+1 for http://www.kaleidoscopeapp.com and their other similar designed pages/apps. Beautiful, artistic and original vs. the same old same bootstrap seen that 100 times type of design that is flooding this thread & the web.
Yeah, I expect we'll have a few more openings there. Right now we're hiring a City Manager for Westminster - details are here: http://www.tucows.com/careers/
For me and others close to me anti-depressants proved to be a joke/a placebo.
I was on five to six different drugs to cure an odd social anxiety, that went away as I got older and grew more comfortable in my skin. How in the world can a drug cure an odd internal social behavior that leads one to feel anxious/uncomfortable? Answer for me is .. it can't.
Another example being my g/f. We started dating six years ago and up until a year ago she had been on 4 different anti-depressants each year. Her doctors would say oh that one isn't working lets try this one and so on. Finally she realized this stuff isn't helpful, what's the point?
For those it has helped that's good to hear, but for me, my g/f and many others I know... these drugs are just lining the pockets of the drug companies.
> How in the world can a drug cure an odd internal social behavior that leads one to feel anxious/uncomfortable?
I'm sorry the drugs didn't help you, and I'm glad you got better regardless. Please don't talk like drugs helping with social anxiety is absurd on the face of it, because it isn't.
> up until a year ago she had been on 4 different anti-depressants each year. Her doctors would say oh that one isn't working lets try this one and so on.
What would you rather they do? Say "can't be fixed, tough shit?" Say "I don't care that it's not working, you have to keep taking it?"
As long as you keep asking a doctor for solutions, they will keep doing their best to provide one. For some people the first drug tried works; for some people it takes a few tries to find the right one; some people never find a solution. It's not simple and satisfying like we'd prefer, but it's how medicine works. It's how a lot of things work.
> How in the world can a drug cure an odd internal social behavior that leads one to feel anxious/uncomfortable? Answer for me is .. it can't.
I can't tell you how, but I can tell you that they do. A friend of mine went to the psychiatrist with a case of social anxiety and after the second or third drug they tried, the problem disappeared. Poof. Like that. With all the somatic effects he had.
So whatever he got in the end, eventually worked. But this is how it works with psychiatric mediation - people have a lot of different responses to drugs and doctors can't predict them in advance, so initially the therapy is mostly matching drug to patient.
Anti-depressants didn't ever do anything for me, either. Although I suspect that the only anxiety attack I've ever had could very well have been caused by them.
In his awesome book Bad Pharma, Ben Goldacre also hints that the link between depression and serotonin levels is not very well established. For those of you that don't know, Ben Goldacre is not some quack that pretends that science is wrong or something like that; in fact, what he asks for is precisely more rigorous science (specifically, more rigorous medical trials, all made public).
On the other hand, apparently there are a lot of people who have had a measurable level of benefit. My non-educated hypothesis is that there are several causes of depression and serotonin levels may be only one of them.
It's probably best to view depression as a symptom. It could have several immediate causes (i.e. the physical processes that make you feel that way) as well as many other root causes (i.e. what leads your body to be in the state that is causing you to feel depressed).
Is there a scientific study pointing to this being a cause for sustained bipolar disorder?
It's true that some antidepressants tend to shoot a bit over the target, but that can be easily taken into account. One such "manic episode", which isn't really called as such because it is drug-induced, doesn't make a bipolar disorder.
This is nice to see and is a step to breaking down the ivy league snob high school mentality that Ive experienced with some VCs.
Case in point a VC whose east coast venture recently imploded was speaking at a conference. After the conference ended entrepreneurs started to approach and pitch him. He acted like he was king crap and he didn't to be bothered by entrepreneurs, but umm that's what he signed on for. He even later made a rude remark on Twitter about an entrepreneur he just met(didn't name names).
VCs like him... please get over yourself, be humble/nice and don't be D*&K! Because one day like the VC I noted above, your on cloud 9 and the next you look like a fool/complete failure in front of the community!
I'm in slightly similar situation in terms of speaking out against a huge firm in the Valley. This firm found out about my east coast start-up and invited us to demo our novel technology. They made promises of buying it for lots of money. Well we flew out there and it was a nightmare, as we were treated like dogs and or worse.
There is a ton of bad behavior going on in this industry and I have pondered whether or not to write about our experience as a warning to all other start-uppers/innovators. I've been going back and forth on whether or not to come out and say who the company is and those who scammed us out of our technology. Though will doing such make me look bad, when the narrative is Silicon Valley companies are no friend to the little guys with no connections!?!
