* Posts by LucreLout

3039 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Jun 2014

Talk about making a rod for your own back: Pot dealer's seized €54m Bitcoins up in smoke after keys thrown out with fishing gear

LucreLout

Re: He must know where the keys are

Or he's a multi-millionaire that is needlessly risking his freedom selling drugs when he has no financial motivation to do so.

Doesn't that describe most drug barons? It could equally be applied to CxO's of most large companies etc.

Worried about future planet-cleansing superbugs? But distrust AI? Guess you're not interested in these antibiotics

LucreLout

Re: Sorry Dave,

If you believe the wilder of the current conspiracy theories, this is what happened with the Coronavirus.

Its probably statistically more likely you'd die from all the tinfoil you'd need in your hat to believe such a thing than it is that you'd die from the Corona virus.

Ofcom measured UK's 5G radiation and found that, no, it won't give you cancer

LucreLout

Re: Chernobyl

people are perfectly fine with believing that Chernobyl is a global disaster that killed millions and rendered half of Europe uninhabitable, and that Fukushima Daiichi will destroy all life on Earth (still waiting...), while at the same time when you actually go down on the ground in those places you'll find that... it's rather boring.

Ignorance is the real underlying problem. It's not that people want to believe these things, it's just that they lack the scientific explanation to properly grasp the truth.

I had previously assumed that Chernobyl would have by now gone on to kill some of us in the UK who were around for the leak, and a few thousand in Ukraine etc. Turns out, not so much, beyond the heroic first responders.

I'd also assumed Fukushima would go on to kill a few thousand of the local populace due to the leak, and that it may equally kill most of the first responders (see Chernobyl for reasons). That also ended up being untrue.

It'd be rather more helpful to society if public broadcasters like the BBC focused on quality programming to dispel misconceptions about technology (Radiation, 5G etc) rather than dancing on the ice in the jungle with the z-listers.

Hey, Brits. Your Google data is leaving the EU before you are: Hoard to be shipped from Ireland to US next month

LucreLout

Re: Convenient BS from Google...

I have a German friend who lived in the UK 20 years ago.... problem with the English is they are living in a 3rd world country...

And yet your German friend would prefer to live here rather than the Fatherland? It seems most likely that he's never been to a third world country and was merely tweaking his prejudices to better fit with what he perceives is your world view. He thinks you hate England so he pretends he does too. Nobody leaves a first world country to live in "a third world country" because they like British beer.

LucreLout

Re: So that is what they meant by taking back control!

Meh. Google does not and never has had any control of my privacy.

I'm not sure that's true. I've never had a facebook account, but I bet Zuckerberg knows all about me - friends have accounts so data about me leaks, and it'll be the same with google. Got a mate with GMail?

Life in plastic, with a classic: Polymer £20 notes released into wild sporting Turner art

LucreLout

Re: Offensive?

I have heard the argument that Brexit will bring back the death penalty (and smoking in pubs) but pretty sure that's currently still illegal.

Is this what remainers do now? Sit around in wine bars and try to out do each other with the most ridiculous Brexit scare story they can conjure up? Really?

I've never smoked but was against the smoking ban in pubs. That argument seems settled to me - no point in forever trying to re-fight lost battles - I just don't see it coming back now. There might be a relaxation for private members clubs one day, but I can't see any demand for over turning the smoking ban. I should imagine most people who didn't want the ban are in much the same mindset as me, and may now oppose any attempt to scrap the ban.

The death penalty simply isn't a vote winner. The country is too split on the issue so most governments will think that its best just left alone.

UK contractors planning 'mass exodus' ahead of IR35 tax clampdown – survey

LucreLout

Re: Anonymous Contractor

I believe that the legal definition of whether someone is an employee is that the employer-employee relationship is a master-slave relationship. As a contractor, I was asked to do things - as an employee I was ordered to do things.

Good luck with that. If I wanted to give or receive orders I'd have joined the Army and if obedience is important to you then buy a dog.

My permies & contractors work(ed) the same way, which the teams define for themselves. I hire the best engineers I can, however they work(ed) for the business, and I expect them to show up and use their brains rather than follow unquestioningly whatever falls out of mine. they are all paid professionals and should not need hand-holding.

I always make requests, I never give orders: being fit to lead is not the same thing as being fit to command - if I screw up the projects are late, if a military commander has a bad day then people die.

