Posts by diodesign

Happy birthday, ARM1. It is 35 years since Britain's Acorn RISC Machine chip sipped power for the first time

Re: Re: Thanks for this.

SimCity 2000 for Acorn/RISC OS has the best music of all the ports. It just blows everything else out of the water.

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"All issues with management blobs etc. aside, this is a bit debatable IMO"

There aren't any management blobs I'm aware of for off-the-shelf implementations: all the bootloader stuff is open-source.

As for desktop Linux - I said it was capable of running the OS, not that it's perfected it. Here's a way to get a system running with PCIe. You can boot a terminal-level Linux on lots of available RV soft and hard cores.

If you think I'm ignorant of RV's issues, you're mistaken, sadly. I can list a few. The dev boards right now are relatively expensive for anything greater than a microcontroller, and your best bet is a soft core on an FPGA. The extension system is dangerously close to going down the route of MIPS with lots of wacky variants. There is no common ecosystem a la Arm Linux. The ISA isn't perfect: I've written RV32/64 assembly code, so I'm aware of the awkwardness at times. Swapping endianness in a 32-bit word, for example, requires a surprising number of instructions.

It's a young architecture that has various kinks to work out. However, it took Arm an age to get to desktop level, and with standards on the server side, so I'm willing to see how this specification and ecosystem grows.

Is RISC-V going to take over the world right now. No. Could it later? Possibly.

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"Not sure why El Reg keeps only highlighting RISC-V as the One True ARM/x86 Killer"

It's not going to kill x86, let's be honest nor is it going to outright kill Arm. It poses a threat to the latter's dominance, though.

We mention RISC-V because: Arm's CEO once said, in a meeting in which this hack was present, that RISC-V keeps Arm "on its toes." Arm has responded to RISC-V with various licensing programs that reduce the upfront cost, and also briefly tried to smear RV with a weird attack website. That, to us, signals it's a headache for Arm.

There are other open CPU architectures, sure, but look, OpenRISC for whatever reason didn't excite the industry nor did OpenPower.

RISC-V is backed by Google, Nvidia, Samsung, Western Digital, and more. They are all using it in chips where they could have used Arm. That's why we mention RISC-V. And I speak as someone who is fond of all open architectures, not just RV, and had a soft spot for Arm BITD.

"it's not currently a serious threat to all but the smallest ARM designs in reality."

The RISC-V implementations coming out of China, at least, are Cortex-5x or Cortex-A7x-grade, if the numbers are to be believed. SiFive's U and E-series RV implementations are not competing against "the smallest" Arm designs, either: the U-series features a quad-core 64-bit SoC (with a management CPU core) capable of running desktop Linux.

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From attacked engineers to a crypto-loving preacher with a questionable CV: Yep, it's still very much 5G silly season

"What is the scientific founding of your statement ?"

There is none. You're trying to find logic and rationality where none exists.

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Sophos XG firewalls hacked, hotfix ready. Texts wreck Apple iThings. Yup, business as usual in infosec world

"calculations in an office are not done on a graphics card"

It's not about calculations - it's about malware on a machine modulating the shader engine clock to emit RF that you can pick up nearby, jumping any airgaps. And as the article says, interesting but not terribly practical.

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IBM Watson GPU cloud cluster Brexits from London to Frankfurt – because GDPR

Re: English please

It's a flippant headline. The headline's there to make you click and read.

IBM Watson GPU cloud cluster Brexits from London to Frankfurt – because GDPR ---> An IBM Watson-hosted GPU cluster is Brexit'ing from London to Frankfurt due to GDPR.

Brexit'ing being a made-up verb for something happening to do with Brexit.

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Presumably that only applies to UK users

Hm, I dunno - the third country thing is all about *transfers* of data. Come 2021, Euro customers won't be able to transfer personal data to the UK to process, so the cluster has to move to Europe.

The data already there... is already there.

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Keen to go _ExtInt? LLVM Clang compiler adds support for custom width integers

Re: Re: "transistor layouts for FPGAs"

Xilinx (for one) sells a C compiler for FPGAs - you can absolutely write logic in C and compile into a design language using today's tools. Heck, you can even use Python these days (with nMigen).

I know of one UK startup that's made a toolchain that compiles Go down to Verilog for FPGAs in Azure.

