating based on spent convictions to the discrimination legislation and be done with it."

Great, that'll help. That's why, since that legislation, all sexism and racism has ended.

Maplin shutdown sale prices still HIGHER than rivals

DavCrav

"The law gives you redress if its faulty so its irrelevant what a given shop provides in the way of consumer protection."

Does it? Even if the retailer is bankrupt?

Yahoo! Can't! Toss! Hacking! Lawsuit!

DavCrav

Re: Security?

"I've been trying to report that their "cached" search on the UK site points to 10.200.146.39 for months with no luck! Wouldn't hold your breath."

Wait. Yahoo does search? I thought it was an e-mail and vulnerability disclosure company.

London Mayor calls for social networks and sharing economy to stop harming society

DavCrav

Re: "our contribution to the overall health of the public conversation".

"The inability to open ones mind to debate and alternative ideas is, I completely agree, a failing on their part. Unfortunately not even trying is a failing on your part I'm afraid."

I'm not sure about that. It's a cost-benefit thing. If you judge your success rate to be essentially nil, then even if the benefit is high and the cost low, you shouldn't bother. Governments have different costs and benefits, so they might bother, but for individuals, it's a far better use of their time not to even bother engaging with cranks of any form. (Nazis, flat earthers, anti-vaxxors, hollow earth theorists, any of them.)

Broadcom's buyout of Qualcomm bogs down as DC blocks merger

DavCrav

So will Broadcom move to the US now? Don't see much reason to.

Broadcom moves to the US: CFIUS-inspired redomiciling makes for happy voters

DavCrav

Didn't work

CFIUS just canned the deal.

Most IT contractors want employment benefits if clobbered with IR35

DavCrav

Re: Contractor rights

"You don't really get £1000 a day tough do you, taking off the 20% corporation tax, thats already less than 3 times than the example permanent person is earning per day. Then take off all the other taxes, insurances, personal pension contributions and loss of money for sick days I can't be arsed to work out. You'll arrive at a very similar number, with far more hassle and less security."

Yeah, except Corporation Tax should be taken off at the end, not at the start. Unless you meant VAT?

DavCrav

Re: Man...

"It's your company as a contractor so you can pay yourself as you see fit. Why would or should anyone want to pay more tax than than legally required? So generally contractors draw a salary up to the NI limit - so circa £8K a year and take the rest as dividends."

OK, do that. Then don't complain when the Government introduces strict laws stopping you from aggressively avoiding tax. It's the same argument with Apple. "You haven't told me this is absolutely illegal, so I'm going to do it."

If your only argument as to why you are doing what you are doing is 'it's technically legal', then you are legally allowed to continue, and everyone else is legally allowed to hate you for it.

But normally the same people who say 'don't complain to me, I'm only following the law' also are the ones who bitch and moan about IR35 and similar things.

DavCrav

Re: re: Pay your Taxes

"Yep did that. Even had a pension but still got clobbered by IR35. Paying yourself the national average wage is in their eyes cheating the system."

Possibly because you're in an industry where the national average wage, about £15/hour, would be ludicrous and they decided you were therefore aggressively avoiding tax?

Here's a good rule of thumb: would you, or someone similar to you, work in that role for that money, under other circumstances, where you aren't also the boss of the company? If not, then you are cheating the system, if not legally then morally. If your company gets paid over and above the market rate for permanent staff because you are great, then that extra is your profit, that shouldn't be as wage. That should also be soaking up sick leave, holiday, pension contributions, etc.

It's much better definition of cheating the system than IR35, but harder in practice because it's difficult to decide on a market rate.

Does Parliament or Google decide when your criminal past is forgotten?

DavCrav

Re: Didn't CRB/DBS blow the RoA away anyway ?

"DBS is Basic, Standard and Enhanced - Standard and Enhanced also show unspent convictions and when you apply for a job in say Finance, Legal, Education etc. you may need an enhanced check."

Whoops. Yes, I actually meant the standard DBS, not the Standard DBS check... You cannot tell that since it is at the start of the sentence.

DavCrav

Re: Didn't CRB/DBS blow the RoA away anyway ?

"Didn't CRB/DBS blow the RoA away anyway? Since they effectively meant all convictions "spent" or not had to be disclosed?"

RoO Act has, I was under the impression, never applied to cases of child safety, national security, or other situations in which DBS/DV is used. There are different levels of DBS for different situations. Standard DBS does not release spent convictions, very high ones release arrests without charge, police intelligence and even hearsay.

DavCrav

Re: If...

"It is also against the rules to leave, even reformed, foxes in charge of henhouses..."

