Hacker News Reader

Comment by skrebbel | Hacker News Reader

I watched a portion of the video, and I get the impression that the people asking the questions appear to have a pretty good idea what they're talking about. Do you feel the same? Those are the senators, right? Gives some good hopes for the future.

View on HN

Those are all senators, yeah. They have staff experts who brief them for these hearings so they can go into knowing what they want to ask (or say), as well as what they are likely to hear. The level of staff expertise is extremely high, and the senators themselves are no fools. They are used to regulating the financial industry, which is even more slippery than big tech.

Perhaps today's Senators have learned not to completely wing it - we're a long way from the "series of tubes" era.

Perhaps in the legislative branch, the executive branch suffers no such limitations. Eg. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-pres...

> I get the impression that the people asking the questions appear to have a pretty good idea what they're talking about

This video is edited so perhaps it's misleading, but I did not get that sense at all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-lMIGV-dUI

Edit: As mentioned below this is not from the same hearing. I interpreted skrebbel's praise more generally and the representatives in these clips didn't inspire much confidence.

That's.. different people in a different hearing.

Not to mention the editing cut footage mid-sentence. I can't watch something like that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com