skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
He was not an automobile journalist, which is probably why it reads like he has no concept of how cars work or that planning a trip to test a car's theoretical range limit in winter is a poor way to review a car. John Broder is on the "Green" beat:

http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/peopl...
Pop quiz - Who was the first band to have a web site on the WWW?
Latency Numbers Every Programmer Should Know: https://gist.github.com/jboner/2841832 discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4047623

DRAM (~100 ns) is very nearly 1000x better latency than SSD (~70 us) which is only 100x faster than disk (~10 ms).
Walk in. Buy something. Ask them.
The ghost who codes: how anonymity is killing your programming career
7 Habits of Highly Effective Startups
How to lab-test your brain with an iPhone
I'm skeptical of Musk's claim that the review was fabricated. What motive would the author have to fake the review? He would lose all of his credibility as a reporter, essentially killing his carer if anyone found out. Seems like a really high price to pay.

That said, Musk also has a lot to lose by calling out a reporter for fabricating data. It's a pretty serious allegation, and he could get into hot water over it. Therefore, my intuition is that either: 1) Musk is not reading the data correctly, missing some important details, or 2) The data was recorded incorrectly by the car. My bets are on (2).
This is also a good way to never get positive press coverage ever again.
The keyword was 'reasonably accurate'
12 Wonderful Hot Springs
>> Why would a reporter lie about the test?

> To get a story that's more interesting than "I tried this car and it was good".

And because it fit the reporter's expectation of what would have happened, without having to bother with actually following through with the experiment.
Great post!!
Recently I was looking for something like this for a visualization. I had to find 16 nice looking distinct colors, which turned out to be pretty hard. Thanks!
> but it could equally see it as x ++3

What it could see is not a valid argument. A compiler could "see" all kinds of absolutely valid situations as invalid, but it doesn't.
No more so than the concerns of driving in warm weather (AC uses electricity). You get less than optimal mileage in less than optimal conditions. This is true for any vehicle. My gas powered car jumps around on its range calculation too.
I don't know if their seriousness played into it. My understanding is that the judge ruled, essentially, that Top Gear was correct when they spoke about the car having extremely limited range when driven on their race track and that no reasonable person would confuse range on a racetrack with regular driving.

(And IANAL, but the UK is somewhat infamous for its plaintiff-friendly libel laws.)
I love building stuff with Rails, but these last few weeks are making me glad I'm not maintaining it in production.
>Naturally, on any occasion when it is actually possible to check a journalistic report against reality, the journalist will turn out to be lying

I don't think this is true "on any occasion"; that journalistic lying is news indicates that it rarely happens or rarely is caught.

I think it's possible to see this as an example of a problem with this individual journalist, or with the culture of journalism, without assuming "the journalist will turn out to be lying" in all circumstances.
It also helps that he is very quick, very intelligent, and has a sense of self-deprecating humor
Any solutions for colour blind scientists?
Open Source Giant VLC Mulls BitTorrent Streaming Support
Shouldn't it be possible to make the linux kernel behave like this with the swap partition on SSD, to get this benefit for all programs?
If it’s important, don’t hack it
The main thrust of the article seemed to be that Tesla's charging stations aren't sufficient in the Northeast, being almost at max range apart. I doubt even Musk would disagree with that.
According to this logic, reporters should not lie about anything.

Unfortunately, this phrase: "lose all of his credibility as a reporter" is already an oxymoron.
I'm impressed that he doesn't hesitate to call out the NY Times. Musk clearly doesn't care about politics or tiptoeing around sensitive issues.
Agreed. In this case, NYT is widely recognized as serious journalism. And sometimes it's not entertaining at all.
I don't believe the children who would have died from diseases the Western world doesn't even have anymore would call it "screwing up" their lives.

He's trying to eradicate disease and help people who don't have billions of dollars, or even millions...or even hundreds of dollars to their name.

Bill Gates didn't screw up computing. The Microsoft that exists today is an entirely different animal than it was when it was just a startup, just as Google and Apple are different.

