* Posts by diodesign

3493 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Sep 2011

How four rotten packets broke CenturyLink's network for 37 hours, knackering 911 calls, VoIP, broadband

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

"each packet was sent only one hop"

According to the FCC, the equivalent TTL was infinity. These packets are not standard TCP packets, I believe, they are proprietary Infinera packets, at least over the management channel, anyway.

Each time one of the bad packets hit a node, the node spammed *all* neighboring nodes with the same packets due to the broadcast address. That's the main problem, not the TTL, IMHO.

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Dropbox would rather write code twice than try to make C++ work on both iOS and Android

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

"It is written in Perl"

Indeed it is. And it's very nice Perl. Our tools are listed here:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/about/company/website/

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Chin up, CapitalOne: You may not have been the suspected hacker's only victim. Feds fear 30-plus organizations hit

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: AWS arguably shares some of the blame

In the past we've linked to this explanation

https://blog.cloudsploit.com/a-technical-analysis-of-the-capital-one-hack-a9b43d7c8aea?gi=197e3ae91d85

Though it's not confirmed exactly how the break-in happened.

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WeWork filed its IPO homework. So we had a look at its small print and... yowser. What has El Reg got itself into?

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

"have a nice cold pint, and wait for it all to blow over?"

Ah pretty much. S'wot happened when a power cut took out the SF financial district, including our old office. We sodded off to the nearest pub with working electricity and Wi-Fi - Vesuvio

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: The Reg

We lol'd a lot at this comment. Cheers

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Neuroscientist used brainhack. It's super effective! Oh, and disturbingly easy

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Really?

The 200m claim was from the conference speakers. We're trying to clarify it.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: ECGs from 200m

FWIW, that 200-metre claim was from the conference speakers. We're working to clarify it.

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Rome wasn't built in a day, wasn't teased in a day, either: AMD's 7nm second-gen 64-core Epyc server chips finally land

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

PCIe 4

Ah right, ok. She might be thinking of PCIe 4 expandability. I dunno.

In any case, I'm kinda more concerned about second-gen Epyc's RAM latency, which are offset by the large caches and prefetchers.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Name it, then

OK, what PCIe 4.0 ready x86 server system-on-chip came before Rome, then? Please note all the words in that sentence.

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Add passwords to list of stuff CafePress made hash of storing, says infoseccer. 11m+ who used Facebook 'n' pals to sign in were lucky

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: tedious pedant

"Hashing is not encryption"

Hashing is one-way encryption.

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Jeff Bezos feels a tap on the shoulder. Ahem, Mr Amazon, care to explain how Capital One's AWS S3 buckets got hacked?

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Tech insecure by design?

Don't take sub-headlines too literally - they are short on space and high on flippancy. It means tech in the context of AWS: whether Amazon's cloud is insecure by design because it may be that it's too easy for customers to lose control of their data. It's just a thought, not a solid accusation.

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Choc-a-block: AWS sues sales exec for legging it to Google Cloud. Yup, another bitter battle over non-compete clauses

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

"AWS should have to pay the employee"

I do believe AWS has refused to do this.

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Class-action sueball flung at Capital One and GitHub over theft of 106 million folks' details

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: GitHub sued over data leak?

The alleged data thief posted details on how to enumerate and download CapitalOne's poorly secured S3 buckets on GitHub. That's about the closest connection.

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Cambridge Analytica didn't perform work for Leave.EU? Uh, not so fast, says whistleblower

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Hi, Mitch

> "still he holds on to a decent approval rating"

> decent approval rating

> decent

When compared to Jimmy Carter, perhaps

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/voters/

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Oh sh*t's, 11: VxWorks stars in today's security thriller – hijack bugs discovered in countless gadgets' network code

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Inconsistent

I wouldn't worry about aircraft and spacecraft. Here's how Wind River characterized it:

"Connected devices leveraging standard VxWorks releases that include the IPnet stack are impacted by the discovered vulnerabilities. They primarily include enterprise devices located at the perimeter of organizational networks that are internet-facing such as modems, routers, firewalls, and printers, as well as some industrial and medical devices."

It's not great, it's not terrible. Not as terrible as some other publications have wailed.

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Alibaba sketches world's 'fastest' 'open-source' RISC-V processor yet: 16 cores, 64-bit, 2.5GHz, 12nm, out-of-order exec

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

"RISC-V is coming from a standing start"

Oh yes, we forgot to emphasis that - just assumed everyone was on the same wavelength. RISC-V, as an ISA and community, is still very new compared to incumbents, and today's available silicon is currently up to about Arm Cortex-A50-series performance.

