* Posts by diodesign

3493 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Sep 2011

Apple whispers how its face-fingering AI works

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Works for me

FYI - the article is about iOS's face detection, and not Face ID. See the correction. We regret the error.

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Increased level of rejections

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Altor

You've had 2 comments rejected this month, and before that way back in 2013. The rejected comments accused someone of fraud and another suggested someone committed homicide. So just take it easy and hold back on the wild accusations - cheers!

Also, we try to write for a big range of people; not every story is going to be your cup of tea. Readership is up ~20% year to date on the same period 2016, so we're obviously doing something right. And what we can't do is please all the people all the time.

But ta for reading. Hope you stick around.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Increased level of rejections

Hiya,

Well, from our end, we haven't stepped up rejections. It's biz as usual. So don't worry about some kind of puritanical crackdown.

You posted on an article where the comments went a bit nah so a mod stepped in to clean it up a bit. We all like cracking jokes, but maybe not about shooting your load in someone's mouth and making light of sexual assault reports. It's the sort of wisecrack that you say a party and it kills the group conversation dead. We've all been there, I think.

So anyway, don't take it personally. You can still comment. Please do comment! And thanks for posting. Just that one, out of your 290-odd other comments, was not great timing.

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ARM emulator in a VM? Yup, done. Ready to roll, no config required

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Just how big are they?

Software has bugs, stories have typos. We try to catch them all but it isn't always possible. Some days we're pretty good at catching them pre-publication, some days we're not.

Just drop corrections@theregister.co.uk a line if you spot anything wrong. Takes just as long as a comment post.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Nothing really that special

"This has been around for a long time."

Well as noted in the story, it's for newbs to get into reverse-engineering and exploit dev on non-x86 architectures. If you know how to set it all up already, this isn't for you.

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Alexa, please cause the cops to raid my home

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: 45RPM

Mate, we're ahead quite a lot of other titles on news. In some cases - such as IBM canceling remote working - we were months ahead of other titles. It took the WSJ about half a year to notice and follow up our coverage.

We thought this amusing thing about Alexa would tickle Reg readers, and be something fun to talk about. And unlike other bootnote-worthy stuff this week - like the woman who allegedly unlocked her husband's phone on a plane while he was asleep next to her and discovered evidence of an affair - this one is actually provably true.

Lester, god rest his soul, would have been all over this, and even he would bootnote his own bootnotes with:

It happened a few days ago. What of it?

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US government seizes Texas gun mass murder to demand backdoors

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: 48 Hours

AFAIA fingerprints don't need a warrant. PINs and passwords do, fingerprints, no. Well, not right now: it's being disputed in the courts.

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Amazon's answer to all those leaky AWS S3 buckets: A dashboard warning light

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: “accidentally left open” is incorrect...

Apologies for being too generous. We wanted to give people the benefit of the doubt - Occam's razor and all that. If "accidentally" triggers you, just image the word "stupidly" in its place, instead.

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Imagine the candles on its birthday cake: Astro-eggheads detect galaxy born in universe's first billion years

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Mike Moyle

Point taken - it's fixed.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Big, yeah but not the biggest ...

LMT is the biggest steerable single-dish *millimetre-wavelength* telescope. I've made that clearer.

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

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Tom 64

Thanks for deliberately misreading the story. Post less.

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Giza geezers' muon-geyser visor reveals Great Pyramid's hidden void surpriser

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: 'a particle usually found in cosmic rays'

It's fixed. Don't forget to email corrections@ if you spot any errors.

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Oh, Google. You really are spoiling us: Docs block cockup chalks up yet another apology

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Double negative

Aah, sorry. Story fixed. Should be "deny via Twitter that Facebook eavesdrops on users".

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

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Comodo CA acquired by Francisco Partners ...

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Blue Coat owned by Symantec

Thanks - oops, someone forgot about the Symantec sale. We've updated the article. Don't forget to email corrections@theregister.com if you spot any errors and we'll get on them straight away, if necessary.

