* Posts by diodesign

3493 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Sep 2011

'Rowhammer' attack flips bits in memory to root Linux

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: “On the software from” ?

It's been fixed. Click on some ads and we'll hire more proofreaders :-P

There's always corrections@thereg if you want to point out typos. We don't have time to read every comment, so those emails are appreciated.

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Chewier than a slice of Pi: MIPS Creator CI20 development board

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: No love for hardkernel's ODROID range?

Yeah, I guess supply is an issue. It's also what to do with one of these ODROID SBCs in a way that can stretch to 2,000+ words, personally speaking.

I bought a Pandaboard and got burned when TI dumped OMAP, so I'm hesitant to trust another manufacturer (outside the usual) unless I've got an interesting project or two for it.

No, not a media center (I don't own a TV). No, not a NAS. I don't have a home network to speak of.

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Grab your pitchforks: Ubuntu to switch to systemd on Monday

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: More research needed

Tweaked story to make this clear systemd is in Debian Testing. Don't forget to email corrections@theregister if you spot anything wrong - you'll experience massively lower post-publication correction latency.

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Litecoin-mining code found in BitTorrent app, freeloaders hit the roof

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: "buying that Blu-Ray in the first place"

lol u mad???

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FREAKing hell: ALL Windows versions vulnerable to SSL snoop

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: A different Freak?

Internet Explorer in the Windows 10 Preview and Windows 8.1 was/is flagged up as vulnerable on freakattack.com. It is the same problem. Microsoft warns:

"Our investigation has verified that the vulnerability could allow an attacker to force the downgrading of the cipher suites used in an SSL/TLS connection on a Windows client system. The vulnerability facilitates exploitation of the publicly disclosed FREAK technique, which is an industry-wide issue that is not specific to Windows operating systems."

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VMware sued, accused of ripping off Linux kernel source code

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: A few nitpicks

Just to be clear: this isn't about Busybox, and the article doesn't mention Busybox. It's about Linux kernel source code (drivers, specifically).

As for violating copyright law versus violating the GPL, I don't think the article's wording is confusing.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: interesting

Very good question. One way is to guess or work out the version of the Linux kernel allegedly used by Vmware in its vmkernel, compile that Linux kernel for x86 and compare common blocks of code between the two binaries – looking for shared function signatures.

It's happened in the past with Linux: people who spend hours looking at compiler output can spot similarities in other code. Obviously, there will be some small blocks that are the same (start and end of similar functions, for example), but chunks of copied code are easy to spot.

That's just one way. But essentially, you don't always need the source code. Binary analysis is possible.

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Canadian bloke refuses to hand over phone password, gets cuffed

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: CAN$25,000 (US$19,900)

Guys, I did add a £ conversion. We still love you.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: CAN$25,000 (US$19,900)

Most of our readers are in North America.

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Edit: Downvotes? The British are coming! The British are coming!

Intel touts tardy Broadwell Core CPUs for laptops, PCs

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Socket Type & Chipset??

"I (and others) would certainly appreciate some indication of the socket type the new CPU requires and what new chipset provides all the features that the CPU provides."

Sure - as soon as we know, we'll let you know. You're commenting on an old story BTW.

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The Platform?

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: The Platform?

The Platform is our new sister site, launched by former Reg writer Timothy Prickett Morgan and co-editor Nicole Hemsoth, both expert journalists in the field of HPC.

The site focuses on supercomputing and other really big iron. Don't take my word for it – it's all explained here :-)

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El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Jake

We stopped talking about the redesign a while ago, Jake.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Joseph

Those websites are completely wrong. The uniques are way off, it's not even funny. How can they record our traffic better that our internal analytics when we're the ones with the log files?

siteanalytics.compete.com is off by at least 3 orders of magnitude. It also thinks the Daily Mail website, the most-read news site on the planet with 150m uniques a month, got only 20m uniques in January. That would make us about as popular as the most-read news site on the planet. I'd be bathing everyday in champagne if that was the case.

And the Google thing is about searches. People don't get to us by searching for "theregister." They get to us through aggregators, RSS feeds, a bit of social media, or searching for stuff and us coming up top in Google. Eg, right now, Google search for "OpenSSL". Link 1 is openssl.org, link 2 is Wikipedia, link 3 is the news story we published 7 hours ago about the FREAK attack.

This is seriously pathetic trolling. You don't like the design? Let it go, let it go. Can't hold it back any more. Let it go, let it go. Turn away and slam the door.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Joseph Eoff

Friend, don't be so tedious.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: jake

"A year-to-year basis isn't exactly germane in this conversation, now is it?"

