Bill C-51 is a lowering of standards for what can be considered terrorism in Canada. It extends the power to our domestic security agency to arrest people who "may" commit terrorism rather than "will"--what that means is a open question. It also establishes more powers to quell "terrorist propaganda", including the cited website takedown powers.
It's much broader than that, "(f) interference with critical infrastructure;" which can be interpreted to mean First Nations protests that delay pipeline construction. I heard from a representative of the BC Civil Liberties Association that protestors have already been placed on no-fly lists.
It could also easily be interpreted to cover that kid accused of making too many connections to the Canadian tax agency's servers back when the heartbleed vulnerability was new.
Computer monkeying could suddenly be tarred as terrorism, in addition to criminal nonsense; it was already hyperbole - I don't even know where to begin on C-51.
I think of two things when it comes to this question: the notion that you should regard relationships as "lines and not dots", and how to get meetings with people too busy to see you.
Now you might say, I'm a student, what could I do? But there's a lot you can offer, from your story and perspective to the skills you have. Even just writing from the perspective of somebody offering value rather than just trying to take it makes it easier for you to get meetings with the mentors too busy to see you--the kind of mentors you should aim for.
Starting a relationship is always easier than maintaining it. You want to make sure you could grow with the person you're reaching out to, and that ideally, the conversations you have with them will be mutually beneficial. After a while, you'll be learning from them and they'll be learning from you as well--if you plan for that relationship rather than sitting back and trying to grab a "mentoring" session you'll start seeing your thinking about mentor dots evolve into long-lasting line relationships.
My last note on this is that it's also a lot easier to learn from people if you're working for them.
To sum up
1) provide value to everybody you talk with
2) think long-term
3) work for people you REALLY want to learn from
I believe one of the key metrics for startup success is how efficient a company is at getting together a great team. There's such a balance between the time you need to spend here and the results you get, but if you maximize the results and score an awesome team, that'll make all of the difference in the world.
I should clarify: I don't think Github should link to the article directly (which is banned since Bloomberg has been banned ever since they published that article)
A plain-text mandarin version in a repo somewhere would suffice to challenge the Chinese government's perception on what it really takes to censor the Internet. I honestly think it would just highlight how much they're losing against an organization of 300.
Failing that, I'm going to resort to my default plan of finding the best way to donate money and time to help support Github, but I thought it was an idea worth entertaining.