This isn't cynicism about startups' growth trends; this is a point that Bill Gates has revolutionized the entire industry multiple times over. How he chooses to spend his wealth is what most people would call generous and altruistic.
The rumor and innuendo I've seen so far suggests that MIT was more than "possibly pushing for charges."
I'd be doing the same thing if there was an announcement about Khronos fixing the perennial retardation of the OpenGL API, or of a new batch of bugfixes for some of the Java stuff I used to use, or whatever else--I'd support them all the same.

Anything that helps encourage people to be open about their work and honest in their failings in our industry is, in my book anyways, a Good Thing.

Don't be hating on Ruby folks for trying to encourage good development practices.
Having the most respected news organization in the world apologize for lying in its review of your vehicle will not harm your future press coverage.

If anything it will ensure others take a more rigorous fact checking process in the future.
Thanks!

I'll check into the backface visibility bugs. :)
From now on

Top Gear already had this exact interaction with Tesla. Either the Times didn't do their homework, or there is a high return on negative Tesla reviews.
It seems from the article he did perform the experiment, but lied about his procedure. He drove further than he claimed to, and didn't fill the battery as he claimed to.

Why he would bother to do that instead of simply lie, I don't know.
> 1.2. What is natural language processing?

> Stub
The length of the detour really matters here. Even if Tesla's claims were true, unless there was truly malicious reporting going on, I think even this kind of basic negligence is still a valid point against the Model S. Consumers might forget to charge their car properly, or not take into account detours/pitstops when planning for the Model S's range.

Note -- I absolutely love Tesla and I can't wait for them to prove everyone wrong, but that still doesn't make the initial claim entirely invalid. I want to see the data before I make conclusions.
Great job, guys! Lechat is surprisingly powerful despite its lightweight and simple ui.
When Is a Gym More Than a Gym? When It’s a Brand
I dunno - do you really think auto reviewers are all a same-think cabal who hold grudges on each other's behalf? I've met a bunch, and I don't think that's correct. Most are out to ... drumroll ... write reviews. If Tesla puts out a good product, they'll get good reviews.
Honestly, I'm surprised anyone is even willing to do a review, when they have shown a willingness to sue the press for libel. Why bother taking the risk? Just let them have no press.
I posit the opinion that Rails is a framework in shambles that is good for nothing greater than a contact form far out-ways many others on HN, which is why there is a relativisation.

These discussions are usually filled with snark and people feeling righteous in their own framework choices, smiling and generalizing about the entire Ruby community. So there's a chasm between people saying "your framework sucks and you should feel bad" and people saying "ok this is actually a good thing".
there are methods in the ruby reflection api that take strings and silently convert them to symbols so it is really easy to accidentally leak memory.

however, on ruby trunk they added a method: rb_check_id which can be used to check if a string has been already symbolized (https://github.com/ruby/ruby/blob/trunk/parse.y#L10465). this means when these reflection methods get passed a string and it hasn't been symbolized they can bail out and not symbolize the string. (https://github.com/ruby/ruby/blob/trunk/object.c#L2073)
>This is complete FUD.

FUD is a mid-nineties term about certain MS practices. Best left to the mid-nineties and/or 4chan types. He made a point, make a counterpoint. No reason to call what he wrote FUD or trolling or whatever. Especially when he writes that we was personally affected by the Merb thing.

>First of all, I'm not familiar with Merb but didn't it merge with Rails?

How is that different from the Merb project that he relied upon being abandoned? That he was given an "upgrade path" if he took the time to rewrite his apps to use the new post-merge Rails?

>Regarding Rails.app, how is it languishing? Yehuda has given status updates[1] and code is on Github right now[2].

- Status updates after someone brought the whole issue to HN attention?
- With things promised to backers still not sent whole months after the promised dates?
- And with taking the money to work on the project and then devoting his time in another venture?

Maybe the project is not "languishing", but it sure is late. And "did something else in the meantime" is not a proper excuse to paying backers.

