* Posts by diodesign

3250 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Sep 2011

Microsoft defends barging in on Chrome with pop-up ads pushing Bing, GPT-4

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Teams

Ah yeah, they started doing that last year, as we reported.

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Google gooses Safe Browsing with real-time protection that doesn't leak to ad giant

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

"There is no such animal"

Nah, you misunderstand. It's non-commercial in that it cannot be used for commercial purposes (and it's also free of charge to use.)

It's not non-commercial for Google at all. It's not for commercial use by others.

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Japan's first private satellite launch imitates SpaceX's giant explosions

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

You might be over-thinking it

Hi -- I think this says more about you than about us and your perception of criticism against Elon.

We're just pointing out that this launch went through the same sort of thing (RUD) SpaceX had to overcome. And Musk's lot figured it out, so good luck to Japan.

If Microsoft had a massive hole in its Windows login system and then Linux had a similar issue a week or year later, we'd probably reference that Microsoft bug in the Linux coverage. Pattern recognition; it's what humans do.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

We screwed up, oops

Yeah, we screwed up and broke the embed. It's now fixed. Don't forget to email corrections@theregister.com please if you spot anything wrong so we can fix it right away rather than realize too late.

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An engine that can conjure thrust from thin air? We speak to the designer

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Tweaked

Hey - yeah, he realized that wasn't well explained. So we went back to him and he gave us a revised explanation. It's in the piece now.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

More info

Ah, there's more detail in the previous article that we link to. The electric gun could be solar powered or from a nuclear device. Or any other way you want to make electricity.

And I've added some more links at the start of this latest piece to more info about the tech.

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Microsoft confirms Russian spies stole source code, accessed internal systems

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Different groups

Hi - Fancy and Cozy Bear are two separate Russian intelligence groups. They are not the same.

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Trump, who tried kicking TikTok out of the US, says boo to latest ban effort

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Reference

If you're wondering what the AC above is banging on about, it's that TikTok pushed a notification to US users warning them of the bill and urging fans to lobby their reps in Congress.

As such lawmakers got an earful this week, reportedly. It's mentioned in our article.

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VMware urges emergency action to blunt hypervisor flaws

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Ethnicity required?

It's just a data point, there's no ill-will from us at least. It is what it is.

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IP address X-posure now a feature on Musk's social media thing

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Free users cannot send DM's

Free users can send DMs, but it's a bit complicated as it depends on your settings and who you're messaging. We've taken that part out so as not to confuse anyone.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Peer to peer works this way

Yes, we've expanded that part of the article. We do know what IP addresses and P2P comms are all about.

This is a heads up for those who assumed Twitter's calling feature was routed through X servers. It's not, by default, you have to switch that on.

We felt this was something worth pointing out to people in general. Not everyone is an IT expert like yourself.

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Copilot pane as annoying as Clippy may pop up in Windows 11

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

YMMV

Nah, we stand by what we wrote. This taskbar hover will annoy some.

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Google to reboot Gemini image gen in a few weeks after that anti-White race row

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Capitals

We capitalize both Black and White when referring to race, yes. It's our style.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

White CEOs, etc

Hi -- yeah, we've tidied that part up. We over-generalized there, ironically enough. While AI models do have biases and whatnot, Gemini was the opposite of the given example -- its problem was that it *didn't* depict White people as much as it should.

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Oxide reimagines private cloud as... a 2,500-pound blade server?

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Sizes

Hi -- FWIW I've added an editor's note on this point. Our vulture was told the 9 ft and 3000 lb figures in conversation with the Oxide team. It turns out those numbers were for the systems as shipped, not deployed.

The article has been updated to include the measurements as deployed.

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Microsoft veteran on how to blue screen your way to better testing

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Clarification

Hi -- yes, we meant that PS/2 support for the key combination was added in Win2K etc. We're not seriously suggesting Win2K was the first Windows to get PS/2 support, and Vista was the first to support USB keyboards.

Give us some credit!

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

:-(

No, we meant that support for the crash-inducing key combination via PS/2 turned up in Win2K, etc, and what the article now more clearly says.

And no, we don't use AI to write articles.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: "PS/2 keyboard support turned up in Windows 2000, USB keyboards were added with Vista in 2007"

Support for the crash-inducing key combination via PS/2 turned up in Win2K, etc, is what we meant, and what the article now more clearly says.

Don't forget to email corrections@theregister.com if you spot something wrong so we can get things fixed ASAP.

