Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lenovo Statement on Superfish

news.lenovo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 312 posts

Re: Lenovo Statement on Superfish

#231

Post by joshuapants »

notsony wrote: post #118
chinathrow wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I have been buying IBM and then Lenovo Thinkpads for ages. I hate the thought that my next machine will be another brand. Lenovo: One customer lost. More to be lost.

Why stop buying Thinkpads? Lenovo have acknowledged the issue and are now trying to resolve it. Everybody makes mistakes but how they fix those problems tells you a lot about the culture of the company. Lenovo also made a terrible mistake in removing the physical click buttons, but is now reintroducing them across their entire laptop range for 2015. What I see is a company willing to listen and admit their mistakes.…

Bringing back the physical click buttons is a step in the right direction, but their recent drivers have ruined the middle mouse button for me. Can't use it both to scroll and middle click; you can either get scrolling or uninstall the driver and get middle click. There is a buggy piece of software called TPMiddle that lives on my X220 right now, but I'm jumping ship for my next laptop purchase.

Re: Lenovo Statement on Superfish

#232

Post by grecy »

notsony wrote: post #204
whoisthemachine wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also important to understand that in a case like this, upper management likely _wants_ the money from installing this on laptops (or their bosses do, or their boss's bosses do, and so on), so while they may act in good faith in translating the technical impacts of software like this to their management, they likely translate with a slight, unbeknownst to them bias.

It's pretty similar to what Comcast are doing by injecting ads into the web pages you visit. Perhaps the real problem is that tech companies hire too many product/marketing managers, resulting in them having to cook up ridiculous money-making schemes in order to justify their own existence.

> Perhaps the real problem is that tech companies hire too many product/marketing managers, resulting in them having to cook up ridiculous money-making schemes in order to justify their own existence.

You have hit the proverbial nail very squarely on the head.

Re: Lenovo Statement on Superfish

#233

Post by TeMPOraL »

sejje wrote: post #176
TeMPOraL wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's advertising, and then there's advertising. Maybe a hundred years ago ads were about product discovery, they are not about that anymore. For most of the needs we have there are already products so you can just discover the product categories via well... interaction with other people. A new class of product gets often gets its spread organically, or at least via product-discovery-ads. So for example, you didn't…

I don't totally disagree, but it's worth noting that when I read about iBeacons "on the internet," that was likely just a sophisticated ad, disguised as a review or blog article. It's definitely better than the ads that ghostery blocked, but ads aren't going away and they were still important to the discovery process.

I agree. Sufficiently honest ad is indistinguishable from unbiased information, but sufficiently dishonest ad is indistinguishable from scam.

Re: Lenovo Statement on Superfish

#234

Post by joshuapants »

notsony wrote: post #223
toolz wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are willing to compromise you on a software level, what makes you think they aren't prepared to do so on the hardware level (presuming they already aren't).

At some point you're going to have to trust the vendor and the supply chain... unless you're prepared to build your own computer by soldering home-made components onto a bread-board! ;-)

It makes more sense to trust someone who hasn't already been caught abusing your trust.

Re: Lenovo Statement on Superfish

#235

Post by gtirloni »

chinathrow wrote: post #65
eropple wrote: post #4

> We have thoroughly investigated this technology and do not find any evidence to substantiate security concerns. I try to be measured around here, as hard as I can. I can't formulate a polite way to respond to this claim. Lenovo, you are full of shit, and maliciously so. There is no excuse, nor forgiveness, for what you've done here.

Indeed. I have been buying IBM and then Lenovo Thinkpads for ages. I hate the thought that my next machine will be another brand. Lenovo: One customer lost. More to be lost.

Lenovo is a hardware vendor. I suspect most of the HN crowd reinstalls something on their machines. The non-HN crowd won't even know about all of this (see the public response to NSA spying on American citizens, almost zero).

Re: Lenovo Statement on Superfish

#236

Post by elchief »

notsony wrote: post #118
chinathrow wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I have been buying IBM and then Lenovo Thinkpads for ages. I hate the thought that my next machine will be another brand. Lenovo: One customer lost. More to be lost.

Why stop buying Thinkpads? Lenovo have acknowledged the issue and are now trying to resolve it. Everybody makes mistakes but how they fix those problems tells you a lot about the culture of the company. Lenovo also made a terrible mistake in removing the physical click buttons, but is now reintroducing them across their entire laptop range for 2015. What I see is a company willing to listen and admit their mistakes.…

Stop calling stealing and lying "mistakes" you astroturfer

Re: Lenovo Statement on Superfish

#237

Post by utxaa »

edraferi wrote: post #221
unprepare wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, a windows user would have to buy a second copy of windows from microsoft and use that to install on the machine. Using Lenovo's recovery images will reinstall the same bloat that it originally came with

It's actually much easier than that - no secondary purchase is required with Windows 8 https://www.thurrott.com/uncategorized/1146/clean-pc-walkthr...

thanks! i have an X1 carbon en route - will try this as soon as i open the box.

Re: Lenovo Statement on Superfish

#238

Post by bhauer »

The chief question I have is whether or not a Lenovo PC sold by the Microsoft Store as a Signature Edition (e.g., [1]) would contain this or anything similar. My suspicion is that it would not. If anyone is near a Microsoft Store, and can stop in to run the test, it would be interesting to see the results.

[1] http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Lenovo-Y...

Re: Lenovo Statement on Superfish

#240

Post by ocdtrekkie »

tempestn wrote: post #200
eropple wrote: post #4

> We have thoroughly investigated this technology and do not find any evidence to substantiate security concerns. I try to be measured around here, as hard as I can. I can't formulate a polite way to respond to this claim. Lenovo, you are full of shit, and maliciously so. There is no excuse, nor forgiveness, for what you've done here.

Speaking of Lenovo being full of shit, there's also this gem: > The relationship with Superfish is not financially significant; our goal was to enhance the experience for users. Right. You loaded adware onto users' computers, not for financial gain, but to enhance the experience for them.

This was the greatest part of the whole document. Absolutely freaking hilarious.
Post reply on HN