Posts by Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor

2023 World Solar Challenge entrant welcomes clouds – not the fluffy white ones

Re: Re: "fuel costs are exorbitant"?

Yes, I am/was. And diesel is considerably cheaper than petrol, which gets close to $3/L at remote roadhouses

VMware's Arm hypervisor still creeping forward, slowly

Re: Still moving like cold molasses

Maybe Broadcom will kick this along - surely Hock Tan sees the potential for VMware to make its CPUs and SoCs more relevant in more places

Dell's rugged Latitude 5430 laptop is quick and pretty – but also bulky and heavy

For starters, we mark any paid content as such on the site. Second, if we'd been paid for this, would we really have given it a tepid review? I'm also far from the world's most competent or confident photographer. But I did snap off a few as I tested. Here - https://regmedia.co.uk/2022/05/24/simon_sharwood_dell_latitude_5430_meets_lawn.jpg - is one, from the moment after the laptop hit the lawn. Of course I >>could<< have manipulated the EXIF metadata to make it look like I shot it weeks ago, when I really shot this in response to your comment .. but honestly I can't even begin to imagine how to counter that sort of thinking

Toshiba brings quantum-inspired computer out of the cloud and onto the desktop

Re: Quantum Computing vs Quantum Physics

Yeah nah. AFAIK the Ising stuff is a description of quantum phenomena, modelled in a classical computer. I think it flies. But I wrote it ;-)

Devuan adds third init option in sixth birthday release

Re: PulseAudio?

Fax me the pint and I'll dive right in ;-)

India flies Mach 6 scramjet for 20 whole seconds

Re: Blue water navy?

Yes! A blue water navy is held to be capable of force projection across at least one ocean or into an adjacent region. There's only about 15 nations with such navies.

Microsoft delivers CouchOps capability with Android TV upgrade to Remote Desktop app

Two-factor authentication! Editing story now ...

50,000 5G base stations built. 4.4 million to upgrade. 935 million customers to upsell

Re: Re: Is this an advert

FWIW my focus is now covering Asia and this kind of story is a way for me to introduce the region's big players to readers.

As I was writing it I knew that it was not going to be searing analysis. But I felt it worthwhile introducing readers to China Mobile with something like this, rather than starting to cover its news without background.

And I feel that describing the sheer scale of a company like this, and its growing offshore ambitions, is useful information to readers given the rapid economic and geopolitical shifts in the world today. Its not just Huawei that will make waves!

Singapore to open-source national Coronavirus encounter-tracing app and the Bluetooth research behind it

Grim world view, but probably true. Dammit.

Google reveals the wheels almost literally fell off one of its cloudy server racks

Re: What were they thinking?

I suspect they were thinking they want whole-rack modularity, so wheels make it easier to just swap whole racks in and out.

Kubernetes is 'still hard' so VMware has gone all-in on container-related tech with expanded Tanzu, vSphere 7

Re: Re: Hyper-V

And yet VMware has ~80% market share ...

Send printer ink, please. More again please, and fast. Now send it faster

Garbage out, garbage out?

HOT SWAP PAPER! genius

You're also allowed to swat smartphones out of peoples' hands if they wander along in a public space looking down and getting in everyone else's way. Or it should be allowed, dammit.

Owww. We do try. And after the recent run of "and then the cops arrived ..." pieces I tried to head off on a different tack. Also did I mention we're free? And reader-contributed?

Re: There are so many extarordinary stories

You're right. The On-Call mailbag has more than 300 un-used stories, but we try to bundle them up into seasonal or thematic specials to honour readers' efforts in sending them in.

Re: Back in the 80's

Bob,

congrats on your last day and thanks so much for wasting some of your employer's valuable time by making a comment on The Reg.

Simon.

Police block roads to stop tech support chap 'robbing a bank'

Re: Not a police story...

So a chap I know who worked at a southern fried joint said the recipe for their infamous gravy is: sweep up all the crust granules that fall off the chicken while it sits breeding salmonella under the heat lamp, add water, stir vigorously until it is gravy.

And then there was the time the morning's sweepings hit the floor ....

Not quote your level of mess, but not a good taste either!

Re: These guys are lucky

Ugh. Sad but likely

I'm sure we all remember Fax spam fondly

Headless man found in lava’s embrace

Re: I've got the Looney Tunes theme stuck in my head now

Better than Yakety Sax

Tech support made the news after bomb squad and police showed up to 'defuse' leaky UPS

Re: Batteries can definitely do strange things

Did the screen survive?

Re: A little off topic, but...

Or imagine how you'd go if you dressed up as Osama Bin Laden and got into the secure area at the APEC Summit attended by the presidents of everywhere. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-H6pU4UbRYE

Cos it happened.

Trump’s new ZTE tweets trump old ZTE tweets

Yes, the shrewdest. So shrewd he went bankrupt.

Virtue singing – Spotify to pull hateful songs and artists

Re: Confused

the policy covers both

Warren Buffett says cryptocurrency attracts charlatans, AI won’t change investing

Re: ROFLMAO

Appreciative laughter.

Oracle pledges annual Solaris updates for you to install each summer

Re: Re: Solaris

But a lucrative pimple: if you are still in the SPARC ecosystem the number of suppliers will keep shrinking and Oracle can keep raising prices ... I've heard of old platforms where the handful of remaining vendors and/or service providers can charge whatever they want just to answer the phone.

