This week, Marty and Victoria introduce a new segment tentatively titled “Thumbs up, Thumbs down”, break down some recent San Francisco propositions affecting AirBnB, discuss the UK Investigatory Powers Bill, and wrap up with a discussion on commenting: good, bad, and why?

What Marty’s up to

• Passing back midterms in CS 106B

• Causing trouble on Yik Yak

What Victoria’s up to

• Utilizing social media to be hashtag-popular

• Writing boilerplate code :(

• Suffering long compile times :( :(

Thumbs-up, thumbs-down

A new segment where we give a “quick” up or down vote to nerdy or tangentially technical phenomenon!

• Twitter Hearts: One of us is pro, the other is not. Guess who’s who!

• New Star Wars
  • Meg’s Star Wars podcast: ROGUE PODRON and Far Far Away Radio
  • Star Wars explained by person who hasn’t watched Star Wars: video
• Amazon Launches IRL book store: Yay or Nah
• Open office floor plans: Terrible or terrrrrific?
• Cloud IDEs: Would you use one?

News Roundup

• Recent local elections in San Francisco: Prop A, I, and F
  • NYT: Airbnb and Uber Mobilize Vast User Base to Sway Policy
  • After Victory, Airbnb Compares Its Influence to the NRA’s
• UK Investigatory Powers Bill
  • BBC news: Details of UK website visits ‘to be stored for year’
  • Seven major takeaways from the U.K.’s proposed surveillance rules
  • In contrast: Obama Won’t Seek Access to Encrypted User Data
  • The Guardian: Snowden surveillance revelations drive UK and US policy in opposite directions
  • Also: Megan Smith at GHC provides details into President Obama’s contributions as a technical leader

Discussion: Comments in code!

• Semi controversial: search “are comments in code good or bad”
• Covered in this discussion:
  • Why comments are valuable, even though you should assume they’re never read
  • Why it matters to comment even simple getters and setters
  • When you shouldn’t use comments

Send us questions and feedback!

Would love to hear from you if you have any questions you’d like us to answer, topics you’d like us to discuss, feedback for the show, or any other comments!

Reach out at mvcthepodcast@gmail.com, or hit us up in the comment section. Thanks for listening!