Posts by diodesign 3533 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Sep 2011
Too many of some, not enough of others. And products are held up by the ones in short supply.
Power electronics, microcontrollers, glue logic, that sort of thing, if not available, hold up shipping end products no matter how healthy the supply of the main processors etc.
It's something the media should be better at, making clear what kinds of components are and aren't available. It's something we're trying to be better at.
C.
We're still doing a lot of written word, as you can see, and some videos, which are fun, useful, and a break from writing.
There's a reason why steakhouses have some chicken and pork on the menu as well as beef. Little bit for everyone. Nothing wrong with a bit of variety for those who prefer listening or watching.
Our videos aren't like YT where people beg for Patreon and likes and subscribes. For us, it's The Register logo, and then right into the chat, and we keep it short. It works as audio-only too if you want to listen while doing something else.
C.
Last time I visited a Google office, it had way more than that. There was an on-site movie and gaming theater, a doctor's office, hairdresser, indoor Zen garden, a tea sommelier, rooms of designer furniture to chill out in, a speakeasy within a speakeasy, the works. Perks are a big thing.
Heck, even El Reg's SF WeWork space had bean bags, table tennis, and bottomless soda and beer that we and a bunch of Aussies in the same building rinsed out until WW gave up and took away the booze.
(PS: The El Reg London WeWork space had sparkling wine on tap as well as beer. Those were the days.)
C.
So you're basically saying ChatGPT is a non-intelligent, non-impressive sentence-predicting machine, which is fair...
...but when we point out the same and that this is less than ideal for real-world work, we're the ones who are ignorant?
Doesn't that make you ignorant too? What's going on here. Did ChatGPT write your comment?
C (as in Chris, not ChatGPT).
FWIW Dish has about 8 million subscribers; suspected ransomware infections are interesting especially if they bring down production systems; and >50% of our readers are in the US. And it was published at 9pm UK, 1pm PT.
That's why we cover US-based news at this time of day, as much as we love everyone from every country. We have the ability to make certain stories appear on the homepage only for certain regions, but we only do that to avoid swamping the homepage with news about one particular region - and when we do, some people are upset they might be missing out on articles.
tldr: we can't please all of the people all of the time.
C.
All right, don't get bent out of shape over what's obviously intentional hyperbole to make a point. It's tedious caveating every sentence.
Next you'll tell me that 'world plus dog' isn't used accurately.
(And BTW everyone agrees with me, and anyone who doesn't is wrong.)
C.
The article did say:
'Supply of many components, especially those used for power delivery and automotive environments, remain heavily constrained'
And we've reinforced that with by adding some extra caveats to the piece, and I've twiddled the headline. We just thought it was a bit obvious we were talking about processors and memory, not MCUs etc.
C.
Articles are generally a collective effort, unless it's marked opinion or comment, in which case, it's solely the author's view.
As a whole, we're done with this charade. There are so many examples like this and this.
Congrats, Redmond, you bought yourself a multi-billion-dollar moron.
C.
What makes you say that - we're not using any AI for articles other than:
* Transcript generation (which is still hand edited)
* Some people are toying with grammar checking (but everything is still hand edited)
We've thought about using software to automatically generate outage stories as those need to be done quick, they're so easy to write, and everyone loves an outage story.
But even then, that would be non-AI (it's just template filling) and would be hand edited before it goes live.
C.
If we didn't include a transcript, some would say they need it because they can't watch the video for whatever reason. And if we include the transcript - which is handy for Google indexing too - then some say it's in the way.
We've moved the transcript to a second page for now. Hope this helps.
C.
Sure, OK. Here's the story you were thinking of.
https://www.theregister.com/2004/08/03/segway_tenmph_shame/
ur welcom
C.
"Did ‘accommodation’ include hospitality and bar bills too"
No, just the hotel room. Dinner, lunch, and drinks have been paid by myself or expensed to my publisher as necessary. Qualcomm got me here to attend the summit's breakout briefings, and that's about it.
"Were your flights Business or Cattle Class ??"
I live in San Francisco. My flights were normal seats, so cattle class? It was about a four-hour flight in which I read a (printed) Patrick Hamilton novel. Bonus points if you can guess the title.
I love that you're looking for scandal here but while Hawaii is a lovely place, and I've personally been many times as a Californian transplant, I've been working this week, either critically covering Qualcomm's announcements, or acting as Reg editor from Maui time.
C.
Far be it from me to do Qualcomm's PR for them but these chips are basically geared for gaming and photography, with enough oomph for modern apps and browsers.
If your mobile use-case only covers part of that - or the walled gardens of the OSes holds you back - then yeah, they will seem a bit limited. A lot of the 8 Gen 2 silicon is dedicated to things like real-time ray tracing in games (eg) so if that's not your cup of tea, it's a waste of transistor gates.
