superbrama

I don’t know, but one would need to thoroughly audit the code to find out one way or another. One would not draw conclusions about the non-existence of such a feature just because they’ve made exterior measurements (exterior to the black box blob of fb code) that don’t give affirmative indication. Contrarily if the technique you described did uncover such surreptitious microphone activity, that might be a bit more conclusive.

(Hard to disprove until you’ve considered all ways it could occur, and reviewed each one, and even that leaves possibilities for mistakes in method or theory)

The viewpoint is that there’s no hard evidence such behavior occurs from their code, not that it couldn’t be the case (still). Maybe some revelation will come out but I’m not betting on it. Fb is too smart for that and their official explanation makes sense.

For those that “believe”, this lesson never gets old: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device) In this example, if your theory for locating a bug was based on the requirement of an electrical signal, you’d have missed such a bug entirely. Next to impossible therefore to disprove such a bug exists, if you can’t consider all of the ways in which it can exist. Hope that helps you on your mission to learn reverse engineering (a skill sadly missed in the USA throw it away culture)

Good reminder to always have an actively tested data and environment recovery plan.

This remark reeks of ignorance and classism.

Someone homeless for a long period of time is likely to have valid input on topics such as neo-socialism. Their views are arguably going to be more relevant than what you may be able to share (assuming you’ve never been homeless for any non trivial length of time nor spent a lot of time directly working with homeless folks).

Just pointing out that this is far from a conclusive invalidation technique. Too many ways such spyware could still exist or operate.

That’s not what’s happening. There’s no hard evidence and it’s not really a fair comparison between detecting government snooping on networks out of your control, versus a spyware mechanism hidden in plain sight, entirely in your pocket.

Nobody seems to be doubting the feasibility of building such spyware but rather are asking where’s the hard evidence and how could they get away with it (not legally necessarily but in terms of detection)?

Few question the feasibility of building a mechanism. The question is whether they’d try to hide any such mechanism in plain sight.

Native apps on a phone are not comparable to government spying on networks outside of your control. The attack vector in this case is entirely within the device in possession: the code, and interactions with the OS and hardware.

Entertaining the opposing view: If fb did build this, how is there no hard evidence of it? On iOS, their code is distributed via Apple, so they couldn’t doctor versions for specific users, and any attempt to build self modifying or self deleting mechanisms would be detected sooner or later for similar reasons.

Valid points but doesn’t address the basic idea that fb knows their code is widely scrutinized. If they process or transmit audio surreptitiously, or have done so, they’d be found out. Their app is so pervasive that it’s exceedingly unlikely that they’d be able to hide any such mechanism for long.

Not all people with such a belief are immutable in that view, nor are all conspiracy theorists.

There’s value in debunking a myth that seems plausible to the masses. In this case, the myth is plausible, and enough people without sufficient critical thinking skills believe it, therefore it’s worth debunking consistently at least within the tech community.

Thought experiment for both scenarios:

I’d guess that my emissions cheat code blob is “safe” since no one is looking. (That guess was wrong of course).

I’d guess that my fb app code, installed on billions of phones and scrutinized by researchers the world over isn’t going to be able to hide anything related to processing or transmitting speech recording surreptitiously.

Would they even take a chance on this with anyone knowing it’ll eventually be discovered or reverse engineered? Why not take their account at face value? (We’ve built AI that is so smart that it can predict your conversations).

Without hard evidence (speech processing code, or evidence of the recordings over the wire), it’s reasonable to take the official account at face value. Frankly that account is far creepier. They’ve built AI so smart that it knows what you’re talking about.

Think about it for a minute. Fb and others have so much data on people and have trained algos so well, even they don’t understand how they work so well. It’s not difficult to imagine this is the case; a computer, especially one with extensive data on the lifes, behaviors and thoughts of billions of people, is far smarter and better at predicting behavior than any human could.

Scary is that it’s just the beginning. I fall squarely into the alarmist camp on the AI issue. Not now, but in the long run. One can see how this scenario with the fb ad microphone spying paranoia thats actually 1 million IQ AI flexing its muscle is but the beginning of a slippery slope.

How does world peace/deterrence rely solely on the obviously aging USA triad?

What info do you have on adversarial capabilities beyond speculation and belief about their recent military expenditures?

