"Scientist" is nonsensically vague here. I have a PhD in Computer Science. I've had jobs where my title was "Sr. Research Scientist". I worked with an atmospheric science research group in graduate school, so I feel like I'm probably above average in terms of climate knowledge for computer scientists, but you absolutely shouldn't care what I think about climate change. I don't have the expertise to provide reliably correct information there.

What matters is that an overwhelming majority of *climate* scientists agree that climate change is caused by man. Those are the people with the relevant expertise. But similarly, they have no special claim to authority when it comes to the dangers of ML. Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, etc., are not people who automatically deserve consideration of their opinions on areas outside their expertise. Today, there aren't a large number of scientists with expertise in AI or ML who are worried about these existential threats. We're almost universally much more concerned about things like the economic impact of continued growth in automation.

What litigation? No one is being prosecuted or sued here. The government isn't stepping in and telling anyone what they can or cannot say or do. Users have the right to criticize Tumblr for what they perceive Tumblr to be falling down at. Tumblr has the right to control how its property is used and how its brand is presented.

You sound really fired up about free speech, right up to the part where you'd prefer no one else have any of it.

So you don't like "censorship".

Great. Here's what actually happened. Third parties did some basic research and found the existence of this material on Tumblr's site. Other people then pressure Tumblr to remove that content. Tumblr will presumably then remove this content. If you find this series of events objectionable, what's your preferred alternative? Should Tumblr be compelled by law to host them? Should third parties be prevented from pointing them out? Are you just saying you'd prefer Tumblr ignore them?

I have a hard time seeing any censorship here. This appears to be a bunch of people using their freedom to speak their mind, and (presumably) a company agreeing with them. It's not really censorship for me to paint over your graffiti on my wall. It's my wall. I get to decide what I want it to say. You can go paint your own wall. You may wish Tumblr would do otherwise, but it's their wall. They aren't obligated, legally or ethically, to display anything they don't want on that wall.

"Everyone is equally free to die of exposure on a park bench."

Protected classes aren't something anyone came up with to elevate one group over another. They were literally the last ditch hope at getting people who were, through accidents of birth and history, already above others to stop ruthlessly exploiting that advantage to stay above those "protected groups".

You don't like people having legal protections from you fucking them over? Just stop fucking them over for a few decades and the laws will catch up.

I'm not aware of any product or company that's ever successfully made a pitch based on "yes we cost more or don't work as well, but look at our sweet privacy policy".

I'm not saying they're right or wrong from an ethical standpoint. I don't even think such a global binary classification exists. The "right" amount of privacy depends on who you're asking. But regardless of what you determine the "right amount" to be, I'm pretty well convinced you can't sell much of a product by appealing to it.

In theory, they have. In practice, as far as I can tell, you get around it by just not describing your patent as "X on a computer". Couch it in enough jargon, and it appears that you can make "X" look novel to the patent office, for pretty much any value of "X".

Sure, but the point is that court cases are inherently uncertain. You can be right and lose. If suing Exxon meant that I thought there was a 1% chance I'd lose and owe them $400,000,000 in legal fees, I'm not suing Exxon.

Sure, if you live and work in a culture that expects slavish dedication to "work" and doesn't recognize that employees aren't spreadsheets that just output stuff according to a formula.

I worked during graduate school for a company that couldn't have cared less about my research or eventual PhD. I took time away from work -- above and beyond my allowed vacation time -- to do things like present at conferences. I left for five years to go be a professor before coming back. My career is fine, because my company, for whatever flaws it has, realizes that people are complicated fuzzy messes that you can sometimes work with to get a better long term result, even if it comes at what appears to be a short term expense.

What if I told you that anyone can choose to do things that way?

Hilary Clinton will be like 73 years old for the next election, and she just lost this one to a guy that couldn't have beaten *me* in a general election, and I'm an atheist who doesn't like people and who has the TV presence of Moe Syzlak. You think she might not be a viable candidate for the nomination in four years? Wow...what an amazing prediction there, Karnak.

She isn't going to face a justice department investigation because she didn't do anything particularly wrong, and the scandal has now served its purpose. You don't want to spend the next four years as President Trump having the New York Times and Washington Post running daily articles about yet another day's worth of courtroom testimony about the ratfucking (that's a real term, ladies and gents) that took place to get you elected in the first place, even if it doesn't really matter because the voters are all reading the Breitbart expose about the lizard people using the UN to run a global conspiracy to replace Bud Light with Seize Soixante Quatre or whatever that communist bubble water is called.

I don't understand what you're saying (or alternately, it just doesn't make sense). If anything, this accomplishes the opposite. If the recovery key was a strict technical requirement to access the account information, and Apple doesn't possess that key, then Apple would have the ability to tell the government, "Sorry, there's nothing we can do". If they replace the requirement of a key with a human being employed by Apple, then certainly they lose that ability.

In general, 2-factor authentication doesn't really have anything to do with whether or not the company has access to your data. It's only affects how difficult it is for an unauthorized user to get access. Apple could happily make themselves an authorized user though by just making sure they have the encryption keys to everything and only using 2-factor on the client to gate access to the keys for a user.

But if this affects governments' ability to request data at all, they're *adding* a "back-door" method of access here, not removing one.

That's not entirely true. People are responsible for their devices under normal operating conditions. If you intentionally do something that breaks it, you're at least partially responsible, and very likely solely responsible.

If you cut my brake lines and I run over someone, you're the one who goes to jail. My car was perfectly safe before your actions, and I took all necessary precautions to keep it safe. If it's legal to fly a drone where you live, then you aren't going to be held responsible for flying one that was intentionally disabled by an unauthorized third party.