>SproutCore continues to be developed to this day

By others. But the subject matter on this subthread was Katz as a contributor, and he has migrated away long ago.
3-2-1 ShmooCon Friday Recommendations
Apparently lying or exaggerating is common in 'journalism.' Probably based on our desire to weave narratives. I don't disagree with you or know anything about this case, but let me provide an anecdote where (1) seems more likely despite the abundance of attention, reputation, and high stakes (I just read this on plane yesterday by coincidence):

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732395190457829...

Context on cultural significance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Cold_Blood
Realtime Responsive Head Tracking and Proximity Detection
The man has a net worth of $41B. 5% of his wealth is still $2B.

I don't know about you, but I don't begrudge a man worth $41B who plans to give away nearly all his wealth, a yacht or two.
That depends on how long it's been in the codebase. As this case is covered in the Rails security guide _and_ the Ruby security reviewer's guide I'd expect it to be quite old and now being found because it hasn't been properly audited before or indicate that the review process needs some work.
Why in the name of sweet Jeebus would someone flag this post on HN?

http://i.imgur.com/ao8qgdG.png

This is ridiculous, and proves that HN is filled with closed minded fanboys and hater zealots instead of technology lovers who otherwise have good karma.

Can anyone who flagged this post tell us why they did so?

If this is not moderator abuse, I don't know what is.

Reminds me of the Germany jury system that had to be abolished: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury#Germany

>Trial by jury was introduced in most German states after the revolutionary events of 1848; however, it remained controversial and early in the 20th century there were moves to abolish it.[34] The Emminger Reform of January 4, 1924, during an Article 48 state of emergency, abolished the jury system and replaced it with a mixed system including bench trials and lay judges. In 1925 the Social Democrats called for the reinstitution of the jury, and a special meeting of the German Bar demanded revocation of the decrees, but "on the whole the abolition of the jury caused little commotion".[35] Their verdicts were widely perceived as unjust and inconsistent.
Symbols in Ruby are basically interned strings.

So if you reference the symbol :foo, it will transparently get pinned in memory somewhere. Referencing :foo again will not allocate an additional object - the interpreter will just give you the existing symbol.

This is usually not an issue, because an application typically operates on a small, fixed set of known symbols. But if an attacker can generate arbitrary symbols (e.g. if you call .to_sym on user input), he can exhaust memory.
Heritability of Intelligence [book]
I'm not against work. I just realise that my collegue who access to deploy our app is in Japan and won't get up for a few hours. It's just common sense.
If anyone even doubts whether the NYT are going to respond to this (of course they are), you can ping their public editor @sulliview, who's an immense treasure to the paper. She'll report on it, no doubt.
The world is (mostly) blue. http://goo.gl/maps/k6BnA
This is great feedback, and this sounds like an interesting direction. I'll follow up via email. Thanks!
No, the crux was that this car is useless because Tesla's charging stations are sufficient in the Northeast and that the car doesn't have the range that it should and that if you get this car it will leave you stranded.

Tesla has just started making their charging network so of course it's not sufficient in the Northeast, it's not sufficient anywhere. It's also not intended to be the sole supplier of electricity for your car, and the indented use of a Tesla vehicle is not long road trips. Most people will leave their home every day with a full charge and arrive home at night with almost a full charge.
> tl;dr of course they're lying, it's easier to make stuff up then investigate so why wouldn't a reporter always just lie?

1. Lawsuits
2. Loss of credibility
3. Often the truth is more interesting than fiction
This is not absolutely universally true, but it is impossible to appreciate just how often it is true until you have been reported-on in a case where you know the facts yourself.

No, in that case you have a single data point that doesn't prove a larger point.

Don't get me wrong, I have no data to prove either side's argument, but suggesting that almost every single article written is a lie seems like a high level of paranoia.
New York Times Model S review is 'fake', says Tesla CEO
There are many smaller targets and this lowers the barrier for script kiddies to an unprecedented level.

