<story><title>Remote Code Execution on Most Dell Computers</title><url>https://d4stiny.github.io/Remote-Code-Execution-on-most-Dell-computers/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>LeoPanthera</author><text>It works, too. This is partly why the iPhone was so popular, at first. It&amp;#x27;s been so long now that probably everyone has forgotten, but before the iPhone, essentially every smartphone on the market was fully loaded with trialware, crapware, and often had hardware features locked out by software so that you could pay extra to unlock them.&lt;p&gt;I remember one particular phone that had four user-configurable hardware buttons, but Verizon had locked them down so that they &lt;i&gt;all&lt;/i&gt; opened the Verizon ringtone store.&lt;p&gt;The iPhone was a breath of fresh air if only for its software.</text></item><item><author>cryptonector</author><text>&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  OEM: Let&amp;#x27;s differentiate our otherwise
       commodity hw product!
  OEM: I know, let&amp;#x27;s add value with bundled
       software the customer can&amp;#x27;t uninstall!
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Then the bundled software turns out to (inevitably) be useless vulnerable garbage.  Inevitably because a) the customer doesn&amp;#x27;t need it, b) it&amp;#x27;s engineered with all the effort that normally goes into adware for captive audiences (i.e., _minimal_), which means it will be vulnerable.&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s an idea:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  OEM: Let&amp;#x27;s differentiate our otherwise
       commodity hw product!
  OEM: Let&amp;#x27;s add NO bundled software.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
That would be fantastic.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>iClaudiusX</author><text>Even a brand new, unlocked, $1000 Samsung Galaxy S10 comes riddled with adware and spyware, some of it unremovable:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;There are apps from Flipboard and Spotify as well as a unremovable version of Facebook. McAfee Anti-virus is baked into the operating system as &amp;quot;security,&amp;quot; and the Samsung Gallery app wants to share my location with Foursquare. The storage management settings, which is just a simple file-cleanup app, is &amp;quot;Powered by Qihoo 360,&amp;quot; a Chinese security company. A caller-ID feature built into the phone app is provided by a company called &amp;quot;Hiya.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Once you run through setup and connect to Wi-Fi, the phone spawns an undismissable &amp;quot;Secure Wi-Fi&amp;quot; notification, which, it turns out, is an ad for McAfee VPN subscription service. I tried blocking the notification—it&amp;#x27;s not blockable—but it turns out you can open the advertisement, carefully consider subscribing to McAfee VPN, say &amp;quot;No,&amp;quot; and then it will go away. Cool.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;arstechnica.com&amp;#x2F;gadgets&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;04&amp;#x2F;galaxy-s10-review-for-1000-samsung-needs-to-offer-a-more-complete-package&amp;#x2F;2&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;arstechnica.com&amp;#x2F;gadgets&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;04&amp;#x2F;galaxy-s10-review-fo...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Remote Code Execution on Most Dell Computers</title><url>https://d4stiny.github.io/Remote-Code-Execution-on-most-Dell-computers/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>LeoPanthera</author><text>It works, too. This is partly why the iPhone was so popular, at first. It&amp;#x27;s been so long now that probably everyone has forgotten, but before the iPhone, essentially every smartphone on the market was fully loaded with trialware, crapware, and often had hardware features locked out by software so that you could pay extra to unlock them.&lt;p&gt;I remember one particular phone that had four user-configurable hardware buttons, but Verizon had locked them down so that they &lt;i&gt;all&lt;/i&gt; opened the Verizon ringtone store.&lt;p&gt;The iPhone was a breath of fresh air if only for its software.</text></item><item><author>cryptonector</author><text>&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  OEM: Let&amp;#x27;s differentiate our otherwise
       commodity hw product!
  OEM: I know, let&amp;#x27;s add value with bundled
       software the customer can&amp;#x27;t uninstall!
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Then the bundled software turns out to (inevitably) be useless vulnerable garbage.  Inevitably because a) the customer doesn&amp;#x27;t need it, b) it&amp;#x27;s engineered with all the effort that normally goes into adware for captive audiences (i.e., _minimal_), which means it will be vulnerable.&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s an idea:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  OEM: Let&amp;#x27;s differentiate our otherwise
       commodity hw product!
  OEM: Let&amp;#x27;s add NO bundled software.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
That would be fantastic.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cryptonector</author><text>Exactly.  Doing better by your customers &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; a differentiator.  It&amp;#x27;s worked very well for Apple.  Microsoft could easily take a consumer-friendly stance on OEMs preinstalling software.  Microsoft please!</text></comment>