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Spyware maker NSO can't claim immunity, Facebook lawyers insist – it's time to face the music

"I can find nothing about the NSO Group having US offices"

NSO has a US presence, just about - it is a bit flimsy. From the original complaint, according to Facebook:

"NSO Group had a marketing and sales arm in the United States called WestBridge Technologies, Inc. "

Also:

"Between 2014 and February 2019, NSO Group obtained financing from a San Francisco–based private equity firm, which ultimately purchased a controlling stake in NSO Group."

Then there was some rearranging of ownership.

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GCC 10 gets security bug trap. And look what just fell into it: OpenSSL and a prod-of-death flaw in servers and apps

Re: El Reg (or the readership) really has changed

As our readership expands - and it has done lately - we have developers (and non-developers) following us with a wide range of ability. Some know C/C++. Some know JavaScript and Python. Some have never touched GCC and are pure Windows developers.

I edited that sentence in to throw a bone to those thinking, 'wtf is GCC 10'. Sometimes people need their memory jogged. Articles that are focused on specific tools, like Docker or Powershell, don't need reminders like this. Articles that have a potential wide appeal may have a line or two explaining the toolchains involved.

If I don't put these in, I get accused of alienating potential new readers. If I do put them in, I get accused of dumbing down the site.

We don't think you're dumb. But I don't want to assume everyone knows what GCC is.

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I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Light-powered nanocardboard robots dancing in the Martian sky searching for alien life

"third of a milligram"

They weigh a third of a milligram each, but can carry up to ten times their weight. So the payload would be more than a third of a milligram.

Also bear in mind, as usual, this is lab experiment / prototype stuff, not final production. The first transistor was pretty crap compared to what came after.

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Singapore's corona-crushing superhero squad grounded by football fans

Re: Re: change.org petition found 900 Liverpool fans willing to sign up

I've moved the picture into the main part of the article - it's now clickable.

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In Rust we trust? Yes, but we want better tools and wider usage, say devs

"horrendous for performance in practice when dealing with read only data."

If you're just reading data with threads, the compiler realizes this, and you can share without a mutex. Rust has a concept of mutability. You declare a variable mutable (writable) or immutable (read only). Multiple threads can access an immutable variable without a lock.

If you want it to be mutable, you need a lock.

Rust is really cool.

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"vim, make, gcc, gdb, strace etc"

I mean, you are using an IDE, it's just rather loosely integrated.

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AMD takes another crack at Intel's server stronghold with more Epyc silicon

Re: Typo surely 8 core low end, 24 core middle and 16 high end ?

That's the way AMD's done it: in terms of pricing, at least, the 8-core part is the cheapest, the 24-core is the middle, and the 16-core one is the high-end. The expensive one also has more L3 cache and faster core clocks.

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BepiColombo probe swings by Earth on way to Mercury – the Solar System's must-visit coronavirus-free resort

Re: It is incredible

I know, right?

As an idiot in his 20s, I quit electronic engineering, where projects were six months to two years away from design to manufacture, for newspaper journalism, where articles were 30 minutes to three hours away from filing to editing, layout, and printing, because it was more exciting.

A relative works for an automaker and she talks of one to three year lead times for minor design changes.

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Watch out, everyone, here come the Coronavirus Cops, enjoying their little slice of power way too much

"Now they are your best friends? sigh..."

I'm referring to the CDC, yes.

"spend all your time moaning about how much they upset you"

If by moaning, you mean standing up to government and power - tech or otherwise - and scrutinizing it, then yes, we do moan a lot.

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Re: Re: Wear face protection?

Also worth pointing out that Los Angeles has mandated essential business workers wear masks and customers must wear masks.

In the San Francisco Bay Area / Silicon Valley, masks are frequently worn now. It's even recommended by the federal government, which is saying something given the political side of all this.

This virus is no joke. California, population 40m, has got it under control through clear and well-defined early lockdowns, and cases may peak the middle of next week, well within hospital resources, depending on what model you follow. It may peak next month, but again, within resources. Which is more than you can say about the east coast.

I don't say this to gloat. I say it to mean there is value in locking down as early as possible and sitting tight. San Francisco closed all essential stores at 8pm, for instance. It sucks for everyone - I've donated cash to my local bartenders, via gofundme, to keep them going because they are among the tens or hundreds of thousands in the region screwed by this. I know most people are screwed by this thing. You really don't want to catch it, above all else.