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Staff say Dell's return to office mandate is a stealth layoff, especially for women

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

"sexist in favor of females"

"two men were impacted, compared to 29 women"

Dell is so sexist in favor of women that the majority of the cited group affected by RTO were, er, women. Think you've misunderstood bigly.

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Forgetting the history of Unix is coding us into a corner

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Links to talk?

Both links are in the second paragraph.

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Apple Vision Pro units returned as folks just can't see themselves using it

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Actually, seeing themselves wearing it

Might have tipped them over the edge.

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Angry mob trashes and sets fire to Waymo self-driving car

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Chinese New Year

FWIW I've added the Chinese New Year aspect. The Waymo car was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It drove right into the middle of people setting off fireworks in the street, and if you've ever been in SF during a CNY, you know it's loud, a little chaotic, and non-stop fireworks going off from the street level. And so it's no surprise, sadly, that someone decided to blow up a self-driving car in that moment.

It's delicate because, as someone who has lived in SF for 10 years next to Chinatown, I know the community isn't like this. This was morons taking advantage of the CNY weekend.

Edit: Also wanted to say - full disclosure - I've been in two driverless Waymo rides now, including one in miserable Bay Area February rain, and it felt as safe or safer than a random Lyft or Uber driver.

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Sam Altman's chip ambitions may be loonier than feared

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: G42

They are on our radar and we will cover them more. One story lately we did about them:

https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/28/cerebras_g42_china_refile/

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Meet VexTrio, a network of 70K hijacked websites crooks use to sling malware, fraud

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

WordPress

Yup, a lot of them, dare I say most of them, are WP that were found by searching the web for unpatched / insecure installations.

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Mozilla CEO quits, pushes pivot to data privacy champion... but what about Firefox?

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Article raises questions and makes bold statements

It's an opinion. You don't have, nor do we expect you, to agree with it. It's a position. You might support or dislike it. It might help you understand or articulate or form your own position.

That's free speech, friend.

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Europe's deepest mine to become Europe's deepest battery

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

"Awful reporting"

Steady on, I think that's a bit unfair. We accidentally missed off the hours in megawatt-hours. It's now fixed.

We're a small team that's trying to do a lot, and we're gonna sometimes slip up. We try our best not to, but it happens. And when we do mess up, we try to fix it ASAP. Dropping us a note directly helps us get an update out faster.

I think awful is a bit harsh.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Edited out

We removed that bit because it's not really relevant.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

It's MWh, not MW

Yeah, we know, we know, we accidentally left off the hours in megawatt-hours. W is the rate of energy being transferred or transformed, and Wh is a quantity, we get it.

Sometimes articles have mistakes. We try to fix those ASAP. Please don't forget to email corrections@ to get our attention straight away - we check that constantly and comments only when we have time.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Ok, ok!

Yes, we made an error. It happens. We try to avoid them. If software has bugs, articles have mistakes. We try to fix them as soon as we can, and prevent them in the first place.

It should be - and now is - MWh. It's now corrected. Don't forget please to email corrections@ if you spot anything wrong so we can sort stuff out ASAP.

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AI models just love escalating conflict to all-out nuclear war

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

See the paper for more

Hi - we can't reproduce the entire paper in an article, just take the more interesting bits from. We also always try to link through to papers and original sources so you can see more for yourself.

In this case, the methodology including full prompts etc are in the linked-to paper starting from section A (page 15) in its current version.

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Untangling Meta's plan for its homegrown AI chips, set to actually roll out this year

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Energy efficiency

FWIW we didn't comment on the energy efficiency of MTIA, we spoke about the low power.

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Faraday plots a 64-core Arm chip with Intel inside

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

"Not really news"

Give me a break. It is absolutely news given that it's Arm Neoverse, Intel's latest process nodes, and you're referring to something about 20 years ago. In 2024, this is new.

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What is Model Collapse and how to avoid it

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

You know the saying:

The difference between science and screwing around is writing it down.

But more seriously: anyone can have a hunch, it takes studies to prove/conclude it.

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Microsoft hires energy mavericks in quest for nuclear-powered datacenters

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

"Why the dismissive attitude?"

That's kinda how we roll around here. We maintain a healthy skepticism.

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Fujitsu gets $1B market cap haircut after TV disaster drama airs

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Also on El Reg

Yeah, and also here.

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Junior techie had leverage, but didn’t appreciate the gravity of the situation

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Oops, sorry

Yeah that should be 6000VA or 6KVA, not 6000KVA. It's now fixed.

Please don't forget to email corrections@theregister.com if you spot anything wrong so we can tackle this sort of thing immediately. Thanks.

