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A CarFax for Used PCs: Hewlett Packard wants to give old laptops new life

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Re: A CarFax for Used PCs: Hewlett Packard wants to give old laptops new life

#41

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF »

johnklos wrote: post #36

This seems wrong for several reasons: * Collecting all sorts of telemetry has never been done for altruistic reasons by large tech companies. * The value of an HP over an Apple is that the HP are supposed to be upgradable, so will HP start monitoring all the replaced parts of machines, too? * HP has a multi-decade history of not being able to maintain a single URL for long term. I bet the only URL that hasn't changed…

> HP has a multi-decade history of not being able to maintain a single URL for long term.

That reminds me of the HP BIOS Setup page: https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/tech-takes/how-to-enter-bios-s...

> There are two primary methods to access BIOS ...

> Method 1 involves restarting your computer and pressing a specific key during the boot process. This key varies by manufacturer but is typically one of the following: F1, F2, F10, DEL, or ESC.

It doesn't say what the key is for HP! On an hp.com article, with "HP" in the title, with "HP" in the header just before this section!

Re: A CarFax for Used PCs: Hewlett Packard wants to give old laptops new life

#42

Post by stack_underflow »

bogwog wrote: post #6

> We decided that the best way to do this is to integrate the life-cycle records into the firmware layer. By embedding telemetry capabilities directly within the firmware, we ensure that device health and usage data is captured the moment it is collected. This data is stored securely on HP SSD drives, leveraging hardware-based security measures to protect against unauthorized access or manipulation. The laptop doesn'…

It sounds like they're doing something similar to Seagate's Field Access Reliability Metrics (FARM) log where IIRC it's much harder to reset or forge their wear-leveling/usage stats, vs SMART metrics which certain manufacturers seem to clear when drives are re-certified[0]. I've seen this tool[1] mentioned often in /r/DataHoarder discussions about checking whether second hand drives have had this stat-reset done. I'm assuming it compares `smartctl --log=farm` output with the attribute/device-statistic log counter values.

A friend and I have been building our own solution[2] for monitoring these wear-leveling attributes on NVMe and SATA drives, with the focus being on tracking and visualizing trends over time. We both have a large collection of drives in various servers and laptops and found that SMART metrics can be reported somewhat inconsistently from vendor to vendor so what started as a simple shell script to scrape `smartctl` output has now turned into a lightweight desktop agent that attempts to normalize all these inconsistencies and let us focus on the actual signals while also allowing us to define alerts/notify us of anomalies via email - maybe something HN users will find useful.

Fun fact: did you know that most drives maintain a pool of spare sectors/cells that are used by the firmware to replace blocks that have failed? It's one of the many metrics we like to track and visualize in Sentinowl [2]!

[0] https://github.com/gamestailer94/farm-check/tree/main

[1] https://www.heise.de/en/news/Fraud-with-Seagate-hard-disks-D...

[2] https://sentinowl.com/

Re: A CarFax for Used PCs: Hewlett Packard wants to give old laptops new life

#44

Post by gjm11 »

johnklos wrote: post #36

This seems wrong for several reasons: * Collecting all sorts of telemetry has never been done for altruistic reasons by large tech companies. * The value of an HP over an Apple is that the HP are supposed to be upgradable, so will HP start monitoring all the replaced parts of machines, too? * HP has a multi-decade history of not being able to maintain a single URL for long term. I bet the only URL that hasn't changed…

It doesn't look like any exfiltration is happening? Although they use the word "telemetry", unless I'm misunderstanding the information is just stored locally on the device.

(Disclaimer: I am an HP employee, but I don't work on laptops and I think this is the first I have heard of "HPFax". Neither now nor at any other time on HN am I speaking for my employer rather than myself.)

Re: A CarFax for Used PCs: Hewlett Packard wants to give old laptops new life

#45

Post by lproven »

Apocryphon wrote: post #24
lproven wrote: post #22

Did anyone else read this and think "WTF is Carfax?" or is it just me? This is a bad headline, IMHO, because that is a service of some kind for 1 kind of person in just 1 country, and to the entire rest of the human race it's meaningless.

Americans tend to drive and many have gone through the experience of buying used cars. HP and Carfax are both U.S. companies. Should an American take umbrage if a British article discussing Deliveroo had a headline referencing Tesco because it’s meaningless to the entire rest of the human race?

You mean apart from the way Tesco operates or has operated in about a dozen or so countries?

Re: A CarFax for Used PCs: Hewlett Packard wants to give old laptops new life

#46

Post by Apocryphon »

lproven wrote: post #45
Apocryphon wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans tend to drive and many have gone through the experience of buying used cars. HP and Carfax are both U.S. companies. Should an American take umbrage if a British article discussing Deliveroo had a headline referencing Tesco because it’s meaningless to the entire rest of the human race?

You mean apart from the way Tesco operates or has operated in about a dozen or so countries?

The average American knows not about that, nor cares even if it was true.

Re: A CarFax for Used PCs: Hewlett Packard wants to give old laptops new life

#47

Post by lproven »

sixothree wrote: post #27
Apocryphon wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans tend to drive and many have gone through the experience of buying used cars. HP and Carfax are both U.S. companies. Should an American take umbrage if a British article discussing Deliveroo had a headline referencing Tesco because it’s meaningless to the entire rest of the human race?

Carfax also inserts themselves into the process of buying new cars too.

Only, AFAICT, in 1 country. There are 193 countries.

So only for half of one percent of people.

Much less by population, of course.

Re: A CarFax for Used PCs: Hewlett Packard wants to give old laptops new life

#48

Post by Apocryphon »

lproven wrote: post #47
sixothree wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carfax also inserts themselves into the process of buying new cars too.

Only, AFAICT, in 1 country. There are 193 countries. So only for half of one percent of people. Much less by population, of course.

Actually, Carfax also serves ten Canadian provinces. And appears to also be active in twenty countries of mainland Europe, though I understand that nowadays in Britain there is less of an awareness of the continent.

Re: A CarFax for Used PCs: Hewlett Packard wants to give old laptops new life

#49

Post by lproven »

Apocryphon wrote: post #46
lproven wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean apart from the way Tesco operates or has operated in about a dozen or so countries?

The average American knows not about that, nor cares even if it was true.

The "average American" is a small fraction of the audience for anything in English on the Internet, and anyone making or writing for the Internet in English needs to remember that.

About 1.5 billion people speak English.

If every single person in the US saw it, that's about one fifth of the potential reach.

Re: A CarFax for Used PCs: Hewlett Packard wants to give old laptops new life

#50

Post by lproven »

Apocryphon wrote: post #48
lproven wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only, AFAICT, in 1 country. There are 193 countries. So only for half of one percent of people. Much less by population, of course.

Actually, Carfax also serves ten Canadian provinces. And appears to also be active in twenty countries of mainland Europe, though I understand that nowadays in Britain there is less of an awareness of the continent.

I'm not in Britain. Haven't lived there in over a decade and I never plan to do so again.
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