Yikes.
You lost me at "Europe sorted this".
Posts by streaky
1745 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Jul 2010
Page:
Four years after Europe sorted this, America is still going around in circles on data privacy in stuffy hearings
Fighting an insurer over lockdown payout? UK policyholders just won an important COVID-19 test case
Thursday 17th September 2020 11:05 GMT
Questionable..
How the insurers ever thought they would win given some of the policy wording involved.
TL;DR:
If there's a pandemic, we'll pay out.
There's a pandemic.
We're not paying out, you're not covered in pandemics.
Either these people are covered or you mis-sold many of them insurance, would you like to talk about compensation now or later?
Thursday 17th September 2020 11:02 GMT
Re: I can imagine this will ultimately be a phyrric victory
"And yes, your policies will cost twice as much next year"
That's the nature of insurance, it's a hedge against unforeseen but potential events, that's what you're paying for.
It won't however be priced in such a way that insurers will assume this will happen every year until the end of time, for one thing because such a policy won't be viable.
Brave takes brave stand against Google's plan to turn websites into ad-blocker-thwarting Web Bundles
UK govt reboots A Level exam results after computer-driven fiasco: Now teacher-predicted grades will be used after all
WSL2 is so last year: Linux compatibility layer backported to older Windows 10 versions
Monday 24th August 2020 03:00 GMT
2004
Only way to get out dev/beta rings is to reinstall windows by the way, for, y'know, reasons question mark.
Had to go dev to get the GPU goodies for TensorFlow, not so fun..
That all being said not had any major issues touch wood other than not being able to install MSFS because Microsoft don't test their own software against their own OS, or something.
NCC Group admits its training data was leaked online after folders full of CREST pentest certification exam notes posted to GitHub
Virgin Galactic pals up with Rolls-Royce to work on Mach 3 Concorde-style private jet that can carry up to 19 people
UK space firms forced to adjust their models of how the universe works as they lose out on Copernicus contracts
Dutch spies helped Britain's GCHQ break Argentine crypto during Falklands War
Tuesday 19th May 2020 02:46 GMT 
Uhm..
This story is complete bull, UK would have been fully aware. The Dutch probably didn't know the UK would have been fully aware - but even if neither of those things were true the Dutch wouldn't have considered for a second blowing the CIA's op. See the issue?
Utter nonsense story. Complete unadulterated nonsense.
Eclipse boss claims Visual Studio Code is an open-source poseur – though he would say that, wouldn't he?
Rust core devs mull adoption of alternative compiler front-end for improved IDE support
Assange should be furloughed from Belmarsh prison, says human rights org. Here's a thought: He could stay with friends!
Wednesday 29th April 2020 02:56 GMT
Re: Incompetent Also...
whilst prison-states like Iran and Turkey have released one third of their inmates
Yeah when you're locking people up for literally no reason you can do this - Assange isn't locked up for no reason. If he hadn't fought the extradition which always was and always will go through because he has no viable legal argument then he'd be in the US and you never know he might have been bailed - I doubt it but it's possible. Sure as hell aint happening here.
Python 2 bows out after epic transition. And there was much applause because you've all moved to version 3, right? Uh, right?
Zoom's end-to-end encryption isn't actually end-to-end at all. Good thing the PM isn't using it for Cabinet calls. Oh, for f...
Thursday 2nd April 2020 03:37 GMT
Stronk Disinformation
Crucially, the use of the Zoom software is likely to have infuriated the security services
Because? There was like 40 people that we could see ignoring staffers, families and the like. You think they discussed privileged information? Really? Oh dear.. That's not what cabinet meetings are for.
while also raising questions about whether the UK government has its own secure video-conferencing facilities
Nah man they just use Zoom for everything despite the contracts for video conferencing being fairly well publicised.
We asked GCHQ, and it told us that it was a Number 10 issue. Downing Street declined to comment.
As they should.
You people can't possibly be this simple? It's clearly a massive diversionary tactic. Pointless one sure, but lets get a grip? They wouldn't talk about anything of note over the public internet, full stop.
