Tuesday, July 30, 2013

My Kids Are Awesome

Here is what one of them is up to. From a TechCrunch article today.

Y Combinator-backed Floobits, a new startup allowing two people to write software at the same time on the same codebase — known as pair programming — is officially launching today to help better connect remote developers and distributed teams.  

What makes this company’s implementation interesting, however, is that instead of requiring developers to use a web-based editor as many pair programming solutions today do, Floobits users can pair program directly within the text editors they’re already comfortable using through the installation of plug-ins.  

And for those who do prefer to work via an online editor instead of a native one, Floobits has integrated its web-based editor with one-click access to Google Hangouts for chat, audio and video conferencing.

Floobits was officially founded this February by former Rackspace engineers Geoff Greer (who came in via the Cloudkick acquisition, and who built this) and Matt Kaniaris. But in reality, they’ve been working on the idea since last August — and yes, often via pair programming.

The ending makes it sound like Geoff and Matt aren't ready for prime time, but I know better.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

The future of cloud computing continues to darken. Today's news is perhaps the worst for business, and for a global, unbalkanized web.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data

Businesses and nations need a modicum of secure, controlled-access process. So far the debate has focused on individual privacy, but the NSA is proving that outside actors can observe development as it occurs on the web and presumably steal it.

Better concentrate on integrated crypto, and fight universal keys.

Tip: Hire Snowden. Dude needs a job, knows his code, and writes mean cipher.

Sporno said...

I'm sure the US would be happy to issue Snowden an H-1b.

I think to make crypto work you have to a) be a Snowden and b) have a simple transfer. Even then you call attention to your packets. I'm suspicious that the NSA didn't get a flag on Snowden to Greenwald.

Anyway, the immediate future is a human to human node. The Occupy experience already has even fully legal activists cognizant of this simple fact. Send an email and Ray Kelly's baton will find your head. The irony is Obama and China are forcing corporations to act like some sort of radical cell movement. Maybe Occupy protestors can get lucrative jobs as R&D communiication directors.

I know people can cite Osama's courier and al-Awlaki as human-human weakness, but look at the costs of the social hacks. Obama violated the Constitution in one case and gutted Pakistan's polio campaign on the other. The polio thing may have unitended blowback for us yet--why does the US want to maintain a polio pocket?

Vertical and horizontal balkanization is inevitable longterm . The corporations want it. They're building it. There will be many national firewalls, because China's is an advantage.

Remember when Bush said "the internets?"

Dude was a fricking visionary.

He's unemployed, and he can pass an I9.



Palantir Stoned said...

Encrypted may work better for individuals than on corporate computers with a built-in backdoor.

Unless, apparently, if you use a Dell. I'm not a hardware guy, what's up with that? I'm imagining some sort of firmware internal port or keymapper. The media have whiffed on that one. So far the NSA hacks seem personal hardware-neutral. Why Dell? Something about servers? Odd.

Forget China, that would be North Korea level shit.

Anyway, the best encrypted transfers the key human to human, it's a hybrid. Greenwald in Hong Kong.

Don't forget the noise to signal ratio, even for encrypted packets. Snowden only needed a few days headstart, anyway. The NSA obviously has its pretty little mouth on a firehose. The redacted lines in the verizon doc likely state the volume, though the statement would also indicate a gross Fourth Amendment violation. Hence the Sharpie.

I am quite sure Snowden is correct that he cannot give up his data under any circumstances. Not by himself at least. Once again egotists like Clapper and Alexander misunderestimate the power of humility and self-sacrifice. Snowden's hack was mainly psychological.

I note again the perfect timing of the latest release. Obama is now assigning the lying to anonymous officials (leakers!), but he still looks like a liar. Or a doofus. Low level analysts can't read your email or listen to your calls? Well, actually...

I agree the cloud takes a hit, but Geoff's idea would work as well in a secured parallel network. No worries. Internets, clouds.

Basically, Obama has created a much more complex world for the spies. Maybe we'll end up with more NSA rather than less.

But, the eye is falling off its pyramid, or its tower, pick your metaphor.

Samdumb Gangee said...

How can we have internets and clouds? Virtually, or does everyone lay their own sea cable.

I think we end up with the Russian foreign service: back to paper. Maybe images of code. Hollow heels with microfilm.

The net will be porn, amazon, and one weird trick to lose weight.

"IP's are like herpes, they were made to be shared."

Anonymous said...

Clapper has done for sexting what the clap did for sex.

Crypto Sporidium said...

Billions of dollars, a million employees, the destruction of the Constitution...for ONE case??

Why can't they get a warrant?

I'm not even saying a kangaroo Roberts-FISC warrant.

Why notgo to a real court and get a real 4th amendment individualized warrant?

The NSA has a zillion lawyers. Not ONE is capable of getting a writ?

Jesus Fucking Christ. Barack Fucking Obama. Even Leahy is calling bullshit on this luxury cruise.

NSA=Club Ned.

Anonymous said...

Too late. Geoff will have to get in line:

Pavel Durov, the founder of the most prominent Russian online social network VKontake, even invited Mr. Snowden to join his company and help to craft new security measures. “Snowden might be interested in working to protect the personal data of millions of our users,” he wrote.

Anonymous said...

So now the NSA implicitly admits unwarranted access to everything we do online and our phone calls by contending this surveillance are auditable.

This from the agency that can't even search it's own email database in response to FOIA.

Will the NSA consent to an outside audit of all searches since 9/11?

More than ever we need an independent truth commission.

The media needs to ask a version of the Watergate question: Is any of the information in the documents released by Snowden news to the President?

I actually wonder if the President was completely informed. If he was, that could explain his incredible paranoia about leaks. He was telling a big lie and he realized how vulnerable he was to hundreds of thousands of low-level analysts.

If he wasn't completely informed, that would be a different sort of scandal.

This seems much larger than Watergate and the Pentagon Papers combined. The administration seems so desparate. Submitting redacted documents one hour before the Senate hearing? That's bush league tactics. Not to mention Bush league.

Bizarre to listen to Kerry preach about the "rule of law" to the Russians. How about a little rule of law here at home, too?