Bloomberg is trying to invent new, scarier sounding terminology, and honestly it's quite silly. What they're referring to are microbursts.
I'm originally from Chicago so I find it all very amusing. I don't recall the L ever shutting down, nor do I remember any news articles about thunderstorms unless there were tornados inside the city limits.
For example, I live in an area that traditionally receives moderate rain and snow during the winter. This past winter, though, we had very little snow while in the past week a major freeway has flooded twice due to heavy rains.
Of course, this is one year and doesn't, on its own, make a trend, but if this continues we'll need to alter how we behave, and possibly how out infrastructure is designed, in order to adjust.
And unfortunately when the climate is changing rapidly, it's suddenly very expensive to alter your coping strategies to adjust to the new normal.
For example, I've lived in the midwest USA most of my life. Every July and August is hot and humid, with many days in the 90-degree (F) range. This used to just be normal summer weather and unremarkable. Now, anything over 85 degrees is a "heat advisory" and over 90 people are advised to stay indoors and avoid activity. They also publish absurd "feels like" temperature e.g. "today's high 91, feels like 117." I'm sorry, in no real world does 91 "feel like" 117.
It does, and there's no voodoo needed to understand why. In a super-humid environment your body's way of dealing with the heat - sweat - just isn't as efficient. On a breezy day in the desert, 117 is... well, it's damn hot, but if you're staying hydrated and take steps to keep from getting sunburned, it's kind of surprising how tolerable it is. In that environment sweat works its magic quickly and effectively.
(I live in the midwest and I'd trade fifteen or twenty degrees for the humidity we get this time of year. My first visit to the Nevada desert was kind of an eye-opener)
But please don't create many obscure throwaway accounts on HN. This forum is a community. Anonymity is fine, but users should have some consistent identity that other users can relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be an entirely different forum. (This is going in the site guidelines soon.)
Also I don't enjoy being profiled and I'll continue to play this game of whack-a-mole regardless of a change in the rules.
The suggestion has come up over the years that HN should just have comments without usernames. The answer is that that would be a fundamentally different site, so we're not going to do it. If that's what you prefer, you're welcome to start such a site, but please don't gnaw at the foundations of this one.
This has been on my mind because I think it's time for HN to go through a fresh round of defining what it is and what it isn't, and the above is one thing it isn't.
E.e. google probably could do it as they have every comment on this site and also have all of your email.
But it's an abuse to make a new account for every few comments, and it's an abuse to rack up a stockpile of burner accounts.
When someone has a reputation of any kind to protect they tend to try to reply somewhat intelligently. This site makes it pretty easy to create accounts for when you need to be anonymous, but in the vast majority of cases you don't need to be. This community self-moderates pretty well so even someone with a high reputation can be replied to with a well thought out counter argument and not be downvoted simply for disagreeing
The points displayed next to your name are on a per-comment level though. Changing accounts doesn't affect anything about that. I've literally never clicked through to see anyone's total karma count until I just tried it for you. I think you're overestimating how much people care about any of this, and thus over-compensating in your response to it by constantly creating new accounts.
It is not up to you how other people judge you, no matter your preference, and attempting to make them is abusive behavior.
> It allows for much more honesty and sincerity in discussions, and I think those are two qualities that HN could use more of.
It doesn't actually, absent names, people become vile. Anonymous comments aren't more honest and sincere, they're more petty and flippant.
http://twitter.com/chopperguyhd/status/755242101835653120/ph...
I never said it made it dangerous, I said the use of the word "bomb" made sense in light of the photo specifically referenced in the article.