Technical, not legal, constraints determine the scope of U.S. government surveillance.

Recent revelations about the extent of surveillance by the U.S. National Security Agency come as no surprise to those with a technical background in the workings of digital communications. Dramatically expanded, highly efficient surveillance programs are predictable given the increased use of digital communication and cloud services—and America’s outdated privacy laws. Our national discussion must take into account the extent to which technology has made surveillance easier and cheaper than ever before.

Improved technology enabled the NSA’s mass surveillance programs. Future improvements will make collecting data on citizens easier and easier.

Recent revelations about the extent of surveillance by the U.S. National Security Agency come as no surprise to those with a technical background in the workings of digital communications. The leaked documents show how the NSA has taken advantage of the increased use of digital communications and cloud services, coupled with outdated privacy laws, to expand and streamline their surveillance programs. This is a predictable response to the shrinking cost and growing efficiency of surveillance brought about by new technology. The extent to which technology has reduced the time and cost necessary to conduct surveillance should play an important role in our national discussion of this issue.

Are here! I've been using them quite a while here on CSS-Tricks and I'm a big fan.

Direct Link to Article — Permalink

Hoefler & Frere-Jones Web Fonts is a post from CSS-Tricks

This is a play-by-play screencast of me moving a component out of SSToolkit into its own library. I cover setting up a good open source component, writing Core Graphics drawing code, a bit of low-level C stuff, and some of my workflow.

You can find the code so far for this on GitHub: github.com/soffes/SAMGradientView We’ll be adding a lot more in part 2.

Here are some things I mentioned:

• SSToolkit: sstoolk.it
• SAMBadgeView: github.com/soffes/SAMBadgeView
• Three20: github.com/facebook/three20
• NimbusKit: nimbuskit.info
• My blog post on ARC: sam.roon.io/automatic-reference-counting

Also note, this video is to give you a sense of how I work and hopefully teach you stuff along the way. There are a few edits. Mainly to save you time. I cut out about 12 minutes of me wasting time. There wasn’t anything of value you missed out on I promise. I’m just looking out for your time

I’d really love some feedback. Leave a comment here or tweet me at @soffes on Twitter.

The post Setting Up Open Source and Live Coding with Sam Soffes – Part 1 appeared first on Treehouse Blog.

I’ve been working on a project called Monocle these past few weeks, and it’s time to show it to the world.

Monocle is an experiment in creating a friendly and intelligent community around sharing quality content with a focus on technology, startups and frankly anything that appeals to the inquisitive mind.

Philosophy

Over the next few weeks I’m going to be writing about the more interesting aspects to Monocle, but for now I want to talk about the motivations behind it.

The motivation for developing Monocle was to create a friendly and safe place for ideas and feedback. Criticism is kept to the constructive variety, and social accountability is provided by linking your Twitter or GitHub accounts.

There can be too much negativity in the tech community. It seems the average response to someone out on a limb, showcasing their latest idea or startup, is one of snark and derision. That is no way to foster an entrepreneurial spirit. Monocle is an attempt to remedy that.

Implementation

When an article is added, a summary of the content and an image is pulled in. Speed is critical: search is practically instant, posts are pre-loaded and pages pre-rendered. There are keyboard shortcuts for practically everything (press shift + ? for help), and there’s also a mobile optimized version.

Monocle’s beautiful design is done by the talented Greg Cooper. The backend is all Sinatra, and the front-end uses a custom MVC framework and templating library.

Next

Users can post links, comment, and browse articles. For the moment, you need a beta invite to contribute, but everyone can read the content.

I’m incredibly excited about the direction Monocle is heading in. The key component is in its community, and I look forward to seeing it grow.

Check it out: http://monocle.io