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"Where does it say that on the official advice, or did you just make that one up?"

Source:

Use of Cloth Face Coverings to Help Slow the Spread of COVID-19

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Who's essential right now? Medicos, of course. Food producers, natch. And in Singapore social media workers have made the list

Re: Re: While here in the states

Lest anyone think we here at The Reg are left commie anti-conservative bastards, this comment has been reported by a few users but I've allowed it to stand because... it's Bob's opinion (and hyperbole).

We try to be even handed in the comments as possible.

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Give us a reason... not to buy a new handset? Samsung back-ports Galaxy S20 photo features to Galaxy 10 range

Re: "the ability to create customer photo filters"

Thanks - fixed. Don't forget to email [e-mail] if you spot anything wrong.

Also, we're incredibly stressed out, and an incredibly small team - small errors will creep through. Drop us a line if you see them, and we'll fix them.

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Please, just stop downloading apps from unofficial stores: Android users hit with 'unkillable malware'

"and assume root privilege"

No, it has to exploit security holes in Android 6 and 7, which are old and out of date, to achieve root.

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If you use Twitter with Firefox in a shared computer account, you may have slightly spilled some private data on that PC

The media content of direct messages and probably stuff like birthdays.

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Re: And what would the mystery header be?

We're trying to find out - as soon as we know, we'll let you know.

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Capita inks deal with NHS to 'bring back staff': Workers get an hour of training to recruit and vet retired doctors, nurses

Furloughed staff

We already reported on it - see the 'Read more' box I've added to the story.

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Time to brush up on current affairs. Because we're predicting Li-ion batt lifetimes using impedance and AI

"It's not an algorithm, its a black box"

It's linked to from the article - you can download it and run it in Matlab.

"if they can tell me why specific voltages returning specific impedence values means a specific number of charge cycles, fine, but I bet they can't."

It's in the paper. You train a model to take these variables - frequency, temperature, impedance, etc - and match them to battery lifetime. So that when you show it arbitrary EIS values, it predicts the lifetime.

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NASA mulls restoring Saturn V to service as SLS delays and costs mount

As the first 2 words of the article say, it's an April Fools.

So yes, it's an April 1 joke.

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Well, 2019 finished with Intel as king of the chip world, Broadcom doing OK, everyone else shrinking. Good thing 2020's looking up, eh?

Re: This is why we have analysts

AMD didn't make the top 10 with 2019 revenues of $6.7bn. Tenth place was Infineon with $8.9bn.

We all want AMD to succeed, but it's still generating <10% of Intel's annual revenue.

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Amazon says it fired a guy for breaking pandemic rules. Same guy who organized a staff protest over a lack of coronavirus protection

Re: Troll

"if he indeed was warned multiple times"

Key word, if.

"One sided reporting"

So one sided, we put Amazon's reasoning in the headline and prominently at the start of the article. Good grief.

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Cloudflare family-friendly DNS service flubs first filtering foray: Vital LGBTQ, sex-ed sites blocked 'by mistake'

"may prefer to tackle such subjects themselves"

I feel sorry for children who have questions and fears, and are forbidden from finding resources themselves that could help them understand who they really are.

Anyway, that's beside the point. The filter is supposed to block malware and porn, not human-rights campaigners. That's presumably the mistake Cloudflare's referring to.

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Sun storm probe OK'd: 'Our motivation is a fascinating signal that we have detected for decades but never been able to make an image of'

Re: Teeny satellites?

No, means they are tiny ;p

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Lobsters given seats on coronavirus rescue flights... although they're probably not in a rush for a boiling bath

Re: crayfish, not lobsters

Ah, no: it's lobsters. And our man on the ground there says so. See here for info.

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Oracle makes some certifications and cloudy content free, in case you have time on your hands

Re: How to access?

Ooops - sorry, we've added a link to the courses.

Don't forget to email [e-mail] if you think we've omitted something.

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Internet use up 40 per cent in San Francisco Bay Area – but you know what’s even higher? Yep, alcohol, weed use

"The range is something like 240 000 .. 2 400 000"

The range is 100,000 to 240,000 with intervention and social distancing, and 2.2 million without. Since we're now, slowly, intervening, we took the lower estimate.

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Sucks to be you, ICANN. We can go our own way: Opera to support sites using renegade top-level domain .crypto

Correction

It appears the domains aren't $200 - you can buy them for, like, $40.