C.
"Almost entirely nonsense"
Well, we said it's important but - as the article goes into - not the only thing to do. Education is good but systems in place to block, contain, and detect are also important. I've made that clearer for people in the piece.
Also, as we said, someone may impersonate your IT staff so rate limiting won't help here, but phishing education and other defenses might. Finally, MFA spam really does work. There's been loads of times where it's worked, so limiting attempts and what not isn't a given at orgs.
We just had a load of phishing attempts against us too by someone pretending to be our CEO. The attempts failed but we still did a round of internal messaging/education about it afterwards as well as reviewing defenses and operations to make sure everyone's on the same page.
C.
"Instead of repeatedly sending out such notifications, surely the system should lock the user out completely after X number of rejections"
Yes, that's discussed in the piece lower down. It's an option. You may not want to use that option as it could lead to a DoS-like scenario against staff but you might instead consider setting a rate limit anyway.
I've made a note of that option higher up in case people don't make it to the end.
C.
No - we're reporting exactly what Mondelez claimed. It said damage was done to its equipment and software. Damage in this case is defined as "physical loss or damage to electronic data, programs, or software, including physical loss or damage."
I can add this point to the piece but it seemed obvious to us and others.
C.
Arm says Nuvia's architectural license was non-transferable without Arm's permission (and quite likely renegotiation). Qualcomm argued back that Nuvia's architectural license largely overlaps Qualcomm's own license with Arm, anyway. Largely but not fully, crucially.
I've heard that Qualcomm already went through this with Arm when Q bought CSR in 2015. CSR had an Arm license that Qualcomm had to ask for, and got, permission to continue using and its derived technologies. Now this time, Qualcomm thinks it's OK to use Nuvia's license as it has done so and any complaints from Arm are just about greed and bullying.
C.
FWIW, this is Desktop Tourism, not a review or product recommendation. It's a series where we take odd, non-mainstream stuff, and see if we can work on it for a month. It appeals to those of us who like experimenting with kit from time to time, rather than always using the basic obvious solution.
We've done things like a Raspberry Pi laptop in the past and later this year, we'll write up an exotic RISC-V device that's fun and a PITA. So, yeah, think of this as a series of stranger things we've used for work just out of curiosity rather than a purchase recommendation.
I'll make that a bit clearer in the blurb box and make a note of the mainstream Intel Core i3 NUCs and what not in the piece.
Also: if you've found a Maxtang box cheaper or more expensive, then, good on ya. When Simon (who's based in Australia) looked around for pricing, 300 USD was the figure he generally found for the device.
C.
1. You can still call it El Reg. We still do internally and publicly. Myself and TR's senior editorial staff have been at The Reg or with our publisher for ten or more years. It's not like we've forgotten the past.
2. We're constantly experimenting with headlines to find the right balance between being unique and amusing and not off-putting for new folks. Sometimes titles go too obscure, sometimes they go too dry. We've got a sub-headline right now on the front page stating "You can kiss my Californian ass, says ad giant" and a headline "Why are PC webcams crap?" and boffins and so on... there's no corporate watering down. We're just trying to make our humor and our take on the IT world a bit more accessible for everyone.
If any part of it reads like a sales seminar, shoot me. That's not the intention, and not what we want to do. We want to make stuff that's informed, accurate, and independent.
3. I'm British. I live in the US after living in the UK. I know Blighty's going through some weird shit right now, and how we're perceived globally is perhaps not quite optimal. But TR switching to US spelling isn't part of that, and your thoughts about the UK being "quaintsy" is something you need to figure out for yourself. TR changing to American spelling isn't commentary on the UK.
It's that the internet sees US spelling and thinks "international or American" and sees UK spelling and thinks "England". Which can be a bit frustrating when we're writing about non-UK things a lot.
4. One day it would be great to translate TR into other languages. An English version is obviously going to be available and prime.
Above all, we're just being honest and open. We could have just not said a thing.
C.
> is highly insulting
It's not an insult - it's just a reflection of what's expected globally.
> the tagline "biting the hand that feeds IT" is gone
It just got moved to the end of the page to tidy up the masthead.
> Bring back Dabbsy
We parted on good terms, and wish him all the best – he's on his Autosave is for Wimps Substack.
C.
1. What was the error - we jump on correction emails within minutes if someone's working. We strive really hard to fix issues ASAP.
2. We're not using speech recognition. If you see typos or brain blips like that, it's because we've got something else on our minds, such as technical accuracy -- I'd rather a story is a fair representation of reality with typos than perfectly written but total BS.
C.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