Do you believe that the USA hasn’t considered your scenario already and put plans into place? Do you believe civilians would know the full extent of our nuclear capabilities?

Why do you believe China and Russia are possibly planning to disarm USA’s triad, and why do you believe they’d have the intelligence to do so? Something about leaks, the nsa, whistleblowers.. is there a connection here? Just speculating based on your notion that USA may be getting ganged up on by China and Russia.

Frankly your line of thought is valuable and worth exploring, and I’d like to see what info can be put on the table to explore your ideas further.

It’s fun to speculate and worthwhile to perform thought experiments. However, is there any basis for your theories regarding Russia/China and NK?

Also, why is it a only triad? Where’s space in all of this? Wouldn’t paranoid sociopathic policy makers with their inflated USA military budgets have already considered the scenarios you’ve described and put multiple contingency plans into place? Just asking.

To offer an alternative, I’d speculate that between USA, Russia and China, all three have privately advanced their own technology to maintain deterrence for the foreseeable future. Just pure speculation of course, I’m not a government employee nor do I have any clearance or special info. Just seems improbable that the USA hadn’t planned for a superpower or alliance trying to disarm all of their nuclear arsenal at once.

Thanks.

You’re really not in a position to speculate about someone’s mental health state.

Furthermore, the manner in which you’ve phrased your response is going to be counterproductive to the person to whom you’ve communicated your perception, at the least. You’re projecting your own social norms and worldview onto someone else in an ostracizing way.

This is actually a really telling microcosm, how you’ve decided to respond. It’s indicative of the chasm between people like you and the poster to whom you’ve responded, a chasm that goes beyond any simple assessment of a mental health condition, all the way to elucidating a fundamental issue with the manner in which mental health issues are identified and handled in society.

The way you’ve represented the other poster is that he is odd, unusual and that your way of thinking should be the majority consensus view (at least you hope so), and is the socially acceptable way. You’ve alienated the poster with your phrasing.

No your assessment isn’t insane; instead you’re visualizing how they’re related and it’s important to understand it.

CME does daily mark to market pricing so the futures price will always fall back in line with the “bitcoin index” which is based on the actual spot market.

CME futures typically close once daily for a brief time (each market has its own schedule) and price settlement (the price adjustment) occurs around that downtime. This is distinct from most btc exchanges which as far as I know, operate round the clock (could be wrong on that point, I don’t actively use various btc exchanges).

If someone were to sell a whole lot of futures and drive the futures market price way down relative to the spot market, another participant could then come in as a simultaneous buyer of the futures and seller of the spot market, pocketing the difference knowing the price will be marked to market daily. Such a natural force helps to keep the prices correlated in soft real time.

Beyond that you’re correct it’s just a way to gamble on the side :) nothing to do directly with real bitcoin

The one takeaway from futures trading is that you probably don’t have enough risk capital to do it right. Professionals use large risk capital bases and have access to better information. Retail traders who don’t know better sign disclosure forms then overutilize the generous performance bond requirements, mathematically ensuring most will perish.

This is probably the most practical takeaway that I can share with you, and it’s why they’re considered so risky. Leverage can kill.

Futures have something called open interest and an expiration. They come into existence because both a buyer and seller are willing to take opposing positions. When this happens, open interest increases correspondingly.

Let’s say you believe btc will rise and you bid to buy one CME futures btc contract at 42000. I am willing to sell (short since, let’s say, I don’t have any contracts to sell) at 42000 and we have now created the future contract out of thin air. Upon expiry money has changed hands between us daily (mark to market pricing) between our futures trading accounts (customer segregated funds at our respective clearing firms to be exact), and price was tied to the underlying (spot — the real btc market) price at all times.

All we did was bet against each other with the “score” being the actual btc price. The “cash settled” part means we don’t touch btc at all, we settle the bet between us in cash. If it sounds too obvious or if it seems like you’re missing something, you probably get it. It’s simple, and there are a lot of complexities underneath the surface (expiration months, cost of carry, contango and backwardation), but at the core it’s just a bet on the price with one party believing price will rise and other believing it will fall. Nothing less or more.

In practice there is interplay between futures and spot markets’ prices, and this opens up a can of worms about liquidity and how futures could be used to “stabilize” a commodity (read up on hunt brothers cornering the silver market for an example of govt intervention into a futures market)