* Posts by diodesign

3493 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Sep 2011

Ban ISPs from 'speeding up' the internet: Ex-Obama tech guru

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Sir Runcible Spoon

"I've often wondered who determines the policy on the moderation of all comments in AO's articles."

It's a long standing editorial policy. It's basically to stop comment sections turning into "wow, Andrew sucks, you should fire him" because people disagree with him.

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Is Pure Storage a solid business or is skepticism justified?

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Not a very unbiased report from El Reg

"I'm not sure what's going on here with the Register but there's a lot that has to be accounted for that's missed in this article"

Read our previous coverage then: we've written loads about Pure.

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Meet Riffle, the next-gen anonymity network that hopes to trounce Tor

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Not sure i see how this works

You send out an initial message to start the process of mathematically proving that future messages aren't tampered with. You don't route all messages through all nodes.

Basically, you can't hide the fact you're using Tor or Riffle - a snooper can see you interacting with an entry node. However, the snooper isn't supposed to see where you're connecting to. Networks like Tor are supposed to disconnect you from your online activity.

So, for example, snoopers can see you using Tor to reach some kind of system but they don't know which system you're visiting - well, not without some sophisticated timing attacks.

With that in mind, you might as well ping all entry nodes so they can collectively ensure future messages from you aren't tampered with.

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Revolutionary Brit-made SABRE hybrid rocket engine to burn in 2020

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: More Eu funding to be renegotiated

All the money is coming from the UK government. The ESA is just on board to oversee the administration of part of it. Like a startup bringing in managers approved by investors. The UK gov bankrolls the project knowing that clever folks at ESA will be overseeing part of it as well as the UK Space Agency.

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Pokemon Go oh no no no, we're not reading your email, says gamemaker

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Yeah, it's just iOS affected. Still, a lot of people and a silly screw-up.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Are they testing the official apk or the known malware infected apk?

The privacy issue only affects iOS - Android phones running the official app do not grant full access.

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Sociology student gets a First for dissertation on Kardashians

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: DriveByReason

Hi new reader – it's a Bootnotes story. We publish anything we want in here.

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Here's how police arrested Lauri Love – and what happened next

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Flocke Kroes

Nailed it.

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Microsoft's Windows 10 nagware goes FULL SCREEN in final push

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Rejected? Then please fix the link then Reg team...

Click the link, watch the video. Iain was supposed to appear live on Twit.tv but couldn't due to a Windows 10 update.

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Internet takes another step away from US govt and into ICANN's hands

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Excellent article, aside from inaccurate/misleading title

Hi John - thanks for the feedback. I wrote the headline, not Kieren as you suspected.

With honestly the greatest respect, judging from your suggestion, I think this is why journalists should write headlines and not CEOs :-)

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Encryption, wiretaps and the Feds: THE TRUTH

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: What a lie!

Thanks for the feedback. We've revised the article - take a look.

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InfiniBand-on-die MIA in Oracle's new 'Sonoma' Sparc S7 processor

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Econonics

FWIW Oracle reckons the S7 is on a parity with commodity x86 in terms of price-performance, but then, it would say that.

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Three non-obvious reasons to Vote Leave on the 23rd

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: jzl

We haven't run a climate story in a long while.

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Intel's Knights Landing lands

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Yeah, it should be TFLOPS not GFLOPS - sorry.

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Docker taps unikernel brains to emit OS X, Windows public betas

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Thanks for the top tip!

London Mayor election day bug forced staff to query vote DB by hand

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: steogede

We here in San Francisco published the news hours and hours before the BBC did by listening to the Assembly meeting. At the time we couldn't reach DRS for comment and went with what we had for the UK early breakfast time.

It looks as though the BBC got more info out of them during the day, and really the extra info is that they used a spreadsheet to count up the totals. The main problem, that their software was broken and they had to manually query the database, was broken by us hours ago.

So, OK I'll add in the bit about the spreadsheet. We strive to get all the techie details into stories, but sometimes we have to call time and publish what we've got.

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Why everyone* hates Salesforce's Marc Benioff

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Doctor Syntax

Can't you even email corrections@theregister.co.uk if you spot anything wrong, so errors can be fixed up straight away, or do you like your comments sitting buried unread for hours?

Edit: Actually, I think it's OK. The article linked to says: "The name is said to derive from one Ned Ludd, an apprentice weaver, who some years earlier smashed a loom in a rage at his master who had beaten him."