He divulged sensitive U.S. documents and information that now bad actors use to exploit/harm the US. Further, he knew what he was doing was against the law and ran as far away as he could to avoid facing the consequences(Bradley, now Chelsea Manning as far as I know didnt run like a coward). Now he's a pawn between Russia and US relations.
The information he divulged that we are being watched by our govt. was nothing knew. It was information publicly known back in 2006.
He disclosed evidence of wrongdoing and illegal activity by the NSA, making him a whistleblower.
He ran away to avoid the extrajudicial punishment Chelsea Manning experienced - years of pre-trial solitary confinement with such privileges as clothing being arbitrarily revoked.
You can't say that the information he divulged was both known and sensitive without being pretty laughable, by the way.
In 2006 I recall seeing reports of the NSA's activities. Back then it didn't go into all the details that he later divulged.
Further, all those small details are now being exploited against the US by bad actors. I know this via someone who works in cyber security for the Govt.
Obviously I hold the unpopular opinion here, as most dudes 18 to 40 in tech circles exalt him as a hero.
>He disclosed evidence of wrongdoing and illegal activity by the NSA, making him a whistleblower.
The only illegal things he disclosed was that some NSA agents/employees illegally used their tools to track ex-gfs and stuff.
All the rest is completely legal. The country had a public debating about warrantless wiretaps and congress wrote laws about it. The NSA follows those laws.
He released the information because he had a political problem with them. That cannot be allowed. I wouldn't call it traitorous, but it was a massive violation of state secrecy laws.
Though, some of his actions since are at least flirting with traitorous behavior. He has released information about US spying on other governments. What the fuck did he think the NSA did? That was its raison d'être.
I haven't read the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board report so I can't comment other than to say it is merely a government policy board. The DOJ fully supports the NSA.
But 15 Federal district court judges have approved the NSA actions as part of the FISA courts. That a single federal district court disagrees isn't a huge deal.
The third party doctrine is very clear. Records about you do not carry a reasonable expectation of privacy. The judge who ruled against the NSA wants to change the law. Maybe the courts will change the law. SCOTUS has disfavored mass surveillance tactics in the recent past.
> That a single federal district court disagrees isn't a huge deal.
Sure it is - that sort of disagreement makes it unsettled law, which is where SCOTUS steps in. Last year they (thankfully) ruled that cell phones can't be searched in most circumstances without a warrant, and I'd expect at least a few of the numerous suits that popped up in the wake of the Snowden leaks to wind their way to Court eventually.
Right now, large parts of the NSA's actions are of disputed legality. We'll see what the justices say.
> Sure it is - that sort of disagreement makes it unsettled law, which is where SCOTUS steps in.
The SCOTUS is more likely to take a case where there is a split in the case law among the federal circuit courts (appellate courts). A split among federal district courts (trial courts) does not really have much significance.
If the state wants it to be so, it will be legal. The holocaust was legal. Segregation was legal. Stop mentioning legality of the NSA spying; the government writes the laws for their own benefit, of course what they do is legal.
Legality of government actions is utterly, brutally, critically, inhospitably irrelevant when compared to what is ethical. A dragnet isn't ethical. A police state isn't ethical.
Furthermore, there wasn't ever a public debate over whether people wanted the dragnet or not-- it was done in secret, then exposed, then legalized after it was exposed to the public, regardless of any public comment for or against it.
As far as "political problems" go, I'd say we all should have major political problems with the government of the US, which hasn't thought twice about breaking all of its own "rules" about the privacy, civil, or human rights of citizens.
I agree morality and legality aren't the same thing. But we cannot have a personal morality exception to classified materials.
I'm sure many people who work for the Department of Defense think the Iranian Nuclear deal is wrong. Should they be able to leak a bunch of classified information to sour it? I'm sure they'd believe making peace with, in their minds, genocidal maniacs with nukes is completely immoral.
>Furthermore, there wasn't ever a public debate over whether people wanted the dragnet or not-- it was done in secret, then exposed, then legalized after it was exposed to the public, regardless of any public comment for or against it.
Were you born the day before Snowden leaked? We've been having §215 arguments since the day the Patriot Act passed. It's been debated in Congress every time the Patriot Act comes up for re-approval.
Congress has a large debate about FISA and warrent-less wiretaps every year from 2006-2008, with amendments to the FISA act ever time.
Congress is a manifestation of the will of the people on the United States. You might be pissed off about what they do on our behalf but we elect them.
You may think it was moral to leak, but that isn't germane.
