Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by lowlevel 1203 days ago
I tried to read the article but my HP computer just turned off randomly and installed an unauthorized bios update bricking it. I'm on my phone now and outraged.
2 comments

UEFI based computers can be unbricked. BIOS based ones are much hard to recover.
Bricked things can’t be unbricked. That’s why it’s called “bricking” - they are permanently as useful as a brick. If it can be unbricked then it wasn’t bricked, just borked.
Wait really?
I think he's being facetious
maybe not.. my HP laptop did a BIOS update yesterday via windows shutdown without warning. turned it of because the battery was low. luckily I got the charger on it in time.
Tbf that's a mechanism integrated directly into Windows updates now and has nothing to do with HP. Any "critical" bios and CPU microcode updates can be done through Windows Update(and there isn't any good way to selectively block them).
HP is involved in that. They wrote the software, provided it to Microsoft, and are aware of how Windows Update works. I'm reminded of the times Windows Update has "helpfully" installed drivers for HP printers for me that are essentially bloatware, phoning home, asking me to create an account, and advertising its ink.