Not call, dude: UK govt says guaranteed surcharge-free EU roaming will end after Brexit transition period. Brits left at the mercy of networks

LucreLout

Underneath the hood the EU stopping roaming charges works by stopping operators providing the service you roam into charging extra for that connection back to your service provider

But I never get these charges in the rest of the world either....

LucreLout

If the operators don't charge (as permitted), it's as if the old rules still apply.

I can't believe the fuss the kids are kicking up over roaming charges. Firstly, your phone bill simply isn't that important, but secondly, there's no reason why it'd have to increase - I use my phone freely and without charge in 71 countries and there's only 26 in the rEU.

http://www.three.co.uk/Support/Roaming_and_international/Roaming_Abroad/Destinations

Unless someone is seriously going to suggest that all 71 are as a result of trade deals that many of them don't have with the EU, which won't be the daftest thing a remainer has posted here all week, then it's hard to see what all the fuss is about.

Canadian insurer paid for ransomware decryptor. Now it's hunting the scum down

LucreLout

Re: Not paying!

Yes, offline backups via tape is now unfashionable because tapes are not new and are uncool and have been replaced by trendy stuff that in this case cost the company using them something like a million in direct costs in ransom fees, and them two weeks + downtime, plus the investigation and prosecution costs. What did that tape drive and a few boxes of tapes cost again?

I'm asking because I think I'm missing something not because I think you are, but .... What advantage does tape bring in this instance? My cloud backup is versioned so I can go get a pre-infection version of any of the files, I think. (retail not commercial so I can afford not to be right)

From what you've said I think I might be missing something, I'm just not sure what that is. Please can you explain why versions on tape have a time based advantage over versions online? Thanks in advance.

Boris celebrates taking back control of Brexit Britain's immigration – with unlimited immigration program

LucreLout

Re: Good, good.

I know 3 EU families who've left the UK since brexit because there was no security for their future there. Why risk bringing up and educating your kids in a country where they have no right to stay or work when there are plenty of other countries where they do?!

Ok, so you know 3 families that have chosen to go live elsewhere in Europe. Families with a history of moving around for a better life. Wonderful as that is, its completely irrelevant to the point originally made and to my response to it, which still stands as fact - zero, absolute zero families or people have been forced to relocate out of the UK because of Brexit. "send them home" is a remoaner lie.

Anyone with EU nationality staying in the UK after the end of this year, knowing what the Home Office did to the Windrushers, more fool them.

And yet my wife is completely Zen about it because it really will all be fine.

LucreLout

Re: Good, good.

Indeed, even though IT professionals themselves are rather underpaid in the UK...

I'm not sure that's accurate.

In London it isn't - the market rates for skills here are sky high, my earning ambitions are more curtailed by the PAYE tax system than they are by the market. Everything after £100k starts to hurt more than it helps (67% effective tax rate), and anything over £150k just ruins your private sector pension (allowances seem to have been made for public sector pensions).

In the rest of the country you have plenty of £70k IT jobs in the public sector (My wife is always trying to get me to take one and join her).

Private sector roles in non-london may well be underpaid.... I've not much recent experience with those.

LucreLout

Re: Good, good.

I know several EU citizens who have already been forced to leave

No you don't. No EU citizens have been forced to do anything yet. This is a lie.

There's no plans to make anyone leave, just the opposite - we've set up a system where anyone that doesn't trust future governments can register that they're here and receive a right to remain letter.

My wife is Swedish and it's taken her a minimal amount of time to apply for this - less than it takes me to do my taxes every year.

Judge snubs IT outsourcers' plea to Alt-F4 tougher H-1B visa rules: Bosses told to fill out the extra paperwork

LucreLout

Re: s/specific skills that are in limited supply/willing to work for peanuts/g

I'll bet you a living wage and no more student loans, that the "not enough American citizens to fill the jobs" problem could be solved by doubling the salary offered.

Doubling pay achieves nothing - same monkeys, more expensive peanuts. I've seen plnety of colleagues double their salary in the past 3 years but they're still just as inept as they were on half what they earn now. Money != capability, though they are sometimes correlated.

LucreLout

Re: s/specific skills that are in limited supply/willing to work for peanuts/g

A 30 year old thick client can many times still beat for functionality the hobbled mess that is almost ANY web application.

Sure, as long as you have a way to ship that to all your global customers and get the buy-in of their IT departments to allow them to install it. Otherwise, you have a problem.

