skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
After reading the original article myself, I didn't think it was that bad. My main takeaway was "If you're a Tesla owner, make sure you charge your battery if you're driving a reasonably long distance on a really cold day".

I didn't think the article was that big a deal. Now we have what is essentially a "blogfight" with both sides parsing out every little word that the other published.
Good thing Musk is willing to "stand up to them" given that he's the truly unbiased one in this situation, right? He's playing an angle here too. And the other article (http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/02/elon-musks...) casts some doubt on his loud protestations. And they've only released their summarized charts, not the raw log data, anyway. It's already a "he said / she said" situation, it's just that much of the HN crowd is more apt to be on one side vs. the other.
Nah. A few minutes outside San Luis Obispo, it's nothing but cows. I live in Cambria, 40 minutes north of SLO. I used to be able to look out my living room window and watch the cows until they turned the East-West ranch into a park. And a few miles north you get zebras.
I am, and the answer is: not very much.

I own a Roadster, and after 2.5 years of daily driving, my battery capacity is down by 6%. That's not 0%, but it's also not a big deal.
Argument and rhetoric is a whole field of study. Prof. David Zarefsky at Northwestern has a good set of lectures on the subject which are on Amazon. The outline is here: http://thefulldialectician.synthasite.com/resources/ZAREFSKY...

My exposure to the subject has been in the legal context. This is a popular textbook on legal argumentation: Gardner, Legal Argument: The Structure and Language of Effective Advocacy. Someone has an older edition for cheap on EBay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/LEGAL-ARGUMENT-THE-STRUCTURE-AN-/310.... The text is quite general, not all that specific to the legal context.
8 is designed for tablets with about he same power as a 7 year old pc...1+1=2
On the point about the data logging, it was stated in Tesla's first response article that they "always carefully data log media drives". It is entirely possible that they were logging/monitoring far more data for Broder's adventure than they would for private consumers.
If you're wanting to play on your own server we (Minefold YC W12) have just silently released TF2 support.</plug>
Sure it is. But that will only work when you warm up the pack, not when you warm up the car. The draining of energy will also warm up the pack (it should, to some extent because the pack will have an internal resistance which the current passes through, which will turn into heat) but this is still much less efficient than using that energy to propel the car forward.

The band where draining at a lower rate would warm up the battery to the point where the aggregate power taken from the pack would be higher if you drained it at a lower rate for a 1/2 hour and then at a higher rate is a very thin one if it exists at all.

The good news is that that is a thing that could easily be proven or disproven with a bunch of LiPo batteries, a freezer and a bunch of resistors.

I'd be quite surprised if the Ri of the batteries was low enough to allow sufficient current to flow, yet high enough to heat up to have this effect.
A debate with DATA. How wonderful!
I'm a recruiter who charges by the hour. A new client asked to find a Senior Rails Developer. I called a friend who does Rails work and filled the job in 30 minutes. I sent the client an invoice for 0.50 hours. The client did not pay and I learned to fish for higher caliber clients.
It's more than rude: you should see what Ayn Rand had to say about the native Americans.

> Any white person who brings the element of civilization has the right
> to take over this continent.
>
> http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand

It is pretty disgusting.
It's unfortunate from the fundamentalist parents' perspective.
I can't blame the system either - it exists because of those darned corporations, lobbyists, politicians, and the electorate.
I lived in Christchurch for a while and there are definitely similarities. A kiwi friend, now in Ohio, is seriously considering a move out this way.
last time I looked there was exactly such a wizard with the override functionality
I'm surprised to see that Hacker News has so many people from Georgia.
Excel: Microsoft's greatest achievement.
Show HN: Visualize Frontpage Hacker News Polls
This guy isn't really asking for much is he? He not only wants someone to build a "better" clone of Amazon but also; auctions, classifieds, forums and a freelance jobs section on-top of what would be an extremely complicated project not-to-mention expensive. I bet the winner of this project will just skin a copy of Magento and install a couple of plugins in unison with a bot script that would scrape all of Amazon's categories and add them. Good luck to the guy, I hope his pockets are deep.

Wouldn't surprise me if the project ends in a skinned copy of Wordpress with WP-Ecommerce installed for the store functionality, haha.
I don't think many programmers think Excel is a bad tool. Excel is a great tool for what it does. But, Excel is not a database. And when an Excel spreadsheet actually becomes your business's application, that's when you have problems (in my opinion).
500 tries on average and I'll have it anyway ;-)
It would be really cool to see what the 2012 election would've looked like with this map.
> Property is granted by governments. Why? Because it's a useful abstraction.

