Xennial here, too, and I muse about this often. I don't think I'd ever framed it quite like you have, that I'm a part of the last group of people who don't have our youthful misdeeds immortalized on the internet. That's a big one, to be sure.

But I do think of other aspects. People born from the late '90s onward don't really know a world without the WWW, and don't (or barely) remember a world without smartphones and tablets. They don't remember a time before texting. A time when you had to plan ahead if you wanted to meet your friends somewhere, and if something went wrong, it was difficult to communicate to figure out what was going on.

They don't remember when getting computers to do things was hard. When it was common to build your own machine from parts, and when you'd almost always upgrade parts in your existing computer instead of buying a new one. They don't remember when laptops were a luxury, and when people instead brought pencil and paper to class so they could take notes. They don't remember floppy disks, and many don't remember CD-ROM or DVD-ROM, or their burnable counterparts.

They don't remember printing out directions, and not having GPS navigation in their pockets. They don't remember having to use paper maps, and actually plan out routes ahead of time for any non-trivial car trip.

They don't remember CRT TVs in classrooms, or "portable" film projectors. They don't remember slides or overhead projectors or microfilm. They don't remember bulky camcorders that recorded to VHS tapes. Everything is high definition for them. Many younger folks have never seen a music CD or cassette tape; ironically many have seen vinyl since it's become retro-popular again.

Certainly there are things that we don't (or barely) remember, like "party line" phones and black-and-white-only TVs. But man, it seems like there was an unusually huge burst of technological progress while we were growing up.

He got a legal threat when he was 19 and claimed to be no longer hacking people's paypals. We don't actually know that he was a minor when he stopped.

I think it's fine to say that things done even at 19 or younger shouldn't be with people forever. But it's certainly newsworthy, given the types of sensitive information DOGE staff are given access to. People can decide for themselves if it's a problem or if it's actually smart to hire people with hacking backgrounds for reasons some folks here in Hacker News would argue. The idea it's out-of-bounds to even report on it, not by you but others here, is wild.

He is probably more of a menace now than before tho

People forget that Robert Morris of Y Combinator was a convicted felon, in fact the first under CFAA IIRC (not that I believe his intent was nefarious at the time). He’s fine now.

Dismantle many democracies in your time? Then not that similar.

You are a contemporary yuppie, congratulations!

Obligatory 'username checks out' comment :)

I don't think the article is saying that the prosecutor is 25 years old. It's saying that he has 25 years of experience as a prosecutor.

And if the current laws prevent you from getting a security clearance, then that is what it is. Sure the laws can be changed, but in this context it’s probably better to exclude some “reformed” people than letting “criminals” through.

Agree. I grew up in the era of phreaking and when I see something like this it makes me happy. We want the tinkerers, the curious, the people always pushing on the margins.

A lot of people like to tell themselves that breaking into other people's computers is about curiosity or activism or some other such virtue.

I don't see it. What I see is post-hoc rationalisation to justify lust for a feeling of power and control over others.

Practically any virtue you ascribe to "hackers" you can give to those kids that break into people's cars and take them on joyrides.

And what qualifies a nerd and hacker to audit systems whose full impact they don’t know and whose programming language they aren’t experienced in?

Would you ask a rocket scientist to do a brain surgery?

Hire a burglar to give home security advice.

You basically just described rebellious youth, which we have all been at some point in our lives. And this statement is complete and utter bs. The problem is that comrade muskov is not a technical person, he is just a "marketing strategist" (quotation marks since I don't want to offend people who actually know what they are doing). Here's the painful truth: most governments have appalling security practices and it's a miracle that the world still exists. Finding vulnerabilities or leaks is not a hard task and it only requires patience - there are dozens of such examples in my own country alone and the only reason no one has sounded the alarm is because two things are going to happen: media scandal for 2 days, then everyone will forget about it and the second thing that will happen is that whoever rings the alarm will be dragged in by security agencies for years to get questioned about what they were looking for and they will not accept "I know you are morons and I don't trust you with handling my data in a service that is completely open to the general public". "Run-ins with the law" has nothing to do with talent and if anything, it's the absence of a talent if that resulted in "run-ins with the law". That is a clear indication that the people involved have no idea what they are doing and just managed to connect two simple dots after a "complete 2 hour hacking crash course - FREE, pls subscribe for more". The simple fact is that musk has no goddamn clue about what he is doing or talking about: "the government does not run relational databases". Right comrade, cause precisely the usa spending service which you are referring to is not a django app using psql: https://github.com/fedspendingtransparency/usaspending-api/b...

Hardly just politicians

Seamus was coming out of the pub with his son when he stopped and put an arm around the youngster. He nodded towards the village in front of them and said, “You know, I built half the homes in this village but nobody calls me Seamus the homebuilder.”

Then with a wave of his arm, he said, “And I worked on half the roads in this village but nobody calls me Seamus the roadbuilder.”

Seamus sighed, put his two hands on his son’s shoulders and, looking him hard in the eye, said, “But you f**k one sheep …”

According to the previous party that ruled the country, my entire existence was "ideological" and I was a "rainbow disease".

And then those same politicals complain, why everything is so tribal :P

Things are also being labelled left/right, where they really should be labelled humane/inhumane or normal/sociopathy, criminal/not.