I'm not saying there isn't a problem caused by junior javascript jockeys and other web devs (lets say up to 10 years experience), but thick clients aren't the solution to that problem.

LucreLout
Pint

Re: s/specific skills that are in limited supply/willing to work for peanuts/g

The UK has a similar problem with London leaving at lot of us elsewhere wondering what the draw is?

Work. It was always work. Never the beer.

Stiff upper lip time, Brits: After bullying France to drop its digital tax on Silicon Valley, Trump's coming for you next

LucreLout

Re: He's threatening Italy as well

Remember the 13 *billions* EU told Ireland it should collect at its actual tax rates?

The same EU that was absolutely happy to flush Irelands economy down the shitter in 2008, right alongside Greece. They had to be bailed out by a mates rates loan from the UK, despite our own economic troubles of the day. It's really quite astounding how short some memories are... Mr Varadkar I'm looking at you!

LucreLout

Re: He's threatening Italy as well

There's a simple answer. I want to live in the UK, but I want the UK to be a member of the EU.

Sorry, but those days end forever on Friday.

in most cases, as the vast majority of leavers could have left the UK to live in a non EU country but chose not to

Totally different thing. they didn't have the right to live in a non-EU country. They could have requested to live in one of their choice, but they didn't have any rights to it. You did, and you still do all week. If the EU is so great, then go and live in it. If it's actually more important to you to live in the UK, even once outside the EU, well, then just do nothing but don't complain that you didn't have options.

The whole of Europe now has an option to live in a non-EU country by right - they should simply move here by Friday. That could be considered a perfectly reasonable position to take in the rEU starting next week, and one I expect will be used in borderline member states such as Denmark, Italy etc.

A tiny amount of empathy based on their own experiences.

Its not a lack of empathy, its that Leavers patience has been exhausted. Leavers won the debate, then they won the referendum, then they had to win two general elections and then they still had to win the debate in parliament. We've had to win 5 times - how many times do you think remain would have had to win? One time and you know it.

In or out of the EU is a binary thing - they insist that it be so. Once the vote became leave, Leavers offered remainers a compromise that would have achieved more of what remainers wanted than what Leavers wanted, and it was rejected angrily by remain. Boris deal is the only compromise now open to us - close trading ties and on going friendship.

If things go badly, as I expect they will, I'll continue pushing for us to be members of the EU

There's no in-again referendum coming. No political party is going to offer you that option for decades - you had chance to cancel Brexit at the election but most of you voted for marxism instead of the libdems. That debate is settled now, and for all time: The Overton window has moved well away from here.

The EU as you perceive it now will not exist in 10 - 20 years time. The cracks are already widening to breaking point, and once other nations see us doing well, better even than they are, then the clamor to leave will grow elsewhere. Best case for you is the EU reforms to be much much less than it is now, worst case, it simply implodes. There is no future in which it endures on the trajectory of 2016 - ever closer union is dead in the water.

LucreLout

Re: He's threatening Italy as well

Can we go back in? Schengen's not so bad, and those Euro coins are awfully nice..

Sure, you've the whole rest of the working week to move to France - there you may enjoy European Socialism at its finest. If that's not what you actually want, well......

One-time Brexit Secretary David Davis demands Mike Lynch's extradition to US be halted

LucreLout

Re: Would you trust a USA court ...

to give Lynch a fair trial ?

It shouldn't matter. Nobody should be facing extradition to the USA until Anne Sacoolas is on a plane.

It's not popular in these parts to admit that I love America and most of its people - I've never met an American that caused me any problems. However, Anne killed a young lad who was doing no wrong. It may very well have been a mistake, but fleeing justice is to deliberately inflict further pain on the family.

Do the right think Mrs Sacoolas, and get on the next available flight to the UK. Chances are very good you'll be making the trip home again a few weeks later.

Bank IT bod pocketed nearly $1m in kickbacks from tech contractor bosses for sending deals their way, Feds claim

LucreLout

Re: What's $13K between friends ?

Well, he's going to have a lot of time to think about burner phones, anonymous bank accounts and the like.

Getting something akin to an anonymous bank account isn't all that hard, but it is very costly to configure and maintain - the complexity and costs involved go way beyond what would be worth while for sums less than £1M.

There's far far cheaper alternatives to moving such small sums that barely involve banks at all and are untraceable after the fact. Anonymous bank accounts you only need for sums over say £100M.

