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>On the one side some 'bad other' could be using an undefined device to attack only American people, only in foreign lands, and for uncertain reasons.

If someone were trying to sour US-Cuban relations, then it would make sense that only Americans in Cuba were targeted.

It seems highly unlikely that 21 diplomats with the same symptoms (plus those in China) were afflicted with an innocuous medical condition. None of the doctors who wrote letters of dissent physically examined the patients. Though the specific nature of the cause may be up for debate, I highly doubt there was no adversary here.

He made some assertions. I argued against them. He accused me of misunderstanding him. I defended myself and asked him to clarify. I think I'm entitled to argue and defend my claims. Nothing about that is turning this into a battle.

> He thus raises the question: "If we can save 10 humans now, is it worth worrying about saving 100 later?"

No, he said "I can think of a number of other issues that pose similar if not more immediate, or greater risks to humanity that have lower economic costs to solve." That is a much broader statement than saying, "I can think of problems with lesser risks, but that are more immediate." I don't see how my points 1 and 2 don't address his claim. I am challenging him by pointing out the nuances (irreversibility) and seriousness of climate change.

> you've devolved it into a battle and put intent behind his words such as "you criticize the behaviors of climate change activists" that probably don't fairly represent his.

He says, "Global warming activism also bothers me in some ways. Snobs have an absolute affinity for it..." That is criticizing the behaviors of climate change activists.

If you're not saying, "it's not worth solving," then what exactly are you saying? What other problems pose "similar if not more immediate, or greater risks to humanity" than climate change? It'd be nice if you could name a few. It seems like your post boils down to, "we have other problems to solve too, besides climate change." Ok. Great.

You do 2 things in your post: you prioritize climate change below other problems (apparently without naming them, which I mistook), and you criticize the behaviors of climate change activists. Please correct me if I'm wrong in understanding your assertions.

I replied with 1 and 2 to show how climate change is the most dire and threatening problem we face. And I replied with 3 and 4 to address your criticisms of climate change activism.

I view climate change as by far the biggest problem humanity has on its plate. I think the alarmism is plainly justified.

1. Is there a viable technology to do this right now? Is there bound to be one within a decade?

2. That's why I said "predicted." Relocating hundreds of millions of poor people to Russia is not a solution to climate change. Look at the problems we are having now with accepting a couple million refugees from Syria. Plus, this doesn't address the flooding and economic cost. The long-term effects of climate change on humanity are overwhelmingly negative.

3. Virtually all climate change activists I know of primarily advocate reducing emissions at home (in the US for me). The goal is not to prevent other countries from industrializing, it's to prevent them from emitting CO2. This may be possible with green energy. Ultimately, the atmosphere doesn't care where the emissions come from.

4. I don't really care what supporting climate change action says about an individual person, I care about results.

> Best thing to do in terms of carbon footprint unless you are directly working on solutions is to not have children and start working on solutions. Finger pointing and preaching doesn't help.

Yes, finger pointing doesn't help. But at least in the US, we already have the technological and economic means to drastically reduce our carbon footprint. The problem is political will. We need top-down political action to force green energy – as you hint at, individuals trying to reduce their carbon footprint will never be enough. There is unfortunately no other way.

1. The big fear with climate change is that it's irreversible. That is not the case with the other problems you mention.

2. Climate change is predicted to cause food supply problems for hundreds of millions of people, trillions of dollars of economic damage, and rising sea levels that flood coastal cities. I don't see how the other problems you mention are more dire.

3. The problems you mention – homelessness, drug abuse, crime, healthcare – are problems that affect us on a domestic level. Climate change disproportionately affects poor people in other countries, yet the CO2 in our atmosphere has been disproportionately created by wealthy countries. How is addressing this snobby?

4. True climate change action would require upending the entire energy sector of the economy. How would this be not taking any action? Just because the action hasn't taken place yet doesn't mean the preaching should stop.

I find climate change opposition adopts the following trajectory: 1. It's not real. 2. Ok, but humans aren't causing it. 3. Ok, but it's not worth solving.

Your response is currently on step 3, and I don't see the logic behind it.