This is where that 'broad intellectual foundation' comes in. You may think that it is, sure, but why? Not everyone does, and there's a whole lot of philosophical discussion on this very topic. Our conception of 'private property' has only been around ~200 years, and humanity's been around just a bit more than that.
Your Logo Sets Your Brand
> I do recall setting the cruise control to about 54 m.p.h., as I wrote. The log shows the car traveling about 60 m.p.h. for a nearly 100-mile stretch on the New Jersey Turnpike. I cannot account for the discrepancy, nor for a later stretch in Connecticut where I recall driving about 45 m.p.h., but it may be the result of the car being delivered with 19-inch wheels and all-season tires, not the specified 21-inch wheels and summer tires.

Okay, someone please explain to me how tires with a smaller circumference are going to result in faster speeds?

John Broder already came across as someone who's hazy on basic physics. Maybe he's not so hot on geometry, either.
Yeah, there are really two major problems with the story. First, that he drove off with 32 miles left. Even if they did say it was okay, a rational consumer would be pretty skeptical. This also creates the problem that the story depends on what was said in a telephone conversation that we don't have access to, so there's really no way to know who is telling the truth. The other problem is this quote: "If there was a public charging station nearby, no one made me aware of it." When I go on a road trip and I'm running out of gas, I don't wait for a call from someone to tell me where the gas station is. I stop and I find out where the gas station is, and then I drive straight to it and fill the car. Broder says that he was trying to simulate a real trip, but that just doesn't square with his behavior. Only filling to 72% is not what an ordinary consumer does on a long trip. You fill the tank, because like your mother always told you, "Better safe than sorry."
Agreed. They've allowed Broder to just ride this out by muddying the waters. He walks away from this only slightly tainted now.

At the very least, his notes and the resulting article are not accurate. He confirms this himself.

This isn't surprising, and not necessarily malicious. But it's extremely common, as anyone who has ever dealt with a journalist knows.

As a group, journalists simply get a great number of things wrong and cannot be relied on for detail oriented work.
From the article: "In my 16 years at The Times I have served as White House correspondent, Washington editor, Los Angeles bureau chief and a political correspondent."

I don't mean to insult or slander Mr. Broder but how does one go from a White House correspondent, Washington editor, Los Angeles bureau chief and a political correspondent to reviewing cars and charger stations?
Can we help from outside the EU? Would it carry more weight to show that the entire worldwide development community recognises Python as referring to Python-the-language.
A car in motion uses ten times the power of a house. The engineers apparently wanted him to slowly pull power from the battery, which would be consistent with "sitting in the car with the heat on low."

If it turns out Tesla denies telling him how he can condition the battery, that would be significant.
> it's just that much of the HN crowd is more apt to be on one side vs. the other.

I don't think so, it's just that one part of the HN crowd likes data more than 'someone said'.

So now it is up to Tesla to provide even more data, preferably with an exact re-run of the conditions in the presence of said journalist. That should clear up any kind of difference and would establish whether or not there is either a bug in the system, a bug in the procedures or a systemic problem with the car. If the problem can't be reproduced with proper handling of the car then there should be a retraction. Regardless of which it is the bickering should stop.
This is why I am glad to be a web developer, seeing things like this done in the browser without using Flash makes me excited for the future. A spot on HTML5 version of the game, super fun and impressive. Can't wait to see more being added to this by the author.
That line was from Broder's response to Musk's criticism...thus, it seems reasonable to infer that the offer was made after this whole ordeal. I think it is likely that Musk made the offer with a more favorable, redeeming article in mind. I don't think Musk repealed the offer after the posting of Broder's article, as your comment seems to imply.
Its too bad they don't package for debian sid/unstable.
> In a national campaign, anywhere you don't advertise, you leave up for grabs by your competition.

And you can have Nebraska. The whole state, I wouldn't run a single ad there for a national campaign, in either scenario. Why would I? The ad money I might have to spend in Nebraska to get a thousand eyeballs might get me closer to ten thousand eyeballs in California or New York. Not to mention the ten thousand eyeballs I get in New York are also eyeballs I want to see my general platform and the fact that my party exists, because as you may well know, most people vote a straight ticket.

I see a lot of compelling reasons to believe that local media would remain a primary means of communication between candidates and prospective voters, even if we switched to a popular vote.
Spoiler alert: Ender commits xenocide just to prove his worth. Is that a win?
If he had just driven the fucking car and recharged as necessary, from looking at the battery meter, it would've been a fine trip.
Get with the program -- it's all about distributed server-side Flash now.
Elon Musk has a billion dollars riding on calling the NY Times a liar and discrediting them.

Here's the thing though: the problem with the Tesla battery is the same problem that every other EV to date has had in sub-zero weather: they lose their charge and the charging meter gets decalibrated.

Tesla's bane is not a biased NY Times reporter. Their fundamental mistake was giving an EV to the NY Times to test drive in the middle of one of the coldest winters on record.