The article's been updated. Sorry.

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Want to see through walls? Electroboffins build tiny chip in the lab that vibrates at just the right frequency to do it

Re: Oooh the hype!

Yeah, yeah, we expect readers are smart enough to recognize a science experiment when they see one - it does say in the headline it's lab work, and later on, it's not a commercial product.

I've put a bit at the bottom stressing this, and the nanoscale-ness. It's just cool science at the moment.

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Re: Ugh!

I make no apology - we're here to twist and torture the English language as we see fit.

Exhibit A: Every headline.

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Short of tech talent to deal with novel coronavirus surge? Let us help – with free job ads on The Register

Aww jeez, thanks a lot - that makes our day :') We're a relatively small team, and we try our hardest. And we'll keep doing our hardest.

Cheers

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Sponsored Articles

They pay our bills so you can enjoy the rest of the site. The vids won't auto-play audio - though if they do, let us know - that would be a bug.

We run webcasts on the home page as they are broadcast live, and sometimes we run virtual events like this. It's not a permanent fixture.

Edit: The videos no longer autoplay - hit play to watch them :)

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PC owners borg into the most powerful computer the world has ever known – all in the search for coronavirus cure

Re: The original El Reg Folding@Home team: Vulture Central 2.2

Cool, thanks a lot!

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Re: Folding Vultures update

Oh cool - thanks a lot, everyone! We'll see if we can get some more gear involved.

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SAP opens up certain online courses to locked-down tech learners

How to access

Follow the links into the story - there are links to the free courses.

Or see: open.sap.com.

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Samsung says it has the future of DRAM sorted after success with new EUV process

Make your mind up, guys.

I've tweaked it a bit. The point is: it can be cheaper and simpler during manufacturing, but developing the technology to get to this point has been complex and difficult.

Don't forget to email [e-mail] if you spot any inconsistencies so that they can be fixed, ta.

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2021

Yes, it was fixed - don't forget to email [e-mail] if you spot anything wrong

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Amazon, Apple, Google, IBM, Microsoft speech-to-text AI systems can't understand black people as well as whites

"I can't understand a lot of Scots. Does that make me racist?"

I can't understand most northern UK accents, I must admit. That doesn't make me a racist.

However, if I was training a speech-recognition AI and left out a load of accents because I don't care for nor understand them, didn't think about them, or thought it would just work without them, then you might well be able to call me biased.

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"it assumes race creates an accent and speech patterns"

Sure, there are plenty of people, millions, many, many millions, who are non-white, but due to their upbringing, speak and sound exactly like the surrounding white population.

This study isn't about people like them. It's about AI not having enough training data to recognize a *range* of accents. And it happens to be that the accents lacking coverage are those from black communities. There's the bias.

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UK enters almost-lockdown: Brits urged to keep calm and carry on – as long as it doesn't involve leaving the house

Re: Read the PDFs

As I understand it, if it's unavoidable you have to come into work at a factory or non-retail place, then it's not against the rules - but it's against guidance as well as your well-being and those around you.

The government doesn't want to say 'shut all the offices and factories'. It's more 'shut all the communal places like cafes and gyms and hotels and hairdressers' and everyone else, please stay at home.

Contrast to California where all businesses have had to close if they are non-essential, though some people are allowed in for special work like security patrols and ensuring payroll is completed. Restaurants and cafes are allowed to do takeout and delivery. There has been little ambiguity.

El Reg has been working from home since last Monday.

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After 20-year battle, Channel island Sark finally earns the right to exist on the internet with its own top-level domain

Re: Tabloid Hyperbole

All right, all right - the headline's been tweaked to something more dull but worthy. Congrats on the cctld.

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Germany says nein to Euro Unified Patent Court, pulls plug and leaves it nearby if anyone wants to put it back in

I've tweaked that - don't forget to email [e-mail] if you spot anything wrong.

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Tech won't save you from lockdown disaster: How to manage family and free time while working from home

Director's cut

Here's the porno deleted scene from Kieren's original:

---------------

It's time to talk porn. On the very first day of shelter-in-place in California, there were numerous examples of people calling out, shaming, or reporting co-workers for watching pornography. And yes it's mostly single men but regardless, here's what you need to do:

* Treat the work day like a work day

* Don't watch pornography when you are supposed to be working

* That's it

---------------

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