Actually it is. It's a phenomenal increase.

"Old techie adage: If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Screw that noise. That's how you end up sleeping in a dumpster wondering why you can't afford a bag of rice. 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it' applies to airport runways, motorway bridges, and third-hand COBOL code you've convinced an IT boss you can maintain when everyone knows you barely know how to install a Win32 scanner driver.

If a redesign means there's more money to be made, bank it. Our traffic is up: people love our redesign, and so they should.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: Joseph Eoff

"Why not run a poll and see what the users of the website tell you?"

Or we could look at something far more accurate, non-self-selecting, and valuable: our actual traffic stats, which are showing increases in individual unique visitors across the planet, on a year-on-year basis.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: @diodesign (was:Re: Joseph Eoff)

"Why is ElReg in denial?"

There are 1,100 posts, but nowhere near 1,100 individual people posting. I reckon a couple of hundred people tops, maybe 300? 400? 500? Frankly, that's not even a rounding error compared to our monthly pageview/uniques tally.

Or let me put it another way, 99.999...% of individual unique readers in January read our stories without commenting on the design tweak.

Not everyone will love the new design, and that's a shame, but you can't please everyone all the time. We're still motoring on nicely in terms of traffic, shifting ads, paying the bills, causing mischief, having fun.

"persistent navigation-bar"

It's pretty cool, isn't it? The rollover expansion is balanced so it doesn't get in the way unless you pause your pointer. Other sites expand immediately, which sucks. We're way better than that.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Actually, no

"The blasted pictures are still too large"

They look pretty neat, TBH.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Joseph Eoff

"the format changes that make the site itself ugly and unusable."

It's looking pretty good, to be honest. Thanks for reading.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Joseph Eoff

"Just fix the "layout for the illiterate" and tone down the ads."

It's not going to happen.

"What in the name of Sam Hill gives you the idea that this site isn't for me?"

You just seem really unhappy. I mean, we work really hard to fill the site with quality techie but fun and entertaining copy, pick nice pics to go with it, all for free (we just ask you view some ads) and yet you're unhappy.

It's sorta like wandering into a Chinese restaurant and expecting pasta, no?

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Joseph Eoff

Mate, I don't think this website is for you.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Were you so disappointed that the shitstorm had died down...

It was one of the most read stories of the week, enjoyed by thousands upon thousands of people, and not one comment about the amusing GIF (that I can see).

There is absolutely no way we can keep everyone happy.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Jake

"Traffic" as in page views and unique visitors. It's a general term. Bandwidth is not used in readership analytics.

Unique visitor count is the number of people we can identify as, well, unique, using IPs and cookies. If 5 people visit the site 10 times in a month, that's 50 visits or 5 unique visitors. (Yeah, we know, by the nature of the web, it's not going to be super-super-super-precise, but when you get into seven-figures, the noise barely moves the needle; it's good enough.)

"Growth in vocal user-base has not been exactly staggering"

Have you seen the Daily Mail article comments? We'd much rather have quality over quantity.

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diodesign Silver badge

"Out of interest, what site has everyone gone to?"

FYI, looking at the latest stats, Register traffic was up globally in January 2015. US unique visitor count was up 18% compared to the year-ago month; other regions (UK, Canada, Australia) experienced same order of rises.

(No Reg badge for boring reasons - posting via public site from home rather than logging into the backend)

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Just want a simple, low-power GPU for your smart-gumble? Try using your Imagination

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Power consumption please...

We'll never know until it gets into an SoC. It's just a design – it's 12 to 18 months from production.

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So You've Been Publicly Shamed, Style and The Buried Giant

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: :(

Oops - added a spoiler warning.

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Reckon YOU can write better headlines than us? Great – apply within

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: MS Word

"But can El Reg afford MS Word"

VIM or GTFO.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: Well...

"if facts get in the way of an opportunity for a good bit of snark, drop them"

Incorrect. Facts first, snark second. Your made-up assertion means you'll never be considered for a journalism job.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: Pet Peeve

"On the other hand, you limit both yo–"

10: If you don't like it, don't apply. The Register is a face-to-face organization. We communicate electronically across continents. if it's important, we fly to meetings.

