Posts by diodesign

Waymo robo-car slays dog in San Francisco

All news can be boiled down

You can boil down most news to pithy one-liners. Home burgled. Man shot. Research published. Software updated.

You could look at it that way. Or you could look at it like this: we've provided you all the context you need to make a personal judgement.

We think it's news because it's a new technology, it's supposed to be a trusted technology, it caused a death, and so here are all the details we have so you can weigh up whether it was an unfortunate accident or something else.

We always encourage readers to think for themselves. I suspect what you really mean by "this isn't news" is that you were hoping the dog was killed in darker circumstances.

It reminds me of George Carlin's bit about the news:

"I watch television news for one thing and one thing only: entertainment. That's all I want from the news; entertainment. You know my favorite thing on television? Bad news. Bad news and disasters and accidents and catastrophes. I want to see some explosions and fires, I want to see shit blowing up and bodies flying around!

"I'm not interested in the budget. I don't care about tax negotiations. I don't want to know what country the fucking pope is in. But you show me a hospital that's on fire and people on crutches are jumping off the roof and I'm a happy guy! I'm a happy guy!"

As a journalist of 20+ years, it's something I think about a lot, every day.

C.

Malwarebytes may not be allowed to label rival's app as 'potentially unwanted'

History

It's a bit messy but it goes back to 2016 when Enigma sued a blog for posting a negative review of Enigma's Spyhunter. Enigma then, in a lawsuit against Malwarebytes, claimed the blog was affiliated with Malwarebytes, and the classification of its Spyhunter as a PUP was in part a retaliatory move.

MB said at the time Spyhunter simply met its criteria of a PUP. Enigma says its tools aren't PUPs.

C.

Millions of Gigabyte PC motherboards backdoored? What's the actual score?

Re: You missed a question.

More than happy to add this Infrequently Asked Question to our list of Frequently Anticipated Questions.

C.

CERN spots Higgs boson decay breaking the rules

Re: breaking the rules

Yeah, there's a better way to put that -- we made it clearer in the piece.

C.

Intel mulls cutting ties to 16 and 32-bit support

Re: ARM Comparison?

Arm is phasing out 32-bit support gradually from its higher-end CPU cores, eg the Cortex-X2 for personal computing. 32-bit will most likely live on in the lower end, but at the high end, today's Arm engineers can't wait to ditch it and simplify the architecture.

C.

Microsoft finally gets around to supporting rar, gz and tar files in Windows

7-zip

OK, OK – crumbs, we didn't intend to lump 7-zip in with the paid-for others, though we can see how people read it that way. We've made the wording clearer and linked to the project.

Don't forget to email [e-mail] if you spot something odd. Us humans will get onto it and fix it.

C.

Supernova peekaboo could provide clues to our universe's age

More or less right

Light has relativistic mass, which we've made clear in the article with a link to the physics explaining why.

C.

Dyson moans about state of UK science and tech, forgets to suck up his own mess

Oh no

If you can't see the connection between Dyson complaining about the neglect of sci-tech biz and the UK not being part of Horizon, then this whole article will not make sense to you, I guess. Similarly, if you can't see the link between funding science in the UK and that parlaying into more interest in STEM and teaching STEM, then again, this article isn't for you.

In our vulture's opinion - and it's an opinion article, it's our writer's view - the two are related. And so far you're doing a really terrible job at changing our minds.

BTW the stuff about corporation tax etc is just included because, well, he brought it up. Science is the main thrust of the piece.

C.

Some potential: How bad software updates could over-volt, brick remote servers

"if the evil ones can break into your datacenter"

Yeah but in this case, they don't need physical access. They still need high privileges, like root, so as we've said, it's for people who want to cause chaos, not just exfiltrate data.

C.

Millions of mobile phones come pre-infected with malware, say researchers

Ugh, is anything really new?

Yeah but Trend Micro's people say this is a growing problem, so in their eyes, it's getting worse or isn't going away. And reminding people of millions of infected devices seemed worth pointing out.

Assuming TM is on the money.

C.

The Hubble Space Telescope is sinking! Two startups want to save it for free

Other way around

They want to boost the telescope and clear from its new orbit any debris that might be there. Well, OK, what the press release says exactly is:

"Removal of surrounding and threatening space debris in Hubble’s new orbit using the Vigoride and Astroscale’s RPOD capabilities will be prioritized after the completion of the primary reboost mission."