And it's one thing to detect the exploit and another to actually run it and post it on the web before people have time to patch their installations (talking about hours!).
The reporter claims the car informed him that "charging complete". That is not the same thing as "you have full range". He also clearly states he was in contact with Tesla throughout the drive and they provided advice, sometimes wrong.

Plus the real negative part of the article that Musk is glossing over is, having to turn off heat in a vehicle just to get somewhere, got to be loads of fun in the summer too.

So what we have is possible confusion on part of the reporter or bad UI design. Either way it only points out that a 100k electric car is not a road trip car. Its a trip for suburbanites or similar. Sure you "can" do a long trip but you don't have the range of alternative a normally fueled vehicle has.

battery powered cars are an interesting technology, I am not quite in agreement they are ready for prime time. Considering the range limits of the top of the line I doubt many would be satisfied with the entry level model.

The big automakers are investigating many different fuel systems simply because they know any replacement to truly take hold has to be simple enough for anyone. It just has too work, there is no place for a list of "buts"
Why so? I think it is going to be quite the opposite. They now have the exact kind of coverage they wanted.

At best what's going to happen here is either a legal suit, or an apologetic exit. It's good that they were storing the logs - machines don't lie.
Why do you (and raganwald) portray the choice as assistance-or-total-abandonment?

Sure, provide infrequent rescues, emergency aid, and damage-mitigation. Just avoid complete 'make-whole' reimbursements, and make the costs come marginally more from those areas subject to frequent, foreseeable disasters... so that there's an incentive gradient for future moves/development to get-out-of-the-danger-zones. Not a "too bad" all-or-nothing ultimatum, but also not blank-checks for folly.

Otherwise, you're subsidizing more destruction and misery. That has been a real legacy of much unconditionally-'compassionate' weather aid, at least in USA flood and hurricane zones.
I don't even know what to make of this. You think you need a label to tell you that you shouldn't open up random network closets at MIT (a billion dollar a year defense contractor) and plug in your laptop?
I don't really see how this is different than forgetting to put gas in a car, other than the larger amount of time it takes to charge a Tesla.
This is an excellent development.

Indeed, when researching just now, I saw examples of people throwing strings at Module#const_defined?, which no doubt get converted to symbols straightaway.
I have absolutely no idea what the facts of this case are - BUT - to your point, an author's motive to "enhance" his reporting a very simple: It makes for a more interesting story. A more interesting story gets more views, more people talk about it, and it enhances the (perceived) reputation of the reporter.

Also, as much as it pains me to say it, there's precedence for this sort of thing. Simply put: reporters make shit up from time to time.

Again, however, I have absolutely no idea who's right/wrong here and won't make a single assumption until the facts are out.
Does anyone know if this supports (efficient) graph-rewriting?

I'm thinking of this kind of patterns:

If there are nodes n and n' such that

- there's an edge from n to n' and

- n has a label XY

then add label Y to n'

So what I'd want to do is match basic patterns and then add nodes, edges, and labels.
There are GUI analysis tools that produce graphs directly from databases, eg Tableau http://www.tableausoftware.com/solutions/big-data-analysis
Hottest industries for startups and entrepreneurs in 2013
Handwaving, much? There's no universal and objective measurement for "government not serving its people." If there were, many problems of government and politics would be a heck of a lot easier.

I don't disagree with the sentiments about the badness of the DMCA, but it doesn't help anyone to trivialize the practical difficulties in establishing a well-functioning government.
Any company or individual should be willing to sue the press for libel. It should also not be of any concern to a media outlet because by rule you should not be committing libel.

It would be an awesomely poor publication that is only willing to report on people and organizations that won't sue the publication when it intentionally misrepresents the facts.
Tesla blog coming soon detailing what actually happened on Broder’s NYTimes “range test”. Also lining up other journalists to do same drive.

I'm not a journalist but I would be more than happy to test drive and do a write-up! I would think it would be pretty easy to find 1000 journalists willing to do this.
BanTigerTrade
> "Seems like a really high price to pay."

And yet Jayson Blair and Judith Miller rolled those dice. And that's just to name two high profile cases at that same paper.