EDIT: Also one of the warmest winters on record in that area of the country, but not during the period of the NY Times' test.
Here's the basics, from an anarchist/communist perspective: http://blog.steveklabnik.com/posts/2012-03-31-anti-capitalis...
This seems much the same as a DRM mechanism on a single-player game that requires a live network connection to phone home to the server. In either case, you have software refusing to function unless its creator gives approval. The only difference is that this is known to the player of the game.
Providing a time-limited version for testing certainly is legal. Just make sure your client knows this and it's in the contract. Display a notice like "Note: this beta version of the software will not run after 1-4-2013".
You are assuming he had log data at both points. He might have changed his story when logs were uncovered.
I get why Musk feels like he needs to defend his company but I think he may be doing more harm than good on the PR front.

Do you think the average Tesla customer is going to want to wade through a bunch of plots of battery charge vs distance, etc? I think the takeaway for the average Tesla customer might be along the lines of "hmm, this seems really complicated.... am I going to have to keep the heat down while I drive even when it's 10 degrees outside?"

To me, Musk comes across as an out-of-touch engineer who keeps trying to argue the technical case and insists it's the customer's fault--it couldn't possibly be a faulty design, confusing U.I., or marketing not realizing a common (mis)use case. If I dropped $60-$100k on a car and run into problems, this is the last thing I'd want to hear on the other end of the phone.
Hopefully all the calls to Tesla started with the usual "your call may be recorded for quality or training purposes".
>Going back to 2000 for a basically tied election we find that 31 states gain via the electoral college, 6 of them are purplish (<10%), 7 are blue and 19 are red states.

You're assuming that what matters is which party wins rather than how the voters influence what the parties do. There is a reason that Floridians got Medicare Part D and Ohioans got the auto bailout but Monsanto continues to be allowed to rape family farmers in all the deep red states.
I don't think that's the reason. I have no idea how to tinker with my car but when my mechanic says it'll take $500 to fix it often seems reasonable.
Virtual goods like Reddit gold seem like an obvious opportunity to accept bitcoin. There's no marginal cost, so you don't have to worry so much about the price of BTC plummeting one day.
Great job, love the look of it!
It's a bit hard to explain if you're not from the DMV area. Most people who say they live in DC actually live in NoVA/MD. I'm in NoVA and voted Virginia, but I was tempted to vote DC as well.
It would be interesting too to see the rates of power consumption for the model S at cruising speed and the 'heat on low'.

From what I remember (doing some electric car design a long time ago) a car that is cruising at about 50 miles per hour uses < 10KW, and that was 1980's car, I'd expect the Tesla to do a little bit better than that.

> If it turns out Tesla denies telling him how he can condition the battery, that would be significant.

It would be, and on top of that they could prove in a re-run that that was what did in the trip (and starting out on a leg with less range than the leg was long, that bit did not make sense at all in the previous article).
HTML5 does that still mean in messaging terms it's a web app or app created using html5 & then converted into a mobile app? Previously it was the latter, but now I wonder are others confused when they see "X Game - HTML5"?

Nice work btw!
Excel can be used as a database for analysis though.. check out www.powerpivot.com. This functionality also comes in Excel 2013.
Does no one else find it odd that everyone accepts the Tesla-provided data as a given fact, given that they are the only people with access to it?

Can a third party verify the data?

And how do readers know that the data-collection itself works without flaws?
REDO. With supervision. Seems worthless to yak back and forth when we can just find out how the car performs. It's still cold on the east coast, right?
That seems to be plausible explanation, but I don't see how you give such advice to somebody on the road. You have two potential situations:

1. Battery has lost some charge for unknown reason, and has to be recharged.
2. Battery has proper charge, but the estimate is wrong.

If you act according to true scenario, client is happy in both cases. If true scenario is 2 but you act like it's 1, the client wastes and hour to recharge (which isn't necessary) but arrives at the goal. If true scenario is 1 but you act like it's 2, the client is stuck in the middle of the road and curses you.

Clearly, you should always choose to act as if the true scenario is 1 and recommend proper recharging, and try to debug why charge indicator was potentially wrong later. If the support person gave different advice, he was setting himself and his company for the mess up, and the mess up ensued.
will pass along , thanks!
Musk already flatly denied that he had ever been "cleared" by Tesla for the next leg of the journey. Somebody's wrong.

> The final leg of his trip was 61 miles and yet he disconnected the charge cable when the range display stated 32 miles. He did so expressly against the advice of Tesla personnel and in obvious violation of common sense.
"Misadventures in Kiddie World"

Anything is better than what's up there now.
> and the 10-15% imprecision is well to be expected from what is a journalistic review and not a scientific experiment

Sorry, but your standards are a bit low. A lot of things like a 10-15% imprecision, all biased in the direction of making the car perform less -- that's exactly what I'd do if I were trying to fix the drive's outcome.

