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

171–180 of 312 posts

Re: Lenovo Statement on Superfish

#171

Post by omegaham »

jacquesm wrote: post #14
pjmlp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly no. Businesses will still buy Thinkpads like candies.

I'm structurally distrustful of the hardware that I buy so I rip out the drives without ever even booting them and then install Linux on a drive bought through another source. I can still see some potential issues there (drive firmware compromised, bios tricks, chipsets with junk and management devices) but that's a basic precaution against getting something you didn't actually buy.

I think it rapidly turns into "How much effort are you willing to use to make yourself more secure?" There's diminishing returns as you increase your money and effort devoted. $50 and a couple hours will get you another hard drive and a Linux install. How much are you going to spend to guarantee that your BIOS and firmware aren't compromised?

There's a reason why security-conscious folks spend an enormous amount of money on the stuff that we buy for a couple hundred bucks. I'm sure that the NSA pays thousands for $100 hard drives.

Re: Lenovo Statement on Superfish

#172

Post by mynameisvlad »

obsurveyor wrote: post #77
mynameisvlad wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> supermarket special offers Why would you not want to sign up to know about what discounts are available at your local grocery store, especially if you frequent it weekly.

Keyword there is "snail mail." You're saying you really want this stuff in your mailbox every week? I don't want any snail mail(of any kind), any week but it's something I still have to live with.

Yes, is it really that hard to take 5 seconds out of your day and check snail mail? I get that people don't like it, but let's be real, it's not that big of an inconvenience.

Re: Lenovo Statement on Superfish

#173

Post by geoka9 »

Coding_Cat wrote: post #23
pkinsky wrote: post #13

I was considering getting a Lenovo X1 Carbon to run linux on. I'd be installing a clean image, so no Superfish, but I still don't want to give money to Lenovo right now. What alternative linux laptops are there? (aside from macs)

There's System76, which are basically pre-loaded Clevo laptops (which are sold under many different names). I have the Galago Ultrapro and am quite happy with it. Good battery life, fast, user-serviceable and a calibrated IPS screen. On release the keyboard was a little off, but the new one is pretty good.

Wow, a very impressive lineup. Their performance laptop even has the optional second GPU - never seen that in a laptop before.

If only they had a trackpoint style pointing device, that would be my perfect next laptop!

Re: Lenovo Statement on Superfish

#174

Post by xienze »

calbear81 wrote: post #137
xienze wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Surely nobody at Lenovo honestly belived that ad injection improved user experience? I can see the marketing folks honestly believing this. See, the problem with people in marketing is that they come up with ideas that sound good in theory but neglect to consider the implications. "Wouldn't it be great if I was presented with offers to buy things based on context clues in the web pages I'm browsing?" "Wouldn't it b…

Let's make broad claims about how people in tech marketing must be idiots! See the funny thing is that I've worked in the PC making business and the parts business (Newegg) and the way this software makes it into the preload is not because of marketing, it's a product or finance decision. Hardware is a low margin business so you get paid to add in some pre-installed software and structure some revenue sharing deals.…

> Let's make broad claims about how people in tech marketing must be idiots!

That's not really where I was going with it, just pointing out that sales and marketing start out with reasonable "what if I could..." scenarios and don't really care about the implementation.

> I don't think any reasonably competent marketer would ever suggest installing some adware as a "feature" so that they could market it.

You're right, because they don't think at the implementation level. What I think _did_ happen, if my experience is any indication, is that someone said "I think showing users suggested products would be a tremendous value add! Let the eggheads figure out how to do it." What you end up with is what needs to be done at a technical level in order to fulfill marketing's requirements. It ain't always pretty.

Re: Lenovo Statement on Superfish

#175

Post by toolz »

jeletonskelly wrote: post #120
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.

I love my Lenovo X1 Carbon. It's a really nice machine. I do run linux so I know I'm not the average user, but they haven't lost my business despite this being an epic screw-up. I think they make good machines and I'll continue to buy from them in the future, but I'll be reformatting immediately just like I've always done with any PC I've ever bought from Dell, Gateway, Lenovo, etc, so I don't have to deal with the b…

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).

Re: Lenovo Statement on Superfish

#176

Post by sejje »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #142
tw04 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how exactly do you expect people to find out about your product if you don't advertise it? Even word of mouth requires a first sale, which generally requires... advertising.

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.

Re: Lenovo Statement on Superfish

#177

Post by zevyoura »

jeletonskelly wrote: post #120
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.

I love my Lenovo X1 Carbon. It's a really nice machine. I do run linux so I know I'm not the average user, but they haven't lost my business despite this being an epic screw-up. I think they make good machines and I'll continue to buy from them in the future, but I'll be reformatting immediately just like I've always done with any PC I've ever bought from Dell, Gateway, Lenovo, etc, so I don't have to deal with the b…

There's a huge difference between bloat and malicious advertising software that creates real security holes that are invisible to the average user.

Re: Lenovo Statement on Superfish

#178

Post by sejje »

doodpants wrote: post #136
therealwill wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, a lot of people use their computer to purchase things. How do people know what to purchase? Ads! Therefore more ads = more knowledge about what to purchase and results in a better user experience QED /s.

You know, I often feel as though I'm living in a cave, because there are many things out in the world that I'm unaware of, and I often wonder if it's because I use Adblock. Take Uber, for example. It's apparently a popular ride-sharing service, which I've only heard of recently due to a bunch of articles about them getting into trouble with the law. So how did that service get to be so popular to begin with? How did…

I've never seen an ad for Uber. I know about them because I keep up with startup news. They were in the news plenty before the legal issues.

Re: Lenovo Statement on Superfish

#179

Post by geoka9 »

Coding_Cat wrote: post #90
meritt wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How's battery life? That was always my concern, it seemed to be quite pathetic in comparison to modern 6-12hr competitors.

It depends on what you're doing of course. Normal usage (playing music/Youtube, browsing firefox, coding, opening up some PDFs) gives me about 6-8 hours I'd say, I get about 3 hours of (modded) minecraft, which is quite the battery drain. this is on Gentoo (Awesome as WM) so the background drain is pretty low. It's good enough that I never really pay attention to it. upower says the battery is designed to store up to…

Is the battery controller programmable from Linux? E.g. can you set charging thresholds?

Is there any hardware in it that doesn't work in Linux?

Re: Lenovo Statement on Superfish

#180

Post by happyscrappy »

Someone1234 wrote: post #138
pja wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you ever imagine Apple pulling a stunt like this? No, because it’s astonishingly user hostile: Lenovo should be hanging their head in shame, not making out like it’s no big deal.

Apple told people for almost ten years (both on their website and in their retails stores) that "Macs cannot get viruses." They act like that wasn't a big deal.

The number one source of viruses on a Mac is anti-virus software, don't install it. No system is impervious, there are levels of risk. Apparently the highest possible risk is running a stock Lenovo.
Post reply on HN