HMRC claims victory in another IR35 dispute to sting Nationwide contractor for nearly £75k in back taxes
Friday 6th March 2020 04:08 GMT
Re: Rigged definition of an employee
what's to stop them then saying that they want years of holiday pay and benefits etc
Depends how you look at it and it could go either way - one way is sure, employees were getting screwed in an inequitable contract arrangement and should be entitled. The other way, and this one will be common is to say that these people knew full-well or should have known full well because they're not morons what the implications of the arrangements they were entering into were. Suspect we're going to find out in court though, but not against HMRC: these cases/tribunals would need to be directed at the employer where they belong.
Employment benefits isn't a matter for the HMRC, by the way.
Friday 6th March 2020 04:04 GMT
Re: Rigged definition of an employee
and also guilty of not providing benefits, etc
That's literally half the reason IR35 exists - if you remember back to the time before this was a thing they were expecting the taxpayer to pick up the tab for things like sickness saving themselves a pile of money, and not paying the requisite taxes for those things in the first place - or put another way taxpayers were getting double screwed.
Friday 6th March 2020 04:02 GMT
Re: Rigged definition of an employee
Its helpful when HMRC have basically rigged the definition of an employee to be be "anyone we think should have paid tax at an employees rate".
No.
What HMRC have done is rigged the rules to say anybody who is pretending to be a contractor yet is for all intents and purposes is an employee for all intents and purposes for tax evasion purposes is an employee and should pay tax like an employee.
It's not hard to guess why people are triggered though, given it doesn't apply to legitimate contractors..
If you're writing code in Python, JavaScript, Java and PHP, relax. The hot trendy languages are still miles behind, this survey says
Quantum compute boffins called up to get national UK centre organised for some NISQy business
Monday 2nd March 2020 07:13 GMT
Ugh.
Bit ragey this thread. Let the yanks piss away cash on the hardware, they're not playing long game: applications of. We learned this with so many technologies over the years and that's what we're world leaders at. The sheer volume of effort we put into the jet engine and didn't play the long game and we got nothing for it other than a few industrial gas turbine makers and a car maker building jet engines - they're very nice jet engines but BA aint no Emirates.
We should be aiming for the Emirates of QC - whatever that looks like - not the Pratt and Whitney.
UK contractors planning 'mass exodus' ahead of IR35 tax clampdown – survey
Friday 14th February 2020 06:06 GMT
Re: Anonymous Contractor
a person is either an employee or a contractor
Except that plainly isn't true. Companies started making people who were *explicitly* even previously employees doing the same job become contractors for the sole purpose of not paying tax they aught pay, people were taking sick pay from the state (i.e. taxpayers) rather than the company who should have been paying it and all sorts of nonsense. That's how bad it got.
The whole thing is *supposed* to be coercive. Everybody involved is supposed to look at the situation and say "oh shit, that doesn't work for us, lets not do the contracting thing and pretend and employee isn't an employee because the tax implications of not keeping it legit are catastrophic" and those employees are supposed to look at it and say to their employer "I'm not playing that game with you, it's not worth my time". Again, to make absolutely clear, it's *supposed* to be coercive to all parties that's why when you come under it then it becomes a horrible nightmare.
Now, if what we're really talking is people who shouldn't be considered employees but are under the system that's a whole different argument/discussion, but it's one that it's utterly impossible to have because of all the noise around people moaning about it doing the job it's supposed to be doing.
It's not that I don't have sympathy, because I do - I got my current permanent job via a freelancing job, I've been there and I get why people freelance. My thing is we need to start by separating the two issues out, telling the people who IR35 actually targets to stop ruining freelancing and contracting and do one; only then can we seriously get into the detail of what the actual problem is.
Friday 14th February 2020 05:58 GMT
Re: Anonymous Contractor
Avoidance is another way of saying evasion. Avoidance is used as a polite term by press because they think it sounds less accusative than evasion. What they mean is they're not paying a tax they should be because they found some loophole in the law. All synthetic "avoidance" measures are now illegal (via catch-all) in UK law are are, in fact, evasion.
Thursday 13th February 2020 03:34 GMT
Re: Anonymous Contractor
> Well, when contractors get holiday pay, sick pay, bank holiday pay etc...
