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> do we know some rogue process isnt vacuuming up your keystrokes? The standard for holding a belief isn't "can you prove it is not so?", but "on the balance o

> do we know some rogue process isnt vacuuming up your keystrokes? The standard for holding a belief isn't "can you prove it is not so?", but "on the balance of evidence, is it likely to be so?". If you believe everything you can't disprove, you'll hold an awful lot of bizarre and contradictory beliefs. In the past I have spent some time believing some things simply because I couldn't disprove them, it is not good for the soul.

lyu07282 1y ago
I think that was also the common approach to paranoia about your privacy pre-Snowden. But he kind of ended that discussion for many, although denial or ignorance is probably better for your soul indeed.
- jstanley 1y ago
  He didn't end the discussion, he presented evidence. When you receive updated evidence you should update your beliefs. He presented good evidence that big corporations are co-operating with the NSA, or something, but he didn't present any evidence at all that regular Linux distros are monitoring all your keystrokes. As far as I know.
  - lyu07282 1y ago
    To just wildly speculate about mass surveillance without evidence is just baseless conspiracy theories, you really have nothing to worry about. Hope that helps.
7373737373 1y ago
The fact that our currently popular operating systems don't enable users to trivially 'disprove' such possibilities really shows how shitty they all are
- madeofpalk 1y ago
  What is a way in which you could disprove this? How could you disprove that the Ubuntu ISO doesn’t do the same thing?
  - ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
    Well apart from monitoring network traffic, with Ubuntu you can examine the source code for anything that you don't trust or dive into what system calls an application makes by using "strace".
    - madeofpalk 1y ago
      How is this different for Windows? Can’t you monitor Windows network traffic as well? Does Ubuntu provide reproducible builds? How do you disprove that the source code isn’t for the thing that you’re downloading? The (not so) revealing thing here is that this isn’t a technical problem, but that Microsoft has just completely lost the trust of people.
      - ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
        Well you can try monitoring Windows network connections, but Microsoft do seem to love obfuscating it with connections to multiple different domains that they own. You can't even look at the Windows source code, so your question about reproducible builds seems to be moving the goalposts somewhat. Also, is there something like "strace" on Windows? Edit: just looked it up and Ubuntu doesn't enforce reproducible builds, although with their new "Monthly Snapshots", Canonical is moving towards reproducible build pipelines.
        Numerlor 1y ago
        What is Ubuntu's source code worth for when you download precompiled binaries without checking if they were built with that source code?
CoastalCoder 1y ago
> The standard for holding a belief isn't "can you prove it is not so?", but "on the balance of evidence, is it likely to be so?". IANAP, but I don't think everyone agrees with that framing. Epistemology is a big topic.
const_cast 1y ago
On a related note, not believing some things because you cannot prove them is a road to naivety. For me personally, based on the plethora of evidence given by other online platforms and applications, I think it's perfectly sane to assume that yes, your data is being slurped and logged. Maybe that's not a bad thing, maybe it is, but at this point I think that ship has sailed. Can I prove it? No, mostly because the manufacturers have specifically designed it in such a way to be unprovable.
- jstanley 1y ago
  > based on the plethora of evidence Yep, this is fine. I'm not saying "don't believe anything you can't prove". I'm saying "don't believe everything you can't disprove". Believe based on evidence, as you appear to be doing. Windows is spying on your use of System Settings? Good evidence. Linux process is spying on your keystrokes? No evidence.

lyu07282 1y ago

I think that was also the common approach to paranoia about your privacy pre-Snowden. But he kind of ended that discussion for many, although denial or ignorance is probably better for your soul indeed.

jstanley 1y ago
He didn't end the discussion, he presented evidence. When you receive updated evidence you should update your beliefs. He presented good evidence that big corporations are co-operating with the NSA, or something, but he didn't present any evidence at all that regular Linux distros are monitoring all your keystrokes. As far as I know.
- lyu07282 1y ago
  To just wildly speculate about mass surveillance without evidence is just baseless conspiracy theories, you really have nothing to worry about. Hope that helps.

7373737373 1y ago

The fact that our currently popular operating systems don't enable users to trivially 'disprove' such possibilities really shows how shitty they all are

madeofpalk 1y ago
What is a way in which you could disprove this? How could you disprove that the Ubuntu ISO doesn’t do the same thing?
- ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
  Well apart from monitoring network traffic, with Ubuntu you can examine the source code for anything that you don't trust or dive into what system calls an application makes by using "strace".
  - madeofpalk 1y ago
    How is this different for Windows? Can’t you monitor Windows network traffic as well? Does Ubuntu provide reproducible builds? How do you disprove that the source code isn’t for the thing that you’re downloading? The (not so) revealing thing here is that this isn’t a technical problem, but that Microsoft has just completely lost the trust of people.
    - ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
      Well you can try monitoring Windows network connections, but Microsoft do seem to love obfuscating it with connections to multiple different domains that they own. You can't even look at the Windows source code, so your question about reproducible builds seems to be moving the goalposts somewhat. Also, is there something like "strace" on Windows? Edit: just looked it up and Ubuntu doesn't enforce reproducible builds, although with their new "Monthly Snapshots", Canonical is moving towards reproducible build pipelines.
      - Numerlor 1y ago
        What is Ubuntu's source code worth for when you download precompiled binaries without checking if they were built with that source code?

CoastalCoder 1y ago

> The standard for holding a belief isn't "can you prove it is not so?", but "on the balance of evidence, is it likely to be so?". IANAP, but I don't think everyone agrees with that framing. Epistemology is a big topic.

const_cast 1y ago

On a related note, not believing some things because you cannot prove them is a road to naivety. For me personally, based on the plethora of evidence given by other online platforms and applications, I think it's perfectly sane to assume that yes, your data is being slurped and logged. Maybe that's not a bad thing, maybe it is, but at this point I think that ship has sailed. Can I prove it? No, mostly because the manufacturers have specifically designed it in such a way to be unprovable.

jstanley 1y ago
> based on the plethora of evidence Yep, this is fine. I'm not saying "don't believe anything you can't prove". I'm saying "don't believe everything you can't disprove". Believe based on evidence, as you appear to be doing. Windows is spying on your use of System Settings? Good evidence. Linux process is spying on your keystrokes? No evidence.