Hacker News Reader

FUD. What proof are you referring to that Google is "directly, deeply, and intricately involved in said scandal?" Should the industry drop C++ (Microsoft) and Java (Oracle) support or similar (Scala, Python, etc)? AMD and Intel processing? All American companies; completely ludicrous.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PRISM_Collection_Details.j...

And there is plenty of other reading material to review regarding Google's history with the NSA (see my other links posted in the nested comment below).

Perhaps I should not have said "directly, deeply, and intricately involved in said scandal" in the tone of 'matter of fact' - because it is indeed an opinion, but I'm just drawing what I feel are logical conclusions. IMO Google is the NSA's primary Trojan Horse into the free market. I am in no means declaring this as fact, like I said originally - just wanted to drop my '2 cents' if that's OK.

It goes deeper than that. You are suggesting that intellectual, free thinking and Google can't coexist, or to work AT or WITH Google is to be not intellectual nor free thinking. It's ludicrous to label Google employees and users. You would suggest that Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, Ken Thompson, and those Google employees that publicly deny your FUD [0] can't be intelligent, free-thinking hackers. Crazy.

[0] https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z13qvvpjivahzpnbo04... (Yonatan Zunger [Chief Architect, Google+] denies PRISM wholesale)

I believe you're taking my comment out of context. I shared 'my 2 cents'; an opinion - and did not label Google users or employees. I apologize if you found my comment rude, but I clearly intended it to be taken with a grain of salt.

For the past ~68 days or so, this is literally the only thing you've talked about here. PRISM NSA PRISM PRISM NSA. Whatever floats your boat, but please stop trying to inject politics onto programming threads.

I appreciate your feedback.

In all fairness, before today my last comment was 46 days ago. And before that there are only handful of comments regarding this issue - looks like all within the same week of the NSA news breaking.

Anyway, next time perhaps I can simply write an article and submit it as a separate thread; rather than speaking out in the thread itself. Thanks again.

Writing an article is a much, much better idea.

I really think it should be about the technology first... I have seen a lot of the same sort of opinions hold back adoption of Mono for projects, because .Net itself came out of Microsoft. Java is now owned by Oracle... so does that mean we should get to migrating all those Java applications off of that stack too?

Hell, NodeJS is backed by Joynet.. does that mean I shouldn't use that platform since I don't plan on hosting with Joyent?

I think it's pretty important to at least try to keep the politics out of certain technology decisions. Sometimes it may well become important, sometimes it is less so.

I think it's unnecessary to feel frustrated. "intelligent, free-thinking hackers" can make their judgement on a technology if they are given complete information about it, which is the case here since, as pointed out by the other comment, Go is an open source project.

Good point man. Probably it's always unnecessary to feel frustrated - I guess just with political type stuff it is more easy to succumb to it.

My understanding is that Go is an open source project, of which the main maintainers are employed full-time by Google specifically in order to improve the language and make it more useful and used within the company itself.

Sure, perhaps it could be said then that Go is similar to that of Android. Which is the prime example of one of Google's 'open' projects that has done wonders for its' industry. Yet given the NSA's surveillance scandal and Google's long history of a close & secretive working relationship with the NSA - today perhaps we should be questioning whether or not we are still comfortable using an Android device. Or programming with Go.

The answer -- at least for me -- is "yes", as long the "open" component of those projects remains intact.

Yet given the NSA's surveillance scandal and Google's long history of a close & secretive working relationship with the NSA

I'd love to hear evidence of this relationship instead of your speculative fear mongering.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/google-nsa-secrecy-...

http://www.pcworld.com/article/217550/google_watchdog_white_...

Neither of these articles prove anything like the kind of claims you're making. I'm concerned about PRISM too but I've yet to see any evidence that Google is any more willingly complicit in it than any other US tech giant.

Never understood the kind of people who wont believe obvious things without first seing a smoking gun on the hands of the culprit and/or a written confession.

I guess it's what passes for valid to the politically naive.

Indeed. Put it this way, if you suspect a serial killer has taken residence in your neighborhood - are you going to wait around for a 'smoking gun' before making conscious decisions about your interactions with that individual?

So what's your alternative if every single one of your neighbors is a serial killer?

Like I said, I share your concerns about PRISM but singling out Google seems like losing the forest for a tree when we have abundant evidence that all the US tech giants have been forced to comply with NSA requests.

There's always another town. And likewise, so many alternatives to Google tech - and all solutions provided by the other 'giants'. Besides, this is an industry driven by technology & innovation. If there isn't a solution or an incumbent is dropping the ball - that's opportunity for geeks like us.

Besides that, why give them the benefit of the doubt anyway?

I have no qualms about singling out Google. Of all the 'giants' this is a company that has the most volume, quality, and relevant information on all of us. They need to be held accountable & scrutinized to the highest degree in the handling of said data. The fact that they are the company most active in their business relations & engagements with the intel sector should be ringing alarm bells.

That's a good assessment, I don't disagree this is or that there is even any 'hard proof' but at some point some of us will make a conclusion about things with the information that is available. To play devil's advocate: I have not seen anything to convince me that the Google is not a key component of the NSA's mass surveillance efforts.

And indeed, other tech giants should share the blame for being involved in PRISM - I tend to single-out Google because of their long & documented history in doing business with the NSA and other intelligence agencies like the CIA.

http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/17-06-2013/12484...

I think its more that go is a useful language alternative to say using C, or dynamic languages. Recently more and more people are catching on to this. Its like rails in 2007ish in feel to me.

Also we can't constantly deal with the NSA, we do have work to get done and things to learn.