* Posts by diodesign

3496 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Sep 2011

Can you ethically suggest a woman pursue a career in tech?

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: I don't know what company Mark Pesce works for, but he should quit.

"What he is talking about, I've worked as an employee and contractor for just over 30 companies. And NONE of those companies is on the same planet as Mark Pesce. I'm an extroverted guy, I like to get in on scuttlebutt, and I've never heard anything like what he is talking about."

I've never had cancer so why are we spending millions and millions tackling it?

C.

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Another female

Mark (and El Reg) want more women in IT/tech. The problem is, there's no point recommending it as a career if they're going to run into toxic workplaces.

C.

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Steven Guenther

"when you do run across a woman in a high position, you know she is just there because of her ovaries."

Or when you do run across a woman in a high position, you know she is there despite not having a dick, and without people with dicks keeping her down the ladder.

C.

Microsoft nicks one more Apple idea: An ad-supported OS

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Wait...

Yes.

C.

Microsoft to close its social network on a week's notice – and SIX people complain

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Who can you believe nowadays?

Well, both. Wikipedia is talking about full-year users (170m) and Statista is talking about monthly users (about 50m). If you follow the link in the Wikipedia page, you'll get to a South Korean financial news article that says:

"KakaoTalk ... had 170 million subscribers at the end of last year and 48 million monthly active users (MAU)."

C.

Oh, 3PAR. One moment you're gliding along. The next, you're in the rain as HPE woos Nimble

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: "Oh goodness here come the meatheads..."

Chris is welcome to his opinion.

C.

Microsoft: Can't wait for ARM to power MOST of our cloud data centers! Take that, Intel! Ha! Ha!

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Question

"Surely hardware needs a driver"

In this case, a generic ACPI driver that accesses the hardware in a uniform and standard way - via ACPI and the ARM server and boot standard (Register passim) - rather than specific Qualcomm and Cavium chipset driver code.

C.

That CIA exploit list in full: The good, the bad, and the very ugly

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: Dear el Reg,

"The Register would focus on the technical details"

There are very few technical details in the WL dump - and we've linked to the most interesting stuff for you to read yourself. There is basically not much of worth in the leak, relative to the hype, which makes us wonder why St Jules went to the trouble of going ballistic over it...

"The CIA is paying contractors to develop zero day vulnerabilities, does not inform the vendors and then the malware leaks"

We've written pages and pages and pages about the IC hoarding vulns. And no malware nor exploits leaked in this WL dump.

C.

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Dear el Reg,

Haha, no. We'll write what we want.

C.

Lacklustre reporting.

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Ryzen

I know, I know. I've been really busy, I'm completely stressed out, give me time. I'm at OCP Summit on Wednesday and cleared Thursday to focus on AMD. In the meantime, a colleague in the UK is covering the Zen server chips for this week.

At El Reg, bad news is a priority: crashes, hacks, cockups, scandals and crime come first. And lots of that has been happening.

PS: We're seeking a full-time semiconductor news reporter to take chips off my hands. If you, a friend or anyone else reading thinks they can cover CPUs, GPUs, ucontrollers and ASICs and FPGAs for The Reg, email me: cwilliams at theregister dot com.

C.

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Lacklustre reporting.

Well, I'm sad you don't believe me, but it's the truth. I wrote about Zen last year. When Ryzen was announced at the end of 2016, all that was revealed was the name, and then later on, the on-sale date was announced, and tomorrow it's coming out.

At El Reg, we don't really do the whole trickle-feed of hype. I'd rather wait for the thing to arrive and do one decent story on it rather than act as an external marketing wing for AMD.

We've written about Hololens and the S8 and so on, but we also wrote about and mentioned Zen last year - in August, September, April, and October. Where I've written about Hololens, it was either in passing about Windows 10 or was an exclusive on the headset's DSP chipset.

I can tell you're a massive fan of AMD, and I'm pleased for you. But I'm not going to act as the advertising wing of a multibillion-dollar corp, especially when other sites are tripping over themselves to say nice things about the CPU.

C.

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Lacklustre reporting.

It doesn't launch until March 2. When it actually arrives, we'll write about it.

C.

BONG! Lasers crack Big Ben frequency riddle BONG! No idea what to do with this info BONG!

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: No spectrum analyser?

Too easy.

C.

Amazon S3-izure cause: Half the web vanished because an AWS bod fat-fingered a command

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Availability Zones

We didn't mention AZs because S3 doesn't use availability zones. That's for EC2.

C.

Net neutrality? Bye bye, says American Pai

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Roger B

The comment's back.

C.

LG, Huawei unwrap 'Samsung Galaxy-killers'

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: You could be a touch more sceptical, please

Um, well, you can use spare cycles to perform ML *inference* to optimize the system. Inference is very cheap. You're probably thinking of training, which is intensive. Modern ARM cores are beefy enough to do inference.

Basically, ideally, you train the system offline to optimize memory allocation, deallocation and organization based on loads of different scenarios (which types of apps are running, for how long, with how much charge, etc), build that model and code into your firmware. Then the phone can make better decisions on how to save power or provide performance, all through cheap inference.