Over a thousand electronic gizmos went missing from London councils last year

LucreLout

Re: Over a thousand electronic gizmos went missing from London councils last year

They're about a grand each, phones cost about £50 depending on model.

Not once they've been through the public sector procurement process they don't!

Back in the mid 90s it used to cost my then public sector employer £6 to order a 6p Bic biro due to all the requisition paperwork and sign-offs that were needed, and had to be done physically at the time. The irony of needing a pen to fill in a paper form to get a pen was perpetually overlooked.

I'm not suggesting it is any better in much of the private sector, but at least that you aren't compelled to fund. My current CTO has to sign off on my expenses - though at least they're not for basic stationary as we have a well stocked cupboard of that. Fewer signatures, but his hourly rate is probably a little higher than mine plus whatever I was expensing.

Having trouble finding a job in your 40s? Study shows some bosses like job applicants... up until they see dates of birth

LucreLout

Re: driving down costs

Why should a 50-year-old doing helpdesk work be paid more than a 20-year-old doing the exact identical helpdesk work?

They quite probably shouldn't be, however....

I expect to be paid a salary commensurate with the work I'm doing, not my age or experience.

Good luck with that.

The age part is only relevant due to maximum years of gained experience, which is the valuable part of most employees. Someone with 5 years experience will make more mistakes, solve fewer problems, and deliver lower quality work than someone with 10 years experience, who compares similarly unfavorable with someone of 20 years, and so it goes, but as a generalization only. While you're young it's nice to pretend experience is irrelevant, but as you gain some, you'll see that it isn't - experience is just about the biggest value add you can bring.

Its a proven fact that we learn new things in relation to the things we already know. Problem solving works the same way - we solve problems based on what we learned solving similar problems before.

Its entirely possible to have 10 x 1 years experience, if you're not learning continually or are learning disparate things (1 year on Go, 1 on Java, 1 on C#, 1 on Python etc). So while you can have a 40 year old developer with poor coding skills, you can't have a 25 year old dev with ninja coding skills - they simply haven't lived enough days to earn the experience required.

Everyone thinks they're "talented" in much the same way everyone thinks they're an above average driver. The average 30 something with 10 - 15 years coding experience is going to produce a lot more high quality output than the most talented 20 something with little to no experience.

LucreLout

Ageism is the single most important discrimination...

...because as I've said before, even one legged black lesbians will get old eventually. We literally all have it in common.

Simple legislation requiring employers to track age of applicants against role grades, with age of hires into those roles would reveal any hidden bias lurking. If millennial's don't deal with their ageism, they will come to a day when they will wish they had, and far quicker than they could ever believe right now.

The state is going to struggle with asking us to work until we're 70 in IT if people are already struggling for work after 40. There's literally half a career left to go there. The easiest solution is going to be to allow people to withdraw funds at their marginal tax rate, from their private pension from any age they choose - at least middle aged devs with jobs will be able to over-fund their pot in anticipation of an ageist man-child that assumed because their non-technical parents can't program the TiVo, that anyone of similar age can't program anything at all. Alternatively you're going to have to support unemployed ex-devs on the state for 20 years when they could otherwise be supporting themselves.

Email blackmail brouhaha tears UKIP apart as High Court refuses computer seizure attempt

LucreLout

Re: The Dream Ticket?

Keir Starmer was utterly hopeless at the CPS.

Lady Nugee somehow doesn't have working class appeal, not any appeal really as we all know what she thinks of the working class English ("Awful", see tweet).

Becky Bailey is just continuity Corbyn with less historic support for terrorism and communism.

Jess Phillips is way more opinionated than talented, but probably the least worst of a cretinous bunch.

Angry Angela has all the appeal of a baked turd sandwich.

So who is left? There aren't any leaders left in Labour, which is why they had nobody to stand up to Corbyn and his rampant antisemitism. Coming down the tracks early next year will be the finding by the equalities commission that the party is institutionally racist, which will ruin the tenure of any Corbynites well before the next election.

The simple fact is that the quickest way to get the Conservatives out of government would be an orderly closure of the labour party, allowing new opposition to emerge that isn't in hock to the public sector unions, and which can make a break from the economic illiteracy of their past.