I'm not sure it is except for certain jobs, where spent convictions are taken into account (DBS, vetting for national security, etc.). If you are dealing with national security positions, you aren't getting your information from Google. If you aren't dealing with national security or DBS jobs etc., then the RoO Act applies.

DavCrav

Re: The law says your conviction is spent after x years, legally....

"Trying to re write history is a completely different argument which amounts to "I don't want it to be easy to find out what I did before", and that's wrong."

Actually, not only is it right, it was the default position until about 2000. It's only the last decade or two where this has been a problem. So the more interesting question is why do you suddenly think it's your right to find out about every single conviction anyone has ever had at the press of a button?

DavCrav

Re: Things can and do come back to haunt you

"Public interest in the fraud? Substantial."

Not according to the RoO Act. That defines the public interest (in the legal sense) of various convictions. Of interest to the public is not the same as public interest.

British military spends more on computers than weapons and ammo

DavCrav

Doesn't this just tell you that bullets are cheap? I spend more on tech than on milk, but that's because milk is quite cheap, nothing else.

'A sledgehammer to crack a nut': Charities slam UK voter ID trials

DavCrav

"Congratulations to admitting to a criminal offence on an open forum."

I don't think it was a criminal offence. You hand over your card and then you are asked to confirm your name and address. When he'd have said his own name, but the right address, the mistake would have been clear.

Europe plans special tax for Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon

DavCrav

Re: Base taxation on inputs and outputs

"I see this suggestion has attracted a thumbs up, and two thumbs down.

Thumbs up I expected, the thumbs downs causes me to really wonder what motivates those people."

I can tell you what's going to motivate people to downvote that message. It sounds really whiny.

I've been guilty of it before -- moaning about getting downvoted -- but it's just a red rag to a bull. You should just take it on the chin.

DavCrav

Re: Base taxation on inputs and outputs

"You are another person who condemns out of hand what they do not understand or are familiar with."

It is not impressive to explain badly and then act all smug if someone doesn't understand you. But I think I do understand you and you are just wrong.

You don't seem to understand what is taxed. Economic activity is taxed. If the UK levies a consumption tax, say VAT at 20%, it shouldn't send some of that money to another country because that good was an import. This is insane. If China wants to tax that good it can tax it as it leaves China, that's easy. The UK government, like all governments, raises money to fund UK services, and does so by taxing bits of the British economy. In an ideal world there wouldn't be any tax, but because of social and pure public good issues we need it.

Put it another way: since more or less all modern technology is based on British inventions, does that mean that the UK should be paid a sizeable fraction of everything anyone does? If not, why not?

Actually, I've decided you are the economics version of one of those people who thinks that they've found the real value of pi, and it's just that nobody else can understand their genius.

DavCrav

Re: EUSSR

"Bullshit, you're just another greed merchant. You pretend that you have some right to what money others make - cunt."

Starbucks paid £8.6m on £3bn in sales in the years up to 2015. Now either that's one deeply unprofitable company, or they were lying.

So that's dealt with your charge of 'bullshit'. As for calling me a cunt, you should perhaps not engage in personal abuse on a UK site. The Prevention from Harassment Act applies, and 'Anonymous Coward' is just a button you press, your IP is logged and available to Plod if a complaint is made. I won't make a complaint, but you are approaching a public order offence. Note that the woman who recently left a sweary note on an ambulance was charged with a public order offence, and she did not actually engage in direct abuse and you have done.

DavCrav

Re: Conflicted as usual.

"Stole from their parents through cheap sales of national assets"

Stole from their children you mean. National debt, house prices and pensions are a trillion-pound intergenerational theft, and my generation knows that your* generation is responsible. When we get in power, you'd better pray.

* If you are of that generation.

DavCrav

Re: Targeting specific companies

"Targeting specific companies. Is that allowed?

When Ireland got done by the EU for targeting specific companies for tax breaks, it was bad. Are France allowed to target specific companies for extra taxes?

Or will it apply to all companies? I suppose where turnover>X where X=min(Google, Facebook, Amazon...)"

I'm sure you can write a law that catches a specific couple of companies. Foreign-domiciled, high-value, pay very little tax currently, etc.. Do the same as when people want to nobble a job vacancy, and write a set of crtieria so specific that only your candidate qualifies.

DavCrav

Re: Conflicted as usual.

"As a Baby Boomer I am very suspicious of this approach, being the target of the "Look, kids, they have all the money. We will grab some (for you of course). Look at all those bad people with all that money they didn't work for." "

Yeah, but old people have lots of wealth but still want lots of services. Young people don't use those services very much, and have no wealth, because old people have it. There's no choice but to grab old people's wealth, because they are the only ones with any.

