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from the move-along-nothing-to-see-here dept.
Lagg writes:
"We're in a climate where it's easy to accuse a company of spying on you by various means with a distinct possibility that you could be right, but sometimes a reality check is needed. A Reddit user recently posted a thread accusing Valve of writing code for VAC that iterates your DNS cache and sends the hashed entries to their server. The proof provided of this was a prettied disassembly (that was not easily reproducible due to how VAC loads symbols) that showed only that VAC was indeed iterating the DNS cache, which any knowledgeable programmer understands is not exactly an uncommon thing to do, as no socket code was to be seen. Today, Gabe Newell responded to these allegations by confirming that no they do not in fact snoop your cache entries.
There are probably a few things to learn from this, including not trusting a screenshot of code that looks complex without actually understanding what it's doing. A lack of any level-headed investigation is a bad idea and it's important to handle these situations before they snowball into a mob (as Redditors are bound to do)."
(Score: 5, Informative) by Khyber on Tuesday February 18 2014, @05:06AM
People take ANY scrap of information and run with it on that site. It's shameful.
Destroying Semiconductors With Style Since 2008, and scaring you ill-educated fools since 2013.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Statecraftsman on Tuesday February 18 2014, @05:11AM
To be fair the moderation system there is more geared to speed than accuracy. Loving this place already!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mrbluze on Tuesday February 18 2014, @05:19AM
It also shows how easy it is to smear an individual or company with no evidence. Doesn't matter if it's complete garbage, some of the stuff will stick anyway.
Do it yourself, 'cause no one else will do it yourself.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by dry on Tuesday February 18 2014, @05:44AM
This is also partially what has broken democracy. Politicians repeat lies about each other until they're believed.
(Score: 1) by ableal on Tuesday February 18 2014, @09:16AM
> Doesn't matter if it's complete garbage, some of the stuff will stick
Reminded me of the French "Calomniez, calomniez, il en restera toujours quelque chose", which seems to go back to a medieval Latin saying noted by Francis Bacon: Audaciter calomniare semper aliquid haeret
To be fair, this instance seems more a case of "a scalded cat fears cold water" ;-)
(Score: 2, Informative) by Sir Garlon on Tuesday February 18 2014, @01:27PM
That's called confirmation bias. You see it all over the place in comments here: "the government is evil." "Corporations are evil." If that's what you're predisposed to believe, that's what you want to hear.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 5, Informative) by GeminiDomino on Tuesday February 18 2014, @01:36PM
It also shows how easy it is to smear an individual or company with no evidence
Or how easy it is to absolve them even if they don't deserve it. Breaking with tradition, I actually read his response, and of course, TFS is full of crap. What Newell confirmed was that VAC does check your cache entries, if a suspected cheat is found, to identify "cheat DRM servers."
VAC checked for the presence of these cheats. If they were detected VAC then checked to see which cheat DRM server was being contacted. This second check was done by looking for a partial match to those (non-web) cheat DRM servers in the DNS cache.
So the code does what it was said to do, which is hardly "no evidence." Sadly, it looks like the almost Apple-like fervor people have for a scummy DRM system isn't one of the relics we'll be leaving behind for Dice to deal with.
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
(Score: 1) by GeminiDomino on Tuesday February 18 2014, @01:43PM
Aaand, quote tags don't work.
NB, for anyone not reading in threaded mode: The first line of my previous post was quoted (or supposed to be) from the post it was responding to. The rest is me.
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
(Score: 2, Informative) by GeminiDomino on Tuesday February 18 2014, @01:50PM
Correction: Paragraphs 2 and 4 are me, 1 is the post I was replying to, and 3 was a quote from Newell's response.
I'm done posting until I get some magic brain juice in me.
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
(Score: 1) by Lagg on Tuesday February 18 2014, @02:50PM
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 1) by GeminiDomino on Tuesday February 18 2014, @03:12PM
Whether or not quibbling over definitions of "snooping" qualifies as "objective" is low priority right now.
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2014, @10:04PM
The summary is actually accurate. The poster used a double negative.
(Score: 1) by Angry Jesus on Tuesday February 18 2014, @06:11AM
People take ANY scrap of information and run with it on that site. It's shameful.
I wonder how much having such a crummy moderation system plays into it.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2014, @06:23AM
They cannot help it that they are on an inferior site with inferior technologies and inferior user base, cut them some slack not all SysAdmin's know how to set up slash code.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by isostatic on Tuesday February 18 2014, @09:08AM
(Disclaimer, I work in the "lame stream media")
This is why I get so annoyed by people saying "we don't need the news, we've got twitter"
Now don't get me wrong, news, especially 24 hour news, runs with rubbish too, but there is at least a little bit of fact checking behind it. The news machine does employ knowledgeable, dependable correspondents, who do tend to filter rumour. When I was in the office in Bangkok recently, I heard a lot of stuff coming in about the protests, which was later reported on twitter, but not reported by us. A couple of days later it was proven that the rumour was a load of rubbish.
Breaking news: A greater than B!
Then 12 hours later
Breaking news: A not greater than B!
(Score: 1) by cormacus on Tuesday February 18 2014, @07:51PM
I think the perception that the 24-hour news cycle doesn't in fact do any better fact checking than people microblogging on Twitter is one of the main drivers behind that statement ("I don't need the news, I have Twitter")
(Score: 1) by isostatic on Tuesday February 18 2014, @11:05PM
Sure, there's a perception, but certainly in my organisation it's really not true, and from the limited first hand, and greater second hand, experience it's not true for a lot of the competition. Certainly not foreign news (where I work)
(Score: 0) by omoc on Tuesday February 18 2014, @06:11PM
I will use this story to remove every news site that run this as legit from my daily reading. It's a good example to prove or disprove "quality" sites
(Score: 1) by Khyber on Tuesday February 18 2014, @10:51PM
I must disagree with that. Reddit does have its strong points, in the areas where knowledgeable people reside. Sadly, those points between them and us overlap very heavily, so we either have to get their attention or lose that rank with how we run this site.
But, in reality, I don't see in a statistical sense some estimated 60,000 others coming over to us. We might get 1,000 if we're lucky.
Destroying Semiconductors With Style Since 2008, and scaring you ill-educated fools since 2013.
(Score: 1) by omoc on Wednesday February 19 2014, @06:06AM
What are you talking about? I was talking about serious news sites, *not* about Reddit. Reddit cannot run anything as legit as content is user submitted. Your comment does not make any sense whatsoever.