6 ms·

So... were Bloomberg just bare-face lying, then?

by Valmar 8y ago

okket 8y ago
IMHO overenthusiastic journalists got fed wrong/incomplete information. Also, every detail is plausible, but at whole, this scenario is just improbable. Details can be deceiving. For a prior incident, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BadBIOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BadBIOS
draugadrotten 8y ago
Kremlin surely is behind this psyOps attack to undermine the credibility of Western media. Trump. Both. China too. If Apple found no signs of hacking only tells us that their SIEM isn't good enough. This spy stuff is Inception IRL.
- okket 8y ago
  Sure. Completely unthinkable that journalists saw a "market moving" story [0] that passed the plausibility test in details, found some anonymous sources and went for it. [0] "Bloomberg News Pays Reporters More If Their Stories Move Markets" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18162440 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18162440
  - bsder 8y ago
    Sure, completely unthinkable that the NSA and big companies are attempting to cover up a story of hacking and surveillance. <rolls eyes> This story has been out less than 72 hours? Most of them over a weekend. Let's let the researchers get back to work today and start actually looking for physical evidence. Personally, I'm MORE worried with all the denials rather than less. If there was nothing to the story, I would expect Apple to say "We don't know anything about this" and then simply ignore the ongoing kerfuffle--especially on a weekend. The fact that they seem to be in full on PR mode at the highest levels on a weekend is somewhat worrying.
    - unilynx 8y ago
      Apple is trying to position itself as the only major tech company that keeps your data private, and this story threatens to undermine that story. So no surprise the PR department is full at work. What else would you expect them to do ?
      - okket 8y ago
        One thing I learned from this Bloomberg story is, that the human mind seems hardwired to prefer conspiracy theories over facts and is very bad at taking probabilities in account.
        dnomad 8y ago
        It's not the human mind, it's a particular ideology. What's at work here is an ideology that must find enemies, the more heinous the better, in order to justify its own heinous actions.
        ElBarto 8y ago
        We don't have facts here, just competing claims. From what I've read such attack would be possible, and I think that if it happened no-one would acknowledge it. This allegedly happened 3 years ago so no-one is going to find physical evidence anyway. They key is that it would be possible so the important thing here is for everyone to take appropriate defensive measures.
        okket 8y ago
        > We don't have facts here, just competing claims. This is not a case of competing claims. Believing that publicly traded companies would vehemently lie instead of keeping silence or use weasel words is essentially preferring conspiracy theories. Presenting such a case without hard, verifiable evidence is ludicrous and only works because many people are susceptible for a bad company/bad government conspiracy narrative.
        8y ago
- nil_pointer 8y ago
  This is a ridiculous theory.
T-A 8y ago
That would be insane. I can easily think of scenarios under which they were purposely fed false information, alternatively got the story mostly (but not quite) right, or got it right but put ongoing activities at risk by publishing now.
- dnomad 8y ago
  How would it be insane? This is a very common pattern. American media publishes outlandish stories and the only evidence is "anonymous sources" and highly partisan agents. Iraqi soldiers killed babies in incubators. Iraq has 10_000 aluminum tubes. Iran is arresting all its Jews. China has camps with millions of people imprisoned. The only thing insane about the whole affair is that no matter how many times it happens, virtually every time, Americans are quick to believe these reports and display virtually no skepticism. The problem isn't Bloomberg by any stretch of the imagination.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    > China has camps with millions of people imprisoned This appears to be actually true in Xinyang? > Iraq aluminium tubes https://www.ucsusa.org/center-for-science-and-democracy/scientific_integrity/abuses_of_science/a-to-z/aluminum-tubes-in-iraq.html https://www.ucsusa.org/center-for-science-and-democracy/scie... It appears that they did try to buy the tubes, and they could be used for nuclear weapons (that's why they were embargoed) - but the evidence did not support that interpretation of their purpose. A deeper point: journalism considers accurate reporting to be reporting that "X said Y" if X did, in fact, say Y. It does not consider itself bound to independently investigate the truth of that - indeed, attaching the reporters's assessment that the source is lying could be considered bias!
    - dnomad 8y ago
      > This appears to be actually true in Xinyang? According to what evidence? The entire story is based off remarks from an anonymous UN official on a random UN committee. [1] In classic style remarks from anonymous and highly partisan sources are repeated endlessly until they "become" true. There's absolutely zero concrete evidence that can be verified. The deeper point is that Americans are trapped inside a propaganda bubble. Their outlandish understanding of the world is based on nothing more than gossip repeated over and over by their press. It's no better than Russia; the only difference is that most Russians know full well what's going on and are very skeptical of such claims. On a deeper level I suspect Americans need to believe this nonsense, that there must be an external enemy to hate. It's not that they are deceived by the media, it's that they want to be deceived. [1] https://grayzoneproject.com/2018/08/23/un-did-not-report-china-internment-camps-uighur-muslims/ https://grayzoneproject.com/2018/08/23/un-did-not-report-chi...
est 8y ago
that depends on how you define "lying". Is telling partial truth lying? By combining multiple truth as one fabricated piece, is it lying?
- sorokod 8y ago
  > Is telling partial truth lying? Are we in kindergarten? Off course it is lying.
  - village-idiot 8y ago
    Lying requires intent. If I repeat a lie that I’m told, I’m merely being a dupe.
    - sorokod 8y ago
      Consciously repeating a lie requires intent. Consciously telling half truth requires intent.
      - village-idiot 8y ago
        Indeed. There’s a really weird gray area too where someone should know that it’s a lie, but doesn’t fact check because it’s too comfortable.
  - sorokod 8y ago
    So lets say Luke and I are troubleshooting a production issue. Luke and Chewbacca recently did some some work on the relevant parts of the code. I ask Luke: "Luke, this is really odd, didn't we ran the test suite and it passed without any problems?" And Luke says "we did and and it passed" knowing full well that Chewbacca marked some tests with #[ignore] annotation and one of those ignored tests covers the exact functionality that is now failing in production. I call telling partial truth intellectual dishonesty and for all practical purposes it is indistinguishable from lying.
- 4684499 8y ago
JustSomeNobody 8y ago
Why? Is this the only other possible explanation? They're a news agency. They claim to have 13 sources. If they found them to be credible, they wouldn't be lying by publishing this. Just wrong.