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A draft US law to secure election computers that isn't braindead. Well, I'm stunned! I gotta lie down

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

It's been like that for aaaages. Eg, the 2001 USA PATRIOT Act:

Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act.

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Hey, big vendor: Oracle, Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook blow even more cash on lobbying

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

re: anonymous

Erg, IT cockup. Screw it, it's embedded as an image. Let's go old school.

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Please activate the anti-ransomware protection in your Windows 10 Fall Creators Update PC. Ta

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: "controlled folder access"

Defense in depth! :) Anyway, not that many people will want to install anything to do with Comodo on their machines...

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Google and Intel cook AI chips, neural network exchanges – and more

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: And AlphaGo Zero

Sure, we covered AGZ in depth here.

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Malware hidden in vid app is so nasty, victims should wipe their Macs

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: How to scan for those files or folders? Not an Apple person.

Open the Terminal app (in Applications->Other) to get a command prompt. Use the ls command to list info about the files, eg type:

ls /tmp/Updater.app/

Or rather type 'ls ' and then cut'n'paste the file name. Hit enter, and you should see:

ls: /tmp/Updater.app/: No such file or directory

Which means the directory doesn't exist so you're OK. Repeat this for the other files listed. You can quit Terminal when you're done.

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NYC cops say they can't reveal figures on cash seized from people – the database is too shoddy

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Farked

We have waaaay more readers than Fark. Like, at least 5x. Fark.com got 793,800 uniques in Sept 2017, according to its official analytics.

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YouTube sin-bins account of KRACK WPA2 researcher

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Emma

If you apply your patches, you'll be OK. If you're using Windows or iOS, you're pretty much immune anyway. There isn't a tool to check as far as we're aware. If you're using a recent Linux or Android 6+ or macOS or openBSD or an IoT gadget that uses Linux, you're at risk.

But bear in mind no exploit code attacking the flaw is out there, someone has to be in range, and it's right now tricky to do. Grab the latest security updates for your devices so that you're protected in future.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: Coverage ?

"It is true, however, that there hasn't been the kind of well-informed, detailed explanation of the vulnerability that The Register would normally do."

The flaw is fairly complex but well-explained in the paper, which is public. We've linked to it in previous coverage. You should read it if you're interested in nonces and key installation. If you're aware of WPA2's cryptography, it's an easy read.

Instead, we've focused on the impact - that's what matters most.

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Microsoft exec says ARM-powered Windows laptops have multi-day battery life

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Please explain

Microsoft is giving up on smartphones, but loves the idea of ARM-powered laptops running Windows 10. Microsoft and Intel had a major falling out over PC processor prices, so Redmond turned to a CPU supplier dying to break out of mobile: Qualcomm.

So forget Microsoft in your pocket. Microsoft wants to be on your lap or desktop, with Windows 10, on Qualcomm ARM, or Intel or AMD x86.

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Man prosecuted for posting a picture of his hobby on Facebook

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: TonyJ

It's a sensitive legal case. We may have to moderate comments for legal reasons.

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Facebook and Instagram outage not worthy of coverage ?

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Facebook and Instagram outage not worthy of coverage ?

Great question, Steve. We cover outages when we can. Some outages are more important than others (ISPs and multi-tenant cloud services, especially) so we jump on those. Facebook going down for a few minutes, not so much. Sometimes we're all working on other stories, and by the time we drop everything, and start writing up the outage, the thing comes back online.

The Verge is about as techie as a bent paperclip. It's a marketing vehicle for Silicon Valley.

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IBM: We're now a, what's not losing money? Ah, a cognitive cloud champ!

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Baton Rogue

It's fixed - don't forget to email corrections@theregister.com if you spot any issues.

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Super Cali's futuristic robo-cars in focus – even though watchdogs say they're something quite atrocious

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Bah!

I'll let you in on a little secret: we don't really care if the scansion doesn't quite match up - worrying about a syllable here or there, life's too short for that.