I had interest in programming and never tried to exploit someone elses systems. What stopped me was knowing that it would "wrong thing to do", that it would be unethical. People here will pontificate for hours over kids reading less or whatever and then turn around and treat activities like this as a proof of something positive.

There are plenty of kids who are not acting like, well, entitled assholes. They have interest in programing, gaming, computers and enough impulse control to not do these. It is not something positive - even if you grow out of it.

Getting cancelled is one thing, gaining security clearance and unconstrained access to everyone's health/tax/social security/etc. data is another.

Your comment is apparently stained by your political views. It is really far from reality, lacks substance and objectivity, and comes off as unhinged.

> added hundreds of billions in costs and killed millions of people

Could you provide a source for this? Or is this just an r/politics moment?

What DOGE activities are you referring to that added hundreds of billions in costs and killed millions of people?

The article describes actual hacking related activity, you just have to read more than 2 sentences to get to it.

I still don't think it's particularly damning given how many of us were tinkering with hacks and exploits at 15, but you're not being accurate here.

You are quoting only a few words out of the article to create a false impression. Here's another short excerpt, an alleged quote:

> I no longer hack into Paypals, gain root access into other peoples computer (sic), or exploit online websites

Doing a crime when underage doesn't stop it from being a crime even if tons of people have done it in the past. Bragging about committing a federal crime is not something we should normalise regardless of the neurodivergence (or lack thereof) of the individual.

It does seem to me that some people in this thread are condoning unauthorized computer access (which is a federal crime).

I agree that we should be skeptical of the idea that we should judge people in their 30s based on things they did in their teens... but I'm a "high talent adult developer" who had a modem in the '90s and didn't do anything anywhere near as shitty when I was that age.

I dunno. People change a lot as they grow up. But it says something that he was committing computer crimes as a teenager. And now he's participating in the dismantling of a democracy. So I feel like his current actions do actually reflect the crap he pulled as a teen.

The context is that administration bypassed the typically vetting processes for almost everyone and is flaunting various rules openly (see signal controversy). Those processes for vetting are important to ensure that folks won't betray the U.S.A. and can be trusted.

This individual might be highly talented and completely trustworthy, but because of how the administration is operating opens everything up for scrutiny including things that should have a bit of scrutiny.

He hacked into PayPal accounts as a kid and now still is messing with people’s lives and livelihoods, the little shit deserves everything he is getting. Bring neurodivergent isn’t a get-out-of-jail free card, bad decisions have consequences.

Imagine if he was an essentially normal 15 year old, and caught breaking into a car instead of into a computer. And didn't spend a few years in college learning to coexist with society. He'd probably still be living in a concentration camp.

What is pathetic about reporting facts?

Yeah, I am disgusted by what this guy and his fellow DOGErs are doing today, but I really hope I -- currently in my mid-40s -- wouldn't be judged by how I acted in high school.

Though the kind of hacking he did sounds like it was worse than anything I did online in the 90s with my 28.8 modem. I mean, he committed actual computer crimes, and not for any sort of noble purpose.

Exactly right- why are people talking about Christopher Stanley's teenage antics in regards to an article about Christopher Stanley? Shouldn't everyone be parroting your political views instead?

And good point on Christopher Stanley being unappointed- why isn't every employee of the executive branch appointed? It's all so confusing

This article doesn't seem especially pernicious. The subject matter is newsworthy. The article has a position which you may or may not agree with but it's not unusual in that regard. It's probably slightly better in that regard than most pieces of writing that have a bearing on politics.

> They're going full mask off, even.

What does this mean?

It would be politically motivated to ignore it.

"Hackers" in the Hollywood sense of the term, which applies here, are a red flag in many real-world scenarios.

> Why do so many journos keep making these politically motivated articles.

Because a bunch of journalists were being paid by the government to be politically-motivated propagandists, and that gravy train went away because of DOGE.

There's a ton of threads on HN about Doge, but if you search with "site:news.ycombinator.com Internews Network".....only 1 result, in the comments.

from: https://x.com/wikileaks/status/1888072129327083979

USAID has pushed nearly half a billion dollars ($472.6m) through a secretive US government financed NGO, "Internews Network" (IN), which has “worked with” 4,291 media outlets, producing in one year 4,799 hours of broadcasts reaching up to 778 million people and "training” over 9000 journalists (2023 figures). IN has also supported social media censorship initiatives.

The operation claims “offices” in over 30 countries, including main offices in US, London, Paris and regional HQs in Kiev, Bangkok and Nairobi. It is headed up by Jeanne Bourgault, who pays herself $451k a year. Bourgault worked out of the US embassy in Moscow during the early 1990s, where she was in charge of a $250m budget, and in other revolts or conflicts at critical times, before formally rotating out of six years at USAID to IN.

Bourgault’s IN bio and those of its other key people and board members have been recently scrubbed from its website but remain accessible at http://archive.org. Records show the board being co-chaired by Democrat securocrat Richard J. Kessler and Simone Otus Coxe, wife of NVIDIA billionaire Trench Coxe, both major Democratic donors. In 2023, supported by Hillary Clinton, Bourgault launched a $10m IN fund at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI). The IN page showing a picture of Bourgault at the CGI has also been deleted.