If Consumer Reports had multiple things 10-15% off, all pointedly to support a given agenda, there would be an outcry. I see no reason why the NYTimes, in an article in which they are reporting data, should be held to a lesser standard.
Then you'd have to split it 50/50.
A Cheesy Valentine API Story
jaquesm's opinion was given to you for free, what are you complaining about? If you don't like it, don't read it...
Through my work at a ISP that serves a lot of farmers I'd have to disagree depending on what you mean by "internet tech savvy". I haven't run across any that sling code in their spare time but other than that, watch out!

I know of multiple groups (usually extended families) that have microwave radio links between their farms. They use this to monitor each-other's grain bins, crops, and security cameras. Not to mention WiFi To The Tractor for monitoring, IM, etc. There's no cell coverage so they find a way to get connectivity. I'd call that pretty internet tech savvy.

This is a large enough market that there's a company that essentially rebrands Ubiquiti radios, marks them up 100%, and markets them through farm magazines. I suppose in a way that's arbitrage on ignorance BUT it shows that there's a need.
I agree with you that the tit-for-tat details don't matter; I don't agree with you that the only question is whether Tesla gave the reporter bad advice.

This is a textbook example of how not to solve a PR problem — to get in a public, internet-driven slanging match with a journalist. Instead of "publicly refuting", Musk should have called up and got a full account of what went wrong; put the journalist on side, and got an at least somewhat positive follow up account from the journalist saying "I spoke to Musk and he had some questions and we talked through it and we realize that rather than the car being at fault, a database with current locations of chargers hadn't been updated etc etc etc".

Right now, instead, Musk can't win. And he's drawing a HUGE amount of publicity to a fact that's already in the back of a lot of consumers minds — that these EVs aren't ready for primetime.
a bad ass reply.
He is the energy and environmental issues reporter now.
I will not argue with you about my disdain for hippies and their views, but to mention a few things from a slightly different perspective...

> But ultimately, seven billion people are never going to form some totally sweet Zapatista-style worldwide commune.

Most serious communists would agree, at least for the near-term: you'd need a few generations of socialism before that'd even be remotely possible.

> At that scale, the markets are going to be at work. Capitalism is inevitable.

Note that 'capitalism' != 'markets,' or even 'free markets.' Mutualism, for example, is market socialism.

> But the farms and kibbutzim themselves are still participants in a larger capitalist system.

Totally, 100% agree.
I wouldn't use plates or silverware that I printed on my 3D printer unless I coated it.

Do you have one? I couldn't think of that many things to print when I made one, but now that I have one (kind of like the hammer and the nail), I can see lots of things to print now.
On the other hand, Brody has known record of exaggeration and distortion of truth. Whereas Musk is an honest, no-nonsense engineer. (Although I'd be interested if you could point me to a situation where Musk was caught blatantly lying about something.)
What about people would start using original and easy to Google names for languages and APIs / frameworks / etc.? (I know Python predates Google but still).

No more three-letters acronyms: PHP, APL, RPG, PL/I (ok, there a slash in addition to the three-letters but still).

No more names that refer to someone who existed (either first name or last name or surname) or a common word: Pascal, Logo, Java, Go, Racket, Haskell... Pffft!

Geez. You have to wonder how the people smart enough to write a language gaining sufficient traction can be so stupid at naming the language.

Here, let's look at a car: oh, "Muffler". Now that's a great name for a programming language. Wait. "Horn" is good too. Common, let's name it "Wheel". Wait, no: "Steering". I'm so smart.

Or let's go to the zoo and pick an animal?

Or... You know what, use Google and try to find a name which isn't commonly used and which hence hasn't much chance of being widely used.

And then it becomes your brand and trademark and intellectual property and what-not-I-am-not-lawyer-but-you-can-nitpick.
Perhaps my perspective is tainted by living in the bay area through two (three?) tech bubbles, however I still don't see it. I agree that HN-type hackers and anarchists both use aesthetically similar language, like "changing the world," but I think that means something substantially different in each context.

My sense is that when tech people talk about changing the world, they generally mean keeping the form of the world basically the same, but making it more efficient.

Here's an example from HN and YC, 42floors:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4500176

They use the language you're talking about -- they want to "change the world" ...with a commercial real-estate search engine! I'm sure that these folks are doing fine work, but really, the world is going to be fundamentally the same, it just might be a little easier to find commercial real-estate in it.

On the other hand, the anarchist basis is that fundamental aspects of society (police, prisons, judges, rulers, laws, taxes) were all the inventions of kings, which were later appropriated rather than destroyed. That it was a mistake to think it was possible to "change the world" simply by putting these same structures in the hands of different people, and that what's actually required is to eliminate them completely.

These, I think, are pretty different ways of conceptualizing that phrase.

I will agree that there are sometimes unusual intersections (the history of twitter, for instance).
what's the theme song?