Looks great! The interface picture, halfway down, should be the top one – it's too hard to tell what the app does from the first one. Might give it a try.

Honestly, how are they obnoxious? They're asking you to pay for a service. I wish there were more paywalls in online journalism. Low-quality ad-funded journalism is how we get clickbait and crap like the Huffington Post.

And using reconstructions, the data appears to go back even further: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Com...

I often see on this site the notion that the media should give us accurate, objective takes on the news, without playing to the public's fears and superficial desires. And yet here you say you'd rather not have to see something that scares you.

The goal of the news should be to inform, not to comfort.

I thought only apps signed by "identified developers" are run by default on Macs with Gatekeeper now. Shouldn't code-signing have prevented this? Unless they inserted the malware before the signing process.

Interesting, thanks. I find that very surprising, as YouTube now behaves differently across browsers. I'm surprised Google would make this the policy for Chrome, and not make the change in YouTube too; it's much better.

Is this not the new behavior? My YT videos only play when I go to the tab now.

But that is not what the problem is. In any scientific discipline, we never know anything for certain. Climate deniers are not saying, "we still don't know some things about climate change." They are denying the basic facts of climate change because they are ignorant or self-serving, or both. To not point this out and address it with equal fervor – especially given what's at stake – is just as much a slight to climate science.

By all means, in the scientific field, maintain humility and approach each result with skepticism. But #1 is more a political problem than a scientific one. The nation's (and world's) response to climate change is vastly insufficient. As educated individuals in a high-tech field, we have a duty to call a spade a spade, and sometimes preemptively calling the opposition's bullshit is a means to this end.

It worked with SOPA, didn't it? Seems like the people have a bit of say.

That's true, I forgot about that. Thankfully, most of the sites I use that have FB login are just for entertainment, not communication or anything serious. But that's true.

What's the big deal if Facebook goes down? If it's important, I email (Gmail going down would be more dire, I think). Or I can text people if I have their number. Or send a Hangout. Or Whatsapp. Or Skype. Or call them. Facebook has monopolized social media, not all communication.

> All public spending involves some sort of "corruption" [1] because it's always other people's money being spent, and there's always someone in charge of spending it.

In an ideal democratic system, opposing parties would seek to expose corruption in public officials and use it to their advantage, thereby dis-incentivizing the misappropriation of public funds. Obviously no democracy is perfectly ideal, but your armchair analysis hasn't exactly blown a hole in modern governing theory.

In any event, this article specifically makes the airport's woes out to be more of mismanagement than corruption, and you haven't linked to anything else in your response.

This seems highly unlikely (without further evidence) to have a global effect anywhere on the level of climate change, and if it's part of the solution to that problem, I'll take it.

Honestly, why do people think that a terrorist attack like this requires any dramatic changes to society? The fact is that some guys got guns and shot up a building, in the name of a currently popular, violent ideology. When will we ever be able to completely eradicate this? The number of people killed per year in the Western world due to terrorist attacks is incredibly low. Perhaps we don't need a routing of our security apparatus and freedoms to prevent what, without the inclusion of radical Islam, would be seen as an violent crime.

We got two wars in the wake of 9/11, and I don't think there was any actual increased terrorist threat.

> I'm just pointing out that using measures like the Gini coefficient can inadvertently reward bad behavior

Great, duly noted. When you make grand assertions about the inequality movement in the future, I suggest you do some background research and actually understand their claims first.

> just pointing out that historically the things that have moved people out of poverty have been market based innovation (the world since 1800), not direct assaults on inequality (USSR, Chinese revolutions, cuba etc.)

You need a history lesson. First of all, reducing inequality is not the same as moving a nation out of poverty (remember, technically, the US is the richest nation in the world). And secondly, look at the US in the 1930s-40s, when JFK's New Deal and WWII – not "market based innovation" – led to the largest expansion of the middle class yet. See http://spot.colorado.edu/~kaplan/econ3080/Krugman-middle.htm...

Inequality in the US is a result of decisions we have made, not because the rich have suddenly become more innovative.