You could read "will be prioritized" as "will now happen" or as "will do more of what already was happening". A basic reading of it leans toward a reboost then debris clean up of the new orbit, but you could read it as doing some clean up pre-boost and then much more cleanup after boost. We kept the sentence in our article open ended; I've made it more declarative.

Don't forget to email [e-mail] BTW if you think you've spotted something wrong. As much as folks want to discuss it here, I'd like to make articles clear and correct, and we check that inbox all the time.

C.

What you need to know from today's Google IO: PaLM 2, Pixel Fold, AI everywhere

RCS

Yeah, it didn't make it into our stories but I'm told this happened:

A Google exec said: "We hope every mobile operating system gets the message and adopts RCS," and the crowd cheered.

Everyone wants Apple to join, and Apple continues to say no. There'll be 1bn people using RCS by the end of the year, it's estimated.

C.

Zoho creates browser with 'Open Season Mode' for when you don't care about privacy

There is no order

The list of browsers wasn't explicitly ordered, FWIW. This website lists in order of Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox, and Opera, contrary to yours. So it's kinda open ended.

But generally Chrome leads, Safari's next, and then the rest. Kinda like AWS, then Azure, and then the rest fight over third place. I've tweaked the sentence as people seem to be taking it as an ordered list.

C.

"Hidden" posts due to "ancestor" being deleted by a moderator

SNR

We write hundreds of headlines a month, not all of them will be perfect. But when we realize where we can do better, we fix 'em up as soon as we can, learn for the future, and continue. If a correction note is warranted, we'll add it. Drop us a note to [e-mail] if you think we've fallen short somewhere.

As for removing posts, see my other comment above.

C.

Re: "Hidden" posts

Hi, can't remember exactly when things changed but yeah, if we remove a comment it also removes the child posts. Previously, you'd end up with a thread with gaps in it - removed posts - which would just confuse folks and look messy, so we tidied it up.

We rarely remove posts: mainly if they are legally dodgy, misinformation, or if they point out an error that we've fixed. Those sorts of posts just add noise and reduce signal. We thus sometimes trim out threads that distract the discussion from the meat of an article.

If you spot any problems with stories, drop us a note to [e-mail] and we'll fix it up as soon as we can. Much faster than reading through every comment, which takes us away from writing and editing.

C.

Vanishing article?

Re: Vanishing article?

It's a very boring reason. We accidentally published an article before it was ready to go live. We took it down and ran it later, here:

https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/17/qualcomm_adds_premium_experiences_to/

C.

Uncle Sam sounds like it may actually do something about rampant visa H-1B fraud

Lol-1 visa

I think you're thinking of the O-1 visa, which is for exceptionally talented people. H-1B is a tier below that, and it's not the only option for immigrant workers (E-2, L-1, EB-1C, etc etc)

But yes, IT agencies are flooding the system and it does not result in an equal, flat playing field IMHO. H-1B and EB-1C are incredibly problematic.

C.

Ashlee Vance spills the beans on the secret exciting life of space startups

Re: Blue Origin

Not much is happening, I'm told. The orbital launcher is stalled and it appears to be a space tourism biz for Bezos.

C.

Tesla ran over worker rights, again, US labor judge finds

Penalties

Correct, Tesla has been put on notice that it's breaking the law and has to remedy that.

C.

SoftBank taps Arm CEO Rene Haas for its board of directors

Not really a nobody

Rene's not really a nobody. Not only is he running Arm these days -- taking over from long-time boss Simon Segars when that Nvidia deal collapsed -- and has been there for a few years, but he was one of Jensen Huang's right-hand men at Nvidia for a while.

Dunno, we just thought it would be interesting to cover what's going on at the top of Arm and within Softbank while there's a lot of attention and interest in it pre-IPO.

C.

Singapore tells its people: Go forth and block those ads

Singapore

Yeah, it's something I think Reg readers ought to (if not already) take into account when reading about the city-state. We do have staff there so we're aware of the... unique nature of the administration.

C.

Microsoft pushes for more women in cybersecurity

'Her lawsuit failed'

It ended because she couldn't get class action status for it. We've added that in now.

C.

