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Comment by JoshTriplett | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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.

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.

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