I wouldn't be so sure that's such a rare thing.
It's not who you know -- but who knows you.
Why?

Writers are expected to deliver a "good read". Nothing beats a bit of tragedy!

Writing a review that stands out against lots of positive reviews can give you a reputation as someone who isn't scared of controversy. This could have been a career boosting "critical" review.

The industry at large is still pro-petroleum. Want a reputation as pro-electric? Annoy your mainstream motoring marketing departments - the ones that lend you a stream of high quality vehicles to try, take you to track days, invite you to nice launch events, if you're lucky, fly you to their German HQ for new launches...
How to archive and delete all your Facebook messages
It would be trivial to batch writes to the mmap'ed region. Reads would still benefit from OS caching.
Tesla previously accused BBC's Top Gear of airing a "phony" review and sued them. The case was thrown out by a judge who ruled that the review was essentially true and that no reasonable person would draw untrue conclusions from it. (my words)

I haven't read every last word on the case, but it seems to me that Top Gear gave Tesla a very harsh review... but that they didn't cheat or do anything really wrong.

IMHO, I would at least give the NYTimes a chance to respond before jumping to any conclusions.

Top Gear's take on the lawsuit: http://transmission.blogs.topgear.com/2011/04/02/tesla-vs-to...

Tesla's reply:
http://www.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/how-we-see-it-top-ge...

Article on case being thrown out for a second time: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/feb/23/top-gear-libel-c...
Not true. Tesla sued BBC's Top Gear for libel after a review [1]. That didn't stop Tesla from getting this NY Times piece [2] and other award-winning press, such as Motor Trend Car of the Year 2013.

[1] Tesla vs Top Gear, well documented by Tesla http://www.teslamotors.com/teslavstopgear

[2] NY Times piece in question: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/automobiles/stalled-on-the...

Edit: removed date of lawsuit per comment below
>Can you prove to me they wouldn't exist otherwise? People like Tim Berners-Lee didn't come up with the ideas they came up with because they were government funded. They created things because they were innovative and smart.

That's orthogonal. And company X's engineer didn't create Y because he was working in the private sector, he created it because he was innovative and smart.

Still, Tim Berners Lee WAS government funded. As was Arpanet. As was TCP-IP. As was most early work on computers. As was lots of basic physics, chemistry etc research before the US had any scientists worthy of mention (in Germany, France, Britain etc).
Give me an example.
pageviews? :)
Epic closes its newest studio after just 6 months
Similar here in the UK. I bought an unlocked Nokia Lumia 710 for £99 new and am on a £20 a month giffgaff pay as you go service. 800 mins to any number, free calls to other giffgaff users, free texts to any network and unlimited data.
My impression was that the 'seriousness' came into play because they did not merely claim that the car had poor range on a track, but that it ran out of juice while they were testing it, which was not the case. Making untrue statements to make a true point about a limitation of the car was permissible since nobody reasonably expects anything else of Top Gear. I doubt a "serious" publication can get away with that sort of thing though.

I'm a fan of both Tesla and Top Gear, and Tesla's complaints about Top Gear always seemed a bit daft to me. That is mostly because of who Top Gear is though.
I haven't seen one, but I'd think it's pretty hard to think you've fully charged it when you haven't.
While not lying, it is common to exaggerate details as putting them in a more colorful light makes for more interesting articles that attract more readers. Pretty much all major media are doing that.
Kevin Systrom's first Instagram photo
It may be too late to worry about privacy, too much is out in the open already.
Not to mention that most writers have a pretty good idea who else on their beat is writing tripe. And if someone has a habit of doing this sort of thing, they're not going to care one whit when that person is exposed.
Bill Gates hits Reddit for an AMA, replies using 80-inch Windows 8 tablet
To be fair, the reporter did leave a margin of error. He may not have understood the uncertainty in the mileage estimates, but he wasn't planning things to the mile. It doesn't seem unreasonable for him to have believed that a range greater than the distance planned by a factor of 2 was safe before parking the car overnight.