* Posts by diodesign

3493 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Sep 2011

IBM drops patent bomb on Priceline.com

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: IBM a patent troll?

I've added a link to the court document + the patents involved. Enjoy.

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Boy, 16, cuffed after posting selfie with body of kid he allegedly killed

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: parents...

"a little convoluted"

Deliberately so – this is all we know at this point, and didn't want to make stuff up or guess what happened.

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ACHTUNG! Scary Linux system backdoor turns boxes into DDoS droids

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Brute force of SSL not SSH

Yup - just revised the copy. SSL didn't look right.

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Boffin the boffin and his boffinry pals in double dwarf super-prang alert

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Boffin schmoffin

Boffin is a standard term of endearment, reserved for the highest of scientists. Otherwise, you're just an egghead or brainiac.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: how did they resist

Apart from the headline, of course.

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Anthem, America's second biggest health insurer, HACKED: Millions hit by breach

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: cornz 1

"a very sophisticated external cyber attack"

It's usually code for: "Please don't sue, there's nothing we could have done about it - it was really sophisticated. Nation state. Beyond reasonable means to prevent. All the words that make a class-action difficult."

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Watt the CHIP!? ARM pops out THE most powerful 64-bit Cortex for mobes'n'slabs

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: Change of venue

"the most influential press (sorry elReg) for this thing are in Silicon Valley"

Hey! :-) We're IN Silicon Valley. I'm sitting in the Reg's San Francisco office. That's why I was able to be at the press conference on Tuesday next to Bloomberg et al.

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I have spotted

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: I have spotted

Hey, hey, keep it to yourself - you wanna get someone fired?

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BY JUPITER: The science behind Friday's Solar System light show

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Flash

Yes - I know. I'll add an editorial note in a sec.

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Atlassian HipChat service popped

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: "Popped"?

Means successfully exploited, typically to gain control.

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Turbocharged quad-core Raspberry Pi 2 unleashed, global geekgasm likely

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Zola

"you posted at 1 minute past midnight"

Yes, that was the embargo our writer agreed to.

"an article riddled with errors"

No, you're wrong. The price, availability, core count, core speed, benchmark speed increase, size, compatibility with the Model 1, and more, were all correct.

It was ambiguous whether this was an ARMv6 or ARMv7 SoC. Not any more - we've made it crystal clear it's 4 x ARMv7 Cortex-A7s.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Couldn't you have waited until the official announcement?

We haven't broken any embargo we agreed to or were told about.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Cortex-A

Edit: it's four (ARMv7) Cortex-A7s - see the /proc/cpuinfo.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Am I missing something...

It's only just passed midnight UTC, so perhaps check again later today.

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El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: @ diodesign (was:where did everyone go?)

"So is this the official announcement that there will be no more changes to the layout"

No – I don't have the final say on the design; there may be more tweaks coming but certainly nothing like turning the site into lwn.net.

Just trying to be helpful suggesting things that readers, who I do appreciate, may be interested to try. Not exactly perfect solutions, but I figured it would be better than silence.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: @ diodesign (was:Re: where did everyone go?)

"You are arguing against actual computer users who understand interface design"

I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. I'm saying: here's another layout to try. You may like it. You may not.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: where did everyone go?

Hm. Odd. It's right down there, bottom right, in the grey box. Under the Twitter and Facebook button links. Or you can try m.theregister.co.uk, but you may be redirected to the desktop version if you're logged in as a desktop user. I tried just now in a Chrome Incognito window and it worked for me.

As for this being sad, I say no, sir. We've got a new design. It's not everyone's cup of tea. There's an alternative layout (and the hidden print page) if you want to give it a go.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: where did everyone go?

Psst... scroll right down to the bottom and, on the right, hit the "mobile version" button. You'll get the mobile-friendly design that doesn't have all the extra layout and multiple pages – just a plain drop of links for the front page and one-page articles.

If you get sick of it, scroll down to the bottom, click on the desktop version link to switch back.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Print Page button

Pssst.... stick a Print/ between the .co.uk/ and the year in the URL, eg: this one-page print-happy review versus the normal look.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: You, there...

Killed it. Will have a chat with the chap who thought it was a good idea.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: @ChrisElvidge (was: Re: Who brought back the "expand comments" idea)

Demanding people be sacked is ludicrous. Just stop and think for a second.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: @diodesign (was:Re: jake)

"The hero pic works well HOW, exactly?"

A picture tells 1,000 words, etc.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: jake

> Now fix the "Hero" pic

First off, I'm not a site designer, nor am I directly in control of the site design. I just work here.

But I will say this: the hero pic works well, IMHO, with stories that have good pics, eg: Cameron and Barack, Raif Badawi, Musk's railgun pods, etc. That's just from today. Yes, we'll slowly and gradually eliminate the stock photos. But, as US editor, I feel we should promote strong illustrations/photos to support our stories, IMVHO.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: IBM Article

Oops - that was a bug of sorts. The internal tag to disable the "hero" pic in that particular article had a typo in it so it didn't work. We meant to switch off the top photo, but that accidentally didn't happen.

