* Posts by Nial

173 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Jun 2013

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Ancient telly borked broadband for entire Welsh village

Nial

Re: 18 months?

" in the US you have to get all commercial kit tested and certified to prove that it doesn't emit RFI and that external RFI will not affect it"

All new kit has to be 'CE' marked , it sounds like this pre-dates this.

There's a lot of crap comes in from China with the CE symbol (you'll have seen it on power supplies etc) that I'm sure has never been near a testing lab.

HMRC claims victory in another IR35 dispute to sting Nationwide contractor for nearly £75k in back taxes

Nial

Re: Wait? I'm a contractior now?

"Seven years as a 'contractor' in the same role?! That's never going to fly"

Yes, because no real business ever wants repeat work.

Don't worry, IT contractors. New UK chancellor says HMRC will be gentle pushing IR35 rules

Nial

Re: If you've been on £400-700 a day for a few years

"Then they are probably disguised employees. A genuine contractor will have specific skills which will be expensive. I've never known a contractor earn less than £500/day, even back when I was employing them"

You've obviously never known any engineering contractors then. :-(

Auf wiedersehen, pet: UK Deutsche Bank contractors plan to leave rather than take 25% pay cut for IR35 – report

Nial

And yes, I have long term sickness cover (and PI etc), that only kicks in after a few months.

Nial

You're mistaking us all for some of those in finance who get paid £££/ Hr.

I'm an engineer and there's not much difference in what I take home and what one of the permies here takes home (especially when you take pensions into account).

There's only a Volvo on my drive.

Nial

"Then your boss (you) sucks for not paying you sick pay. You can't just take the pros and complain about the cons"

I have money in the company to cover this sort of eventuality and can't see where I complained about it.

I was just pointing out there is risk when you're working for yourself.

Nial

"Risk? What risk? You're a contractor, not an entrepreneur."

I had emergency surgery last year and wasn't able to work for a month.

No work = No pay).

That sort of risk.

Contractors welcome Lords inquiry into IR35 before tax reforms hit private sector but fear it's 'too little, too late'

Nial

"When contracting you are at the mercy of your employer"

They aren't your employer, that's your company.

Remember that Sonos speaker you bought a few years back that works perfectly? It's about to be screwed for... reasons

Nial

Re: Makes logitech look like....

And expanding.

I've got two raspberry pi based Squeezeplayers driving two set of speakers in our kitchen.

Not a piece of Logitech kit in sight. :-)

UK government review of IR35 tax reforms? Like a broken pencil, say contractors groups – it'll be utterly pointless

Nial

Re: It's over....

"have been in the same company for several years* refuse to accept that they were disguised employee's"

What business turns down additional work because they've been satisfying a client for too long?

Repeat business is crucial to every real business.

Nial

Re: It's over....

"The difference between permie take home and contractor take home is not as much as you might think, especially if...."

...your a design engineer. :-(

But freedom from anyone in HR having any 'power' over your career :-)

Nial

"shift from the employee to employer"

The company I am providing design services to are not my 'employer'.

That is, and will continue to be my company, which covers all my training, sick pay (I was off for a month last year after emergency surgery), holiday pay, benefits etc.

I have also had an employee (for a project which fell through, we're still on good terms, he keeps trying to

persuade me do some work for him now), a situation I'd like to repeat and grow the company.

Again, the crowd I'm doing some work for _now_ are not my employer.

>:-|

We won't CU later: New Ofcom broadband proposals mull killing off old copper network

Nial

Re: one major problem that Ofcom is deliberately ignoring

"Err the problem is that when the power fails, the mobile phone mast will also fail. I have a solid 4G signal where I live, but when we had a power outage last month, my signal also died due to the phone mast being on the same circuit and hence dead."

Perhaps this will trigger a revival in ham radio!

Smart speaker maker Sonos takes heat for deliberately bricking older kit with 'Trade Up' plan

Nial

Re: "the backlash is a wee bit overdone"

> > There are many anomalies in the data

> What? No, there aren't.

Have a read of this then come back to us.....

https://realclimatescience.com/2020/01/nasa-confirms-their-own-conspiracy-theory/

When is an electrical engineer not an engineer? When Arizona's state regulators decide to play word games

Nial

Re: So... is he an engineer?

