* Posts by diodesign

3496 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Sep 2011

Multi-factor auth fatigue is real – and it's why you may be in the headlines next

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

And don't call me shirely

"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.

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NASA's CAPSTONE satellite is out of safe mode and on track for Moon orbit this month

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Safe mode

Yeah safe mode means: it's only and just doing what's needed to stay intact. Taking it out of safe mode makes it operational.

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Ritz cracker giant settles bust-up with insurer over $100m+ NotPetya cleanup

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Not bad reporting

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.

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Qualcomm: Arm threatens to end CPU licensing, charge device makers instead

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Non-transferable license ?

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.

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Your next PC should be a desktop – maybe even this Chinese mini machine

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

'made a mistake'

Do you mean our Simon or the person who started this thread?

I checked with Si and he says he saw the basic Maxtang box priced around 300 USD.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Why bother? Well....

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.

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Basecamp decamps from cloud: 'Renting computers is (mostly) a bad deal'

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

"This whole article"

By that, i'm assuming you mean DHH's blog post..?

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How I made a Chrome extension for converting Reg articles to UK spelling

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Concerns

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.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Maximum confusalization

> 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.

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Liz Truss ousted as UK prime minister, outlived by online lettuce

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

E-z money

Regardless, she gets to dip into an annual 115k GBP allowance for the rest of her life. She can use the funds to expense stuff if there's a public duty angle to it – police protection, correspondence, meetings, etc.

Past PMs have all used their allowances.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

in nearly 20 years

Damn, I may have just given away my age. Thanks for the pint. Make it a gin.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Free speech, duh

The UK PM - not a trivial role, only the leader of a G7 nuclear power - has had a total meltdown and resigned weeks into the job. That'll make a good story. Especially with the online lettuce.

Also, we're not a blog. We have offices and tea cups and a CFO. So, nerr.

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US Dept of Energy injects more particles of cash into tokamak fusion reactors

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: claims

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.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: "Taurus"

Yeah, yeah, it's fixed.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Sperling messteak

Yeah yeah yeah. It's fixed. We clearly hadn't had enough coffee by that point to spot it - the spellchecker certainly didn't.

Don't forget to email corrections@theregister.com if you spot anything wrong.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Shrug

Sure, we can mention it. I see no working, useful fusion reactors so clearly it's also still in development like all the rest.

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Upstart Ransom Cartel linked to REvil veterans

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: API hashing ?

It's a way to obfuscate the Windows API calls used by malware to make reverse engineering more tricky. It's down at the executable level, where the program imports functions from libraries. See:

https://www.ired.team/offensive-security/defense-evasion/windows-api-hashing-in-malware

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Scottish space upstart's rocket crashes into the drink

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: So where's it SUPPOSED to land?

Good question, but it was supposed to go a little further than the 500m it made it from the launchpad.

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Infosec still (mostly) a boys club

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Bricklaying, plumbing and electrical work

Kinda irrelevant, no?

Women want to be given a fair crack at getting these particular technical jobs that use their brains and skills, and if they get the job, to be treated fairly and thoughtfully as equals. It's pretty straightforward.

Go talk to The Register of construction about those other careers.

"If you want equity, then it has to be done at every level and every job"

Uhm, why?

Edit: My "why?" meant: why does it have to be all or nothing? Why can't we start with IT seeing as we're an IT crowd.

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Lufthansa bans Apple AirTags on checked bags

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Might want to update this article

That magazine article is dated Oct 8, a day before the latest statement we saw from LH (on Oct 9, our story published Oct 10) contrary to that magazine article.

So it's up to LH to clarify what's going on. Last time we saw, LH was saying ATs are too dangerous for checked baggage.

Edit: LH has U-turned mid-flight. AirTags are now allowed, and we've added an update.

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Oracle VirtualBox 7.0 is here – just watch out for the proprietary Extension Pack

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

USB

It seems you may not need the extension pack for USB 2, as that's included now in the open source base package, so we've taken that reference out for now. We're double checking.

Don't forget to email corrections@theregister.com if you spot anything wrong.

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Binance robbed of $600 million in crypto-tokens

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Fiat

We're gonna keep fiating the fiat words we fiatingly well want to fiat.

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He's only gone and done it. Ex-Register vulture elected to board of .uk registry

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Chew gum and kick ass?

As much as some of us like IT Crowd, gotta pay respect to the origin of the quote: They Live.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Du5YK5FnyF4

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Scientists, why not simply invent a working fusion plant using $50m from Uncle Sam

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Indeed

Yup, that's the dream.

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Wind, solar fulfill 10% of global electricity demand for first time

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Just the headline - now fixed

The article's fine - it's about electricity, as the first sentence makes clear. This got truncated down to energy for a shorter headline, and has now been corrected.

Don't forget to email corrections@ if you spot something wrong, ta.

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How one Ukrainian software maker planned for survival as invaders approached

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Er..

If you read the very next paragraph:

> There was an even more pressing priority – which Tkachenko referred to as "priority zero" – the physical security of company team members.

Blows your argument out of the water.

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Matrix chat encryption sunk by five now-patched holes

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Shrug

It's pretty clear, right off the bat, this is a code-level issue, with patches for vulnerable apps rather than changes to the protocol.

Yes, the protocol is mentioned, in that, a study of a protocol may not only uncover shortcomings in the protocol design but also may indicate where there will likely be problems in implementations [triv.]

Don't forget to use corrections@theregister.com if you think you've spotted something wrong, please.

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Cloudflare's invisible CAPTCHA works by probing browsers with JavaScript

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: And what if you block JS?

Same if you tried another JS CAPTCHA widget and there was no fall back. You'll get told to turn on JavaScript or you can't verify you're a human.