Now fixed, ta.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: el Reg has lost control of the story

"I'll down vote everything diodesign says short of an abject apology"

I'm sorry.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: My feedback on your latest missive

"GROW UP AND TAKE IT LIKE A MAN - IT'S ONLY A BUNCH OF COMMENTS, NOT LIKE WE'VE PHYSICALLY ASSAULTED YOU"

I only sighed to the effect of "why bother" because some people wanted a total revert, no other options. Which doesn't leave much room for dialog. Trust me, I've had far worse from the internet than the feedback here :)

Merry Christmas,

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: Is the story photo selection automated?

Yes, all right, David Bailey ;-)

We've got images up to and beyond 650px, some 2000px, some 185px, some 200, some 450, and so on. It's not all sub-650px. This comes from optimizing images for a site serving 20+ million page views a month. We're gearing up for bigger and better image use, just give it time.

Edit: I swear every downvote makes me not want to spend my time here.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: Is the story photo selection automated?

"In that case they need better training to pick ones that are an appropriate size and quality"

Problem is that the site used to be 535px wide and most of the teaser art was about 200px wide. So a lot of our internal pic library is <650px. Then the width was increased to 650px in the redesign. It'll take time to flush the smaller stuff away and populate the library with hi-res images.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Is the story photo selection automated?

No, the images are uploaded and selected by busy humans.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: "Social Stuff"

"Seriously, do you expect us to share articles on the state of the IT business on facebook"

Sharing links about new all-NAND storage arrays to your grandparents is obviously a really dull idea. But a mid-range smartphone review, a laptop comparison, a story about scams targeting small biz, a piece about malware holding people's files to ransom, abuses by the government and cops, etc may fit within your social circle. Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn, Facebook, whatever you want, or none at all. No pressure.

But millions are sharing news via social.

"The front page pictures are starting to be related to the stories."

Fantastic. We're getting there. Not every story can carry a giant 650px pic, but some can, so a compromise must be found.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Jamie Jones

"It shows the 'brand loyalty' and passion this site has built up in people"

BTW I appreciate and get that, and it's kinda a relief to see.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Jamie Jones

"HUGE PICTURE: Also often not even specific to the article, but some general stock photo."

I'll admit I was among those who suggested we make a better play of pictures. Perhaps they shouldn't appear on every article until we've either got a dedicated picture desk or they should be made smaller, or both. I don't make these decisions.

It's sad because it wasn't our intention to use pics that, as one soul said above, have "fuck all" to do with the stories.

"Time-format..... Is this being done to make it easier for people in different time-zones?"

I guess so. More than half our readers are in the US, and we have a healthy number in APAC.

So I think the main thing is that the in-your-face design we hoped would guide readers to the obvious big news – NATS cockups, Sony being hacked/sued, etc – and allow people to scroll down to peruse other stuff isn't working. There were worries that the previous design was looking like Ceefax.

Sometimes a big story or a really decent analysis can get lost in all the other coverage. Social stuff needed to be more accessible rather than tucked to the side.

What I'm trying to say is that there is method in the madness. It's the UK office's Xmas party tomorrow (Wednesday) and people are off and about for Christmas, so please don't get too frustrated if changes aren't made immediately.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: Come on, Reg, wake up.

"it makes you sound condescending"

I feel anything I say now is going to irritate people, so I give up.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: You guys are reminding me of children...

OK, it would be nice if everyone calmed down. The feedback from people posting here is clear. As I've said before, you're treating the redesign as tantamount to physical assault, which isn't right.

All I can say is: we're working on it. If we rush out a change, everyone posting here will go apeshit again.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Come on, Reg, wake up.

Come on, Ketlan poster, keep up.

Anyway, my previous posts attempting to engage with readers have been downvoted so I guess everyone here doesn't want to hear what Reg staff have to say.

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IBM jobs axe: 'The cuts have STARTED and are spreading' sigh staff

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: "that Forbes made up?"

"Did he specifically say 26% of employees globally?"

He said:

"To fix its business problems and speed up its 'transformation,' next week about 26 percent of IBM’s employees will be getting phone calls from their managers. A few hours later a package will appear on their doorsteps with all the paperwork."

and

"One in four IBMers reading this column will probably start looking for a new job next week. Those employees will all be gone by the end of February."

Other than saying the US workforce would be "hit hard," there's nothing country specific in the claims. He thought 110,000 people would be laid off in the space of five weeks.

Still, it got Forbes 420,000 page views. Kerching!

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: "that Forbes made up?"

"If he said 100,000 (which he didn't,"

Got to stop you there. He said 26% of employees would be getting severance packages. Given the biz has 431,212 employees, according to its filed paperwork, the rest is basic math.

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BOO! Grave remote-code exec flaw in GNU C Library TERRIFIES Linux

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: NX

Probably ROP - return-oriented programming. Overwrite part of the stack so EIP/RIP is popped with an attacker-controlled pointer to some code in the executable or library, like, say:

pop rsp

ret

This moves a previously attacker-modified value off the stack into RSP - congrats, you've pivoted to an attacker-controlled stack. Then return, popping another address for RIP from the evil stack. That points to another bit of code like, say,

pop rax

call [rax]

ret

...and so on. Chain bits of code ("gadgets") that end in ret. Use a tool to find ROP gadgets to build up your own program from the stack until you spawn a shell over TCP. All the gadgets you're chaining together are in the executable-enabled text or library sections. NX can't help you here.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Yay!