What do you mean your eardrums need a break? Samsung-owned JBL touts solar-powered wireless headphones you don't need to charge

LucreLout
Joke

Re: "68 hours of playtime from just 1.5 hours of sunlight"

Now you've done it. It's sure to fail by Solstice. You should never speak of equipment longevity. Ever.

And yet the landing gear on Air Force One is a remarkable piece of kit - it's lasted ages!

(No really NSA/CIA/USA this IS a joke)

Cool 'joke', bro, you could have killed someone: Epilepsy Foundation sics cops on sick flashing-light Twitter trolls

LucreLout
Facepalm

Re: mailing a rabid bat or rattlesnake

most scorpions are relatively harmless

It's war. I think we can safely assume they weren't lobbing them so the enemy could adopt a pet.

and a single one won't last long among lots of feet.

Most rowers would have been barefoot, so knock yourself out - you go stand on it.

You leak our secrets? We'll leak your book sales, speech fees – into our coffers: Uncle Sam wins royalties fight against Edward Snowden

LucreLout

Re: Streisand Effect

So in your proposed scenario, the Feds would ... do what? Ask the court to ban cryptocurrencies entirely? Even assuming a suitable legal framework could be found, how would that be achieved in practice?

Trivially, in practice.

Simply prohibit the use of crypto and all the American owned and ran debit/credit card companies won't be allowed to process any transaction to or from a crypto currency purveyor. The cash value becomes almost zero.

In much the way that sports betting used to be very highly regulated in those united states, crypto is an easy ban for them too. What they need, is a saleable reason to do it - something the average voter won't question, some sort of bogeyman figure detrimental to the national interest.

Now, before you get to thinking why they won't or can't do that, they already did with the alleged-but-now-timed-out rapist Assange and Wikileaks, which crippled the latter financially. Snowden is the perfect fall guy for heavily regulating/banning crypto.

LucreLout

Re: Streisand Effect

If he makes a BTC address available I'd pay for it.

Unfortunately that would be exactly the sort of action that would make the courts sit up and pay real attention to BTC, and not in an enjoyable way.

Whatever you think of Snowden and his actions, and whatever you think of BTC, I don't see the American legal system simply rolling over and saying "Oh, well, the transaction isn't in dollars". Do you?

Hate speech row: Fine or jail anyone who calls people boffins, geeks or eggheads, psychology nerd demands

LucreLout

Re: I notice that...

has written a book based on a small 20 person sample in which each was interviewed for 90 minutes

Indeed. MENSA seems to be the level she's determined to be smart, and they use top 2% of people, so there's around 1.5 million people in the UK would meet her test. And she's interviewed 20? Excel would quite recently not be able to cope with such a small decimal in terms of percentages.......

Anyone thinking they're smart under such a system should realize you could have a whole city of people where you were the thickest resident. It's unlikely, but possibly more likely than a sample of 20 from a 1,500,000 set being representative, no?

LucreLout

Re: these terms are "divisive and humiliating,"

Personally, I have no problem being called a nerd. I think that that person is basing that statement on her personal experience in school, which she obviously did not appreciate.

That's not the case today. Nerd is a badge of honor now

Agreed!

30 years after people used to call me a geek or a nerd at school, they're not looking so clever stuck on the council estate in which we grew up. I've used what intelligence I had to make myself stronger, tougher, richer, and better educated than most people. I've traveled further and experienced more of what this world has to offer. If geek is all you got in return for what life has brought me, then bring it on.

That doesn't mean I think we intelligence fairly in relation to other things.

The simple reality is that we spend billions seeking artificial intelligence, while overlooking any perception of value in our own intelligence. The Professor Hawking quote, while I agree with him entirely, is not applied equitably to the pretty, or the young, who both flaunt their unearned and temporary prowess with abandon. This, despite beauty being found throughout the cosmos, while as far as we know, intelligence is found only here on Earth. I'm aware I'm guilty of double standards here myself mind, as I'd far rather a one nighter with a hotty than a genius, but then no amount of quadratic equations has ever landed me in the sack with a girl either.

The n-word is hate speech, geek or nerd are really just envy speech.

British bloke accused of extorting victims for 'Dark Overlord' hacker crew finally gets his free trip* to America

LucreLout

Where is Anne Sacoolas?

Why are we sending anyone for anything until she too is on a plane?

Harry Dunn's family deserve justice, and they haven't got it.

Buzz kill: Crook, 73, conned investors into shoveling millions into geek-friendly caffeine-loaded chocs that didn't exist. Now he's in jail

LucreLout

Re: I don't get it...

