Posts by diodesign

We all deserve a break. Pack your bags. Four Earth-like worlds found around nearby Tau Ceti

Re: Ummmm

Doh - accidentally introduced during the edit. It's fixed. Don't forget to email [e-mail] if you spot a problem.

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Your top five dreadful people the Google manifesto has pulled out of the woodwork

Re: Re: Average differences between groups

"The manifesto says to judge each person on their merit."

While at the same time saying certain people - women, for instance - aren't suited to certain jobs due to their biology. You can't have it both ways: you can't say 'treat people on their merit' while also writing them off because "on average" they suck at certain tasks. Which is it: treat people on merit because everyone has every chance of being competent, or assume "on average" women aren't as competent as men? How can you take people on merit if you've already decided half of them are potentially defective? It's hardcoded bias. It don't make no sense.

This is why, here at El Reg, we just don't buy it. We don't buy the memo. It's shit reasoning by a PhD dropout that has now spiraled out of control, fueled by latent biases.

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Re: Re: kieranmccarthy Re: RTFM

"And then your article doesn't really delve into the memo, it just picks five people whose politics you don't seem to agree with for a barrage of insults."

Yeah, that's kind of the point (hence the headline)... finding people flailing miserably to defend a shonky manifesto, and ripping the piss out of them. We tend to rip the piss out of a lot of people.

Also, you don't have to lecture us on Google. We've written tons on the corp's overreaching power and influence. I've even been interviewed on the subject by a chap writing a book about Silicon Valley and power.

But the target isn't Google this time; it's incoherent views on fairness and discrimination in the workplace, and the morons seizing these views to further unsavory agendas.

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Re: Re: Screw the statistics. I'd use the best people I can find to do the job.

Kieren has read the memo plenty of times - it still doesn't make much sense.

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Re: Re: Average differences between groups

" judge each person on their merit."

Judge people on their merit, but on average they won't be any good, but still judge them on their merit anyway, even though there's a good chance they'll suck at it, but still, hear them out, even though you'll interview them assuming they'll suck. That's the memo's thinking. If that's a rational, coherent and fair thought process for you, then... I don't know what to say. No wonder particular groups feel unwelcome.

Right. Let's say you were a fan of the Sopranos on HBO, or you like Brit metal band Cradle of Filth. And say there was a study that suggested Sopranos and Filth fans tend to be unstable in stressful situations. And you go into a job interview with the interviewers knowing from your Facebook that you're a fan of the Sopranos or the Filth. And immediately they're thinking: on average, this person isn't going to be a reliable candidate.

Or your colleagues you pair program think the same.

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Re: I almost feel like crying

Damore blundered pretty badly in the way he brought up the issue: the memo is contradictory, and so poorly thought out. He can apparently code but he can't string together a coherent line.

He then became a corporate liability by making colleagues feel uncomfortable, as well as breaking internal policy, right in the middle of Google fighting off legal complaints of discrimination. And, we hear, the CEO had to cancel his vacation to fly back and sort it out. At that point, in corporate Silicon Valley, you're toast.

And yes, we did read the memo. I still can't get my head around it. It just doesn't make any sense. People claiming we've misread are, I suspect, projecting their own opinions onto it to fill in the blanks, so to speak, and warp it to fit their narrative.

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Re: RTFM

He did read the memo. Not our problem if you disagree with him.

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It's August 2017 and your Android gear can be pwned by, oh look, just patch the things

Re: Hmm

Key thing is to patch before they turn into threats. Apps from dodgy marketplaces tend to love priv escl bugs.

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Sweet Christmas: Micron more than triples SSD capacity with 9200

It's x4 for U.2 and x8 for HHHL.

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Linux kernel hardeners Grsecurity sue open source's Bruce Perens

Re: gphoto2 ain't part of linux sources

It's an artist's impression of what open-source source code may look like in happier times.

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Re: boring

They harden-up the kernel.

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Particle boffins show off 'cheap', cute little C^osI, world's smallest neutrino detector

Re: Typo

Hm. Slight confusion, here. A proton accelerator produces photons from the collisions, which is the light that the detectors pick up. However, to be clear: it's the beam of protons that smashes into the sample, producing the light. I've made it clearer in the piece.

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

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VCs to Trump: Don't lock out our meal tickets! Save startup visas!

Re: Big John

Explained in the story, mate. Second sentence. Ta.

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How can you kill that which will not die? Windows XP is back (sorta... OK, not really)

Re: I wonder how the total size of the market has changed?

There's no exact figures, we presume, because it's taken from SC's traffic sensors on about 2.5m websites. It's good for measuring, with a suitable pinch of salt, market balances rather than exact numbers of systems in use.

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New iPhone details leak: Yes, Apple is still chasing Samsung

Re: Wut?

