Re: Is it custom firmware?
I work for a vendor who competes with HP and has ocasionally said rude things about their quality control, and this same question was raised internally. The information we received is that this issue is restricted to custom HP firmware only .. this does not make HP uniquely evil, most OEMs do extensive qualification against specific hardware / firmware levels and control updates of firmware via their own distribution process in case a firmware problem is detected (which is what HP is responsibly trying to do right now). My personal conjecture is that HP placed a counter in their firmware to track fleet age, possibly for QA tracking purposes, or possibly to make warrantee claims easier to validate. Either way someone made a mistake, and HP is trying their best to fix it. This isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened e.g. https://www.computerworld.com/article/2530543/complaints-flood-seagate-over-hard-drive-problems.html and it wont be the last, this time it is HP, next time it might be Dell, or Lenovo, or SuperMicro or whoever, so if you've done some basic sysadmin hygiene like registering your hardware and allowing it to send back telemetry to the vendor and action the "your system is at risk" emails they send you (instead of say, sending them to an email address for a sysadmin who left two years ago) you should be fine.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