In this case, we couldn't fit the 'the' in because then the headline would not fit in its little space on the front page, break over many many lines and just look ugly. And I'd rather have a tidy looking headline than one that fits the 14 syllables perfectly.

Sorry, not sorry. But thanks for appreciating the headline. We couldn't write one anywhere else in the enterprise IT news world.

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Hackers nick $60m from Taiwanese bank in tailored SWIFT attack

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Walter Bishop

We've tweaked the story to make it clear - it was the banks' equipment that was hacked, not SWIFT's infrastructure.

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You may not have noticed, but 'superfast' broadband is available to 94% of Blighty

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: "Anyone know anything?"

A class-action lawsuit in the US over the issue (v Arris, IIRC) was settled v recently. A big bunch of CVEs were assigned to the Intel chipset bugs (pretty much all denial-of-service). We'll do another followup soon.

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Kotlin's killin' Java among Android devs

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: article deja vu

We accidentally ran it too early - it was supposed to go live Tuesday after the Columbus Day break. My fault.

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Sole Equifax security worker at fault for failed patch, says former CEO

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Security resource identified.

^ Simpsons joke...

https://simpsonswiki.com/wiki/Tibor_Jankovsky

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Have MAC, will hack: iThings have trivial-to-exploit Wi-Fi bug

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: anonymously

"This a another faux-outrage created by non-Apple users, as usual."

Apple is being super confusing here.

"In iOS 11 and later, when you toggle the Wi-Fi or Bluetooth buttons in Control Center, your device will immediately disconnect from Wi-Fi and Bluetooth accessories. Both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth will continue to be available"

Will both continue to be available even though disconnected. Huh? Turns out you have to go to the *settings* page:

"To turn off Wi-Fi, go to Settings > Wi-Fi and turn off Wi-Fi.

To turn off Bluetooth, go to Settings > Bluetooth and turn off Bluetooth."

You can see why it's irritating people. Off should always be off, not nearly off until you find the other lever to pull.

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Deloitte is a sitting duck: Key systems with RDP open, VPN and proxy 'login details leaked'

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Excused Boots

You're not far off :(

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DataCore tech cranks wheezing SQL Servers to ridiculous speeds

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: Super fast response times

^ agmax works for DataCore, FYI.

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Pirate Bay digs itself a new hole: Mining alt-coin in slurper browsers

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: anonymous

It's mining Monero, a relatively new and lightweight alt-coin that is still really easy to crunch on typical desktops. See the link in the story.

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Don't panic, but.. ALIEN galaxies are slamming Earth with ultra-high-energy cosmic rays

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: anonymous

No - we're talking about charged particles, not light. Cosmic rays are atomic nuclei.

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Spanish govt slammed over bizarre Catalan .cat internet registry cop raid

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: jltallon

BTW not sure what you mean by Catalan judges getting involved, but to be clear, the order against .cat domains is coming from the Spanish judicial authorities.

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Ah, good ol' Windows update cycles... Wait, before anything else, check your hardware

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Semtex451

Hate to 'actually' you, but ACTUALLY: Our revenue this year is neatly following 2016's record high. As in, 2016 smashed El Reg's all-time ad sales records. The unsung heroes here are our sterling ad sales team, and us news scribes are in their debt.

So yes, we sometimes run vendor-sponsored articles - clearly labelled sponsored or promos - and they make us a decent amount of money. Take 'em as you like: they are written by freelance journos we vet for quality. And the pieces are super interesting. Don't skip over them just because they are biz-sponsored. It's all part of the El Reg mix.

However, a vast chunk of our cash comes from display ads against our top news articles - which are produced well away from any vendor interference.

We strive to provide highly technical and accurate IT news and features independently and ethically.

Ultimately, this all funds the snark, sarcasm, the exclusives, the analyses, the features of The Reg that you love and we'll continue to serve.