I see we're still confusing legitimate contractors with the people IR35 explicitly targets as what you'd politely call tax avoiders and more accurately call tax evaders.
People targetted by IR35 are explicitly entitled to all those things because they're employees *pretending* to be contractors. That's why IR35 exists.
Because we can't have an adult conversation about the execution problems we can't have a conversation and the government is going to ignore the noise as a result - much like, by the way, Universal Credit - the parallels make my head explode.
Can't believe we're still arguing about this shit. The law is clear. It doesn't affect all contractors. It affects employees posing as contractors. If you're an employee posing as a contractor you're entitled to employee protections.
I know these forums are packed with contractors - and I'm going to get downvoted as a result for speaking truth - I used to be one and I get the pain, but please can we stop confusing who the IR35 is targetting, execution problems (to the extent they exist) and ACTUAL contractors doing contract work - IR35 for the latter being relatively trivial. Our tax system aint that complex and we should stop pretending it is.
Not call, dude: UK govt says guaranteed surcharge-free EU roaming will end after Brexit transition period. Brits left at the mercy of networks
Friday 31st January 2020 18:11 GMT
Termination fees work both ways and in many cases this stuff is the companies cross-charging themselves. German telcos won't charge for roaming in the UK because they'll be able to swap with UK telcos for the same in reverse. Telcos aren't eating costs for nowt just because the EU ordered them to.
Again, this is how it works with other non-EU countries.
Also again, to be clear, this was already a thing - the EU didn't make telcos do something they a) weren't already doing or b) do something they didn't want to do - if they'd not wanted to do it, it simply wouldn't have happened; the EU is the wild west for lobbying and is extraordinarily corrupt as a result. They know how to make this cheap, they already did and leaving the EU doesn't make them forget how to do it cheap. Telcos aren't eating costs in roaming countries just because the EU ordered them to - it's because they can trade it and because it's extremely inexpensive. Don't forget, we're dealing with digital phone networks - it costs the infrastructure as much to call somebody as it does for me to write a comment here.
but trying to explain this to a Brexiteer is a total waste of time
Yes, because we're not as stupid as remainers think we are and have knowledge of how this stuff works and can see through it a mile away.
Friday 31st January 2020 12:26 GMT
If the operators don't charge (as permitted), it's as if the old rules still apply.
There it is.
Ignoring the fact the rules still apply, it was something many operators were already starting to do when they first started to apply. There's no rule requiring free roaming in the US, but all networks give it, there's no rule requiring free roaming in Israel but most networks give it, there's no rule requiring free roaming in Australia but all networks give it.
Turns out in a fair competitive market you don't need masses of bureaucracy to give people the things they want - and that's what we should be watching out for, not the other thing.
Just ask all the UK banks who have all set their overdraft interest rates to be 40%.
This is the exception that proves the rule, it doesn't undermine it.
One-time Brexit Secretary David Davis demands Mike Lynch's extradition to US be halted
Friday 24th January 2020 10:54 GMT
Re: Not Menwith
It says we must extradite if the Americans provide a warrant but that we have to present a case to get Americans extradited here.
Yeah but that's not how it works which is how Assange is still rotting in a UK prison cell. The only way they can do it with just a warrant is if it's uncontested, but that's the same the other way.
On the Sacoolas thing IMHO it's fairly clear that hubby is NSA or CIA and that's why the US is being protective. Without being declared persona non grata the only people who are fair game is who the US elects to decide are fair game. The real issue that the US aught bare in mind is what they're doing is precedential - when some young lad in the US gets mown down by a drunk British (or any other country) diplomat driving on the wrong side of the road (they'd have to be drunk because most people can tell the difference between left and right) and they claim immunity and leave the country what are they going to say to the family of the victim? Oh, well, we could have prosecuted him, but we tried to be clever in another case and it's fucked us right proper.
As for it originally being valid if her husband has immunity, which he probably does, then the convention is clear that it cross-applies to family, for fairly obvious reasons. It's an abuse of the treaties though - they exist to stop the likes of Iran and China locking people up just for the fun of it, not as a catch all we can do whatever we like which is a real risk of ending the entire diplomacy system, especially when it's a key military ally.