We can, should, do, and must continue to have a strong and overriding sense of personal morality when dealing with government-- "just following orders" is not, has not, should not, and will never be an acceptable response to government wrongdoing as committed by the people who make up the organs of the government.
Without Snowden, Ellsberg, Drake, Binney, Manning, and the other leakers, we would still be completely and utterly in the dark about most of the malicious things our government is doing. It is solely by these people's sense of moral agency that the wrongdoings came to light! If we left it up to the government to regulate itself within the rules, we would absolutely never have any kind of citizens oversight specifically because they make their own set of rules, and those rules include keeping us in the dark for the purposes of making things run smoother.
As far as claiming there was some kind of debate over the dragnet-- no, some representatives quibbling about the wording from time to time does not count as citizen oversight. The representatives didn't even know how deep the NSA rabbit hole went. They didn't even understand the interpretations of the Patriot act that were being used to justify the spying. They were almost as clueless as we were. So no, there was no debate, no oversight, no way for the citizenry to say "stop" before the fact, and so far, no listening to their cries after the fact.
You may bring up the FISA and warrantless wiretaps, but it's kind of a stupid thing to say: the FISA court is a rubber stamp body, approving well in excess of 95% of requests that come before it. Nevermind that the citizens have no oversight over the court, since it's held in secret, with unelected members. Nevermind that a democracy shouldn't have a secret court system.
It was a moral necessity to leak, it isn't germane to talk about legality in the context of morality. We either have leakers, or we're passengers to the system, which doesn't sound like a democracy to me.
You should have a strong and overriding sense of personal morality when dealing with government, but you should also keep in mind that your opinion is not the only one that counts, nor is your personal moral code necessarily "right". Democracy means that we must accept the will of the majority even when it conflicts with our own beliefs, even if history ends up judging us right and everyone else to be wrong. That's just part of living in a cooperative society.
As the GP comment pointed out, people knew about these NSA programs in particular before Snowden. I certainly did. Just because you weren't paying attention to these issues until they were attached to a charismatic personality doesn't mean that no one else had any knowledge of them.
Congress did indeed debate the details of the Patriot Act. Once again, just because you find it boring to watch CSPAN doesn't mean that the issues weren't debated in open forum. You're conflating your lack of awareness with a secrecy that didn't exist.
The FISA court operates how it's supposed to. It approves the majority of requests because prosecutors can thoroughly evaluate each case before bringing it before the court. They approve everything because prosecutors can request that cases be strengthened before they're even presented.
The bottom line here is that all branches of the government approved of these programs. That's how our system works. If you don't like it then propose a new system, potentially one where every decision has to live up to your personal moral code of righteousness. Until then, we'll stick with doing the best that we can to make the right decisions using the process outlined in the constitution.
> The FISA court operates how it's supposed to. It approves the majority of requests because prosecutors can thoroughly evaluate each case before bringing it before the court. They approve everything because prosecutors can request that cases be strengthened before they're even presented.
Prosecutors can do that for non-secret courts, too, yet their requests are often denied. It's very unlikely that prosecutors take special extraordinary measures to never present a mediocre case to the court.
At the very least, I'd like to see vetted, security-cleared lawyers from the ACLU/EFF/etc. permitted to play the adversarial role found pretty much everywhere else in our legal system.
There is a vast difference between not accepting "just following orders" as a defense for crimes against humanity and allowing people to spill state secrets when it is against their politics.
If Snowden didn't want to be involved in the NSA, he could have quit.
But like I said, you can't let individuals determine government policy by themselves. Otherwise we'd have no ability to keep information classified.
You can come up with a hypothetical that would justify leaking confidential materials, but I would strongly disagree that Snowden or Manning meet that standard.
If Snowden leaked that the US had an extermination camp, yea I'd support him. But the NSA surveillance programs are nothing like that.
The NSA isn't doing something that completely shocks the worlds conscience. The are following the laws Congress wrote for them. Snowden and other civil libertarians are outraged, but so what. You don't get to declassify stuff because it is against your politics.
The law shouldn't and doesn't give you cover for that sort of political action. How could it? Can a pro-peace activist leak military plans? Can a pro-Palestine activist leak Israeli diplomatic cables?
The standard can't just be "one guys thinks this is immoral."
>You may bring up the FISA and warrantless wiretaps, but it's kind of a stupid thing to say: the FISA court is a rubber stamp body, approving well in excess of 95% of requests that come before it. Nevermind that the citizens have no oversight over the court, since it's held in secret, with unelected members. Nevermind that a democracy shouldn't have a secret court system.