My sister did an electronic engineering degree then when she graduated went to work for BT (British Telecom) here in the UK.

They had a structured route to getting chartered for those entering, so while she specialised in project

management and never did a days 'engineering' in her life, she was chartered before I could have

been. I'm 2 years older, also did electronic engineering, and was actually doing electronic design work for a small company.

Being 'chartered' doesn't mean anything. :-(

How to lose a UK contractor in 10 days: Make them commit after upcoming IR35 tax upheaval, apparently

Nial

Re: Good.

"but still retain a great deal of control over the work they take on and how and when they do it"

The whole point of taking on contractors is that they know 'how' to do whatever needs done.

There is case law where a chef was told what the menu was, but not how to produce it. He was found not to be an employee. (This is from memory so I'm afraid no references).

Nial

Re: It's not that hard

"It was. It was then copied by a bunch of people who don't want to pay tax"

It was then copied by a bunch of people who wouldn't get a contract if they didn't operate through a limited company, as enforced by clients.

And oddly enough, I, and the company I run, both pay lots of tax.

"Either you are, or you aren't"

And yet if you're supposedly an employee you get no employee rights. So you are, but you aren't really.

Ever thought about giving contracting a go?

Nial

"whether they need to switch to full-time staff status, pay national insurance and get benefits like paid holidays"

Eh no, they can be taxed as if they were employees, with none of the benefits.

"But the survey found that 83 per cent of contractors have still not had a conversation with their employer"

The company engaging their services on a particular contract is not "their employer"

As above, this is pretty bloody shoddy from elReg.

UK Supreme Court unprorogues Parliament

Nial

Re: Damning...

The reason they voted against an election is they know with the anger of those who voted leave, they would lose (as long as the Tories and Brexit party come to an arrangement).

Nial

Re: The status of Northern Ireland

"As I understand it, NI demographics have been gradually shifting over time and are now such that there would probably be majority support for leaving the UK"

I'm not sure you understand it very well, NI benefits enormously from being part of the UK, I'm not sure many people want to pay EUR 50 to see a GP. There's a lot more trade with NI & the rest of the UK than with 'the South'.

"I'm guessing the EU factors would also support remaining in the EU if/when the rest of the UK departs, as appears to be the case with Scotland"

You're not making the mistake of believing the SNP are you?

A large majority here still want to be part of the UK, our problem is the unionist vote is split 3 ways so the SNP get elected. And they're the only ones you ever hear from.

BTW, an independent Scotland would be out of the EU for a considerable amount of time, and Sturgeon et al would have had us all out in 2014 without a thought. The current bloviation is

just convenient grievance mongery.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson moves to shut Parliament

Nial

"This is a reminder that when asked the man who is now PM said "Fuck industry""

No, he didn't, and what he did say was in the context of business having too much influence in something or other.

He's not anti- business.

Contractor association blasts UK.gov guidance on hated IR35 tax law's arrival in private sector

Nial

Re: Impossibly complicated

Neil, if it's all so easy and well paid why don't you go contracting?

Take the bus... to get some new cables: Raspberry Pi 4s are a bit picky about USB-Cs

Nial

"But they decided not to follow the specs"

It was a sodding mistake.

How many hundreds of pages of specs did they have to troll through to implement this design?

It's great to see all the people on here getting stuck in over a mistake, I hope all your software / hardware works first compile and no bugs ever get past testing, because that's what you're complaining about.

Dundee Satellite Receiving Station: Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

Nial

Re: The UK in a nutshell...

"or 0.0003 DUPs"

The DUP negotiated extra spending in NI, that benefits everyone there.

Nial

Re: The UK in a nutshell...

"Of course, it would all have been managed so much better if Scotland had gained its independence"

I presume that's sarcasm?

It's 50 years to the day since Apollo 10 blasted off: America's lunar landing 'dress rehearsal'

Nial

Re: Dumbest = religiously dumb. ;-)

"I can verify that they faked it."

And the Russians who had also lost men in this race sat around and didn't say anything about it?

My other leg plays jingle bells.