DavCrav

Re: Base taxation on inputs and outputs

"So a taxation system for global corporations should base the calculation of tax on total economic activity, rather than just outputs (sales). Under normal circumstances, the sum of inputs and outputs would be under twice the output (profitable). An equitable percentage of this sum would levied by way of taxation and distributed to the taxation authorities of the nations in which economic activity occurred on a basis that reflects the proportion of the activity in that nation to the total global activity."

That is, and it was up against some pretty stiff competition, the stupidest idea I have heard this month. Congratulations.

If you want an explanation as to why it's stupid, here goes: the economic activity done in the producing country, say China, is labour. That labour is taxed. The economic activity in say the UK is consumption. That is also taxed.

If I buy something for £100, someone has sold something for £100. If I then sell it for £150, I have made £50 profit, and the other person has also hopefully made some profit, but any way you cut it, your idea seems to be to slice it off both sides. I pay to buy stuff and I pay to sell. You can do that if you want, but it's bizarre and pointless.

In fact, the more I look at your post, the less sense it seems to make.

DavCrav

"In general we think competition is a good thing. So why isn't competition in tax regimes a good thing?"

Because competition drives efficiency, by inefficient companies being liquidated or taken over. That's not a good plan for countries. 'Sorry, you aren't being very efficient, so Germany is going to take your country over' wouldn't go down well more or less anywhere.

And you know that but are being deliberately dense. Stop it.

DavCrav

Re: EUSSR

"No fortune is being taken out of the economy, in fact by definition a loss making company is spending more than they make, so that money is coming out of investors pockets and into the economy..."

The problem, as you either don't see or pretend not to see, is that (for example) Starbucks is a profit-making company globally, but miraculously a 'loss'-making company everywhere other than tax havens. The point is, they aren't loss-making, they are lying. A turnover tax should be considered a 'tax of last resort'. It's the equivalent of saying 'You're a liar. Everyone knows you're a liar. We can prove that you are behaving like a massive bunch of dicks, and this is the result. You brought it on yourself, now open your wallets you greedy bastards.'

DavCrav

Re: I wonder....

"It will be VAT as usual, and a flat tax on top, so all our Amazon bills will go up by 2% with a new "EU revenue tax" item added to them to cover the extra."

No they won't. If you think £5.99 will change to £6.11, you have another thing coming.

The point is that other companies have to pay tax, and now so will Amazon. If that removes some of their competitive advantage (from being close to, but not quite, illegal), then that's great. If Amazon prices have to go up, then good, because they are artificially low right now. If Amazon prices don't go up, even better, as the tax authorities get some of what is due with no problems for anyone other than Amazon.

DavCrav

Re: I'm not sure that targeting specific companies is the way forward.

"It also misses out on the notion that Amazon's margins are a lot lower than Facebook and Google. Amazon actually have to buy stuff to sell (except for marketplace) whereas Facebook and Google have enviable gross margins."

Boo fucking hoo. Shouldn't have been dicks about paying tax/VAT (yes, also VAT, unless they are based in Luxembourg because of the nice views, although the law was changed to that this doesn't work any more) then should they.

MIT gives one-star review to Lyft, Uber over abysmal '$3.37/hr' pay

DavCrav

Re: We know Uber is losing billions

"Oh how wrong you are. In many cities (especially big ones) there is a lot of regulation around taxis. You can't just "buy a few cars" and set up shop. In NYC you have to get an official medallion. The numbers the city issued were limited, so you have to buy one from someone who has them. Uber may have driven down the value, but last I heard five years ago they were going for about $1 million each!"

OK, sorry, I should be more specific. I meant 'in the event of Uber destroying all other taxi businesses', in which case for example the medallion system of New York would probably have disappeared. In the UK there are regulations but no quotas, and it's trivial to set up a firm (as long as you comply with the regulations, which Uber sometimes does).

DavCrav

Re: We know Uber is losing billions

"If most of the drivers are losing money too, the only thing being accomplished is driving taxis out of business. Consumers win with cheaper fares temporarily, but after taxis are gone Uber will jack up the rates to enjoy their new monopoly. Hopefully they get more competition than Lyft before that happens."

The trouble is, taxi companies are easy to set up: just buy a few cars. So you cannot make anything other than normal profit (technical term) this way.

Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired for opposing hiring caps on white, Asian male nerds

DavCrav

Re: Who trust McKinsey?

