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Comment by randomdata | Hacker News Reader

> This is the problem when a non-technical generation makes the rules and regs.

The millennials hold the power these days. If you consider them non-technical, I'm not sure there will ever be a technical generation...

Which may be a fair assertion as I work with a lot of people in the tech industry who wouldn't even consider the issues you raise unless it was handed to them on a silver platter. If actual tech people aren't considering it, those who have other focuses in life certainly won't be.

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Millennials have less money than the generations before them, they do not make up the majority of voters and they aren't executives at large.

The only power most of them have boils down to passive or active rebellion, and they are too busy managing excess grey pressure in most places while said grey pressure is actively voting against them.

Additionally, even millennials aren't technical at large. They certainly aren't technology preactive enough. Not even most developers are.

the millenials do not hold the power. They are not the blue badgers in the intelligence community that are making decisions.

The intelligence community only exists because those in power grant it so. The millennials hold the power. Certainly they delegate – there is only so much time in the day – but the outcome still rests on what lies at the top.

The reality is that millennials, as a generation, don't see a problem with this. Select individuals may, but individuals don't hold power.

im not sure what definition you are using, the executive is nearly 80, the average age of congress is 60, average age of CEOs is 58. You know, the people with actual power.

These are not millennial ages..

For the most part, they're barely even Gen X ages. Still a boomer world in the upper ranks once you get outside tech.

Upper ranks, sure, but at the very top you find millennials. They are the largest and strongest force.

Of course, they also don't really consider the implications. Step away from HN, where the perspective is biased by people who study security for a living, for a minute and you won't find much of anyone who is stopping to think why this may be a problem.

The civil servant representatives may be older, but they don’t hold the power. They are hired by the power to serve the power. Again , we are talking about the power, not those who the power has delegated some work to.

Again? No, you obviously have a different definition of power, one that is abstract and in practicality useless. I'm trying not to be disparaging, but your comment is so absurd that I can't think of any situation where it would be appropriate outside of a college freshman poly sci class.

Please, let your disparagement run free. It allows us to understand that your motivation is to protect your emotional state, not to simply convey information as has been the nature of discussion up to this point. As I have no emotional attachment to the subject, I'm not bothered by it and am able to learn that you are not here in good faith.

Contradictory information is welcome, encouraged even, but I am not sure your criticism, no matter how constructive, is on-topic information. The subject here is pretty well defined. Worrying about what I may have done wrong does not add value to the thread of information here.

Bringing this back to the topic at hand to not derail it further, millennials hold the power. They are largely not concerned with it. Technical understanding to some degree doesn't mean one is an expert in all matters of tech. Security is actually not well understood by most, even those who are involved with tech professionally. As an example, "don't implement your own encryption" is common advice given because we realize that security and related matters is actually really hard to understand and really easy to get wrong.

Sure, lets start with what I can only assume is your premise, that since millennials are very recently the largest adult demographic , that somehow translates into any current issue being implicit agreement by the millennials?

1. millennials are very very marginally above boomers in % of population, when separating each demographic. https://www.statista.com/statistics/797321/us-population-by-... - this doesn't give millennials majority rule, ie (boomers + gen x ) is larger 2. It is not the case that population numbers are directly proportional to power. Even on paper, this has never been true in the US. It is a democratic republic. A million arguments could be made why this ideal is even barely true. 3. Political power in the US is so far removed from I'm guessing your libertarian? view of politicians. They are not servants of a populace power. It is also not a failing of millennials if politicians are in contradiction with "millennial" belief.

4. The US is not a vaccuum. One trillionaire would have more power than 99.99% of millennials combined. this isn't the french revolution.

I feel like your reply to politicians not being representative of the marginally larger populace of millennials is a moral failing of millennials for not starting a revolution. Which is absurd.

> Which is absurd.

Indeed, it would be quite illogical to experience feelings over consuming information. There is no inherit emotional experience found within information. The fact that security is hard to understand, even for tech professionals, equating to feeling like there is a moral failing of millennials being implied does not compute. If your feelings won't let you participate in good faith, so be it, but ultimately there is no value in those emotions.

You are saying millennials hold the power, like it's an axiom. There is no on topic when you build your premise on that. They do not hold the power by any reasonable definition.

Were it an axiom what purpose would stating it serve? There is no value proposition found in conveying information that is already established.

Millennials hold the power, but do not understand technology well enough to realize the implications of their actions. Many tech professionals do not even understand the implications. It is a hard topic to understand.

The vast majority of elections are "which boomer or older do you want to <strikeout>represent</strikeout> make decisions for you?"

Certainly. Every manager understands that when you hire an employee there will be situations where, in the heat of the moment, they have to make decisions without consulting a higher rank and sometimes you won't like those decisions. That's the nature of being an employer. If you weren't willing to take that risk you wouldn't hire someone.

However, when an employee doesn't do what you like you can tell them to stop going forward. There isn't much will to have the employees stop in this case because nobody is thinking about the security implications outside of HN where you have professional security researchers able to provide their unique perspective. Security is a fairly hard to understand topic if you're not deeply engrossed in it and is not something people casually think about.

Venture out into the world where you find millennials in construction, food service, retail, childcare, etc. and listen to what they are talking about. I can almost guarantee it is not this.

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