I'm not entirely sure I 100% disagree on the point about stopping extraditions, but it does work both ways, despite what you think and they're a massive help with things like tracking down people who skip out on paying child support and making them pay it and other such things.
Friday 24th January 2020 07:09 GMT
There is precident..
For US federal courts noting and sticking to rulings in higher British courts and staying well out of ongoing cases and cases where a party has been ruled against - not least because forum shopping is abusive to the rule of law cannot be allowed. This should be fought in the US court system before it ends up anywhere near an extradition request.
Friday 24th January 2020 07:05 GMT
Re: Not Menwith
There's no imbalance in the treaty, same rules apply both sides - the imbalance in what we consider to be a satisfactory case to answer. The US uses their system of district/state/US attorneys which are political positions which encourage news-making - and grand juries where the prosecutor gets to state any case they feel like which the potential defendant cannot argue their case. In the UK we have professional prosecutors who weigh the case on its merits, public interest and likelihood of succeeding - and it's explicitly apolitical (or it's supposed to be anyway). That's where the perceived imbalance comes from.
The Harry Dunn case is particularly shitshowy and there's the whole issue of diplomatic immunity (which it's not obvious is valid) that will go through the US court system. There is a strong and easy case to make to stop all UK-US extraditions until it is resolved though, absent exceptional circumstances.
Who says HMRC hasn't got a sense of humour? Er, 65 million Brits
Tuesday 21st January 2020 05:58 GMT
Just to be clear..
In case there's people reading his who are from third world countries* with absurdly inefficient tax systems designed to kick up maximum fuss every year given the headline could be slightly confusing: the vast majority of people in the UK don't file tax returns.. It's about 12 million before you ask - which surprised me it's that high, suspect a good chunk of that is why IR35 exists..
* Like the US..
EU've been naughty: GDPR has netted bloc €114m in fines since 2018
Tuesday 21st January 2020 05:35 GMT
Re: Wouldn't it be nice if the UK had an effective regulator?
If you can travel somewhere for 90 days by a simple application and paying a what was it again, 6 euros? fee every 3 years then maybe it effectively is visa-free travel and it might be time to stop moaning because nobody could put forward a positive compelling case to stay in the EU? (helps that there isn't one)
No, oh well, in which case - to bastardise a line from Sorkin - they'll like us when we win.
MI5 gros fromage: Nah, US won't go Huawei from dear old Blighty over 5G, no matter what we do
$13m+ Swiss Army Knife of blenders biz collapses to fury of 20,000 unfulfilled punters
Non-unicorn $700 e-scooter shop Unicorn folds with no refunds – after blowing all its cash on online ads
Americans should have strong privacy-protecting encryption ...that the Feds and cops can break, say senators
We strained our eyes with Lenovo's monster monitor: 43.4 inches for price of five 24" screens
Radio nerd who sipped NHS pager messages then streamed them via webcam may have committed a crime
Friday 1st November 2019 04:52 GMT
Humbug
It's trivial to gulp down pager messages, the encoding on them stands up to no scrutiny at all and in theory doing so isn't a problem. Asking people not to look at what's passing through the air is like doing semaphore and asking people to look the other way - AFAIK merely listening has never been tested in court and it wouldn't survive if it was. HOWEVER - then distributing the data you collect has always been a no-no, predating RIPA.
TBH I'd say prosecute the hospitals that are passing messages around effectively unencrypted. Seems like a job for the ICO.
A stranger's TV went on spending spree with my Amazon account – and web giant did nothing about it for months
Well, well, well. Fancy that. UK.gov shelves planned pr0n block
Her Majesty opens UK Parliament with fantastic tales of gigabit-capable broadband for everyone
Tuesday 15th October 2019 03:29 GMT
Re: It's no problem...
After a no deal BREXIT, they'll be cutting the cables to the UK anyway.
Vast majority of the bandwidth between the US and Europe passes through the UK so I wish them every luck with that. Bit late to start laying pipe now.. All that finance traffic down the toilet, oh dear..
Biting the hand that feeds IT
