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Comment by m463 | Hacker News Reader

I think one solution would be like a purism laptop (and upcoming phone) - hardware switches (they one for camera/mic, one for bt/wifi)

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Yes I can see the discussion at hardware manufacturers now.

Marketing: 'So, we can monitor users and collect sellable data through a camera hidden behind their monitor?'

Engineer: 'Why yes, but maybe we should allow users to disable this through some kind of hardware switch. It could lead to potential privacy violations etc.'

Marketing: 'If they turned it off could we still collect marketable data?'

Engineer: 'Well no...that's sort of the point...'

Marketing: 'I see...so invisible hidden cameras that can't be disabled you say?'

Ethical engineer: Not if you want anyone to keep working here. Also, it'll make the news. No.

Many, many engineers driven more by money than they want to admit: “well if I don’t do it someone else will.”

Marketing: Make the news eh? Well any publicity's good publicity and we can outsource these kinds of things can't we? Maybe we could save a bit of money that way. Excellent idea. Get right on it.

Yeah 'ethical engineers'.

They exists don't get me wrong but you know plenty of engineers don't care or bother with more simple things like recycling, keeping themselfs in shape, working on their own mental health etc. etc.

There are plenty fish in the ocean which do not care or just never thought about the implications.

After a decade of hardware buttons that aren't, e.g. TV power buttons, I think for most people trust has sailed. It works if the company builds it's brand on it (Purism) but I would not trust a hardware switch from Lenovo or Dell.

Is dell as untrustworthy as lenovo?

I do remember the lenovo driver that installed itself from the bios - even on a clean windows install - and would snoop for months and then silently uninstall itself.

EDIT: here it is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo#Lenovo_Service_Engine

However I have not heard much about dell.

I've owned a Dell XPS13 which was the crappiest product I've bought in a while. So I'd say the problem with Dell is more inablity vs. malicious intent.

What was so bad about it?

We've bought/had replaced half a dozen XPS13s in the last 18 months and all but one have had to be returned, some are on their second replacement. QA seems to be non-existent

What was so bad about them?

Not the person you were replying to, but anecdotally my XPS 15 9550 has been nothing but a nightmare.

It's on battery #3 from the battery swelling issue, a lot of backlight bleed on the 4K Display, coil whine in the power supply (went through three of those), three DC jacks (might need to be a 4th soon), the infamous VRM/throttling issue, and to top it all off I had the main board replaced within the first two years because of a firmware problem preventing Windows from activating. Less of problem with the system itself, but during that mobo job Dell replaced the 512GB Samsung SSD with a Toshiba 1TB and R/W speeds dropped to ~1/3 of what they were before. Also anecdotal but a buddy of mine with a 9560 has gone through more or less the same issues, sans the firmware problem.

They look so appealing on paper (which is why I chose it over a MBP), but there's just something about them that feels proof-of-concept, like it's an unfinished product that was pushed out too quick. I wanted to give Dell another chance, having gone private three years before and having seemingly improved their build quality. When you spend $3800 on what is supposed to be the best-of-the-best and it turns out to be the headache of a lifetime, it leaves a really sour aftertaste.

Wow, so it's not just the Precision models that are lottery. In my area of the company we mostly use DELL precision and I kid you not, every second one (Precision 7550) has some sort of a problem. They vary from the ones that give you blue screen of death, throttling issue in CAD/CAE software ect.

I ordered a XPS 15 (9570) last year to replace my wife's slow Walmart special. We debated between Mac and Wintel and decided to stick with Wintel due to familiarity and various programs we run. We get the delivery, take it out of the box, plug it in, turn it on... and this horrible screeching noise greets us like someone is cutting a piece of metal with an angle grinder. It was not a shipping bug either, the package arrived in perfect shape.

That pretty much summed up the difference between Apple and everyone else for me.

As a counterpoint to that (and maybe it has just been a particular model series), I've had the 9343 XPS13 for 5 years now without issue. The battery life is much shorter now, for sure, but it's been a daily driver for all that time so I'm not so surprised.

I don't recall the model number anymore, but I also had an XPS13 for around three years at my last job. Had it running linux as my primary machine for web (and some mobile) development, and the only issue I ever had was that the onboard microphone sounded pretty bad.

I've seen a lot of bad reports, so maybe I just got lucky, but I hope not since I loved that machine and the XPS line would be pretty high up on my list if I was in the market for a new laptop now.

I'll just add on to this. Also have had an XPS13 as a daily driver for about a year and have nothing major to complain about. A slight coil buzz while charging, nostril cam and shitty microphone are some minor gripes, but all in all it's been great.

I had one and it was a lemon. It was so bad that I gave it away and got a second-hand laptop to work for almost a year, it made me so much more productive.

(XPS13 was max specced) Battery died, Fan died, booted during the night on it's own, due to the failed fan made a loud alarm noise, louder than our fire alarm (wondered what the developer thought there), paid for premium business support with next day replacement, Dell didn't want to repair the thing but wanted me to jump through dozens of update loops, mouse pad went bad.

Alot of vendors (Lenovo[0], ASUS, Dell, ) are using Windows Platform Binary Table, WPBT (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18095848) to get the OS to execute binary. Dell seem to use it to load the Absolute's Lojack anti theft rootkit[1]. Also on Absolute's website there's a list[2] of manufacturers that are using Absolute Persistance[3].

[0]: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/lenov...

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19800807

[2]: https://www.absolute.com/partners/device-compatibility/

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_Home_%26_Office#Absol...

Wow. Almost every Linux distribution would never enable such a thing. As for Apple's Macs, it's all a black box in and of itself.

Dell has an anti theft ‘solution’ that works the same as this, as do all the major vendors. The fault is with Microsoft for allowing that crap in the first place.

The camera would be useless until the pixels in front of it are turned off, right? If you see a small "hole-punch" in your screen, the camera is on.

OLEDs can be turned on and off in fractions of a second. The camera sensor could take a picture while the led is off and there’d be no way to tell.

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