More operating systems should do this. Forget the AI/ML hype, this is useful stuff for letting devices cope with a large range of users and their demands, without an ugly codebase of heuristics, if-elsif, and switch() blocks.

C.

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: please start every phone review with:

Hearing you loud and clear - updated the article with links to specs + battery info + storage slots + more.

C.

People built AI bots to improve Wikipedia. Then they started squabbling in petty edit wars, sigh

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Eddy

Great memory. Well, this time round the paper's been officially published, and we've got more details and quotes - such as the pages most argued over. Enjoy!

C.

Boffins exfiltrate data by blinking hard drives' LEDs

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Root access

It's not always about root access. You might be able to game the OS to blink the light when you want as a user-mode process. But anyway, it's not about that. It's about getting information out of an infected air-gapped system. In theory. It's literally an academic exercise ;)

C.

Neuromorphic progress: And we for one welcome our new single artificial synapse overlords

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Kinda

Nah, I kinda like the word. if you want boring lifeless mechanical prose, VentureBeat is that way ---->

C.

Meet the chap open-sourcing US govt code – Paul, an ex-Microsoft anti-piracy engineer

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: What license is he going for?

MOOSE is GPL 2.1 and the build system (Civet) is Apache 2.0 - both linked in the article.

C.

UK Snoopers' Charter gagging order drafted for London Internet Exchange directors

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

LINX is lying

We disagree with LINX's incorrect claim that there is no gag clause. There is a clear update to the constitution that means information will be withheld from members if legally necessary. Within the context of the IP Act, that means secrecy orders attached to surveillance demands.

LINX was also obviously, from consultation documents, considering the impact of the IP Act when it was drawing up this constitution tweak. We also ran this article's claims by LINX prior to publication, and the result is the official quote at the end of the story. It is disappointing to see LINX fail to accept the findings and criticism presented by The Register.

Here's the relevant text from the amended constitution highlighted.

C.

FAKE BREWS: America rocked by 'craft beer' scandal allegations

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: This story only got written for the headline

:) We really want to do a podcast or some kind of recording of our headline writing, if only we had time. It's mainly us shouting puns at each other across the office.

C.

Google yanks workers from ISP outfit, it's THE FIBER COUNTDOWN

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: "it's not totally giving up"

Yeah, I think our sarcasm was a little too subtle, there.

C.

OK, it's time to talk mass spying again: America's Section 702 powers are up for renewal

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Hmmm.....

"I haven't heard of a single Trump-based scandal."

I almost rejected this for its sheer stupidity but I'll leave it here for all to see. You're either expertly trolling, or helping to fuel the creeping post-fact neurosis that's threatening to poison the great nation that is America.

There are so many fuck ups, it's hard to know where to begin. Firing his acting AG who turned out to be right. Bannon's bungled Muslim ban. Michael Flynn. The constant lies and completely unsupported assertions, especially about voter fraud. Russia. Nordstrom. The OPSEC comedy performance art at Mar-a-Lago. The crappily written exec orders. The fact that the exec orders on the WH website do not match what was signed. Acting tough on China until it granted him his trademark. Putting Betsy DeVos in charge of education. Having anything to do with Jeff Sessions, let alone making him Attorney General, after he was deemed too racist to be a federal judge in the 1980s. And so on.

You get the picture. It also means I highly, highly doubt anything else you write since you see the world through such a warped lens.

C.

The Register's guide to protecting your data when visiting the US

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Not right, but not that strange either

Not sure even the UK would stop and search a UK citizen, and seize his phone, for being of vaguely Middle Eastern descent. (See the opening example in the article.)

C.

2009 IBM: Teleworking will save the WORLD! 2017 IBM: Get back to the office or else

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Not sure how real this is in the UK

It's coming to UK + Europe, gradually.

C.

All of Blighty's attack submarines are out of action – report

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Diesel Electric

The subs aren't diesel-electric, they use fuel cells. Apologies for any confusion.

C.

Why your gigabit broadband lags like hell – blame Intel's chipset

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: TheVogon

Last we heard, which was last week, Intel still didn't have a working firmware fix.

C.

Mag publisher Future stored your FileSilo passwords in plaintext. Then hackers hit

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Adam 52

I hate to literally "actually" into a conversation but...

Actually, we went HTTPS well before 2017: experimentally, while we worked in things like ads, layout components, the mobile design, and so on, HTTPS was available, we just didn't hype it before it was ready. If you tweaked the URL from HTTP to HTTPS you would have had a nice surprise. We've been working on encrypted Reg reading for months :) Props to Marco, Tony and the tech team for their work. It takes time because there are so many components to a page, and all need to be served securely.

So in short, if you hit a HTTP link, change it to HTTPS. Gradually, these will all become HTTPS automatically.

C.

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

IGNORE ADAM. HTTPS HERE :D

C.

Revealed: 'Suicide bomber Barbie' and other TSA quack science that cost $1.5 billion

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Bah!

Sometimes I can't tell if you peeps hate us or love us. I've fixed the copy. Don't forget to email corrections@thereg ah fuck it.

C.