So... were Bloomberg just bare-face lying, then?

by Valmar 8y ago

So... were Bloomberg just bare-face lying, then?

IMHO overenthusiastic journalists got fed wrong/incomplete information. Also, every detail is plausible, but at whole, this scenario is just improbable. Details can be deceiving. For a prior incident, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BadBIOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BadBIOS

draugadrotten 8y ago

Kremlin surely is behind this psyOps attack to undermine the credibility of Western media. Trump. Both. China too. If Apple found no signs of hacking only tells us that their SIEM isn't good enough. This spy stuff is Inception IRL.

okket 8y ago
Sure. Completely unthinkable that journalists saw a "market moving" story [0] that passed the plausibility test in details, found some anonymous sources and went for it. [0] "Bloomberg News Pays Reporters More If Their Stories Move Markets" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18162440 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18162440
- bsder 8y ago
  Sure, completely unthinkable that the NSA and big companies are attempting to cover up a story of hacking and surveillance. <rolls eyes> This story has been out less than 72 hours? Most of them over a weekend. Let's let the researchers get back to work today and start actually looking for physical evidence. Personally, I'm MORE worried with all the denials rather than less. If there was nothing to the story, I would expect Apple to say "We don't know anything about this" and then simply ignore the ongoing kerfuffle--especially on a weekend. The fact that they seem to be in full on PR mode at the highest levels on a weekend is somewhat worrying.
  - unilynx 8y ago
    Apple is trying to position itself as the only major tech company that keeps your data private, and this story threatens to undermine that story. So no surprise the PR department is full at work. What else would you expect them to do ?
    - okket 8y ago
      One thing I learned from this Bloomberg story is, that the human mind seems hardwired to prefer conspiracy theories over facts and is very bad at taking probabilities in account.
      - dnomad 8y ago
        It's not the human mind, it's a particular ideology. What's at work here is an ideology that must find enemies, the more heinous the better, in order to justify its own heinous actions.
      - ElBarto 8y ago
        We don't have facts here, just competing claims. From what I've read such attack would be possible, and I think that if it happened no-one would acknowledge it. This allegedly happened 3 years ago so no-one is going to find physical evidence anyway. They key is that it would be possible so the important thing here is for everyone to take appropriate defensive measures.
        okket 8y ago
        > We don't have facts here, just competing claims. This is not a case of competing claims. Believing that publicly traded companies would vehemently lie instead of keeping silence or use weasel words is essentially preferring conspiracy theories. Presenting such a case without hard, verifiable evidence is ludicrous and only works because many people are susceptible for a bad company/bad government conspiracy narrative.
        8y ago
nil_pointer 8y ago
This is a ridiculous theory.

