diodesign's comments

You're probably thinking of TheInquirer.net, which was founded by a co-founder of The Register, and shut down in the past few years.

C.

Hello, I'm Chris Williams, the editor of The Register. Maybe I can answer some of these Qs.

> what caused this transformation?

All things have to evolve and move with the times. As you've said, we were known, for example, for "intentionally-obscure headlines." Guess what, that works for some people - and it was fun - but it was holding us back reaching many more people, not just from the headline tone but also aggregation and sharing. And I want our original, technical, and best coverage seen by as many folks as possible.

The Reg has been going for 20+ years. We have to keep up with what people want. And yes, some people liked the 2010s era, some missed the 2000s era, but also many more thought we weren't taking journalism seriously. We do take it seriously (we don't take ourselves too seriously) and I'd hate for headlines to hold that back.

What's really changed is that we've styled the main headlines to be more accessible in every way, and still keep our sardonic, informed voice in stories and sub-headlines. We have a mix of core IT stories; software and open source; where life meets tech; science; and more, written in a way that gives our tech readers a voice.

If you haven't read us in a while, then yes, we've changed visibly. If you've been reading us for more than a year or two, the change will have been fairly gradual as we tune our headlines to match what people expect from an irreverent technical title.

> Has it been acquired by a conglomerate?

No, it's still independently owned, with owners who give editorial free rein. It's documented in UK Companies House.

> its original Chief Editor left in May 2019

No, you're thinking of an executive editor who left around then, who wasn't in a management position (think editor-at-large).

C.

Is this actually happening? Because it makes little sense when you consider that YouTube-parent Google is sponsoring security education videos. See this GCP-sponsored LiveOverflow video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-P9USG6kLs

Maybe Google's killing off dodgy script kiddie vids, and leaving quality content up (and I mean the rest of LiverOverflow's videos et al, not just the paid-for stuff.)

Credible journalists contact governments, businesses, individuals, and any other subjects of articles, ahead of publication to ask for official comment, interviews, on-the-record explanations and confirmations, and so on.

It's basic due diligence to speak to both sides of a story. However, it can tip off organizations and folks that they are about to be a headline...

Hi, I work at El Reg. Just wanted to say we're not owned by the Daily Mail. I used to work for the Daily Mail Group, funnily enough, leaving in 2011 to join The Reg. But, anyway, no: El Reg isn't owned by the Daily Mail. It's the same four co-owners and the same independent publication.

(If you haven't read us for a while, then please why not try us again. We're still snarky but I like to think our sarcasm and skepticism is precisely deployed as and when it's needed rather than as a scattergun. And above all, puns, jokes, and irreverence aside, we strive to be technical and correct.)

C.

Compressed, it is ~8TB. Fully expanded it is ~32TB. I think the bigger issue is not the final size, but that internal Microsoft material - particularly source code - has escaped into public FTP. That, to me, is the main thing, right?

C.

Hiya - I wrote the article. What's happened is that the Beta Archive folks have now deleted (or in the process of deleting) the private material that was uploaded to the BA FTP. There most definitely was non-officially-released internal Microsoft files in the archive, regardless of BA's intentions, such as the Shared Source Kit, the ARM64 Windows Server build, the Mobile Adaption Kit, and various prerelease versions of Windows.

We've updated the story to explain why things aren't what they seem. Essentially, the files at the heart of the matter were there (we screenshotted them and saved copies of the forum posts) at time of writing, and they were removed later on Friday.

In terms of the 32TB: that's the full decompressed dump of Windows files uploaded to BA. From what I understand, Microsoft hasn't released 32TB of public Insider material, so obviously there's extra sauce in the mix.

That includes, yes, copies of officially released Insider builds plus confidential private stuff that should never have left Microsoft, let alone turned up in BA. We make this clear in the story - I'm starting to feel the headline could have been better to make this clearer rather than grabbing the biggest figure. I am beginning to regret this.

BA can twist and complain all it likes - but stuff that was confidential within Microsoft ended up in their FTP archive (and some is still in there, such as the ARM64 stuff). The next stage of this story will be to uncover how exactly did this material escape Redmond.

C.

Got it - hear you loud and clear. The article wasn't worded correctly. We've corrected the explanation and linked to the APIs directly (which we should have done from the start).

Yeah, we're a tabloid and, yes, we're rude. But at The Reg, we do take accuracy extremely seriously. We want to be right. If you spot anything wrong, [email protected] goes straight to our editors: it's a great way to get things fixed fast. Thanks.

"But why do they reveal it?"

Lewis Page, the editor, noted in the comments section:

"The [UK] government have made it plain that in their view not only foreign powers (ie probably Russia and others) have full access to the Snowden leaks, but quite possibly 'non state actors' also. In other words the only people who don't know this are the general public.

"And given the colossal automated penetration that NSA/GCHQ are achieving worldwide without anybody being much the wiser, it seemed to us that the public should know - as there's no further intelligence hit for UK.gov to take, by its own analysis."