"It seems a bit odd that a journal that covers the cutting and often bleeding edge of technol–"

Proper engineering and boffinry is something to celebrate. But, generally, technology sucks. That silicon chip you designed or bridge you built? Brilliant. That web chat toy? Your fancy web app? It's bollocks. You know it's bollocks. I know it's bollocks. Everyone knows it's bollocks. You're swallowing the hype.

Goto 10.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: anonymous

We're old skool.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Do you review...

I care about ability; that's it. What happens in the comments, stays in the comments.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: Pet Peeve

"actually from this website your LOADING DOCK is on Maiden Lane, you're actually on Geary"

Other way around: main office entrance on Maiden Lane, packages to Geary. I'm just heading out toward Irish Bank.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Pet Peeve

You must be able to come into the office, yes. In some circumstances, we work from home, but most of the time we're in the office if we're not at conferences, etc.

Why? Because it is vastly more convenient and productive to discuss ideas and bounce around headlines, puns, contacts, background info, and so on, if the team is all physically present. Although we have a staff IM system, actual face time is much, much preferred at The Register.

Our office is quite all right. We don't have a whisky bar or a pool table, but we're in a nice part of The City: Maiden Lane.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: Proof Reading (in Berkshire)

"if you can beat my current job title of Managing Director "

Ah, touché.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Proof Reading (in Berkshire)

I don't think you've got the job.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: green card?

Or an I-class non-immigration visa.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Pay?

Pay is competitive, holiday is UK standard (5 weeks + federal hols, way more than most US biz offers) and healthcare is included.

As for SF rent. Don't believe the hype. $10,000 a month? Come on. It's only, what, $6, $8,000 these days?

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Well...

It's all part of the test.

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Facebook sad-nav: How to put depressed chums on internet suicide watch

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: "Definitely not a killer feature"

That's what I thought, but what do I know? I'm just an idiot with a modem.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: "Definitely not a killer feature"

The following headline was rejected:

Don't leave your friends hanging: Suicide alarm bell added to Facebook.

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Oh No, Lenovo! Lizard Squad on the attack, flashes swiped emails

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Moderation

Your last rejected comment was in December (and was about something else completely – namely, asking for a troll icon next to a certain journalist's articles).

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MELTDOWN: Samsung, Sony not-so-smart TVs go titsup for TWO days

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: John Tserkezis

"Are you kidding? It might cover most of here, but we're just scraping the barrel compared to the average Joes out there who don't know IP from cheese."

We're a site for professional techies. We're not Samsung's tech support ;-) If you can follow the instructions, great. If not, hammer Sammy – they should be fixing this.

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Wanna free web domain for a year? Hey, it's not rocket .science

diodesign Silver badge
Flame

Re: Bother!

Yoink! We were born for this gTLD combo.

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The finest weird people in the world live here, and we're proud of it

diodesign Silver badge
Thumb Up

Richard Aplin

What makes this interview even better is that Richard worked on a load of games in the 1980s and then co-developed the Game Genie at Codemasters.

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Samsung buys LoopPay ... to be better at bonking than Apple

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: kisnet

Nope, bonking. When you wave your NFC phone over a till or some other payment system, and you bump the device against it. Bonking. What were you thinking of?

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Nutanix to release 'community version' of its secret software sauce

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: "Secret software sauce"

It's assumed if you know what Nutanix is, you'll be interested in this story. If not, you're probably not working in the converged storage-compute world.

But I'm always up for spreading and sharing information, so I've added in a par and a link to a very long and detailed story about Nutanix.

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Your hard drives were riddled with NSA spyware for years

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: As far as the hacking a hard drive's firmware goes...

"A hard drive is a dumb storage device that has no way to transfer data to a host with out the host requesting it. Hacking a drive's firmware with some kind of virus would allow you to do nothing."

You are so wrong it's not even funny. If the OS requests data from the disk (such as files for the boot process) and you, the malicious firmware, modifies that data, you can make the OS execute code it shouldn't.

So if Windows requests important_startup_file.dll, you change the content to include code that loads other malicious programs from the disk. Take a look again at the diagrams in the article.

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Jaguar F-Type: A beautiful British thoroughbred

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: BillDarblay

Post less.

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Reg hacks (and rest of 'Frisco) in LinkedIn measles contagion scare

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: If I get sick...

"AND DON'T CALL IT "FRISCO" !!!!"

Hahaha. We call it San Francisco. But that wouldn't have fit in the headline story. At least we didn't use San Fran, amirite?

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Richard Ball

"LinkedIn constantly, desperately trying to trick us into giving them our email account details"

Isn't that, like, every social network on the planet?

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