Attention adults working in the real world: Do not upgrade to iOS 11 if you use Outlook, Exchange

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Full of nonsense as ever

Hey Andrew - it's Chris from Drobe. Remember those RISC OS days? Ah yeah. Now I'm at El Reg. Lol!?

Anyway. Thanks for reminding ppl about the extended iOS settings to actually switch off radio comms. We linked to Apple's instructions, so no foul there.

"The continued race to the bottom in El Reg persists"

The fact that we're the most read in the enterprise IT space, and that we're making year-upon-year growth in ad revenue and profit, suggests you're full of shit, Andrew.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Works fine here

This article isn't written for people who have avoided the bug. It's written for people hit by the bug who want to know WTF is going on. And check the link - Apple admits there is a problem.

Also, ppl saying their gear works - are you using the Outlook app? That app is crippled: check out the reviews for it. The UI is mashed beyond repair. That's not a great UX for ppl.

There's no sensationalism going on here. iOS 11 doesn't fully work with Microsoft's software - Apple says as much. If it works for you, great. Judging by the stats on this article, millions disagree that all is ok.

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Give staff privacy at work, Euro human rights court tells bosses

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Graham Dawson

Hiya - yup, sorry. Wrote this from the US and didn't appreciate the subtle differences. Don't forget to email corrections@theregister.co.uk if you spot any problems.

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Big Tech fumes over Prez Trump's decision to deport a million kids

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: anonymous

That was then. Now it's happened, and this is the response.

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Big Tech slams Trump on plan to deport kids

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: anonymous coward

"stopping exceptions that just encourage more people to enter the US illegally"

Yeah, sucks to be you if you're brought to the US as a young kid by family, and the States are all you know, amiright????

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Uncle Sam outlines evidence against British security whiz Hutchins

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Something's up

The crowdfunding thing was cancelled when it was swamped by fake credit cards. Another one is coming next week, we're told by his legal team.

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Node.js forks again – this time it's a war of words over anti-sex-pest codes of conduct

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: anonymous coward

"ranting about the SJWs is poor form"

Ah, come on. Our job is to summarize as best we can complex stuff. In between the usual in-fighting and politics that rage in some open-source projects, the thing for us that stuck out was the CoC side, and so that's the focus here. To us, it's the straw that broke the camel's back.

The ability, or inability, for Node.js to self-govern properly as a FOSS project is best left to another story, and something we can look into. In fact, it should be obvious that, after two splits now, that all is not well in the project.

It's our job as journalists to identify the information that is most interesting to readers. And in our view, a bitter argument over CoCs - which is a rather large policy issue these days in tech - is more significant than people flaming each other on mailing lists.

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German court reveals reason for Europe-wide patent system freeze

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Truth, good story etc...

"the EPO has got nothing to do with the UPC"

Apart from granting them – and, for years, spent a lot of time, money and effort promoting UPC, is a huge cheerleader and advocate of UPC, and stands to gain a lot from the UPC coming into force.

So yeah, nothing to do with UPC, lol.

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Fat-fingered G Suite admins spill internal biz beans onto public 'net

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Steve G Suite Admin

Hi - we reported what Redlock was trying to warn everyone: that some people have set up their accounts incorrectly, and you should make sure you're not making the same mistake. We've updated the story with a note from Google explaining this.

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Rejected

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Rejected

Couple of observations, my dear fellow:

1. Your comment pointed out a typo in the article. Our standard operating procedure when we see corrections in comments is to fix the typo and reject the comment - because the comment is unlikely to make any sense after the tweak is made. You should email corrections@theregister.co.uk so problems can be addressed ASAP. We don't have time to read every comment but we do like to correct all errors.

2. You need to, as we say in California, chill out.

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Software definer wants you to befriend the 'BFC', do a bit of 'reverse virtualization'

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: ikenassi

"big flexible computer"

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Space boffins competing for $20m Moon robot X-Prize are told: Be there by March 31 – or bust

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: do something that literally has never been done before

Put a privately built moving rover on the Moon that streams back HD video (could be live, not sure) and photos. That's not been done before.

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