So... they did smash looms. They may have smashed other devices, but they also smashed looms - so the article's right and you deserve the down votes.

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New periodic table names

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

It's fixed - can you please email corrections@theregister.co.uk if you spot anything wrong so we can fix things right away. Ta.

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MPs pass new UK spy law

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

As the article says, it's off to the House of Lords next. When exactly isn't clear - that has to be scheduled.

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UCLA shooter: I killed my prof over code theft

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: anonymous crazy person

Can't you take this to a blog or something? I could do with less crazy around here.

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Cisco axes unloved M-Series modular servers two years after launch

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: The M-series aren't blades

Yeah sure - we know. Typo in the sub-head. It's fixed. Don't forget to email corrections@theregister.co.uk if you spot any problems.

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SWIFT threatens to give insecure banks a slap if they don't shape up

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Any ueful info / links about this?

The link is in the very sentence you've quoted.

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Why Oracle will win its Java copyright case – and why you'll be glad when it does

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: anoco

"he is here to be the one writer pushing the balance to the right "

The Register is a broad church; Andrew's articles are not our only coverage of the Oracle-Google issue. It's good to air opinions that might otherwise be suppressed because they are unpopular.

FWIW, my personal opinion is that there are pros and cons to not extending fair use to APIs, I just don't want to live in a world in which software interfaces are not covered by fair use. If you want a world with strong control over API ownership, be my guest. I don't want to be on that planet.

For one thing, no fair use means discouraging common interfaces to databases, operating systems, web servers, networking devices - it'll be chaos with no sign of any interoperability.

Sure, you can potentially pay a royalty for using an interface, but then you're at the mercy of whoever is licensing the tech to you. If they play fair, perhaps it'll work out OK. If they play nasty, then you'll refuse to use their interface, come up with or use something similar, and get sued anyway for infringement.

Just make APIs fair use - make it OK to reuse function names and call/return definitions - and then may the best implementation win.

Having said that, I respect Andrew's opinion and I don't see why it should be squashed because it's unpopular in some quarters.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: The code is trivial

A code snippet [PNG] appeared briefly in the article, but it was removed because it was a slightly confusing example.

Yes, it showed that Google's implementation of a particular function was very very similar to Oracle's in the Java SDK.

However, the code (dating back to 2010) was used for testing other library functions, rather than providing an app-facing library function, so it never shipped on devices, and would only have been seen by other developers.

It was removed within 30 mins of the story going live after we had second thoughts on it. No conspiracy, just a change of mind. Although it showed Google and Oracle's code were very similar in this instance, It wasn't one of the 37 APIs at the heart of the matter.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Well said!

"Same [sic] on you El Reg for posting this diatribe unchallenged."

Er, it's our Andrew's view of the situation. You're welcome to agree or disagree with it.

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Oracle to sue cloud sales 'whistleblower' for 'malicious prosecution'

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Adam 52

Makes perfect sense. Oracle is so convinced it's going to win, it's already threatening a malicious prosecution suit.

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Western Digital to axe 507 California staffers

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Irvine and Santa Ana

Jeez, fine. Fixed.

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ARM Cortex-A73: How a top-end mobe CPU was designed from scratch

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: "From scratch"

" know the article mentions this, but the headline and the PR department claims still rankle a bit."

Yeah, yeah, all right. I did point out it's based on the A17 and the opening line says "more or less from scratch" – I couldn't really squeeze it into the headline. The A73's microarchitecture borrows a lot of the A17's structure, but various crucial parts have been rewritten like the branch prediction and memory system... if you take a broom and change the stick, head and bristles, I don't think you've got the same broom.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: El Reg employs puppet as journalist?

I deserve that. I think I was trying to be poetic.

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Three's company: Micron intros first 3D and triple-level cell SSDs

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: How much?

No prices yet - they're not on sale for another month or so. The article even says so in the final paragraph.

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Seattle Suehawks: Smart meter hush-up launched because, er ... terrorism

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: Optional

Update: We'll run the follow-up on Friday because everyone's distracted by this afternoon's Oracle-Google news.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Optional

Ah yeah, the case is pretty messy - we tried to keep it succinct. I'll add some of that info into the mix. We're speaking to Phil in-depth tomorrow so expect some more info on Thursday.

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Hulk Hogan's sex tape, a Silicon Valley billionaire, and a $10m revenge plot to destroy Gawker

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Anonymous Coward

Uh, not quite sure where you got us defending Gawker from this. It is possible for us to dislike both sides of this story – we often dislike both sides of stories.

