this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2024
93 points (100.0% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35807 readers
174 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

For example I don't know if a cheap mini PC like the GMKtec G5 would be more likely to have firmware/driver related security flaws over a more standard PC like an older Dell Optiplex from Staples.

Maybe there is something else entirely I am overlooking. I'm not sure. Most of the complaints I've heard are in regards to mini PCs containing bloat and potentially malicious things installed.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world 15 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

It's hard to tell.

You install your own windows? Do you really know if the pre-installed windows gets deleted?

You install your own linux? There is still the BIOS that could carry some unwanted "evil" software.

Then there is the possibility of unwanted "evil" hardware or firmware parts inside some of the chips...

[–] Kelly@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You install your own windows? Do you really know if the pre-installed windows gets deleted?

This one seems to be easy to manage. Formatting the disc seems easy to do.

[–] viking@infosec.pub 1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Deleting all existing partitions via the installer is already enough. Once a new partition is created, all files are essentially wiped.

[–] Kelly@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

Sure, repartitioning works too.

[–] NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Once a new partition is created, all files are essentially wiped.

Partitioning does not wipe things.

It rewrites the partition tables, obviously, but no data elsewhere.

[–] viking@infosec.pub 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That's why I said "essentially". The data is no longer accessible by the system, which is all that's needed to prevent malicious files from being executed.

[–] NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

is all that's needed to prevent malicious files

Hmmm. So why do tools for "safe erase" even exist? ;-)