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Lenovo's Response to Its Dangerous Adware Is Astonishingly Clueless

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Re: Lenovo's Response to Its Dangerous Adware Is Astonishingly Clueless

#91

Post by joshuapants »

JadeNB wrote: post #58
fown9 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1.) Which US computer company has ties to US government? Literally owned by the government? 2.) How is US government authoritarian? Have you actually lived in a country that has no elected representative?

> 1.) Which US computer company has ties to US government? Literally owned by the government? But Lenovo isn't owned by the Chinese government, either. > 2.) How is US government authoritarian? Have you actually lived in a country that has no elected representative? The existence of more dictatorial countries doesn't mean the US isn't authoritarian—it is a spectrum rather than a dichotomy.

You would have to really flex the definition of authoritarian to include the US, to the point of making the word uselessly broad.

Re: Lenovo's Response to Its Dangerous Adware Is Astonishingly Clueless

#92

Post by gbl08ma »

billhendricksjr wrote: post #23
secabeen wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it a Thinkpad, or a consumer model? The Thinkpads were never involved in this.

Thinkpad T430s. It's a year old so I'm in the clear upon more detailed reading of the article. I usually do a clean install but when I bought this box it came installed with Win 7 and the discs I got were Win 8 only. Didn't come with a Win 7 serial. This is what I get for buying from a reseller on Amazon.

If you have Windows installed I think you can extract the license key from it (assuming Windows is genuine), then use it to do a clean install, or just save it for posterity in case the hard disk ever dies. As far as I know this is fine WRT Windows EULA.

Re: Lenovo's Response to Its Dangerous Adware Is Astonishingly Clueless

#93

Post by joshuapants »

pjc50 wrote: post #60
finnn wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you're still running the OS that it came with? Even if you want to keep Windows, always reinstall fresh. It's far easier than trying to hunt down every piece of malware they put on it

This is repeatedly recommended, but I think it's overlooking that not all manufacturer customization is entirely evil. You then to hunt down all the drivers for bits of the motherboard. Are you sure your power consumption settings are optimal after you've done this?

Windows has gotten pretty good at finding and installing drivers for you. I'm not sure about 8.1 (only used it briefly on a tablet that came with it installed) but with the 10 preview it has found and installed all the drivers I needed for the two Thinkpads I tried it on. It didn't download the Lenovo power management utility which is key to really squeezing the most out of it, but in my experience it isn't significantly better than Windows power management + keeping the screen brightness down (which is what the Lenovo utility does anyway).

Re: Lenovo's Response to Its Dangerous Adware Is Astonishingly Clueless

#94

Post by bigbugbag »

rdtsc wrote: post #34
danielweber wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

15 years ago this would have led to rioting on slashdot and Usenet. How dare Microsoft remove someone else's software? I'm generally in favor of MS doing this specific thing, but there is potential for abuse here.

No 15 years ago Microsoft would have been the ones installing it. I think Microsoft went from being a hated software giant to sort of an underdog vis-a-vis Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple. They are very big and strong no doubt, but I think the attitude they are projecting since switching CEO recently, their open source efforts, and such make them look pretty good PR-wise among the tech crowd.

In the past Microsoft would have been both installing it and have their security tool removing it, left hand does not know what the right hand do in large organization, then after figuring out they would whitelist their own spyware from the removal tool. This may have actually happened.

The rest is simply PR, microsoft is still the evil corp it used to be but has to fight other evil corps to keep a share of a market it once dominated. Microsoft had too much money to burn to die quickly, its agony will take quite some time.

Re: Lenovo's Response to Its Dangerous Adware Is Astonishingly Clueless

#95

Post by thefreeman »

engendered wrote: post #54
jhou2 wrote: post #26

Kudos to MS, srsly. lol the amount of positive press that MS has been garnering recently on HN is impressive.

Don't think it is purely happenstance. There is absolutely and unequivocally either brigading Microsoft fans, or paid shills, hitting HN hard. There was a garbage post on the front page yesterday and I left a completely benign post that didn't go with the pro-Microsoft/anti-Google narrative -- saw -11 within less than 60 seconds.

Maybe you shouldn't jump on top level posts with nothing but paranoid speculations and that wouldn't happen so much.

Re: Lenovo's Response to Its Dangerous Adware Is Astonishingly Clueless

#96

Post by daeken »

engendered wrote: post #54
jhou2 wrote: post #26

Kudos to MS, srsly. lol the amount of positive press that MS has been garnering recently on HN is impressive.

Don't think it is purely happenstance. There is absolutely and unequivocally either brigading Microsoft fans, or paid shills, hitting HN hard. There was a garbage post on the front page yesterday and I left a completely benign post that didn't go with the pro-Microsoft/anti-Google narrative -- saw -11 within less than 60 seconds.

The reason it saw that was that 1) your post was inflammatory, and 2) it was completely content-free. The very same reason I downvoted this.

Yelling "shill!" does nothing but decrease the site's SNR. It's not helpful in any way.

Re: Lenovo's Response to Its Dangerous Adware Is Astonishingly Clueless

#97

Post by stcredzero »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #38
buro9 wrote: post #13

Microsoft is currently doing Lenovo's work for them: https://twitter.com/FiloSottile/status/568800260111388672 The latest version of Windows Defender is actively removing the Superfish software and the cert. The text of the definition is here: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=us7iXvkn

Every AV should be doing this. Is MS the only one doing it?

Defender is my current Windows anti-malware software of choice. Basically, because they don't feel they have to shill so hard as the other AV companies, and this makes their user experience suck the least.

Re: Lenovo's Response to Its Dangerous Adware Is Astonishingly Clueless

#98

Post by kachnuv_ocasek »

engendered wrote: post #54
jhou2 wrote: post #26

Kudos to MS, srsly. lol the amount of positive press that MS has been garnering recently on HN is impressive.

Don't think it is purely happenstance. There is absolutely and unequivocally either brigading Microsoft fans, or paid shills, hitting HN hard. There was a garbage post on the front page yesterday and I left a completely benign post that didn't go with the pro-Microsoft/anti-Google narrative -- saw -11 within less than 60 seconds.

That's like saying the majority of HNers are Gruber's drones for praising his business model, or Google/Mozilla/Node having a brigade of posters to praise their languages.

Re: Lenovo's Response to Its Dangerous Adware Is Astonishingly Clueless

#99

Post by remarkEon »

engendered wrote: post #54
jhou2 wrote: post #26

Kudos to MS, srsly. lol the amount of positive press that MS has been garnering recently on HN is impressive.

Don't think it is purely happenstance. There is absolutely and unequivocally either brigading Microsoft fans, or paid shills, hitting HN hard. There was a garbage post on the front page yesterday and I left a completely benign post that didn't go with the pro-Microsoft/anti-Google narrative -- saw -11 within less than 60 seconds.

Does everything have to be a conspiracy? So either Microsoft is building some good and interesting stuff, or there's some conspiracy to target HN that would get them...what, exactly? +Karma here?

Re: Lenovo's Response to Its Dangerous Adware Is Astonishingly Clueless

#100

Post by fname »

buro9 wrote: post #13

Microsoft is currently doing Lenovo's work for them: https://twitter.com/FiloSottile/status/568800260111388672 The latest version of Windows Defender is actively removing the Superfish software and the cert. The text of the definition is here: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=us7iXvkn

This is really great, but the real question is will users actually see this on a default Lenovo OS build? Can anyone confirm that Defender doesn't get disabled in favor or say... McAfee or Symantec?
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