Comment by mindslight | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mindslight | Hacker News Reader

Have shortscreens started to fall out of fashion at all yet? I'm having a serious case of tech-inadequacy after I got my mom an X230 and my girlfriend decided she wanted one too. But looking at that X230 side-by-side with my identical-width T61, I can't bring myself to give up 2.5 inches of vertical screen real estate. (And the "14 inch" T440p is still a whole 1.5 inches shorter, in addition to the whole thing being much wider).

I've seen the Chromebook Pixel is 3:2, which is hopeful. But going with a machine that erases your installation when it loses power seems like a outright terrible idea (in addition to signaling Google that their locked down computing is appreciated in the least)

I suppose I shouldn't get my hopes up at all, given that manufacturers have moved on to even more terrible ideas like soldering a paltry amount of RAM to the motherboard, and then removing one or even both sodimm slots. Maybe I just need a NUC strapped to a car battery.

> I've seen the Chromebook Pixel is 3:2, which is hopeful. But going with a machine that erases your installation when it loses power seems like a outright terrible idea (in addition to signaling Google that their locked down computing is appreciated in the least)

It does not erase your installation when it loses power. If you switch into or out of developer mode, it'll wipe user data, but otherwise your data is safe.

As for "locked-down computing", as long as Google continues to mandate developer mode as part of their hardware requirements, that seems quite sufficient to me.

Yes it does lose data if you run out of battery while your laptop is sleeping! You have been warned - https://plus.google.com/117057264318218846563/posts/hnVnjpF5...

https://plus.google.com/111049168280159033135/posts/4nkSEmGo...

Its the main reason why I dont use my pixel anymore.

Erm, the following is a passage from the Gentoo Wiki:

> [Chromebook Pixel] has a fatal bug - when battery runs out to zero, my Gentoo installation is erased. It's some kind of security measure. After full discharge any non-signed OS is erased. And I need to install Gentoo again from scratch

I have no firsthand experience, but I've heard the same thing other times as well. Is it just a baseless rumor?

I wouldn't be worried about my data per se (backed up with unison, etc), just the hassle of reinstalling and ultimately wary of electing into that kind of user-hostile design.

"Developer mode" is equivalent to rooting your phone - something that most users won't do, and that some misguided developers will even think they should discriminate against (I believe some banking apps were recently mentioned here). Even if you go out of your way to do it and suffer the oddities, buying such a device sends an economic signal (to Google and developers) and social signal (to less-clued friends) that the official locked-down experience is desirable.

> Erm, the following is a passage from the Gentoo Wiki:

>> [Chromebook Pixel] has a fatal bug - when battery runs out to zero, my Gentoo installation is erased. It's some kind of security measure. After full discharge any non-signed OS is erased. And I need to install Gentoo again from scratch

> I have no firsthand experience, but I've heard the same thing other times as well. Is it just a baseless rumor?

News to me; ugh. Quoting one of the Google posts on this: "The problem here is that the flags that remember whether or not you're in dev-mode have to be stored somewhere, and we chose to put them in the battery-backed CMOS. When they're lost, we have to assume we should be in normal mode, or it opens a security hole. The only other place we could keep them would be in the TPM, but that's slow to access and would adversely affect boot times in normal mode. We may be able to fix that in future Chromebooks, but changing the verified boot security features generally requires a change to the read-only BIOS, which isn't possible with an update."

That's really broken.

> The only other place we could keep them would be in the TPM, but that's slow to access and would adversely affect boot times in normal mode

Has this delay been quantified? I've used Linux-based systems with dynamic root of trust, with the TPM being queried at boot. There wasn't any noticeable delay in boot.

I'm an avid Thinkpad user and one of the many reason is the 16:10 screens. What is largely the reason that I have not upgraded from my current x200/201 hybrid[1] is the lack of 16:10 screens. I've considered a Mac but I can't get past the keyboard/glass screen and lack of trackpoint.

Either way I understand you position.

[1] x200 chassis with x201 motherboard. Ask for more details if you're interested.

... i'm interested. why / how did you do that ?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com