Posts by Pinballdave

Re: Devil in the detail

That's easily fixed, and needs to be done to comply with the court ruling.

Uber should ensure that minimum wage is paid for all the time the 'worker' is under direction of the company. If this is all the time that the driver is logged on, then drivers can cheat the system and get paid for doing nothing.

If, as Uber has now decided, it is to be only when the driver has accepted a job and until completion of that job, then Uber is cheating the driver as the driver is not being paid while they are waiting for jobs.

Crucially from a legal perspective, this is not complying with the court order, as the worker is still under direction of Uber, as they are waiting for Uber to specify the next task they are to perform, so should still be entitled to minimum wage for this time.

So the compromise is likely to be that the driver is ensured minimum wage from the point that they accept their first job, until the completion of the job before they either log off, or decline a job. If they decline a job, then they won't have been under direction of the company from the time they completed their precious trip, until the time they next accept a job, so will not be entitled to minimum wage payments for that period.

Re: An offer you can't refuse

I have also just had my VM broadband upgraded from 50Mb/s to 100Mb/s, but it came as my current 'loyalty discount' came to an end, resulting in the upgrade coinciding with a price increase from £24 to £37. Phoned up, was offered £27 per month but sticking with upgraded 100Mb/s speed. Said I'd rather cancel, and waited for the call back from retentions.

When the call came the next morning, I said my bit and got offered the original 50Mb/s for £24. I got cheeky and said that would be OK, but you're only going to stick a £2-3 price rise on it in the next few months, and I'll still be stuck in contract at £27 so won't have gained anything over the original offer. I was then offered a further 'discretionary discount' , and will be paying £21 per month until the next round of price rises.

My only concern with these new rules, is that they may result in more people getting 'loyalty discounts', and whether that will affect the level of discounts offered to those of us who are willing to take the 'waiting for the retentions phone call' gamble.

Not really, it's just our psychological problems are not as easy to monetize.

Re: dont get it

The point of this is that they're aiming at the console market. There's no point selling this to PC gamers, they're most likely to already have Steam, and in the long term are unlikely to give Valve any more money than they already do.

The untapped marked (for Valve) is the current console owners, the ones that own an X-box/PS3/Wii for gaming, an iPad/Android tablet and a cheap laptop with integrated graphics that they bought with their groceries from Tesco. None of their platforms is a significant source of revenue for Valve, and building (or buying) a decent spec gaming PC is too scary for them to even contemplate.

Something that can be bought from a supermarket, has a decent existing library of games and is a simple plug and play setup might tempt some of these people away from giving all their gaming money to Microsoft/Sony and into the arms of a grateful Valve.

Re: Blimey

No need to name & shame any brands of phone, as the 'target device' in the attack is the SIM card not the phone.

The attack appears to compromise the admin keys of the JavaCard smartcard chip used in the SIM and from there it has access to all data on the SIM card, including any phonebook records, stored SMS messages and encryption keys for your network access or any other application running on the SIM card.

It's unlikely that it will have any access to the phone itself (apart from modifying any SIM Toolkit applications that are presented through the phone interface). But it will have access to the network via the SIM Toolkit and so will be able to send/receive calls/text/data, some of which may cost you money or compromise your privacy.

It looks like an interesting attack, with the potential of being able to clone your SIM card just by sending you a text message and allowing the SIM to open a data channel to dump its contents to a remote server.