Quick Start, Episode 7: Crimes... And Felonies.

HP took a look at all the other Quick Start products and said "oh, we can do worse." They did.
 

Chapters:
00:00 Quickweb recap
04:02 Feature 1: QuickLook
09:15 QuickLook under the hood
15:30 What's an EFI application?
29:15 QuickLook in summary
29:50 Feature 2: Daystarter
32:27 Daystarter: A Horror Story
44:32 But why, though?
58:03 Outro

[CathodeRayDude]

(Spoilers below)

I would like to note that after publishing the video I've spoken to one firmware engineer, and read about a dozen posts from another (Matthew Garrett), and my takeaway is: no, the SMM has _not_ been left alone as it should be, it _has_ been leveraged for a bunch of reprehensible hacks by vendors who didn't want to do things the right way. But nothing on this level that I'm aware of. When I said "corporate bullshit, " I was referring to _what we see here, _ stuff in the vein of advertising, not solutions to some kind of genuine problem, and I don't _think_ the SMM's been abused for that. But honestly, at this point, nothing would shock me.

[klikini]

Your explanation at the end perfectly explains why every company remotely related to technology has shoved “AI” into their products: it’s the only thing they had left to add.

[Yasokuhl]

The idea of some CEO lugging around all his outlook data in unencrypted XML files in some random FAT32 partition is pretty funny to me

[rosly_yt]

The delta between the technical wizardry and tolerance for stupid, unneeded risk needed to pull off such a hack and the thing they used these things for is... stunning. It's like hacking the Pentagon to increase the default size of the mouse pointer. I love it.

[jacekm]

HP DayStarter is kinda like changing the laws of the universe to make your kettle boil 10 seconds faster. A show of eldritch power harnessed for an innocuous and very pointless purpose.

[crybernetics]

doing shit that sounds like the way you'd design an NSA backdoor into something to make a calendar app load 10 seconds faster has been such a bizarre recurring theme of this series.

[oasntet]

Dang that rant is 🌶. Solid, and spoken in the language of tech, a dialect so rarely interested in delivering rants that aren't 100% capital-L Libertarian. Great writing!

[BurritoVampire]

"Looked like a BOX for a GeForce 4." My god, perfect, accurate description. What was it with early 2000s computer marketing design, like what a wild time.

[avagromus]

As someone that works at HP the whole rant about an executive firing everyone until they find someone that blurs out the worst idea possible, it's soooo true! hahahahahaha

[johnn]

Listening to your point about middle management unsolving problems while I was at work scanning copies of pen and paper quarterly count sheets so my manager can manually input them felt awfully prophetic.

[MarcusTheDorkus]

Oh god. I just paused the game I was playing when CRD said it was running on the SMM shouted out "NO!" and sat here for a moment in shock. I felt some tears starting to build from the horror.

[rs]

The rant at the end was worth the whole watchtime. It reminded me of a rant Technology Connections made about toaster companies and why we can never expect innovative toasters ever again. Seems like the real boot-time-speedup was the executive bonuses we met along the way.

Regarding the pop-up at 50:48, I'd love to see a video on what you think PCs could and should be.

[FooneTuring]

Halfway through: "hah, this HP laptop is a silly hack!"
At the end: "AND THAT'S WHY WE MUST DESTROY CAPITALISM! WE HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT OUR CHAINS!"

Best tech video ever.

[ugh.idontwanna]

I didn't expect a video about a calendar viewer to be such a roller coaster of emotions. At one moment we're looking at a cute little UEFI app and getting fascinated by some seemingly impossible computer wizardry and the next moment we're feeling resentment over how this wizardry was achieved before finally getting hit with the ennui of late stage capitalism.

[Griwes]

Been a while since I laughed as hard as when you said "SMM". Wonderful, a rootkit that displays a calendar. Nothing could ever possibly go wrong with this.

[valshaped]

"HP put DayStarter in the goddamned System Management Mode."
That's a bucket of ice water to the face if I've ever heard one.

[Jacobhopkins]

“Bob is in hell, and he’s making it your problem.” Absolutely sent me.

[NigelMelanisticSmith]

The reveals in this series are scarier than any Black Mirror episode

[scott]

"Bob Needs A Bonus" should be the name of a recurring video series. Products that are defined or sold by one dumb feature that really didn't need to exist and has no real world benefit, but does anyways because, well, Bob Needs A Bonus. Or at the very least, make it a recurring phrase to describe such a thing.

[Klatchan]

I distinctly remember changing the boot splash of my Windows ME PC to very low quality pictures of Sonic. A turbonerd was born that day.