Proliferation of AI weapons among non-state actors 'could be impossible to stop'

'And also clickbait"

You know we're reporting what was said in a hearing? The headline reflects what was said - it summarizes what was said. That's like the opposite of clickbait.

I've added some quote marks to make clear to those at the back that we're reporting on what was said in Parliament. All regular Reg readers know we're not keen on this latest AI hype.

C.

ChatGPT creates mostly insecure code, but won't tell you unless you ask

HTML

Yes, mate. You're telling me you've never written an SQL database server in HTML?

Pfft, amateur.

C.

Boffins rewrite the book on how Earth's oceans developed

could you stop with the 'boffins'

No.

C.

Pentagon super-leak suspect cuffed: 21-year-old Air National Guardsman

makes a smidge of difference

Yeah, OK, did wonder if someone would point that out. We included it in the piece to show that right off the bat, the prosecution is treating this as a straight up leak, and this isn't (from their POV) going to be an argument over whistleblowing.

C.

Launching soon: ESA's Juice to probe Jupiter's moons for signs of possible life

Caveats

We thought that would be obvious - if we haven't detected any water then there isn't any to our mind - but we've made that clearer.

You could add 'that we've detected' to anything. There's no more coffee left in the pot that we've detected. There's no patch yet from Microsoft that we've detected. And so on.

C.

No problem

Yeah, fair point, we've thrown some credit in for ol' Copie.

C.

Closer etc

OK, we're clarified or taken those out since they were confusing some people.

C.

'So it's in the shape of a cube'

Well, yeah, it really does look like a washing machine, but it's not washing machine sized. It's much bigger.

When simply stowed, it's 4.09 x 2.86 x 4.35 m.

C.

Baidu sues Apple and anyone else in sight over ERNIE chatbot fakes

Yes

There's never normally more than one active at a time. We're always willing to let people have a go in the comments, though we draw the line at someone accusing us of taking bribes from Google to help keep his AI inventions down and other nonsense.

C.

Cisco Moscow trashed offices as it quit Putin's putrid pariah state

'lesbian online magazine'

Now that is a deep cut, as they say.

C.

You misunderstand

Who says we always have to be neutral? Look around - we report the facts straight, sure, but we also chip in our own views. That's kinda the point of El Reg. Headlines, sub-heads, comment and opinion pieces, analysis, columns, features, that's where we try to stand out from the rest of the IT media.

You don't have to agree with us. We've never set ourselves up as the Associated Press or Press Association of the IT world. We have opinions, which we hope are informed and help further the interests of our readers, and we'll share them.

If we think company or government X does something bad, we'll say it's bad. And though The Reg was around in 2002 - would have been about four years old - it may or may not have had an opinion on the Iraq war back then. Doesn't bother me, I was just a regular reader at the time.

A wider point can be made here. Sometimes some people think we here at El Reg are lychee martini liberals or Daily Mail demagogues. I don't think we're fixed on a particular political side. We're just against stupidity. If your side does something stupid, we'll call it stupid - it's not a left or right, west or east, rich or poor thing.

C.

Hey Siri, use this ultrasound attack to disarm a smart-home system

Doh

Yeah, ha ha, it's fixed now. Don't forget to email [e-mail] if you spot something wrong like this please so we can adjust it right away.

C.

Fist in mouth

Yeah, that's now fixed, too. Managed to sneak past the spellcheck. I suspect we were too focused on figuring out if this attack was legit or not.

C.

Can ChatGPT bash together some data-stealing code? With the right prompts, sure

Nah

"This undertaking is non-trivial and likely requires a substantial time investment"

Nah, there's no way that takes 5-10 people several days to do what's described. Maybe if they all stood around arguing it would take that long. The code would take an hour or three to write, depending on how newb you are, and maybe an afternoon of fiddling to obfuscate it. A day tops.

Think about what's happening here. You're basically making a program that finds two files, merges them, and uploads them to cloud storage. The only malicious part is that someone might use it on another's computer without permission.

And then you take this borderline malicious program and obfuscate it so that VT definitely doesn't flag it up.

C.

Uber driver info stolen yet again: This time from law firm

Legal stuff

From the letter to drivers, the firm said it got the data because it was representing Uber in some matters:

"In connection with this legal representation, we received data regarding certain drivers on the Uber platform, which included information about you."

We'll add that to the piece.

C.