A quick search online for key personnel yielded this site, and it was old white man, old white man, old white man, old white woman, and the rest were apparently vampires as no pictures were available. I could take a wild stab in the dark though about them: Zafar Khan (old Asian man), Emma Mercer (old white woman), Baroness Sally Morgan of Huyton (old white woman with a crown), Andrew Dougal (old white man) and Justin Read (old white man).

DavCrav

Re: Pity party

"The reason gay men are probably over represented in PhD's is because we have the time and capital to spare."

I see that, although most PhD students and prospective ones don't have children either.

"takes longer to find ourselves a husband (well there are fewer of us, it is a little bit true about gay men being somewhat slutty)"

It is true that the gay men that I know are more often single than the straight men I know, in academia. This will help with not having a two-body problem, but that's normally quite a long way after doing PhDs.

I'm not going to try to come up with my own explanation for any of these rough trends, because I'm not a sociologist and have no desire to just make stuff up. Throw in the fact that I'm not gay and I don't even have personal experience to draw upon.

DavCrav

Re: Pity party

"Perhaps that's due to [...] not achieving the required academic levels [...]"

Not sure about this. Gay people are heavily overrepresented in academia, at least in my experience (science, not just humanities). For example, I would estimate something like 10% of mathematics PhDs are gay, way over the underlying population.

DavCrav

Re: Who trust McKinsey?

A recent article in the Economist said that forced diversity in European boardrooms has had no discernible effect on performance or on diversity in the shopfloor, or on pay differentials. You can want it in and of itself, but there are no benefits beyond those that flow to the lucky few daughters of well-connected families who get in at C-suite level.

DavCrav

Re: This looks the most interesting

"So if the court rules it illegal the fallout will be on the "nuclear winter" scale. If the court rules it legal, I would suggest our Silly Valley, M4 corridor, etc colleagues to immigrate somewhere where they still hire on merit like Eastern Europe."

It's nothing to do with England and Wales. English/Welsh law (not sure about Scotland) is unequivocal. This would be illegal here.

Bitcoin heist with a twist: This time it's servers that were stolen

DavCrav
Headmaster

"Or y'know, into a volcano. Iceland has a reliable stream of magma"

*cough* lava *cough*

Google: Class search results as journalism so we can dodge Right To Be Forgotten

DavCrav

Re: This is the precise problem with this right...

"I want the right to find out if someone has done certain things in their past before doing business with them.."

Then you may need to change the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. I hope you are in Parliament, otherwise it might be a struggle.

DavCrav

If Google are journalists, then surely every fake website that they index is their responsibility? Every libel on every website indexed by Google is their responsibility? I would have thought asking to be treated as a news source is incredibly dangerous on their part.

Stop slurping NHS data to enforce immigration laws? Not on your nellie, huffs UK Home Office

DavCrav

"damage the public's trust in doctor-patient confidentiality."

Doctor-patient confidentiality is about what you are suffering from, not whether or not you are a patient.

Inviting nearby exoplanet revealed as radiation-baked hell

DavCrav

Re: Need I finish the book?

Oh, and he's the guy's father! And they are twins!

DavCrav

Re: Need I finish the book?

It turns out he's been dead all along.

Cryptocurrencies kill people and may kill again, says Bill Gates

DavCrav

Re: Tabs Vs Spaces

"Then I realised that it just goes to prove that nobody can be wrong on everything..."

He's also not a fan of malaria.

DavCrav

"Didn't they say Microsoft Powerpoint contributed to the death of the Columbia astronaughts [sic]?"

Not unless we are also going to blame the manufacturers of the pencils that they used to write down equations as well.

Oi, drag this creaking, 217-year-old UK census into the data-driven age

DavCrav

Re: Data protection.

"Except when, for some reason, a huge American commercial enterprise [ie. Ancestry. com] seems to have somehow managed to be appointed gatekeepers of this info and are allowed to charge us for access to it —profiting from selling us back the data which our ancestors were legally obliged to provide."

Anyone can go to Kew and look at it. It appears, although I'm not sure, that Ancestry.com digitized the lot, and so they have access to it. It's not clear to me whether they paid for the privilege of doing this, I suspect so. If another company wants to do this, I would guess that the ONS not only would be happy to allow it, but would legally be required to do so.

Chilly willies: Swedish nudie nightclub opens in -11°C to disgust of locals

DavCrav

Re: IT?

"I think the IT angle is that even in this situation, you're bound to find a gaggle of geeks in a corner cooing over their latest gadgets, completely oblivious to the bacchanalian activities going on around them."

Erm, they are naked. Where would they store them? Wait, don't answer that.