Microsoft’s Surface Pro X cameras have stopped working for everyone | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft’s Surface Pro X cameras have stopped working for everyone

theverge.com

31 pointsamatheus13 comments

Here's some similar stories, including mine.

In short, a Windows Update (possibly on the latest Windows 10 build - was for me) appears to brick the touchscreen on at least some Surface Pro 4 devices, but since there's relatively few left about and/or they're all out of warranty, Microsoft seem to be able to ignore the problem their updates caused.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/forum/all/surfac...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/oxg0pm/surface_pro...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/otygmo/surface_pro...

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/forum/all/surfac...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/q8sw6k/comment/hgr...

Jeez. And people complain about Linux updates breaking things and MS is here bricking key features on first party products.

Mine is working fine. Probably because I’m running Linux on it.

I briefly considered getting a surface pro recently, but opted for an iPad Pro with keyboard. So far, it’s been really lovely.

I wonder what it would take to make such a nice device for an independent company with Linux. The m2 chip is obviously out of the question, but I wonder how close a startup could get in 5 years given some funding

https://github.com/linux-surface/surface-pro-x

Ubuntu and Mint work pretty well on the SP4 Pro. It's a good mix between hardware and a much better OS. Probably as close as you will get to having an independent, open source tablet.

Ubuntu and mint support touch interfaces? Can you use a stylus for writing?

Touch is supported with both. Haven't tried the stylus, though.

This means that when the model is obselete and unsupported that the camera is guaranteed stop functioning? Is this a security trade-off or planned obsolescence?

Security trade off likely due to driver certificate expiration .

Drivers for the camera exist outside the core OS, so need to be verifiable otherwise you could have malware replacing it.

If Microsoft forget to update the certificate, it’ll eventually stop working.

An expired certificate should not cause that. I'd be very surprised if they did not have a cryptographic timestamp [1] on the driver signature. The presence of the timestamp allows the signature to be verified after the signing certificate has expired.

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_signing#Time-stamping

OK upon actually reading the article it looks like they didn't include a timestamp - ouch.

Hardware connected to software connected to the internet.

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