>Was an editor absent or too plastered at the downstairs pub?

Have you been living under a rock the past 4 days?

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After we ran our article about the fate of .sk, the nation of Slovakia flew into a rage. And now, here's part two...

Re: Comment from NasaDomena.sk

> My comment in previous article was rejected

It was accepted - go back and check.

> Previous nonobjective article still needs remedy and apology.

Incorrect.

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Re: Some claims are still false

You're like clockwork. We're happy with the story - we disagree with your interpretation of the situation. For example, you can bang on about companies changing names and so on all you like, but it doesn't negate what we said:

> [.sk] has been in private hands since the 1990s, resulting in a number of different organizations running it

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Targeted, custom ransomware menace rears its ugly head

Re: Bitwiper

"Does ANYONE have evidence that ALL computers trashed by NotPetya were operated -on a workdaily basis- by people with admin privileges?"

All right, calm down, calm down. We've tweaked the sentence so it's a little sharper. Not every trashed machine had admin access, obviously. And giving people and software the least possible privs is a good thing, obviously.

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Presto crypto: IBM releases gruntier, faster Z14 mainframe

Re: Sil

Hi - yup, I've taken the sentence out. On its own, it's meaningless. If you check our other IBM articles you'll see we're not really down with running Big Blue 'press releases' - and our other chip stories go into a lot more detail when comparing features.

Take this article as-is: a product announcement, not a product endorsement.

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Jodie Who-ttaker? The Doctor is in

Re: This is the BBC making a quota

Lol, time travel, aliens, the TARDIS, all this fantasy, but a woman is too far fetched? What are you afraid of?

There's no rule to say Dr.W has to be a bloke. If someone wants to try another gender for a JA character, why complain? I wouldn't. It's art. It's entertainment. The world is a fluid place. Try new things.

What are you afraid of?

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Juicero does to its staff what your hands can do to its overpriced juice sacks

Re: Missed opportunity

Yoink!

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Dark web souk AlphaBay shuts for good after police raids

Re: Valarian

Yup - mistake fixed.

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When 'Saving The Internet' means 'Saving Crony Capitalism'

Re: kameko

You've gone full cynic. Never go full cynic.

(We're just reminding folks that it's not the black and white, red v blue, binary situation pro and anti-NN campaigners would have you believe.)

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Intel bolts bonus gubbins onto Skylake cores, bungs dozens into Purley Xeon chips

Re: Not mentioned the support for NVDIMM

There was no mention of NVDIMMs by Intel in the tech materials its engineers shared with El Reg, so I guess this has been paused?

I must confess, I'm a software and CPU dude, not a storage person, so I didn't pick up on this. I've let my colleague Chris Mellor, our storage writer, know so he can follow up.

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(The other Chris)

Two-factor FAIL: Chap gets pwned after 'AT&T falls for hacker tricks'

Re: fbt3

Wow, that's crazy. Thanks for letting us know.

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Re: fbt3

Wow - how did they manage to transfer your T-Mobile number? (I'm assuming it's T-Mobile USA, right?)

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Behind the scenes of Slovaks' fight to liberate their .sk domain

Re: Re: Kieren, is this article serious?

I think we're gonna have to agree to disagree: there's clearly a clash of views.

If there are specific sentences in the story you disagree with, email them to me (with a brief explanation why you disagree with them) – cwilliams at theregister dawt com – and I'll take a look.

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Re: anonymous

Thanks for the feedback - suffice to say, this article isn't sponsored by any party. Just our take on the matter. I've passed it onto Kieren.

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Someone's phishing US nuke power stations. So far, no kaboom

Re: intermediary contact

Contact is being established...

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May the excessive force be with you: Chap cuffed after Star Trek v Star Wars row turns bloody

Re: Snowy

Actually, ITYM Deep Space 5.

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Feelin' safe and snug on Linux while the Windows world burns? Stop that

Re: about 12 per cent of servers run non-Windows OSs!?

Thanks for the feedback - you're probably right that Spiceworks is biased in favor of Windows-centric orgs (it does offer Linux monitoring tools, though). It's something we'll keep in mind.

We've tidied up the section on Linux/Windows web server stats: there Unix-ish OSes rule the roost.

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Boffins with frickin' laser beams chase universe's mysterious trihydrogen

Re: Chris Miller

Thanks - that was a mistake our end and it's been fixed. Can you please email [e-mail] if you spot anything wrong so we can fix it right away. We don't have time to read every comment, sadly; we get thousands of posts a month.

C.

Search results suddenly missing from Google? Well, BLAME CANADA!

Re: JohnnyS777

> What are you talking about "animal care products"? Equustek does high end electronics

Hmmm, OK. Fixed. We're investigating how this happened.