Nobody ever has oversight over courts, directly. They are unelected on purpose to protect them from political bias. The People have oversight by writing the laws. If the People don't want FISA courts, ban them.
No warrant proceeding is in open court. You get a magistrate judge to issue you one in private.
As to 95%, that could just as easily be evidence that the DOJ is only requesting warrants in situations that are legitimate. Recall that they are only handing out ~3000 a year (probably many against the same person and many against foreigners). So it isn't like the DOJ is doing this in a dragnet fashion. Also, the FISA court requires substantive revisions of about 25% of those it approves.
The 95% rate is easily just proof that the government isn't abusing the system.
I see that your heart is set on being stuck to upholding the "laws" that make up our system of government while steadfastly ignoring the entire "laws are made for the benefit of the powerful and subject to change based upon convenience" reality we live in. To reiterate, this isn't some small-time debate about whether "leaking confidential files" is "legal" or not, but rather a debate about whether the public has the right to know what the government is doing. The public does, in fact, have a right to know what the government is doing in their name. Snowden and whistleblowers need to exist in the current configuration of the government, which favors secrecy because they fear the public's reaction to their bad deeds.
One last try: Snowden leaked information which tells us that the NSA effectively has the power to blackmail anyone in the US or elsewhere. Via whistleblower Russ Tice we know that the NSA was spying on Obama starting from 2004. Anything Obama has done, the NSA has known. Doesn't that seem like it creates an avenue for major abuse?
This sure seems like a backdoor to democracy which would justify letting the members of the democracy know, right? Or is it still more important to maintain confidential materials when the materials show that democracy has a workaround via surveillance?
> Were you born the day before Snowden leaked? We've been having §215 arguments since the day the Patriot Act passed. It's been debated in Congress every time the Patriot Act comes up for re-approval. Congress is a manifestation of the will of the people on the United States. You might be pissed off about what they do on our behalf but we elect them.
The Snowden leaks made it clear that statements given to Congress by James Clapper were false. If we want Congress to act on our behalf, they must be able to regulate these agencies.
The PATRIOT Act and Section 215 has been controversial since way before 2006. You might remember the whole argument that the FBI could collect everyone's library records and look for people reading subversive books.
This article is dated February 15th, 2002, and one of its references is a now dead link to an article entitled "Library computers targeted in terrorism investigation" from the Sun Sentinel dated September 18, 2001.
Much of what he released was unknown to the public. I think that his stated purpose was to enable and spur public debate on those previously unknown practices.
The metadata wasn't disclosed, but the NSA was doing warrant-less wiretapping during the Bush administration without even any oversite from FISA courts.
The only real surprise to me was the metadata they were using.
But even then we knew about §215 of the patriot act.
Do you have any evidence that the articles published from the disclosures he's made have made people less safe? I think many of us had a little Truman Show-esque paranoia, especially regarding the Internet, but that paranoia wasn't widely considered credible until after his disclosures. We certainly weren't having a public discourse about the legitimacy of the US intentionally compromising SSL or hacking into our private communication en masse in 2006.
He's more controversial than exalted. Snowden did an interesting interview last weekend with the comedian John Oliver which showed the public's perception of Snowden and the information he revealed. A lot of people aren't aware of him or not very familiar with what he did. But given the types of information collected, people weren't too happy about it when they learned what could be collected.
Pardon I witnessed the World Trade Center fall right in front of my eyes. I don't want to witness that again ... let me know your watching my every move and I'm fine with it! I don't want to witness the same type of tragedy again and I have nothing to hide. I am a law abiding citizen.
This is cool to see(congrats to them), as I too have had interactions with the founders when they first started. Just looking at a few emails we exchanged and thinking why I haven't I reached the same level of success when I've had a ton of great serendipitous moments/opportunities to seize.
It all boils down to pretty much being a solo founder. I always hired or found code monkeys to help turn my front end coded designs/ideas into a working product. None of these coders cared the same 500% percent I do for my start-ups. I.E. In December a Fortune 500 company wanted to become our client and I wanted to make this happen. I wasn't sure if I should make this company sign a licensing agreement or not. An advisers said they should, though I wasn't sure and wish I had a co-founder who cared as much as I do to discuss this decision with. It was a turning point for my start-up and the deal ultimately fell through (crushing).
Having a team/co-founders that are vested the same 500% is utmost important. Especially, if your not a schmoozer with tons of charisma and or a unicorn with great luck!