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Open up, it's the IRS. We're here about the crypto tax you dodged

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Good crypto use

Nah, see Register passim. I stand by it.

Of the high volumes of cryptocurrency transactions, only a small percentage is involved in crime.

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This hero probe will smash into an asteroid to see if we can deflect future killer rocks

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Typo

Yeah, yeah, we know - we were concentrating on making all the technical stuff right in the other 1,499 words in the piece so it could run before the main event on Monday.

It's fixed - don't forget to email corrections@theregister.com if you spot something wrong please.

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Billionaire CEO tells Googlers 'we shouldn’t always equate fun with money'

diodesign Silver badge

Re: TGIF?

Yeah 'cos Thursday for the US and UK is Friday for Asia-Pacific. If TGIF was actually Friday, APAC would be tuning in on a Saturday.

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diodesign Silver badge

Re: TGIF?

Ha. It really does stand for Thank Google It's Friday.

It's their end of week company confab.

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SiFive RISC-V cores picked for Google AI compute nodes

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Not quite sure what you're asking but here goes...

The general-purpose cores in the X280 are 64-bit RV64GCV CPU cores. As the name suggests, RISC-V is quite RISC.

RISC-V uses letters to represent extensions and features. GCV basically means the CPU cores support the base (bare bones) RISC-V instruction set plus support for integer multiplication/division, atomic operations, single and double-precision floating point math, compressed instructions, and vector math, and some other bits and pieces.

RV64GCV is all you need to run an OS like Linux and applications. It's fit for general purpose, and includes vector math support in hardware.

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Mozilla drags Microsoft, Google, Apple for obliterating any form of browser choice

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Chrome on desktop

I think Moz doesn't have much of a case there, but Android, that's a different story.

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Meta, Google learn the art of the quiet layoff

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

"resource action" - outed

Well, we're not including IBM in "places like Meta" ;-)

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Tongues wag that Softbank's Son may sell Arm to Samsung

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Wrong

Nah mate, get shot. US, UK, who cares. No one I know uses 'shut'. That sounds norvven to me. Like Newcastle.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Language easter egg

It's Brit slang for 'get rid of'. It's just a Google away.

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The next deep magic Linux program to change the world? Io_uring

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: CDC 6600 had this 50 years ago

Yeah, well, we don't have large 1970s Crays on our desks, in our pockets, in our bags, and in our 1U racks in 2023. So we'll make do with this.

I love the history, don't get me wrong. But that doesn't make today's implementation, for today's computers and users, any less interesting or useful or relevant.

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Eastern European org hit by second record-smashing DDoS attack

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

We can use whatever words we want

You're not my real dad!

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Amazon 'punishes' sellers who dare offer lower prices on other marketplaces

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: "Allegedly"?

Yeah, we have to use the word for boring legal reasons because the case is ongoing and no decision, ruling, or settlement has been made.

As far as we're concerned, it's alleged that Amazon does this. Your experience is why we have lawsuits to sort it out.

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Musk seeks yet another excuse to get out of Twitter buyout: This time it's Mudge's severance check

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Check

More like cheque it out.

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Open source biz sick of FOSS community exploitation overhauls software rights

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

RMS

I don't believe anyone accused him of actual crimes so when you say no crimes were proven, it's a bit of a strawman. ICBW on that: we didn't TTBOMK report him breaking any laws, alleged or otherwise.

The criticisms against him were that he was crashingly insensitive or naive about sensitive topics, and that he allegedly did things like, as a senior academic, ask 19 year old students out on dates within minutes of meeting them. It just creeps people out after a while.

He suggested that the possession of sexual material of minors, and even sex between an adult and a child, should be legal under the assumption that a minor could consent to it and everything would be OK. I believe he later backtracked on all or most of that stuff.

Bottom line is, his colleagues in the community just didn't like him any more. And when the press covered that tension, it was all wrongly interpreted - for some weird reason - as an attack on Free software. Free software has and had nothing to do with it.

This was all on RMS and his behavior. I'm aware of the concept of free speech and that folks should generally support those with differing opinions, and all that, but if people find you sketchy on the basis of your attitude and comments, don't be surprised if they don't want to keep you in their community.

You don't invite back the loudmouth bore who scared away guests at a previous party.

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Ad blockers struggle under Chrome's new rules

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Autoscrolling poll

See here.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Autoscrolling poll

It shouldn't autoscroll at all - and we've asked our tech peeps to address that ASAP. It should be fixed soon.

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Edit: It should be fixed now - sorry about that!

Apple Silicon takes a back seat at iPhone-heavy launch event

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Missing

1Hz isn't a typo. It's a power-saving feature.

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Pakistan politicians label government cybersecurity team 'incompetent'

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Yet another American English / British English difference

The headline and story were written by an Australian in Australia who's been with us for the best part of decade.

I take your point, and fixed the headline. The story's fine.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Ummm...

Yeah yeah, typos happen. It's fixed. Drop corrections@theregister.com an email if you spot anything wrong - things get fixed faster that way.

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California passes bill requiring salary ranges on job listings

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Women v men

So you're saying that, on average across the board, men get the good paying jobs and women get low-balled? Thanks for raising that.

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Google tests alternative payment methods in Play store

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: supports our continued investments across Android and Google Play

Google quote.

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Google, YouTube ban election trolls ahead of US midterms

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: We've seen this before

Yeah? That's a tweet from 2017 about the 2016 election in which Russia spammed Facebook and other places with thousands of messages to divide Americans and undermine confidence in the elections.

Tho the 2016 election was nothing like the 2020 one. The 2016 one was mostly all about the media milking the outrage over Trump and that Clinton's campaign was so-so. 2020 was on steroids.

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