So there's everything to play for. Don't forget: Arm's CEO late last year told a room of journos, including those from El Reg, RISC-V was keeping Arm's engineers and salespeople "on their toes."

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Rise of the Machines hair-raiser: The day IBM's Dot Matrix turned

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Um

> > women driven out

> No one leaves a good job just because

Key words: driven out. Leaving against their will.

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Airbus A350 software bug forces airlines to turn planes off and on every 149 hours

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Why is this a 'news' story?

Also we've written about aviation software faults for years (see Register passim) because readers love hearing about engineering problems - and we're OK with this. Bugs and weird shit fascinate us.

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South Africans shivering in the dark after file-scrambling nasty hits Johannesburg power biz

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

"the prepaid credit vending systems being down"

Ah, yes. We'll make that clearer in the opening sentences.

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Brussels changes its mind AGAIN on .EU domains: Euro citizens in post-Brexit Britain can keep them after all

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

"the Register is nothing without snark."

Bit like saying a steakhouse is nothing without steak.

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Queen Elizabeth has a soggy bottom: No, the £3.1bn aircraft carrier, what the hell did you think we meant?

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: 65 ton???

Yeah, it's a typo. We accidentally out a word or two. Don't forget to email corrections@theregister.co.uk if you spot anything wrong, please.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Christoph

Yeah we accidentally out a word or two. Should be 65k.

Don't forget to email corrections@theregister.co.uk if you spot anything wrong, please.

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Train maker's coder goes loco, choo-choo-chooses to flee to China with top-secret code – allegedly

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Nice Picture

I'd hope by now that most of our article images are tongue in cheek, or deliberately trolly, to raise a laugh. Like using Babylon 5 pics to illustrate JEDI contract stories...

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This major internet routing blunder took A WEEK to fix. Why so long? It was IPv6 – and no one really noticed

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

"If anything, it is a demonstration of how robust IPv6 can be in the face of such mistakes."

Hm, I see where you're coming from. We'll keep it in mind in future.

(Edit: Tweaked the article to include your counterpoints. Completely accept that IPv6 is vast, that it didn't break despite this error which is a good thing, and that more specific routes would have been used. As watchers of IT blunders on a daily basis, who see failures developing a mile off, we were concerned that no alarm was raised, and no fix was applied, for several days, which makes us contemplate more problems in future.)

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

'Why would anybody notice, particularly?'

Doesn't bode well that an advertisement like this is only picked up days later. Maybe we're worrying over nothing; maybe not.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

"they weren't in use so nobody was affected"

Yeah, as we said, doesn't speak well for IPv6 and future routing cockups.

(Yeah yeah we know IPv6 space is huge and this probably collided with nothing.)

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I got 502 problems, and Cloudflare sure is one: Outage interrupts your El Reg-reading pleasure for almost half an hour

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

'knocking Cloudflare over'

Aw shucks. Don't let the other websites know, they'll only get envious.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Is El Reg

Given that we've faced multi-gigabit DDoS waves in the past for annoying black hats, Cloudflare's CDN is particularly useful in staying online at the moment.

We are planning to expand our infrastructure tho to improve connectivity (and then IPv6 etc etc)

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A $4bn biz without a live product just broke the record for the amount paid for a domain name. WTF is going on?

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

"Has whoever sold the domain actually got the money?"

According to the linked-to SEC filing, dated June 18, MicroStrategy received the money in cash on May 30 with GoDaddy facilitating.

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The European Space Agency is going to visit a new comet in 2028. Which one? We haven't discovered it yet

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

In what way was it offensive?

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FYI: Your Venmo transfers with those edgy emojis aren't private by default. And someone's put 7m of them into a public DB

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Can someone tell me why Venmo is a thing?

It's not that smooth in the US. Venmo is a thing because it's faster than anything else available. It also means someone can pick up the tab for a table of six and then request each person's share from them individually - the restaurant will not let you split it more than once.

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We asked readers what DXC should be known for... and of course you came up with the goods

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: "Is that the case?"

No. Paul, who writes our DXC stories, has never worked for DXC.

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HP CFO Cathie Lesjak didn't even read KPMG's Autonomy due diligence before $11bn biz gobble

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Oh my

"Lesjak personally reading the due diligence report is neither here nor there"

I will only add that this was HP's biggest, or one of its biggest, acquisitions at the time. This wasn't some sub-$500m acquihire.

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These boffins' deepfake AI vids are next-gen. But don't take our word for it. Why not ask Zuck or Kim Kardashian...

