Do you personally know what Kim Jong Un has been up to? He has been in power only about 2 years and aside from propaganda photos, nobody knows really what he has being doing in that time, especially Westerners. Citizens of the DPRK don't even know how old he is. The only evidence giving a glimpse into his personal policies or beliefs is that he probably is quietly pushing reforms and experimenting with capitalism. He lived in Switzerland (probably) and has visited other capitalist countries. Turning a country around, especially one like North Korea, takes time. It is foolhardy to judge the man based on the almost nothing we know about him personally.

Why would DPRK hackers be using the DPRK IPv4 address space when they are reportedly set up in China ? When I visited North Korea 6 months ago, the largest, most modern, and most prestigious hotel in the largest and most prestigious city (Pyongyang) was using dialup for internet access. To a Chinese ISP.

There are too many inconsistencies in the FBI's story. There are too many liars and too many suspects on all sides. Unless someone takes credit, there is no way to know who did the hacking.

My pet theory is that the US government made a deal with them- The US will deal with ISIS so the Saudi's don't have to get their hands dirty. The US will make sure that Saudi Arabia doesn't get too many refugees dumped on their border- a phenomenon which is quite concerning given that Lebanon's population is now around 20-25% refugees. In return for this help, Saudi Arabia helps put the squeeze on Russia.

It shouldn't be necessary to hire a plumber to hook up a dishwasher, or hire an electrician to wire an extra circuit. I am a licensed professional engineer with a strong background in piping and electrical. I can do both tasks easilly, and understand the theory of each. When the building inspector comes around though, I would be biting my nails. Only someone who does a trade or profession for a living every day has a hope of knowing all the little rules, tricks, and pitfalls.

It's fine to have a law enthusiast represent themselves when it is their own skin on the line. Not so good when they will be arguing a case that may well be the legal precedent for the next 100 years. The only saving grace is that if he does get to the Supreme Court, the justices generally do a good job of making all the arguments themselves and just use the lawyers as their pawns to advance their preconceived talking points.

I think you are being a little shortsighted here. AI for NPC's could be incredible if each NPC had its own core. Real life people analyze every action you take, no matter how small or insignificant. Real life people discard or take notice of these actions, weigh (rank) the important actions, and then combine the most important actions in consideration of what you are thinking or what you might be likely to do. Real people analyze the actions of all the people around them, and take that into consideration when dealing with a person too. In a computer, each AI thread do all these things too, but nowadays we normally use tricks and hacks since computing power is in short supply for AI.

Doing this well takes a large amount of computing power, and there is no reason it can't be paralleled- real life people act in parallel and aren't all part of the same computing "thread". Simulating that doesn't have to be in the same computing thread either, but nowadays it often is because the vast majority of computers are limited to 2 to 8 cores.

A lot of the balloons have religious messages attached. Most people launching balloons aren't doing it just because they think the citizens of the DPRK want these things. They are doing it because they are religious evangelist fanatics and it is part of their conversion strategy.

As an agnostic, I completely understand why the DPRK hates these balloons. It is the equivalent of Mormons dumping tracts (pamphlets) in your back yard. Not once, not a handful of times, but whenever the winds are favorable.

I doubt it. Airframes develop very slowly but electronics is quickly obsolete. The prudent thing to do in the spec would be to say "we will have a sensor pod X by Y by Z inches with attachment points T,U,and V. The sensor pod (yet to be developed) will require # amps of power at #volts using a HIJ connector, and please run a ABC connector to that area with specification EFG connecting to the main bus." They didn't do that. They settled on the sensor knowing it would be obsolete before the aircraft flew.

The broken english used in the threats is a match to a google translation from gramatically correct Russian. That doesn't seem like a coincidence to me. Since the Russians hacked the NASDAQ as recently as July 2014, maybe they had something to do with it. And Russians are known to enjoy manipulating stocks

Mind you, I don't think this has anything to do with manuipulating stocks. I think it is far more likely that it was some person who didn't like Sony very much and the deflection onto the DPRK was just a red herring. But if shorting stock WAS the angle, the Russians have a lot of experience doing it.

They have. When I was there earlier this year, we got stuck in legitimate traffic jams a couple of different times. There are about 10 times as many cars on the road as there were just 5 years ago, according to the (Australian) tour guide. It is the single biggest and most visible sign of change he had seen.

No informed person is worried about the DPRK. As for ISIS- if they want to be a state, I say let them be one. The USA is great at breaking states. Its literally the only thing we can do correctly in international diplomacy. In about 3 months we changed the tone in Russia from "lol these sanctions are a joke" to "These Rubles are worthless so we're going to price everything in Euro with an exchange rate to rubles which changes hourly"

$1000 per device? Wow. I was at a recent trade show and they wanted $80 per device per day. Needless to say, everybody had their phone in hotspot mode and therefore the 2.4GHZ spectrum was useless for everybody.

I did a week tour in April 2014. You're not special, lots of westerners have taken tours since the government decided to open up a little bit and experiment with reforms. The strongest and most universal impression I got was that every foreign visitor saw basically the same things, and yet everyone came to completely different opinions about what was going on. It was a great learning experience for me to see how given the same information, different people will see different things depending on their own experiences and predispositions.

It seems you disagree with me that these folks are basically harmless and just want to enjoy life and watch their kids grow up. That's fine. The situation there is tense, but it has been more tense in the past. If something was going to happen it would have happened already. Saber rattling never leads to peace.

It kind of begs the question about what the US is still doing in South Korea anyhow. South Korea is a rich country. They can afford their own defense, but its convenient for them for Uncle Sam to pick up the tab. I have stood on the North side of the DMZ and it is clear that the US is just a thorn in the situation making everybody tense. There is no doubt that the South Koreans can adequately defend themselves against any potential "invasion" from the North. There is no reason for the US to be there. The constant presence of US marines on the DMZ make the North Koreans nervous that the South will invade them.

The DPRK certainly does overreact to different situations, but we need to take a little responsibility for not trying to de-escalate the general tone on the border. Up in the DPRK officer's lounge on the North side, there is a smoking lounge with leather couches for the guards to chill out, possibly smoke some weed (which is legal in the DPRK countryside), and look down on the DMZ. Most of the guards on the North side looked bored and didn't care particularly what you did. In contrast, the guards on the South side look like they will kill you for looking in the wrong direction.

That's exactly my point. Why would North Korea hack Sony 6 months before they were aware of such a movie? Sony has pissed off a huge number of people, especially technically-minded people. The DPRK is just a convenient scapegoat.

We are deluded. There isnt a shred of evidence tying the DPRK to this hacking and yet they get all the blame. The movie was filmed in Fall 2013, but there were no statements from the DPRK until June 2014. They really arent the kind of people to miss out on a threatening press release if given even the slightest opportunity. Their press bureau literally salivates a this kind of thing. They also rarely lie. Huge exaggerations? Sure. But not lies. So it seems reasonable they didnt hear about the movie until June when official announcements and trailers started coming out

Meanwhile, the hackers apparently got into Sony's systems over a year ago. They first asked for money, then only later started talking about The Interview and wanting it pulled. The broken english used in their communications is not consistent with a Korean speaker. DPRK citizens speaking english is pretty obvious- they only have a small number of schools which teach it, and without many native english speakers, the teachers are very consistent.

We need to back up a little and reask the question of who did it. The answer might be even more interesting that the line we are being fed.