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Comment by seiji | Hacker News Reader

be so clueless about email security

Old people + technology = failure. Really common pattern. We like to believe people in positions of power know what they are doing, but sometimes the facade cracks and we see they are just regular old crazy people.

But, it's more like inconvenience + people + technology = policy violations. In one company I worked at a new CEO was installed (the old one was faulty; turned out the new one was still faulty) and he told people to forward all their company email accounts to their personal gmail accounts because he just liked the gmail interface better.

edit: _gasp_ it's like online people read comments while wearing hair trigger hostility goggles and don't use their contextually aware kindness beanies. go figure!

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We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10428726 and marked it off-topic.

Is it better to move things around instead of just deleting things? Replies don't exist in a vacuum, so detaching from parent comments breaks meaning and intent, not just location on a page.

Seems better to censor by deleting unwanted content with prejudice instead of waffling and breaking context.

There's a link to the original parent in what I posted.

Eventually we might build more software support for this.

You have to consider scope of knowledge. Nobody is an expert everywhere. You can't use someone's knowledge of IT security as a stand in for all technical knowledge, let alone all knowledge in general.

I worked with an expert on NAND Flash. The guy is brilliant. Knew how the whole process flow works--from substrate to cap layer--off the top of his head. It doesn't need to be said that fabricating semiconductor devices makes setting up an email server look like childs play. Yet, he used a @aol.com account.

Brennan was the daily briefer to Clinton. He was Saudi Arabia station chief. He's definitely a talented guy who knows a TON of stuff you haven't the faintest clue about.

Old people invented email.

Turns out we don't live in a hive mind society where knowledge transfer is laterally osmosified amongst all members of a singular class.

> Old people + technology = failure. Really common pattern.

True, but so is young people + technology. Young people tend not to be Secretary of State or Director of the CIA though.

young people - old people = lord of the flies

That's true of children, maybe. You'd be hard-pressed to recreate lord of the flies if you just took everyone over 50 out of the decision making process.

My mom was using email likely before you were born. She knew the risks.

But please, keep your ridiculous ageism going.

It's not that there aren't exceptions, but it's pretty obvious old politicians aren't hip to technology from the past 30 years, isn't it?

I didn't say "every old person is dumb and invalid and will rot in their living rooms out of stupidity." But, an average 4 year old can use an iPhone better than an average 63 year old.

This 'an average 4 year old can use an iPhone better...' makes me cringe every time I hear it, especially when it comes from proud parents who think their offspring is a genius. The geniuses here are the engineers who made the device usable by the 4 year old, not the other way around.

As the father of a 5 year old and a 3 year old, that's simply not true.

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