T-A 8y ago

That would be insane. I can easily think of scenarios under which they were purposely fed false information, alternatively got the story mostly (but not quite) right, or got it right but put ongoing activities at risk by publishing now.

dnomad 8y ago
How would it be insane? This is a very common pattern. American media publishes outlandish stories and the only evidence is "anonymous sources" and highly partisan agents. Iraqi soldiers killed babies in incubators. Iraq has 10_000 aluminum tubes. Iran is arresting all its Jews. China has camps with millions of people imprisoned. The only thing insane about the whole affair is that no matter how many times it happens, virtually every time, Americans are quick to believe these reports and display virtually no skepticism. The problem isn't Bloomberg by any stretch of the imagination.
- pjc50 8y ago
  > China has camps with millions of people imprisoned This appears to be actually true in Xinyang? > Iraq aluminium tubes https://www.ucsusa.org/center-for-science-and-democracy/scientific_integrity/abuses_of_science/a-to-z/aluminum-tubes-in-iraq.html https://www.ucsusa.org/center-for-science-and-democracy/scie... It appears that they did try to buy the tubes, and they could be used for nuclear weapons (that's why they were embargoed) - but the evidence did not support that interpretation of their purpose. A deeper point: journalism considers accurate reporting to be reporting that "X said Y" if X did, in fact, say Y. It does not consider itself bound to independently investigate the truth of that - indeed, attaching the reporters's assessment that the source is lying could be considered bias!
  - dnomad 8y ago
    > This appears to be actually true in Xinyang? According to what evidence? The entire story is based off remarks from an anonymous UN official on a random UN committee. [1] In classic style remarks from anonymous and highly partisan sources are repeated endlessly until they "become" true. There's absolutely zero concrete evidence that can be verified. The deeper point is that Americans are trapped inside a propaganda bubble. Their outlandish understanding of the world is based on nothing more than gossip repeated over and over by their press. It's no better than Russia; the only difference is that most Russians know full well what's going on and are very skeptical of such claims. On a deeper level I suspect Americans need to believe this nonsense, that there must be an external enemy to hate. It's not that they are deceived by the media, it's that they want to be deceived. [1] https://grayzoneproject.com/2018/08/23/un-did-not-report-china-internment-camps-uighur-muslims/ https://grayzoneproject.com/2018/08/23/un-did-not-report-chi...

est 8y ago

that depends on how you define "lying". Is telling partial truth lying? By combining multiple truth as one fabricated piece, is it lying?

sorokod 8y ago
> Is telling partial truth lying? Are we in kindergarten? Off course it is lying.
- village-idiot 8y ago
  Lying requires intent. If I repeat a lie that I’m told, I’m merely being a dupe.
  - sorokod 8y ago
    Consciously repeating a lie requires intent. Consciously telling half truth requires intent.
    - village-idiot 8y ago
      Indeed. There’s a really weird gray area too where someone should know that it’s a lie, but doesn’t fact check because it’s too comfortable.
- sorokod 8y ago
  So lets say Luke and I are troubleshooting a production issue. Luke and Chewbacca recently did some some work on the relevant parts of the code. I ask Luke: "Luke, this is really odd, didn't we ran the test suite and it passed without any problems?" And Luke says "we did and and it passed" knowing full well that Chewbacca marked some tests with #[ignore] annotation and one of those ignored tests covers the exact functionality that is now failing in production. I call telling partial truth intellectual dishonesty and for all practical purposes it is indistinguishable from lying.
4684499 8y ago

JustSomeNobody 8y ago

Why? Is this the only other possible explanation? They're a news agency. They claim to have 13 sources. If they found them to be credible, they wouldn't be lying by publishing this. Just wrong.