Shark used to make an (otherwise excellent) upright consumer vacuum cleaner with a metal strip in the handle. The vacuum's power cable did not have a ground.
This vacuum had the most five-star reviews on Amazon, but then a minority of people started complaining and leaving one-star reviews, saying they were getting shocked.
The reactions from the fanboy crowd were non-sympathetic ("you're imagining it," "it's just static," etc.), and they mass downvoted every one-star review. Some of the people claimed they were getting shocked PRETTY HARD, too, as in it knocked them over. IIRC, even Shark responded saying that it was impossible for the vacuum to shock you.
I remember seeing this while looking at vacuums for my elderly mother who has a heart condition. To the electrical engineer in me, everything made sense!
I started defending every single one-star reviewer person, and I wrote my own very detailed review with photos of the handle. Soon, the tide turned, and more people started upvoting my review than downvoting it; and I even received personal "thank you" messages from the people who got shocked ("finally someone believes me").
It eventually got to the point where a year later in 2014, Shark released an updated model with no more metal strip. Seeing this, I bought the new model for my mother. I'd like to think I can give myself SOME credit for causing them to do that.
Not only that, the upvotes from that alone were a good part of the reason I became an Amazon Top Reviewer.
Like I said, it was otherwise, an excellent vacuum. Any how, I know about Lenovo's Superfish and recently its attempts to block Linux installs, but I am still a die-hard Thinkpad user because these are very large organizations where all it takes is one single person's oversight to cause a mistake.
They didn't "attempt to block Linux", they just shipped hardware without a Linux driver.
And later released a workaround to make the hardware work in a slower, more power consuming backwards compatibility mode so Intel can continue not properly supporting the hardware in Linux.
Lenovo initially released a BIOS with a goto statement added to jmp out of the disk controller mode setting (which is normally present and allows the user to change back to AHCI mode). Reverse engineers on the Lenovo forums discovered this modification while studying the disassembly.
Then, one user patched the BIOS and manually reflashed it using an SPI flasher and some soldering, and Linux worked just fine by detecting the drive.
Yes, the ideal solution is that Intel gives specs to OSS devs to build a driver (or even builds on themselves), but the path of least resistance is to have Lenovo unblock that BIOS setting, which amounts to changing one line of code, or 15 minutes of one engineer's time.
> Lenovo initially released a BIOS with a goto statement added to jmp out of the disk controller mode setting
Because switching to AHCI mode with Windows installed would brick the machine (Yay, Microsoft), and Lenovo foolishly assumed that people who wanted to use Linux would buy one of the Linux certified machines instead (X1 Yoga and 60 series Yoga devices are all certified: https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd031426 – but I'm sure that's just more proof that Lenovo hates Linux for some reason).
> the path of least resistance is to have Lenovo unblock that BIOS setting, which amounts to changing one line of code, or 15 minutes of one engineer's time.
Different divisions doing different things. Intel is extremely interested in Linux for their HPC Itanium/Xeon range, moderately interested in Linux for other server and business hardware, as well as mobile; and Intel's consumer PC division doesn't give a fuck at all.
I guess I should go further: some vacuum cleaners have to have a ground connection in the hose, to try to discharge the dust. If they removed it for unrelated reasons, they probably lowered the overall quality of the product overall.
This vacuum had the most five-star reviews on Amazon, but then a minority of people started complaining and leaving one-star reviews, saying they were getting shocked.
The reactions from the fanboy crowd were non-sympathetic ("you're imagining it," "it's just static," etc.), and they mass downvoted every one-star review. Some of the people claimed they were getting shocked PRETTY HARD, too, as in it knocked them over. IIRC, even Shark responded saying that it was impossible for the vacuum to shock you.
I remember seeing this while looking at vacuums for my elderly mother who has a heart condition. To the electrical engineer in me, everything made sense!
I started defending every single one-star reviewer person, and I wrote my own very detailed review with photos of the handle. Soon, the tide turned, and more people started upvoting my review than downvoting it; and I even received personal "thank you" messages from the people who got shocked ("finally someone believes me").
It eventually got to the point where a year later in 2014, Shark released an updated model with no more metal strip. Seeing this, I bought the new model for my mother. I'd like to think I can give myself SOME credit for causing them to do that.
Not only that, the upvotes from that alone were a good part of the reason I became an Amazon Top Reviewer.