"that picture is NOT Ghostbusters, that is ScoobyDoo...."

"Scooby Doo", that's a Casper the Friendly Ghost episode, right?

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Scary code of the week: Valve Steam CLEANS Linux PCs (if you're not careful)

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Recommended reading

Yes, something like that for the Reg could be fun. There's not much point doing a straight-up carbon copy of thedailywtf but I'd like to do something similar. Answers on a postcard, etc.

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Elon Musk: Wanna see a multimillion-dollar rocket EXPLODE? WATCH THIS

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: It works at the circus

> I signed up with The Register just so I could upvote this

> post

It's true. Welcome aboard :)

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Are you running a Telnet server on Windows? Oh thank God. THANK GOD

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Please help a penguin

It's here.

Imagine you're not insane, and you're running a Telnet service on Windows so some equipment can communicate with software running on the server over port 23, or a user can connect and request information rather than run commands. You can change the command interpreter to something non-cmd.exe - anything you like.

Now along comes a bug that allows you to execute arbitrary code via the server, even though you configured it to be a controlled environment. I'm talking legacy stuff here.

Alternatively, according to Microsoft, "if you use NTLM authentication, then your user name and password are encrypted." But commands / data sent over are in plaintext and can be modified by an attacker.

It's not a world-ending bug; it's just wryly amusing that an RCE in Telnet has to be fixed in 2015.

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Got a 4King big TV? Ready to stream lots of awesome video? Yeah, about that…

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Terrible writing

Maybe it's not terrible writing, more that we haven't made it clear enough and you've misread it. I've tweaked the article to make everything crystal clear.

4K readiness is a short way of saying you've got enough bandwidth to stream 4K video comfortably: 15Mbps+

The number of people with 15Mbps+ bw worldwide decreased 2.8% *quarter to quarter* ie: comparing Oct-Dec with Jul-Sept.

The number of people with 15Mbps+ bw worldwide increased 32% *year to year* ie: comparing 2014 to 2013.

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C'mon, ElReg. Je suis Charlie![1]

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: C'mon, ElReg. Je suis Charlie!

Obviously, we're appalled and infuriated by the slaughter, the senseless clinical execution, of brave and witty French journalists who dared to publish an opinion, the police officers who protected them, and everyone else caught up in the killings. Some of us in London went to the Trafalgar Square vigil.

I'm in awe of those who stood up to extremists, time and time again, and paid their lives for it. Will repeating a hashtag, a ticket to join a bandwagon, right the wrong that has happened, in even an infinitesimal way? No.

Are we, The Register, silenced or cowed by these barbaric murderers? No. Simply, no. The alleged killers, according to the authorities, returned from the Syrian civil war, perhaps led by the group known as ISIS, which we're described as "medieval terror bastards", "murderous humanity-hating fanatics", or worse.

Have we published cartoons as striking as Charlie Hebdo? No. Will we be silenced by those who massacred them? No. Will we honor and thank those who paid the ultimate price resisting suppression of free thought? Yes.

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Lollipop licked: KitKat still king in Android land

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Anonymous fandroid coward

"Release of Android that has only just recently come out"

And should be on every capable Android device. Your PC you bought in 2011, does it only run Vista?

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El Reg tests portable breathalyzers: Getting drunk so you don't have to

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: So really

"all you achieved was to highlight that both the units are shit."

My good man, we all got plastered on company expenses, and highlighted both the units are shit. Living the dream.

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Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite and VPN's...

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Mac OS X issue

Hm. Anyone else affected?

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Online armour: Duncan Campbell's tech chief on anonymity 101

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: Android Apps

I've tweaked the headline to be more specific – it's about anonymity, after all, and an introduction to it. I, personally, would love to do a QubeOS et al review, but it's finding the time to do it properly. Maybe someone can set aside the time.

FWIW if your life really really depends on it, consider using physical separation a la PORTAL of Pi.

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ICANN: The TRUTH about that hacker attack on our DNS zone file database

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: El Reg Plz..

Take the article as a whole, rather than reading too much into a single sentence :-) Later we note: "any information provided publicly could be used by miscreants to shape an attack."

What we're saying is: more detail of procedures/policy would be welcome. It's tricky. Some will say you should be able to disclose everything about your security implementation to prove you're confident it's built right. Others will say there's no need to just hand over the blueprints to enemies.

It's tricky.

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Misfortune Cookie crumbles router security: '12 MILLION+' in hijack risk

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: djack

"If it is a real technical announcement, what does this mean"

The problem is, if you go full disclosure and dump all the details online, someone will weaponize it an hour and by the end of the week someone will have a 12-million-strong botnet. Check Point noted: "This public awareness may serve as a better incentive for the makers to release updated firmware faster."

You need to craft a HTTP request with a cookie that exploits a flaw – probably a buffer overflow – in the server. You can always reverse engineer the firmware yourself, like Check Point did, and I suspect people already are.

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