Yes, but why does Monster buy them out rather than launch their own product?

They don't, which is the scam part where the fools and their money were parted, albeit illegally.

LucreLout

Re: I don't get it...

Why bother with all this chicanery for a small pay day when you could make more money by actually making the advertised product?

The "value" wasn't in the product, it was in the buy out from Monster. Absent that, what they had was a start up not a "sure thing (tm)".

This sort of thing is why finance is one of the most regulated industries on the planet, even if it doesn't always feel like that.

100 mysterious blinking lights in the night sky could be evidence of alien life... or something weird, say boffins

LucreLout
Joke

A hundred red objects blinking in and out of existence

Labour MPs?

Americans should have strong privacy-protecting encryption ...that the Feds and cops can break, say senators

LucreLout

You make it sound personal.

You make it sound like you can guarantee you and nobody you ever care about will be subject to a false and malicious allegation.

I never have been, nor has anyone I care about, but my ability to predict the future becomes limited the further we progress from today. Doesn't yours?

LucreLout

Re: This is like the political argument that huge tax cuts pay for themselves

Partly true, but if you cut the tax rate from 20% to 10%, you pretty much have to double the taxed activity to get that lost tax revenue back.

Not really.

If you cut income tax by 10% a decent slug of that "lost" money will be spent, and subject to 20% VAT. Some of the rest of it will be invested there by producing more economic gains in following years and so a greater number of pounds taxed at the new rate and a greater number subject to VAT when spent.

Some of it will be spent on road fuel where the price is already mostly tax, thus substantially increasing the tax taken on those pounds.

The Laffer curve is about as well proven fact as anything in economics.

Missing from all of the above is the fact that due to low taxes, more of the "black economy" comes back onto the table and moves from a rate of zero tax to the new lower rate.

LucreLout

So where do the Government want to put the responsibility? Because Apple (or any other device manufacturer) are not in control of all places keys are generated.

No, but they COULD have the device store or generate the keys in an accessible to them manner. I'm not suggesting they SHOULD, but to claim they can't isn't helping, it's stalling, and that only ever works for a while.

What needs to happen is a proper grown up debate without the trench warfare, and then a decision made by the populace, sort of like democracy, which is then enacted by all parties. That debate could go either way, but the alternative is the tech companies stall and eventually the government steamroller through whatever they want to do.... and I'm not sure any of us actually want that.

I think there's a good argument to be made in that the key repository would become one of the biggest hacking targets on the planet, and compromising it could leave to personal, and economic devastation as well as war if its found to be state actors behind the hack. I think there's a good argument to be made in favour of the right to privacy. Those arguments aren't being made because they're hiding behind the fig leak of impossibility.

Listen up you bunch of bankers. Here are some pointers for less crap IT

LucreLout

Re: The problem is no senior technical people

I agree with most of what you are saying - but I am intrigued about why you think senior IT staff with historic knowledge are part of the problem?

Most of them haven't coded in anything more recent than C++ (I'm not slating the language, its great, but for LOB apps you probably want C# these days or maybe Python), meaning they've missed out on all the sound engineering practices that have happened since - design patterns, solid, test pyramids, ci/cd, cloud, and modern language design and capability. In short, they're effectively so out of date as to be non-technical.

Most of them won't have a github profile, never mind a continuous green ribbon spanning years. Coding and technology may once have been their hobby and then their job, but now that's golf, and talking shit, to put it bluntly.

People working in technology chose a profession where you have to stay up to date or you become the problem others are trying to solve. Either learn something new or retire; don't linger like an unflushable turd. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but that is the message an awful lot of the people lower down the totem want you to receive, and for good reason.

LucreLout
Boffin

Re: companies and FMIs would be expected to ... <plan for business continuity>

That will be bad, but not as bad as negative interest rates that can be applied to ensure you don't keep cash in the bank. Base rates are effectively floored at 0% because people would rather bury cash than wear a negative interest rate, which won't be an option in your scenario.

Staffer representation on our board? LMAO! Good one, cackles Microsoft

LucreLout

Re: Not a good idea

It is typical of the feeble mentality of British management that this is feared here.

Most other countries didn't have the British experience of unions in the 70s. Anyone, anyone, that still thinks Red Robbo or Arthur Scargill did any good for their members or the wider workforce is positively delusional. They literally killed their industries and led their members to a lifetime of unemployment and insecure work, when it could easily have been very different.

