22 ms·

It should not be up to the user to mitigate flawed hardware design

by IntelMiner 8y ago

jacobush 8y ago
It looks like excellent design, encryption is working even against Apple as an "attacker". Right?
- WalterSear 8y ago
  It's a specious reason, and disengenous dissembly. There's nothing about encryption that precludes low-level duplication. This just something "you don't need" because they would rather shave another millimeter of the width, for the larger and more lucrative fashion-focused part of their customerbase.
  - adt2bt 8y ago
    What? This isn’t about the size of the laptop. The 2018 model is the same size. The T2 chip on the logic board contains the decryption key for the SSD. Therefore, if the logic board breaks (and thus the T2), the data are irrecoverable. The design choice was either software encryption and data exfiltration port or hardware encryption and no port. They chose to add hardware encryption, so no port.
  - simonh 8y ago
    What has this got to do with low level duplication? How would that mitigate encryption hardware failure?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
jonknee 8y ago
Encryption is not flawed hardware design. You also can't recover data from your iPhone and most people on HN consider that a feature, not a bug.
hrktb 8y ago
To clarify my comment, the trigger of the issue here is a motherboard failure, and data loss is cascading from there. Sure Apple makes decision that can affect the outcome in this specific case, but other things happen to laptops (physical damage, loss, direct disk failure etc.). I would blame a pro user with valuable info for not backing/replicating it in case the laptop dies. Actually I am not even sure the laptop could go to repair with the data still salvageable in companies with strict security protocols.
simonh 8y ago
Hardware fails, that's just a fact of life and an inevitable consequence of the second law of thermodynamics. All the comment you are replying to is saying is that pros should know this and back up their data - preferably using multiple methods. I'd argue everyone should do this. Personally I use Time Machine and Backblaze, plus all my most important stuff is in Dropbox.

It should not be up to the user to mitigate flawed hardware design

jacobush 8y ago

It looks like excellent design, encryption is working even against Apple as an "attacker". Right?

WalterSear 8y ago
It's a specious reason, and disengenous dissembly. There's nothing about encryption that precludes low-level duplication. This just something "you don't need" because they would rather shave another millimeter of the width, for the larger and more lucrative fashion-focused part of their customerbase.
- adt2bt 8y ago
  What? This isn’t about the size of the laptop. The 2018 model is the same size. The T2 chip on the logic board contains the decryption key for the SSD. Therefore, if the logic board breaks (and thus the T2), the data are irrecoverable. The design choice was either software encryption and data exfiltration port or hardware encryption and no port. They chose to add hardware encryption, so no port.
- simonh 8y ago
  What has this got to do with low level duplication? How would that mitigate encryption hardware failure?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

jonknee 8y ago

Encryption is not flawed hardware design. You also can't recover data from your iPhone and most people on HN consider that a feature, not a bug.

hrktb 8y ago

To clarify my comment, the trigger of the issue here is a motherboard failure, and data loss is cascading from there. Sure Apple makes decision that can affect the outcome in this specific case, but other things happen to laptops (physical damage, loss, direct disk failure etc.). I would blame a pro user with valuable info for not backing/replicating it in case the laptop dies. Actually I am not even sure the laptop could go to repair with the data still salvageable in companies with strict security protocols.

simonh 8y ago

Hardware fails, that's just a fact of life and an inevitable consequence of the second law of thermodynamics. All the comment you are replying to is saying is that pros should know this and back up their data - preferably using multiple methods. I'd argue everyone should do this. Personally I use Time Machine and Backblaze, plus all my most important stuff is in Dropbox.