You make inequality out as the result of purely economic factors, when it is as much the result of political decisions. If congress passes a tax cut for the top 1%, that increases inequality, not because some group has suddenly "found a way to farm more efficiently" or discovered a cure to Alzheimer's, but because we decided it that way.

And as matthewmacleod has stated, you have constructed a complete straw man for someone against inequality. The inequality movement doesn't believe in destroying productive resources. The idea behind redistribution (e.g. taxing the rich and giving it – possibly through increased social spending – to the poor) is to make up for what is seen as an unfair rewarding of wealth and inequality of opportunity. And before you say that this results in the same thing as destroying resources because it drags the economy, I invite you to look into the research being done on the negative economic effects of inequality, not to mention its effect on society as a whole.

For the presidency, under which the power to enact or prosecute torture lies, there's been no chance for a third-party candidate in my lifetime (and I've seen one election, 2000, thrown in the wrong direction because too many people voted for Nader).

In any event, 3rd parties often look so honest and admirable because they've never had to hold power and make tough decisions. If any of them managed to hold power for a significant portion of time, we'd be clamoring to vote them out of office for their misdeeds all the same. Part of politics is about accepting the dirtiness of the game and doing the best with what you have. I'll throw my support behind the party that's good enough for me, and has a chance of actually bringing about some meaningful change.

So I should support a third party that will get no representation in the government and have no impact? We live in a two-party system whether you like it or not, and it's not changing anytime soon.

I quickly grow weary of the constant anti-establishment chant on HN to "vote out all the incumbents" (not going to happen) and support an independent candidate (not going to get elected). How about I vote for the one of the two major parties that didn't opt for the useless wars that spurned this and didn't authorize torture in the first place? I know Obama hasn't prosecuted Bush, Cheney, and the other torture enablers (it's political suicide in case you didn't know), but at least he didn't let it happen under his watch.

I hope so too, and I doubt the US government's response will be cyber-warfare related. There's not much they can do in the first place, and it would be a petty tit-for-tat reprimand.

If they are wrong, then they take a hit to their credibility. The Republican Party would pounce on this and never let up. It would not look good in the public eye if the government's cybersecurity apparatus – which the president just spent the past year and a half defending – fingered the wrong country behind an attack.

I agree. Had he simply said we should record languages and try to understand them before they die out, I would have agreed with him too, but trying to get people to keep speaking them just for the sake of it seems like a waste (and an exercise in futility).

This is an article reporting on government officials' claims that the attack comes from NK. The credentials of the reporters (especially their "tech journalist" credentials) hardly matter. The NYTimes isn't endorsing this position, it's just reporting that government officials say it, and it'd be pretty stupid of the NYTimes to just make it up. I don't understand why you suspect a conspiracy, especially based on such little info.

With regard to point 2, remember that this is the country that built a nuclear weapon and launched an object into orbit (with some dramatic difficulties on the way). If the NK government wants to get something done, especially something militaristically, they do it.

Since when does it take more than a month to find the origin of an attack? We've seen the capabilities of the NSA, and I'd bet they've already made grounds infiltrating NK computer networks in the past. If the perpetrator was sloppy (e.g. forgetting to use a VPN once or something), it would make it even easier.

Haha yeah I forgot about that. Also, if you write the programs on your computer, you can use lowercase a-z and get 26 more. And there's theta and a couple other weird ones too.

I also first learned to program in TI-BASIC, on a TI-83+ in 6th grade, and I did it prolifically for the next four years. Learning programming at that age was a huge advantage when I "officially" learned later: even though TI-BASIC only has 26 variables and no subroutines, flow control is basically the same, and it gave me an intuitive understanding to how programming languages work.

Also, TI-BASIC made it so easy to display graphics, just by using the 'output' function or plotting to the graph. I think a huge turn off to beginner programmers is the amount of material you have to learn before you can do simple stuff like that (I remember looking for a "draw pixel" function in Java, only to learn to my dismay that I had to choose a GUI toolkit and create a window first). The ease of using the TI API made it addictive, and it lured me into programming for hours at a time in school.