The issue is trust. Management can't trust the employees not to elect some commie bellend as their representative with the vote buying so typically found on the left, who then goes on to scupper the company with unrealistic demands. That, in a nutshell, is what most unions did in the 70s, and nobody that experienced any part of it wants to go back.

European reps of unions have a more realistic and hollistic view of their purpose and work with management instead of agitating against them as some sort of demented awkward squad.

Unions in this country simply don't work. If having a union enhanced your business performance, and there by the incomes and job security of your workers, then businesses would already have rolled out their own.

Microsoft emits long-term support .NET Core 3.1, Visual Studio 16.4

LucreLout

Re: Proof in the pudding

once again my thoughts that .NET is not a stable choice for applications with long lifecycles

And once again you'd be wrong.

.NET is one of the premier language frameworks on the market - if you're not using it as a default these days then you're probably doing Python or C++. The frameworks all have extended lifecycles, and there's no reason you have to move from .NET to .NET Core unless you want to (there's advantages in why you might and reasons why you might not).

probably the difference between contract and permanent mentality

Were such a thing to exist, this would not be it.

If you're not using .NET Core as your default language choice you're stealing from your employer. Yes, there's a plethora of situations where you wouldn't use it, such as where you have to be very close to the metal, but Java is basically dead - there's no future in it now.

Is your computer doctor secretly a racist? Two US senators want to find out the truth

LucreLout

Re: Fortunatly

And one of the main reason the premiums are so low is the NHS and universal healthcare.

No it isn't. The policy covers what the policy covers entirely absent the NHS. The reason its cheap is you don't have to pay horrendous unearned pensions from peoples mid fifties, and because inefficient providers go bust, quite unlike the bloated NHS.

LucreLout

Re: Fortunatly

Thankfully in the UK you don't have to be rich to afford private medical insurance. I'm pretty sure my family premiums are about £150, which is latte/pub money. I'm not suggesting it's universally affordable, only that you can be a long way from rich and still have private cover.

EU wouldn't! Uncle Sam brandishes 'up to 100%' tariffs over France's Digital Services Tax

LucreLout

Re: Wrong argument

"all that branding and IP may be generated in the UK, but the head office may be in the USA."

That's fair.

I'm confused, or you are.

If the IP is generated in the UK under contract to an offshore entity as a product of work (UK design agency, Caymans company buying a logo) then who owns the IP? It has to be the latter because they're the client.

If something owned elsewhere is sold to a company in another country then that country own the IP going forward, so international sales would never be possible.

"Fair" isn't a useful word, its an emotive one. Fair means different things to different people. Some people think its "fair" that we have an ever increasing percentage of tax due the higher amount of money you earn. Others think its "fair" that we have a flat tax so everyone pays the same percentage thereby not penalizing success. Still others think it's "fair" that everyone pay the same amount of tax in pounds earned because everyone then has the same stake in the efficiency and scale of services provided for taxes raised. "Fair" doesn't really mean anything I'm afraid.

I especially don't see why that IP can then be handed over to GMC Cayman who then can license it back to GMC UK.

You don't see it because you're getting hung up on an emotional aspect of the tax treatment, rather than looking at the international trade component of it. Rather than have potentially 100s of dispersed legal entities cross paying or licencing IP from each other, and trying to handle 100s of different legal and tax treatments for each different piece of IP and royalties from it, it's much simpler to stay within the law by moving all the IP to one location, and its commercial sense to make that location somewhere low tax for IP purposes.

(Much the same as the famous band with their own hedge fund in Holland that manage their IP and royalty payments).

There's no imperative either moral, economic, or legal that mandates a person or entity to structure their affairs such that the maximum amount of tax is due - common sense dictates they structure it so the minimum amount is due. I think it was Lord Justice Hand that made this point? Could be wrong.

If I give a second house to my son, I am charged CGT as if I sold it at market rate.

No you're not. You can gift him whatever you like completely free of tax provided you survive for 7 years after the gift is given.

https://www.gov.uk/inheritance-tax/gifts

So charge Corporation Tax to GMC UK as if it had sold this IP on the open market, so something like ten times the total global revenue earned from it

Any charges against the local entity will reduce its taxable profit because it will make less profit due to the accounting charge. That will make the situation what you;d perceive as worse, not better, as they'd pay less tax.