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: 59.6% is most people

Yeah, yeah, we know - late-night blunder that wasn't caught. We can't catch every error. Email corrections@theregister.com if you spot anything wrong, please, and we'll fix it.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Wellyboot

"59.6% does equal 'most' to me"

Yeah, late night brain burp. Wasn't caught in the edit, but now fixed. Please don't forget to email corrections@theregister.com if you spot anything wrong. We can't catch every slip up.

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Hate your IT job? Sick of computers? Good news: An electronics-frying Sun superflare may hit 'in next 100 years'

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: sm-erg

I dunno, erg is pretty funny sounding ;-)

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Not very bright: Apple geniuses spend two weeks, $10,000 of repairs on a MacBook Pro fault caused by one dumb bug

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

"Mac mini's definitely can use external monitors and keyboards right from boot... as they have no other option."

This ain't a Mac Mini: pretty sure my old MacBook Pro didn't fill its external monitor with anything useful during boot + login (just kept it a dull grey)

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US border cops confirm: Maker of America's license-plate, driver recognition tech hacked, camera images swiped

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Subcontractor’s network compromised?

"What class of a computer did this subcontractor’s network run on?"

Looks like Windows with some Linux.

"What was the name of this subcontractor?"

Are you trolling? The name of the subcontractor is all over the article.

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Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook in crosshairs: Politicos stick monopoly probe into Silicon Valley

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

"Figures only matter in relation to other figures."

Yeah obviously it's not much in terms of product revenue and profit but that's not the point. If you click through the link, you see the headline

"Biggest Washington DC lobbyist is now a tech giant (yes, it's Google)"

There's your context.

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Uncle Sam wants to read your tweets, check out your Instagram, log your email addresses before you enter the Land of the Free on a visa

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: terrorists

FWIW, the visa program includes things like fiance K visas and spousal derivative visas, so it's not all employment focused.

Also, I think it's the DS-160 form - if not, it'll be another one you fill in - that asks you if you've ever trafficked child soldiers, built or used explosives, been part of a terror group, etc. So yeah, you would be asked to declare that kinda occupation.

This is what happens if you tick the wrong box (in this case, on a visa waiver form) www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-45678517

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Require Social Media?

For ESTA, it is optional FWIW. For the DS-160, not so much.

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Introducing 'freedom gas' – a bit like the 2003 deep-fried potato variety, only even worse for you

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

"Methane is odourless"

For the vast vast majority of people, it has an odor due to treatment.

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It's the curious case of the vanishing iPhone sales as Huawei grabs second place off Apple in smartmobe stakes

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Oppo and Vivo? They're one company.

"Why are figures for Oppo and Vivo cited separately?"

Just the way Gartner breaks them out - see the linked-to announcement. Also, it's Vivo and not Viva - now corrected.

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That's a hell of Huawei to run a business, Chinese giant scolds FedEx after internal files routed via America

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: pun violation

It works either way.

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When two tribes go to war... Intel, AMD tease new chips at Computex: Your spin-free summary

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

"Unmentioned in the article"

Yeah, they weren't included in the keynote but are in the linked-to announcement. I'll throw them into the article, too.

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It's all in the RISC: Arm legs it to Computex with a head full of Cortex-A77 CPU, Mali-G77 GPUs

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Body puns

When Michael Foot was put in charge of a nuclear-disarmament committee, The Times (of London), according to one of its sub-editors, ran the headline:

Foot heads arms body

We're taught it in headline-writing school. I'm dying for headteachers to quit an Arm-sponsored STEM group so we can do the headline

Heads leg Arm's body

It should be no surprise that El Reg editors hoard headline ideas in a black book waiting for the moment to use them.

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Assange rape claims: Complainant welcomes Swedish investigation's reopening

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

It's 22 weeks, not 22 months.

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RIP Hyper-Threading? ChromeOS axes key Intel CPU feature over data-leak flaws – Microsoft, Apple suggest snub

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: What about AMD cpu's?

Not affected.

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Tesla touts totally safe, not at all worrying self-driving cars – this time using custom chips

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Bandwidth & storage

"So we have all these Teslas sending data/video to where?"

Tesla's backend servers. Funnily enough, bandwidth wasn't discussed, AFAICR.

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We've read the Mueller report. Here's what you need to know: ██ ██ ███ ███████ █████ ███ ██ █████ ████████ █████

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Please just give it a break

Sadly, politics is everywhere:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zruGBWLk9s8

Although we try to keep it to a minimum and just to tech.

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