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Insurance article

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: Insurance article @diodesign

"You don't think that disguising an ad as an article is more than a little deceptive?"

The idea is absolutely not to deceive. I don't wake up in the morning wanting to deceive people. I'm sorry you think it's disguised - I'm meeting our sales team in next month in London, I'll bring up your concerns there.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: Insurance article

As the page says, it's a promo - a promotion. Comments were turned off because it's not an article, it's an ad. We do promos from time to time; they pay the bills and they are labeled as such (and also rather stick out - they're not written by Register journalists).

Don't confuse promos with editorial articles. Our reviews are never promos. Promos are usually special offers of competitions or the like.

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Your f---- video player

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: Your f---- video player

[ edit - Marco's right and I didn't even notice / think about it because I disable Flash. It's HTML5, not Flash. ]

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Microsoft half-bricks Asus Windows 7 PCs with UEFI boot glitch

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Secure boot

"Why would you even have secure boot enabled on a Windows 7 system?"

It's supported by default on newer Asus motherboards but Windows 7 doesn't use it. The update makes the firmware think Secure Boot is supported by the operating system, but really the OS cannot/does not ultimately provide the signatures needed, so the boot fails.

I suspect - and we're waiting for more info from Microsoft - that the updated BitLocker drive encryption code that loads before the OS is run is cocking up the process: the firmware believes it's booting a Secure Boot OS but it's really not. Possibly.

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Hacker flogs '42.5m freshly stolen logins' for seventy-five cents

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: pw42

Yeah - it's not clear from Hold Security whether these are hashed or not. I can imagine it's a mix of hashed and unhashed.

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IBM's quantum 'puter news proves Big Blue still doesn't get 'cloud'

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Grumpy Gumby

"So put yourself in IBM's shoes. How do they market this play toy and yet limit access to those who would actually do something of value with it?"

By describing it as I set out at the start of the article without the cloud bollocks. Christ, it ain't hard.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Perhaps the author wants to stop all scientific research?

FWIW I don't want scientific research to stop. If IBM had described this as I laid out at the start of the article, without the cloud bollocks, it would be all good. Nice one, Big Blue.

Instead it turned into a big kick in the balls.

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Devs claim charger uses 'photosynthesis' power battery charger

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Please stop promoting scams; have some journalistic integrity!

Yeah OK, OK. Point taken. Take a look around the rest of the site - clickbait isn't our thing. Apologies if not every article is shit hot.

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The EU wants you to log into YouTube using your state-issued ID card

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: not that I want to spoil the party, but...

"Where are the links to any kind of evidence supporting this story?"

It's from a draft report that was leaked. I've linked to a copy of the dossier from the article.

HTH,

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Cavium snubs MIPS, picks 64-bit ARM for next-gen network SoCs

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Prices

It's hinted at in the roadmap chart: $500 for a top-end 24-core Octeon-TX.

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Apple man found dead at Cupertino HQ, gun discovered nearby

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Rates and news?

"One of them working for apple makes it news?"

Yes, a person suffering an apparently gun wound and dying on Apple HQ is clearly news. It's news. It's stuff people should know about. It's a public company. It's news. if you don't think it's news, don't read the news.

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Microsoft's Windows 10 nagware storms live TV weather forecast

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Small misfire by M$ leads to a Butterfly Effect...?

Trust me, Microsoft reads these forums. They treat these comments seriously.

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Microsoft, Google bury hatchet – surprisingly, not in each other

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

"Anyone know why elreg doesn't open the pro-copyright topics (eg the one before this) to comments? Second time it's happened in as many weeks."

Our pro-copyright stories have comment sections. Most stories allow all comments through (unless you're a new poster or on a naughty step). For some authors, we hand moderate comments to stop the forums turning off-topic. If you spot any articles with delayed moderation, that'll be the reason why.

If any articles are published without a comment section, it's 99% an error on our part (someone hit the wrong button) or because of an obvious legal risk.

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Bypass the Windows AppLocker bouncer with a tweet-size command

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

"what non-admin would ever need regsvr32"

Make sure it's unavailable, then. Job done.

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Come get your free Opera VPN (and bring along something to read)

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: If you bothered to read the blog

"Why try and out a negative spin on everything?"

Just keeping people's expectations realistic.

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SpyEye duo behind bank-account-emptying malware banged up

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: Why name the judge?

Judges have to OK plea deals.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Why name the judge?

What planet are you from?

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