FTC urged to freeze OpenAI's 'biased, deceptive' GPT-4

I wish

No, like pretty much everyone we write about, they'll still have PR humans who'll let us know almost immediately if they think we've overstepped the mark.

Not that we can complain much: we pick holes in what they do, PR teams quibble the words we use. Fair's fair. It's a wonderful post-publication dance.

C.

Vessels claiming to be Chinese warships are messing with passenger planes

Why the change?

Cos having mysterious 'removed by moderator' messages in place of deleted posts, and with child replies that make no sense without the context, is just a confusing mess all round.

When we remove parts of threads, it's not done lightly. If there's a decent discussion going then we'll leave it there. But if it's just noise on noise, that's going to be tidied out of sight.

C.

The first rule of Moderation Club is ...

Some idiot posted something stupid as the first comment on the story - and was downvoted into oblivion - so a moderator binned that part of the thread as it was irrelevant to the article and getting in the way of discussion.

We try not to get involved in moderation. We try to let discussions flow naturally. We want a high SNR.

If that idiot posted their mini rant after 50 or 100 comments on an article, it would have been buried and we would have probably left it alone. But when it's the first comment, it's just noise.

Since enough people are unhappy, we'll bring back that comment and thread. But as you can see, it's just nonsense. I don't think it fairly reflects the kinds of discussions we have around here.

I hope you can see why the comment was rejected, it's just dumb. This is the sort of chaff we trim out of threads to make the experience better for everyone.

C.

If scammers use your AI code to rip off victims, the FTC may want a word

Re: What does this regulation prohibit that isn't already prohibitted?

The FTC does this every so often, it reminds people that the New Shiny Thing is still subject to today's laws and regulations.

In fact, there's no new regulation or rules here, it's just a reminder from the watchdog. Or a clarification. Depends how you look at it.

C.

Student satellite demonstrates drag sail to de-orbit old hardware

225 grams

...is the mass of the drag sail. The whole thing is 6kg.

C.

Oops

It's actually 6kg - we've fixed that in the piece. The 225g was the drag sail, not the full sat. The other dimensions are fine. If you spot anything that looks weird, drop us a note please to [e-mail] and we'll get right on it.

PS: if you want more info on how it works, check out the project's site. It has lots of details.

C.

UNIX co-creator Ken Thompson is a… what user now?

Re: Shocking?

Bear in mind the shock is half tongue in cheek, half surprise it's Raspbian. Or so the great man said himself.

C.

We read OpenAI's risk study. GPT-4 is not toxic ... if you add enough bleach

"you lefties think you're sooo much better"

Why is right-left politics relevant here, please?

"Humans are a nasty, spiteful, vengeful bunch"

Ah, projection?

C.

UK watchdog still not ruled on Openreach wholesale fiber discounts

Spelling

Nah, fiber's good, mate. Unlike "thje".

C.

Enter Tinker: Asus pulls out RISC-V board it hopes trumps Raspberry PI

Scratch space, scratch that

"It is completely normal to have a few KB of ITIM and/or DTIM on both ARM and RISC-V chips"

Yeah, true, very true. I experienced as much when I was playing with some RV silicon and also Qemu that correct emulates it.

The SRAM showing up in virtual space is very annoying, and demonstrates the part isn't for general purpose computing.

C.

where some high speed SRAM is located

Reminds me of some MIPS CPU implementations that had on-die high-speed scratch RAM in place of a cache, fixed in physical memory. Looking at you, PlayStation 1.

C.

"What is the purpose of this?"

Probably to test out manufacturing and distribution of RV SOCs and boards as well as fulfill any niche demand.

C.

Cloud upstart offers free heat if you host its edge servers

Nothing new?

If someone tries an idea in the past and it didn't work out, and someone else comes through with a similar idea and tries it again, that's still potentially worth noting.

How about this, I'm planning on building a faster-than-light drive. We'll be able to get to nearby stars in minutes, that's the dream. There, now that idea is out there, never again can anyone write about FTL drives or slower-than-FTL flight. The idea is old.

Also, I'm planning on making 100PB hard drives. All the galaxy's information in your pocket. OK, now that's out there, no more stories about hard disks until we're over 100PB per drive. The idea is otherwise nothing new.

I know this is reductio ad absurdum, but c'mon. And we linked to similar heating tech in the piece.

C.