No it can't tell--I'm sure they'd like to, the attitude is omniscience, infinite data for infinite perving looking for patterns. Like most patterns just aren't virtuous, like oh I can fuck them out of a few extra bucks if I bug them at 5 in the morning after a bad experience at small claims court. That's business intelligence. That's a pattern. Or another pattern, we get more signups after sending users "informative" messages terms of service have changed--it's actually a form of marketing, anything to nag and bug people with some minuscule link to the business and money that it craves for its tumescent growth aspirations. Otherwise it would be technological, like come up with actual useful knowledge that would actually be useful. Economists say in the long run all wealth and all progress comes down to technology. Technology is the only thing that matters.
But yeah it can tell it's in a VM because that's when it decides to crap its pants. By this point it's impossible to tell if bugs are intentional when they benefit the startup, there's a whole game in bugs, like no don't fix it it causes the user to lose his shit and give up and pay for this upgrade in the hopes that it all gets better.
There was one bug, yeah a bank bug I saw in Chile. So what this bug did is it fucked up printing the receipts after the user had paid and the bank machine said the transaction was approved. Employees would then insist the user hadn't paid because a receipt hadn't gone through. So the customer had to pay again--and the second time it always worked--double billing. Fucking stealing. Theft. MacDonald's at the SCL airport brazenly stole from me in exactly that way. And did that bug get fixed promptly? Ha...na let it be a little longer, it's not a high priority. It's...not urgent. Fix it next quarter, it's too difficult.
You can't assume good faith in software as it's delivered.
But yeah it can tell it's in a VM because that's when it decides to crap its pants. By this point it's impossible to tell if bugs are intentional when they benefit the startup, there's a whole game in bugs, like no don't fix it it causes the user to lose his shit and give up and pay for this upgrade in the hopes that it all gets better.
There was one bug, yeah a bank bug I saw in Chile. So what this bug did is it fucked up printing the receipts after the user had paid and the bank machine said the transaction was approved. Employees would then insist the user hadn't paid because a receipt hadn't gone through. So the customer had to pay again--and the second time it always worked--double billing. Fucking stealing. Theft. MacDonald's at the SCL airport brazenly stole from me in exactly that way. And did that bug get fixed promptly? Ha...na let it be a little longer, it's not a high priority. It's...not urgent. Fix it next quarter, it's too difficult.
You can't assume good faith in software as it's delivered.