Windows 10 to force you to use Edge, even if it isn't default browser

Re: Analysis of the email market in 2007?

Ooops, yes, typo. Fixing.

Drones replace models on Dolce & Gabbana catwalk

Re: I wonder if ...

See comment from "MyffyW" below. One reader knew about D&G. And FWIW there's an ice cream bar down here called "Dolce and Gelato", deliberate pun. Not all poison insects and mines down here.

ServiceNow unleashes its 'Kingston' release

Re: Dear Reg

We don't use it.

We don't get it for free.

It's not a shameless plug.

I believe SN is a significant vendor and we like to make sure we cover significant vendors' new releases as they show how the company and its products are evolving.

Xen Project's plan after AWS goes KVM: Talk up embedded future

Re: Re: This story seems to contradict other recently published stories on this topic

We reported exactly what AWS published and none of that mentioned multi-hypervisor strategies. When we saw AWS' posts we immediately asked AWS for comment. As it happens, AWS immediately reached out to ask us for a correction of an unrelated error in the piece (I mixed up cores and threads). So there goes the "AWS is too busy and you don't matter to it" argument.

They know where to find us and are not shy about doing so.

But AWS never asked for any change to either piece regarding the hypervisor content. I was not aware of the TechTarget piece until today and will refer to it now.

We don't aim to be relevant to vendors. We aim to be relevant to readers. And I'm pretty sure they appreciated reading about a significant piece of news here, first, TWO WEEKS before TechTarget touched it.

Re: This story seems to contradict other recently published stories on this topic

Nice of them to tell that to Techtarget - as our story states, when we read of the new KVM hypervizor, we immediately asked AWS for an interview about their strategy. And they never replied. Further, their statements to TechTarget contradict the words in their own FAQ, which said all new instance types would use KVM. See our second story for the screen grabs to that effect

Birds are pecking apart Australia's national broadband network

Re: A culling program

There's about a bajillion cockatoos in Australia. Good luck culling enough to make a difference.

Samsung's Galaxy Note 8 is hot, but not much more than the S8+

Re: Re: Has that intern started yet?

Yes it should. I missed the H. My bad. The production desk will give me a grilling now :-(

Re: Re: Has that intern started yet?

"Hand-write". My bad. And the intern will work in London, not down here in Oz.

Forget trigonometry, 'cos Babylonians did it better 3,700 years ago – by counting in base 60!

Re: Strangely enough ...

FWIW Wikipedia isn't public domain - we can't just lift their stuff.

Automotive Grade Linux shops for hypervisor to accelerate smart cars

Re: A hypervisor to do what?

Well you have a point about VM speed, but the acceleration I alluded to is in the development of smart cars through allowing them to have one CPU rather than lots.

nbn™ hits the half-way mark – but has more than half of the job left

Given that the whole point of the NBN was faster, more resilient connections, and every ISP is hitting its customers ASAP once the NBN rolls into town, I think the slow uptake is notable.

FWIW I worry that even a 25Mbps NBN connection would send me backwards from the 16Mbps I've been lucky to have over a 900m cable run for the last 11 years.

Earth resists NASA's attempts to make red and green clouds

Re: Strontium ... dogged

Ha! I was hoping someone would spot that. Made my day, this has.

Horse named 'Cloud Computing' finds burst of speed to beat 'Classic Empire' in actual race

Extra sugar lumps and a nice brush down for you!

Re: Take offense at "nag"

The alternative was "galloping pet food".

You just sent an on-prem app to the cloud and your data centre has empty racks. What now?

Re: RC track

Photos please ssharwood at sitpub.com

Photos or it didn't happen. ssharwood at sitpub dotcom

Microsoft promises twice-yearly Windows 10, O365 updates – with just 18 months' support

Re: Dear gods...

My thoughts exactly.

Boeing 737 turns 50

Longer

Reg now behind invisible HTML5 Bitcoin paywall

Re: Disappointed in El Reg

Well I'd love to tell you that we plan April 1 gags months in advance and even spend on patent applications to make them more real. But we're just not that organised. And do you know what it costs to file a patent?

VMware to end support for third-party virtual switches

Re: Re: Er... sniff test fail

Thanks B I. Lovely to have you as a reader

Re: Er... sniff test fail

Really? For starters, I won't have my byline on native marketing. And it is Just Not Something We Do At The Reg. Indeed, we mark such stuff as PROMO every time. And we do precious little of that.

Secondly, I think you're glass-half-emptying this. I look at it this story as as finding a customer-only communique, pointing out it will mean a forced migration, identifying a market shift and offered some analysis on how this could be a deeper play.

Be our Guetzli, says Google, to make beastly JPEGs beautifully small

Re: Re: A better solution...

FWIW, when all we have is vaguely-related stock, we have the option to use a tag so it doesn't appear. I do so for most stories. The idea is that if the image doesn't help to tell the story, we don't use it. We also have a size limit on header images to help page load times.

Hardware 'dislodged' from HPE SAN during cable replacement

Thanks - always nice to know people read deep and see the little fun bits we try to leave inside. Also tried to make that the headline but just couldn't get there.