Perhaps he's a non-English speaking coder who is expressing admiration and incredulity? What makes you think he's complaining? He goes so far as to explicitly state "no offence".
Because he is able to not only master his native tongue but also acquire some fluency in English. You people born with English as native language wouldn't know how hard it is to keep switching between 3-4 languages constantly.
Well assuming the Hackathon is on a razor thin budget (which I grant you it may not be) might be able to support adding some equipment which can be tasked to other things when not hackathoning and can be installed/removed in a variety of venues. The WebCam/Pi/Disk system is about $100 (less if you use the Pi's camera module).
You absolutely could go out and buy a video surveillance system of course.
So that you can incorporate plausible deniability, selective disclosure, and secret-sharing based quorum. Do you really want to have created a system that gets subpoenaed for automated guilt-by-association when it turns out that one of the participants is being investigated for thoughtcrimes?