Edit: A company name mix up (there's an Equustock that does animal care products. The name was corrected during editing but not the product type, oops. It was quickly fixed.)

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Microsoft: We'll beef up security in Windows 10 Creators Edition Fall Update

Re: Para 3, line 2 - "new operating system". WTF

Jesus, take it easy. You know what we meant. I've changed it to "updated" to save you a heart attack.

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Vblock tags in Vxblock: Move is a 'simplification' for punters

Re: anonymous

We got the wrong end of the stick - we've updated the article to make it much clearer. Apologies for any confusion.

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Researcher calls the fuzz on OpenVPN, uncovers crashy vulns

Re: ShelLuser

We've tidied up that sentence. Some of the bugs require authentication, some don't. Crucially, remote code execution looks extremely unlikely (thankfully!) - update just in case, of course.

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And now, in alphabetical order, all the storage news you may have missed

Re: GTFO

Oh dear. Now fixed...

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(The other Chris)

Software dev bombshell: Programmers who use spaces earn MORE than those who use tabs

Re: correlation is not causation.

Aw come on, don't kill the fun.

(PS: we say in the piece that correlation is not causation.)

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Stop trying to make The Machine happen, HPE. It's not going to happen

Re: ... early space race, which saw Russia launch its Sputnik satellite ...

Fair point - now changed. Don't forget to email [e-mail] so we can fix up stuff straight away rather via reading the comments a day later.

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Samsung releases 49-inch desktop monitor with 32:9 aspect ratio

Re: 1080 x 720

Typo fixed. It's already Friday in Oz - brains are tired after a week-long slog.

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Sorry to burst your bubble, but Microsoft's 'Ms Pac-Man beating AI' is more Automatic Idiot

Re: Problem?

Yes - that's why it's called machine learning. Chess programs aren't AI. They are algorithms and preprogrammed patterns. Airbus autopilot isn't AI. It's algorithms and preprogrammed patterns. Compare this to DQN, which didn't even know what the game controller's buttons did. It was given video frames and told to get on with it. It had to figure it out from scratch. That's where AI wants to head if it's going to make anything remotely intelligent.

Sure, the world runs on algorithms and preprogrammed patterns. No problem with that. Let's just not trumpet it as AI.

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The open source community is nasty and that's just the docs

Re: Time wasters

"I felt uncomfortable and out-of-place!"

No further questions, your honor.

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Cuffed: Govt contractor 'used work PC to leak' evidence of Russia's US election hacking

Re: Any incompetent should know what todo by now.

"I can't remember the person who did it"

Because they only exist in your imagination, Donald.

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DXC Technology looks to lighten the payroll six weeks after launch

Re: anybody Know?

DXC = a mashup of CSC and HPE.

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Google DeepMind's use of 1.6m Brits' medical records to test app was 'legally inappropriate'

Re: ratfox

Edit: Story updated - it's not an AI system. It's a fixed algorithm. We've tidied up the piece.

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For now, GNU GPL is an enforceable contract, says US federal judge

Re: Nick

Thanks, Nick. All links welcome - don't forget that while most of us Reg hacks have been reading the site for ages, we haven't been working for it's entire lifespan. So the people producing El Reg today for you, based on the values we've long held dear, may have skipped an article or two in their write up. Basically, if you can't see a link, it's because we've been running around on fire trying to make quality content for you, and may have left off some old links. I am sorry.

Your 90-second guide to new stuff Nvidia teased today: Volta V100 chips, a GPU cloud, and more

Re: 120 teraflops using INT8

Yeah, it was a long day and brain wasn't fully firing. Nvidia quoted 120 "Tensor" TFLOPS (see my comment below), which we took to be marketing spiel for INT8. Duh, INT8 is integer so TFLOPS makes no sense. I've taken out the stat because Nv doesn't, TTBOMK, define exactly what a "Tensor" TFLOPS is.

Edit: See article update.

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Re: INT8 performance in FLOPS

It's actually 120 "Tensor" TFLOPS which we took to mean INT8, but Nvidia claims it is not - so we've taken it out. Last time we asked, Nv wouldn't define what a "Tensor" TFLOPS is, so we've axed that stat and stuck with industry standard metrics (64FP and 32FP).

We've asked Nv to clarify what a "Tensor" TFLOPS is. If they give us a clear explanation, we'll update the story.

Edit: See article update.

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Mozilla to Thunderbird: You can stay here and we may give you cash, but as a couple, it's over

Re: I use Thunderbird and I want to support it

Here:

https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/

Mozilla is handling donations for Thunderbird.

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America 'will ban carry-on laptops on flights from UK, Europe to US'

Re: So what about the battery

AFAIR, airlines let you put devices containing li-ion batteries in the hold, but not separate batteries. So a laptop, fine. A replacement battery, not so fine.

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