New Yorkers are wimps when it comes to anything weather. There's a small thunderstorm? We call it a "doozie". Some snow in the forecast? We shut down the entire regional transportation system.

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.

I've noticed this trend to be more and more alarmist about what used to be normal weather.

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.

> 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)

Yes, even normal weather has always killed human beings. Having infrastructure to both warn people about real natural danger and give steps for dealing with it is one of the good things our species does.

The data says otherwise for the midwest. We are going through abrupt climate change, there are global effects and it's accelerating.

http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report/regions/midwest

We always had heat advisories in Chicago. When it's 87 degrees overnight, people without air conditioning die. Yes, it happens every summer. But it's a reasonable weather warning; reminding people to stay hydrated, and to try to get somewhere cooler.

No, it's more that regional climate varies and different areas have invested in and prepared for different types of weather events.

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.

My girlfriend poked fun at the weathermen going apeshit over 30mph winds earlier in the week. Then she got stuck at Newark on Monday waiting for the storm to pass. Karma.

Ok, we rewrote the title to be less baity, in accordance with the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

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.)

A "showkarma" boolean in the user profile would be nice.

I prefer to be judged on the content of my comments rather than the number of internet points displayed by my name. It allows for much more honesty and sincerity in discussions, and I think those are two qualities that HN could use more of.

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.

It isn't a question of karma, but of community, which you omitted to consider.

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.

What do you suggest for people who need to post stories where the lack of anonymity could have serious ramifications for their lives? This is a serious question. Are those people (or those contributions) simply not intended to be a part of this community?

I didn't get from dang that HN is going to require Facebook auth or anything else to make it more difficult to create pseudonymous accounts. Dang simply discourages creating unnecessary new pseudonyms because the community benefits with consistent pseudonyms. If you need a new pseudonym to protect your identity, that's a necessary pseudonym: have at it.

Some people create pseudonyms as a platform for trolling or propagandizing without risking their main account, other people simply morally object to having a consistent online identity on principle, or want to say something controversial or confidential to protect their main account or identity. In every case, the pseudonym is an attempt to protect one's identity, and the person making it considers it necessary.

The first two cases are at odds with the interests of the community and ought to be discouraged.

They are usually discouraged, downvoted and flagged as they should be. But that happens with established accounts as well, so the anonymity itself doesn't seem to be the problem in those cases. Unless your account links to your real world identity in some way, there isn't much value in having an established account at all.

The corpus of postings by any consistenly used pseudonymous account can probably be fingerprinted and linked to a real-world identity if someone cared enough.

E.e. google probably could do it as they have every comment on this site and also have all of your email.

That's no problem. Sometimes people have legit reasons for making a throwaway account. For example, they might want to post about experiences that could get them in trouble if they used their real name or even their main pseudonym. All that is fine, and long established on HN.

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.

Thanks for the clarification!

Maybe they (HN) could allow one BugMeNot-style account that is known not to belong to anyone, has aggressive anti-spam filtering, maybe requires a captcha to post, and only posts dead comments? Then when people who really don't want to join the community have something useful to contribute we can vouch for the individual comments. I guess this would be a tiny bit like the old sites with the Anonymous Coward "username".

> I prefer to be judged on the content of my comments rather than the number of internet points displayed by my name.

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.

There are justifications for anonymity and 2chan and 4chan originally stated that was their goal, that you should be judged by the contents and not by who you are. But as 4chan has shown when most people are anonymous, they default to trolling and junk posting. Theres no real reason to ever think out your arguments or locate facts because there are zero consequences for you if you're wrong and even if you thoroughly dismantle someone else's argument they can simply start posting somewhere else with the same nonsense because people can't just go back and look at their history and copy and paste the replies to their junk arguments.

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

> I prefer to be judged on the content of my comments rather than the number of internet points displayed by my name.

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.

Didn't you hear? "Climate change is weaponizing the atmosphere."

Bloomberg isn't inventing the term rainbomb. It is evocative, yes. I feel that sort of colorful language is appropriate for describing an extreme weather event that dumps 8+ inches of rain in less than a day. Rainbomb or microburst, they are apparently quite effective at destroying vital infrastructure. Either way, you can't in good faith condemn the exploitation of color language to describe a destructive and lethal event by pointing out that that destructive and lethal event has a benign name.

Googling it I see a bunch of references going back at least a year, so I don't think bloomberg is to blame for this one.

To be fair, the picture linked in the article does look a lot like a bomb going off.

http://twitter.com/chopperguyhd/status/755242101835653120/ph...

I recently saw a sunset that looked a lot like a bomb going off due to refraction over the ocean. That didn't make the sunset dangerous.

Yup, that's the same thing. And say, would you use the word "bomb" to describe it? Oh you did.

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.

Why do you assume I'm attacking your statement?

Woah. That's almost terrifying to see.

If they report microbursts as rain bombs, will they also collectively sit around and wait to see what terrorist group claims responsibility?

Well, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis did flood the Nile with tears...

They'll say the terrorists are republicans who deny global warming.

They are already saying that.