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Will AI take our jobs? That's what everyone is talking about at Davos right now

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Yeeaaah, it was sarcasm

Ah yeah, it was totally sarcasm. (We've fixed it. Cheers.)

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Researchers confirm what we already knew: Google results really are getting worse

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Comparisons

With Google the supersoaraway search engine still, our article focuses on the Big G. If you want to see how Bing etc fared, it's a mixed bag - some good, some bad - see the linked-to report for the details.

It's why we link to reports and original sources wherever we can - not all publications do that - so that you can dive deeper beyond our take of a situation. Articles are like products: you have to make a decision to ship at some point, and we shipped this story with a focus on Google.

There's still scope for a followup that compares Google with others, and it's on the todo list.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

'Morons'

So, shall I put you down as undecided on our reader satisfaction survey?

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It's uncertain where personal technology is heading, but judging from CES, it smells

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

So grumpy!

1. As someone who has been working on tech products since the late 1980s, Mark is a columnist for us, not a news reporter. We wanted his thoughts on CES, and he shared them. CES is so huge that it's impossible to report it all - instead, I appreciate his highlights.

2. Personal tech (as opposed to enterprise tech and software dev) isn't a core subject for us, though we cover it as much as we can because our readers use the stuff. So we're not going to have extensive CES coverage - mainly what caught our eye, and why, and those stories are on the site this week.

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eBay to cough up $3M after cyber-stalking couple who dared criticize the souk

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Fine mess

That is our understanding, yes. It's a penalty resolved with the DoJ. The Steiners are seeking damages in a separate civil case.

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Another airline finds loose bolts in Boeing 737-9 during post-blowout fleet inspections

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Air head

As others have aired above, it's not airily ambiguous. The only one I see being lazy is you, throwing around insults with airs and graces.

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America's first private lunar lander suffers 'critical' fuel leak en route to Moon

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Cryptocurrency????

Yeah, someone sent some Bitcoin and Dogecoin to the Moon in one of the private payloads.

Edit: Almost.

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What the AI copyright fights are truly about: Human labor versus endless machines

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

I think we're in agreement

And don't even realize it. You're talking about AI companies being able to rip off people at a fantastic scale. And they're able to do that with: machines.

If this was about some office somewhere with 500 people churning out counterfeit work, that's people v people. This latest copyright stuff is people versus machines, in my view.

Or I guess, if you like: people versus the makers of machines.

As I've said, don't over-think our analysis. We're just pointing out that these aren't just a set of copyright infringement claims. There's an underlying concern among artists over the ability for machines to flood the market with knock-offs, and no one gets a penny from it or can opt out, and that's coming through in these court cases, in our view.

If you're an artist, and there's like 5 or 6 people copying you, that's one thing. Now imagine a million people able to copy you, with the help of AI. That's the machine element.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

There's the underlying concern

Don't get me wrong. Yes, the cases are primarily about copyright. Yet there's an underlying concern for the future of creative work over large-scale AI imitating people without recompense nor the ability to opt out of being pulled into the training process.

Don't over-think this analysis. We're just saying, in our opinion, this isn't a straight-forward, open-shut (c) claim. It's people upset that they're being or about to be displaced at a large scale, and they're using copyright to tackle it.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

"allowing their works to be used in AI models - as long as they get compensated for that"

That sounds like humans versus machines to me.

"AI companies simply took everyone's copyrighted works without permission and built something on top of that, that now displaces the original works and authors"

Again, labor versus machines IMHO.

I believe you're over-thinking this. Yes, the cases are about copyright allegations. The NYT is rather specific. But a lot of the cases have an undercurrent of something along the lines of: it's not fair that these widely used models learned how to imitate us and are now pushing us out of the market.

This isn't just purely over copyright, but copyright is how the plaintiffs hope to solve it. That's at least my impression of it all.

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US fusion energy dreams edge closer to reality, Congress permitting

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Step back a minute

Yeah, the article does say that the efficiency is about 1%. OTOH the first fission piles/reactors weren't that spectacular, so I see this as more baby steps to production.

BTW imploding hydrogen isotope fuel capsules with x-rays (and ablation) has been around since the 1940s/50s, though not with practical power generation in mind...

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Cisco goes Christmas shopping, buys Cilium project originator Isovalent

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Sure, Windows kernel, Linux, etc... but:

We were talking about Docker. By 2019, the biz was not in a good place so I'm not surprised Microsoft was shifting its position.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

What's a Docker?

I think that was more on Docker than MS. The startup that flew a little too close to the sun.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge