4 ms·

Lenovo laptops silently stripped of important feature in BIOS updates

52 points by RachelF 5y ago

breakingcups 5y ago
This practice was found to be illegal in some countries, right?
MikeUt 5y ago
Is this what it has come to? Never knowing when items you supposedly own will refuse to work, due to court or corporate decisions you're not involved with? Amazon remotely deleted copies of 1984, Peloton bricked indoor bikes unless you paid a monthly fee, and now this. A man's home is his castle, and a simple purchase should not be a standing invitation for corporations to invade and compromise the functioning of my devices. Having functionality of items we thought we purchased be continually dependent on the whims and good standing of manufacturers is dystopian. Will I have to worry that I'll remain without light one evening, because the smart lightbulbs were found to infringe some patent? Will the water filter cease to function for a similar reason?
Jonnax 5y ago
So the important feature is H.264 encoding support on the GPU. I'm surprised that Lenovo is the one that would pay the licencing fee, I imagined that Nvidia would sell that bundled as part of the chip.
- Saris 5y ago
  Yeah especially since my desktop GPU doesn't require an additional fee to use the encoder, it's just included as it should be.
- salawat 5y ago
  Nvidia? Make anyone's life easier? these are the pople who cryptographically lock power and clock management of hardware you pay good money for away and do not compensate you for the loss of control over the device you paid for via firmware cryptographic signature checks burned into the silicon and are terribly documented. You should expect nothing less than maximum inconvenience out of them.
yummypaint 5y ago
If a person buys a device with a credit card and key features are immediately removed remotely, that would seem to be fraud that justifies a chargeback. No different than if you bought the product from a salesman who misrepresented it. What recourse do people have over longer timescales, though? Would insurace cover replacement if the machine is rendered unusable for the original purpose? Not looking forward to when safety features are silently and remotely removed from vehicles due to IP disputes.
gruez 5y ago
>Buy a Lenovo Legion 5 on Amazon contextual advertising strikes again!

52 points by RachelF 5y ago

This practice was found to be illegal in some countries, right?

Is this what it has come to? Never knowing when items you supposedly own will refuse to work, due to court or corporate decisions you're not involved with? Amazon remotely deleted copies of 1984, Peloton bricked indoor bikes unless you paid a monthly fee, and now this. A man's home is his castle, and a simple purchase should not be a standing invitation for corporations to invade and compromise the functioning of my devices. Having functionality of items we thought we purchased be continually dependent on the whims and good standing of manufacturers is dystopian. Will I have to worry that I'll remain without light one evening, because the smart lightbulbs were found to infringe some patent? Will the water filter cease to function for a similar reason?

Jonnax 5y ago

So the important feature is H.264 encoding support on the GPU. I'm surprised that Lenovo is the one that would pay the licencing fee, I imagined that Nvidia would sell that bundled as part of the chip.

Saris 5y ago
Yeah especially since my desktop GPU doesn't require an additional fee to use the encoder, it's just included as it should be.
salawat 5y ago
Nvidia? Make anyone's life easier? these are the pople who cryptographically lock power and clock management of hardware you pay good money for away and do not compensate you for the loss of control over the device you paid for via firmware cryptographic signature checks burned into the silicon and are terribly documented. You should expect nothing less than maximum inconvenience out of them.

yummypaint 5y ago

If a person buys a device with a credit card and key features are immediately removed remotely, that would seem to be fraud that justifies a chargeback. No different than if you bought the product from a salesman who misrepresented it. What recourse do people have over longer timescales, though? Would insurace cover replacement if the machine is rendered unusable for the original purpose? Not looking forward to when safety features are silently and remotely removed from vehicles due to IP disputes.

gruez 5y ago

>Buy a Lenovo Legion 5 on Amazon contextual advertising strikes again!