Rising sea levels? How about the rising risk of someone using a nuke?

Nial

Re: How about both?: Rising sea levels and nuke use

"Just for example of 50% of the UK's power generation capacity is now from renewables"

Bollocks.

http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

Back to drawing board as Google cans AI ethics council amid complaints over right-wing member

Nial

Re: ...by definition unethical

"The "Socialism" of the Nazi's confused me briefly, but I did figure it out. They were not Socialists, they were National Socialists. Completely different concept"

Until you look at their policies., redistribution of wealth, state ownership of industry etc

Nial

"One of the many differences between the left and the right, is that the left can merrily exist without the right, whereas the right couldn't get out of bed without the motivation of something to hate"

The right can merrily exist as long as they're being left alone, whereas the left can't get out of bed without the motivation of someone to control/ opinion to shut down.

Boeing... Boeing... Gone: Canada, America finally ground 737 Max jets as they await anti-death-crash software patches

Nial

Re: "US, Canada finally ground 737 Max jets..."

"Everyone involved in that part is recorded, and so when it fails we get a boot up the ass. How do you record all of that on software? Unless its a very simple program, you're unlikely to have just a single software engineer working on it for the lifetime of the project. How do you show who put the dodgy line of code in, and when? Why did they do it ? Was it checked? How do you PROVE the code was checked?"

Version control will show exactly who changed what when. It won't show if it was checked but it'll show who's responsible for checking changes in.

The HeirPod? Samsung Galaxy Buds teardown finds tiny wireless cans 'surprisingly repairable'

Nial

Re: Why bother?

"It doesn't matter how durable a device is if the user chucks it in a draw"

Dave, what's a "draw"?

I've seen this in various forum posts over the years, I presume you mean 'drawer'?

Not being cheeky but are you from the south of England where the 'er' of drawer is barely pronounced?

Peers to HMRC: Digital tax reforms 3 days after Brexit? Hold your horses, how 'bout 3 years...

Nial

"I had a look before and there is no reason why you couldn't write your own software"

Many of us aren't software engineers, that's one reason.

Small Brit firms beg for 'light touch' as only half are ready for digital tax reforms due next month

Nial

"or when Scotland and Ireland (Northern) vote to leave the UK"

Neither of those is going to happen.

"Can someone please explain to me how England ended up where they are right now"

The UK isn't 'England'.

Northern UK smart meter rollout is too slow, snarls MPs' committee

Nial

"Dear MPs, where is this North Region? ..... Because if the later we have a name for the north of the UK, we call it Scotland ya ignorant Sassenachs"

Are you talking Geographically or by population?

I took it to mean that both the Scots and Northern English have more sense than the southern shandy drinking sausage jockeys.

FPGAs? Sure, them too. Liqid pours chips over composable computing systems

Nial

"It is quite a leap, isn't it?"

Just remember you _are_ describing hardware, every flop flop, look up table etc you describe is always there and clocked, every clock.

And the article description is slightly incorrect, FPGAs aren't 'flexible compute devices'. They can be, but they could also just act as wire connections from pin to pin.

Euro eggheads call it: Facebook political ads do change voters' minds – and they worked rather well for Trump in 2016

Nial

Re: @The Tick

"Ahhhh, typical ignorant response from a brexitter"

"The Tick", you posted so many easily demonstrative lies, I don't know where to start.

Then a lot of rambling that doesn't actually refute any of the points.

Good one!

Free for every Reg reader – and everyone else, too: Arm Cortex-M CPUs for Xilinx FPGAs

Nial

Re: What are they used for

"typically their main design limitation is that you run out of input / output pins"

It depends what you're using, the biggest Artix device has 500 IO pins.

?

Don't mean to alarm you – but NASA is about to pummel the planet with huge frikkin' space laser

Nial

Re: Missing information

"Resolving round trip time to a billionth of a second gives a theoretical accuracy of 0.1mm"

You sure?

Speed of light in air = 3.10^9 m/s

Divide by 1.10^9 = 3.1m

That's a round trip so can resolve to half that, so ~1.5m.

Having said that resolving to 1nS isn't much to boast about, is that correct?

