Doge staffer's YouTube nickname accidentally revealed his teen hacking activity

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?