LucreLout

Re: Wrong argument

Internal IP transfer pricing should be deemed to be zero - the owning company gets its share in the profits of the owned company.

I can sort of see where you're going with that, but it just isn't how international trade works in any industry or any country.

What would happen is that a 3rd company would be set up to own the IP in an out and out tax haven, and it would be licenced to whomever wants to use it in an exclusive arrangement per legal jurisdiction. The costs of such licencing would become astronomical - I can sell a lot more coffee in any given country if I brand it "Starbucks" rather than "Lucreffeine (C)", and the IP transfer would shift from being around 2 or 3% that Starbucks currently use, to 30-50% of revenue, perhaps more. As it'd be the same coffee but my sales would be around 100x the amount, you could create a reasonable argument that 99% of the sales were only due to the brand and therefore charge most of the revenue to IP.

I get that you don't want international law and commerce to work this way, but it always has, and it probably always will. Look at it in the reverse - all that branding and IP may be generated in the UK, but the head office may be in the USA. Given your proposal, all of the tax would be paid in the USA under current law, despite the IP being British. I'm not clear that is what you intend.

International taxation is complicated, perhaps more so than it strictly needs to be, but this is because competing governments have different world views and different priorities. They produce laws entirely independent of each other and with scant if any regard for the impact on other nations. This is the root of the problem you perceive, not the companies using that law and those tax treaties to the best of their ability for their primary stakeholders (shareholders, and employees).

Google ex-employees demand retribution for Thanksgiving massacre

LucreLout

Re: "these guys sound bitter"

Wouldn't you be bitter if you felt you'd been unfairly fired?

Not so bitter as I'd destroy my whole career by going public like this, no. What I'd probably do is pick myself up, dust myself down, and find a better employer, then move on with my life.

Their reputations are toast now, no matter who wins any legal dances that may emerge down the line. They've no chance of being hired by a proper company in future - you'd never be able to explain to HR why you hired them given their previous cyber bullying of colleagues, were there to be a repeat in your gaff.

LucreLout

Re: I don't like to judge people based on their appearance...

They can disagree with some of those projects without actively spying on individual people working on them.

Quite. I don't want to work on or for someone that creates Hunter Killer type drones or tech for them, so I don't. The correct thing to do should your employer embark upon an endeavor that goes against your personal ethics, is to quit and explain why politely in your resignation letter.

What you can't do is illegally start stalking your colleagues and misusing the companies legally held data about them to further whatever sinister campaign you're pushing by abusing that data.

LucreLout

Re: I don't like to judge people based on their appearance...

organising unions is never reason to fire someone

Oh yes it bloody is.

There are no successful unionised industries or companies. All of the big unionised places went bust because the unions couldn't comprehend that they don't run the business, and would strike for whatever whenever they thought they would.

They're a dinosaur from another age whose time has long since passed, and whose relevance to the modern age may best be considered akin to that of ink and quill pen.

Most, almost all in fact, union members are too slow of thinking to realize the union doesn't give a damn about them and never would. One of the finest wine cellars in all the country belonged to the RMT under Bob Crow. You never see a poor union baron - they all enjoy fat cat pay and wallet busting pensions, paid for directly by their members stupidity.

Now, it may not be legal to fire someone for organizing a union in your jurisdiction, but even someone so slow of mind as to want to be a union rep should realize that while so organizing, you need to keep your nose clean and can't afford to breach fellow employees confidentiality by slurping their data into your pet stalking project because you don't like what your employer is legally doing.

Trump Administration fast-tracks compulsory border facial recognition scans for all US citizens

LucreLout

Re: At a Loss For Words

Trump is what he is. The real problem is that enough people decided that he, among all people, is the most fit to be the President of the USA.

I'm not at all sure they did. I think they simply decided he was less unfit to run the country than Hillary Clinton. I'm pretty sure if the democrats had stood any other candidate that they'd be in power now and Trump would be onto the next Apprentice series / whatever.

I'm equally saddened that the demos seem to be making exactly the same mistakes all over again. Stop fannying about with the senior candidates in the party and stand AOC against him. Much as I'd possibly be more of a Republican than a Democrat were I American, my view is she'd landslide it.

Too young to have a history of corruption or incompetence, ticks all the diversity boxes democrat voters love, and against all the odds she manages that while being both seemingly competent & capable and photogenic, which is important to the instagram generation.