Rejoice! Thousands more kids flock to computing A-level

Nial

"bear in mind that an A* or A grade truly does put them in the top few hundred of their cohort"

Did I not hear that ~ 26% (overall) got A or A* ?

It doesn't mean much these days.

CEST la vie, IR35 workers: HMRC sets out stall for ignoring Mutuality of Obligation

Nial

Re: where does MOO fit in?

If you're an employee they have to provide work, you have to do it, and they have to pay you for it.

As a contractor if the work finishes there's no obligation on them to give you any more,

Uber's London licence appeal off to flying start: No, you cannot do driver eye tests via video link

Nial

Re: Just make them

"Want to pretend to be self-employed - run full accounts, payroll and pay your tax as a company"

So you're banning people working self employed in the UK?

You know there are more tax advantages running a company?

Tesla undecimates its workforce but Elon insists everything's absolutely fine

Nial

Re: sustainable, clean energy

"It does until it goes wrong and you send a massive radioactive cloud over half the planet"

Won't happen with Small Nuclear Reactors which can be designed to fail safe with no backup power.

UK has rejected over 1,000 skilled IT bod visa applications this year

Nial

Re: @AC Use local

"The median salary in the UK is about £21k (official figures are a few years old, so maybe 22-23 by now)"

The most recent figure I can find with a quick google is that in 2014 the median salary for full time employees was £27,200.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_Kingdom

Again, it makes the argument that you can't get experienced IT people when you're offering £30K laughable.

Nial

Re: Use local

"And this is not about paying less, both of the roles I am offering are paying very well!"

Not well enough, obviously.

If you pay it, they will come. And if rates go up more people will start doing it.

Nial

Re: @AC Use local

"the minimum salary is £30,000"

This is bin man(/person) salary range.

How anyone can say they can't get experienced people when they're offering this is laughable.

Can't wait for Linux apps on Chrome OS? And you like stability? We'll see you in December, then

Nial

"Bloated browser? My sub £200 Chromebook is online and usable from cold power up within 3 seconds..."

Exactly, I don't know where the downvotes are coming from.

I bought a cheap Chromebook to get access to my email (tethered to my phone) when on one client's site when they locked everything down.

At home it has become our go-to bit of kit for browsing/ ordering etc. That's over a reasonable windows laptop, an oldish ipad and a two year old ipad air.

They aren't laptops, but are instant on and 'just work', with a keyboard that vastly increases producivity

when you need one.

I don't even know where the ipads are now.

Grab your lamp, you've pulled: Brits punt life-saving gravity-powered light

Nial

"If I didn't already have electricity in my shed, I 100% would buy this... Big thumbs up to them :)"

My reaction too, so I tried to buy one.

_£70_ on Amazon!

>:-0

Scotland: Get tae f**k on 10Mbps Broadband USO

Nial

Re: Popular Front for the Liberation of England

"So Wales and Scotland would be worse off how exactly? It's interesting that virtually every argument used by the Leavers for taking the UK out of the EU can also be used (in spades) to justify the breakup of the UK, but the Britnats don't seem to see the irony!"

Except the money flows OUT of the UK to the EU.

Wales and Scotland get a lot of subsidy IN from the r-UK.

So the situation wrt the EU is completely reversed.

"Britnats". You're an SNP supporter then?

Nial

Re: Eh?

"We get much less than the Scottish economy returns to Wastemonster"

I'm sorry but this is complete and utter balearics according to the SNP led government's own figures.

"We are also the only part of the UK other than the SE with a positive balance of payments so we pay our way in the world"

Wrong again. Again according to the SNP govts figures we get ~£1900 per head support from the r-UK.

BTW, NI, Wales, the NE and NW of England all get more per head than we do. Our revenues are about the UK average so our economy is doing OK, it's just that schools/ hospitals/ policing roads etc are expensive to provide in the Highlands and Islands.

Ever wondered why there's been no mention of Full Fiscal Autonomy for a while?

Get the message, PHBs: New York City mulls ban on after-hours biz email

Nial

Re: No working for free

"Exactly! Who in their right mind reads , let alone answers, business e-mails after hours?"

Everybody who works for themselves.

Although I suppose for us there's no such thing as "after hours".

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