Tosh's new workhorse drive: Not too desktop, not too enterprise

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Dave 126

Ha, sorry. Was too busy concentrating on Intel, IBM and other exclusives. Got clumsy on this. It's fixed.

C.

Samsung battery factory bursts into flame in touching Note 7 tribute

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Fake News

It is very true.

C.

Russia (A) bans web porn as a 'bad influence' (B) decriminalizes domestic violence – or (C) all of the above?

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Destroy All Monsters

"OTOH, why are we discussing beating laws in Russia as opposed to say, beating laws in Saudi Arabia again?"

See Register passim etc.

C.

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Decriminalisation: Does this do the opposite of what you think?

Nice of you to give Russia the benefit of the doubt but it's been dubbed the "slapping law" even by Russian media. Rather than faff around with burden of proof, it reduces the punishment of family-on-family abuse, so that it becomes a minor matter kept out of court. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that family conflicts do "not necessarily constitute domestic violence."

It sends the message that it's OK to beat your spouse or kids: at worst you'll get a $500 fine or a 15-day arrest warning. Meanwhile: porn is bad!!1

C.

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Anonymous

We call him "Vlad" as a piss take, not as a language-correct reference.

C.

IBM's Marissa Mayer moment: Staff ordered to work in one of 6 main offices – or face the axe

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Marissa Mayer

I think it's pretttttty clear the quotes are from Peluso. She's mentioned and named right through the story and there's a screenshot of her from her staff vid, captioned "Michelle Peluso". And the link with Mayer is explained after.

C.

Second time's a charm? WD tries again with 3D NAND, doubles capacity

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Misnomer Alert

TLC is triple level cell: three bits are used to data in eight levels (000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110, 111). Blame the flash industry for the slightly odd naming.

C.

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: nvm.expert

Yup, the graph was wrong - we've torn it out. Don't forget to email corrections@theregister.co.uk if you spot anything wrong.

C.

Intel Atom chips have been dying for at least 18 months – only now is truth coming to light

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: sanmigueelbeer

"If this is the case, then I can fully understand why Intel is behaving like this."

Extremely strange that Intel won't explain this or say this. And some of the affected components started shipping in 2014. If you bought an Atom-powered NAS in 2015, would you want to start 2017 knowing it could die after the next reboot? It's crappy quality.

"Intel wants to control the situation before everything gets to 'chaos' mode."

No shit. Sorry, we don't do Intel's PR. Happy to set the cats among the pigeons and get some real answers out of vendors, rather than suppliers hiding behind NDAs while people's devices mysteriously fail.

C.

RAF pilot sent jet into 4,000ft plummet by playing with camera, court martial hears

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: 15,000 feet-per-minute

Peeps, can you email corrections@theregister.co.uk if you spot anything wrong.

Edit: OK, you lot can wind in that snark. At one brief point, the aircraft fell 15,000 feet a minute, although fell 4,400 ft in 33 seconds. See the linked gov.uk report.

C.

Chrome 56 quietly added Bluetooth snitch API

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: matt

Matt, we hate the fact that web browsers can access webcams, too. Fuck that noise.

C.

FYI: Ticking time-bomb fault will brick Cisco gear after 18 months

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Intel is likely

Thanks - we'll look into it!

C.

New US Net Neutrality law coming 'within three months' – advisor

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: this rates a "pants on fire"

The net neutrality debate is exactly that, a debate. There are shrill and moderate voices on both sides. We've written heaps about net neutrality amid Comcast et al screwing over subscribers. Andrew's writing from the other side, the side that argues what the FCC was dong was flawed.

C.

Pure unsheathes the FlashBlade, cuts out NetApp legacy system

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: Am I mis-reading this?

Thanks - article tweaked.

C.

PDP-10 enthusiasts resurrect ancient MIT operating system

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: PDP-11 emulation on ITS?

No, there really is a PDP-11 emulator in the ITS source code.

C.

Forgot your GitHub password? Facebook cooks up spec to reset logins via social network

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: ermm. a question.

Well, if you compromised someone's FB account, you can then compromise their GitHub - just like if you compromise someone's Gmail, you can compromise their GitHub by reseting the password. This is why you have two-factor auth on your GitHub account. And all accounts.

The point of this is: who is better at writing and maintaining a secure account recovery mechanism - you or Facebook (or Google etc)? If you, then do it yourself. Otherwise, use someone else's working system instead.

Also means you don't have to store personal info stuff like mother's maiden names in your database.

C.

Facebook ad biz comes under scrutiny in MPs ‘Fake News’ probe

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: It's all fake anyway - The picture

Fun fact: one of my bosses from my UK newspaper days was a news editor on the Sport, and he says he was involved in that WW2 bomber story. Or was the London double decker bus found at the North Pole?

Anyway, at least the Sport was obviously spoofed. If you read Stick It Up Your Punter! and similar books, you'll hear about real hacks putting together made-up "special investigations" for years. Sad, really.

C.

Happy Friday: Busted Barracuda update borks corporate firewalls

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: not understanding

Yes, this was new data pushed out to Barracuda devices from Barracuda.

C.