Node.js: Cluster vs. Async - <AUTHOR> http://synsem.com/SyncNotAsync/ <comment><USER2> This article is wrong on so many levels...

\- It implies that async execution is equivalent to callback hell. In reality there are excellent ways to have async code which looks just like sync (generators, async/await).

\- It benchmarks multi-core (sync) vs single-core (async) and makes claims based on the results.

\- It presents async execution as an antipode of clustering. In reality it's a best practice to make use of both.

...and everything that follows is just irrelevant.

<comment><USER3> There are so many statements in the article that makes me laugh

> async cons: Adds latency with parallel overhead

What parallel? This should be cons for multi threaded running on single core cpu

> async pros: Callbacks help enforce error-prone synchronization

How does callbacks help in error prone synchronization? It is not callback, it is single threaded model that does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't understand these strawmans. The virtue of the asynchronous programming model is low-memory overhead as compared to threads AND low latency for IO- bound tasks in highly concurrent scenarios.

Request per-process/thread has all the same memory overhead implication it has always had. It's almost like the author is ignorant of the reason for node.js' success or why it was built in the first place.

Also, "callback hell" is just FUD. Nobody who does this for a living and knows what they're doing really has an issue with this. Promises solve the unreliability issues, and async/await solves the syntax complexity issues.

I'd like to see this same analysis for 1000 req concurrency measuring memory overhead and using async/await for code comparison. Cooperative multitasking will always be capable of lower latency when you know what you're doing, and async programming is lightyears simpler than multi-threaded programming.

<comment><USER5> I'd say at least 10K simultaneous requests on a single instance with ease, let alone several. Just a simple echo web-server... [http://localhost/foo](http://localhost/foo) => "hello foo" ...

Launching that many threads will quickly hit bottlenecks on most systems... I've seen this happen in a poorly written simulation server (each actor had it's own work thread)... the server would freeze up randomly with only a handful of connections in a test scenario... changing to an event-loop using an async thread-pool resolved most of these issues (this was before node).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Edit: The whole idea behind clustering is to run an application instance per thread/core for better performance and load balance requests between the application instances. This article seems absurd in its intention to force you to choose between multi-threaded synchronous application instances or a single application instance using callbacks.

We've been running a Koa.js API server using Cluster in production for over a year now with no hiccups (on a Windows machine).

I've been thinking about making the switch to iisnode, as it handles clustering, graceful shutdown and zero-downtime from within IIS (and does a couple of other things). It uses named pipes to proxy connections and also supports web sockets among other things.

With the nodeProcessCommandLine configuration setting, you can pass parameters to node (e.g. --harmony), use babel-node or io.js.

See: [http://www.hanselman.com/blog/InstallingAndRunningNodejsAppl...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/InstallingAndRunningNodejsApplicationsWithinIISOnWindowsAreYouMad.aspx)

A blog post I wrote a while ago: [https://shelakel.co.za/hosting-almost-any- application-on-iis...](https://shelakel.co.za/hosting-almost-any-application- on-iis-via-iis-node/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Hogwash. It seems like this person doesn't understand that node is an event based, asynchronous language, and that's one of its big advantages over other languages that force threads, or don't generally offer parallel execution.

If this had compared Node.js with clustering and async vs a synchronous language like Ruby, it might have been interesting. Maybe. But non- asynchronous operations in Node are an antipattern that core node contribs are trying to remove (the -Sync in node stdlib are trying to be removed).

Good coding conventions, promises, generators, and async/await are your friends for making callback hell go away.

<comment><USER8> Indeed, I've noticed that quite a few -Sync methods aren't documented anymore. My hope is that node will have a major release which removes all -Sync methods and replaces callbacks with Promises. Then we'll all be happy _and_ use cluster when we can.

<comment><USER9> No please! More sync function please!

Yes, if I'm writing a web server I want everything to be async. But, just as I want to share JS on the server and the client I also want to use JS as my build language. At least for me, I find it much faster to build using a sync style.

Maybe I just haven't learned the async way but for example I tried to make a build system using node. I needed to spawn out to a builder to build some stuff, copy files, spawn git in various ways to see if repos are dirty or clean, git add, git commit, and a few other things. I found it a massive nightmare and after 2 days I switched to synchronous python for my building. Was done in 2 hours.

If there's some articles or tips that will make me as comfortable at async for building as I'm as sync in python then please point me at them. But, for whatever reason, I'm struggling with async for really complex tasks. (and yes, I'm using promises)

<comment><USER7> If you truly need to do sync programming for whatever reason, you probably aren't using the right language. It's not just web programming that benefits from asynchrony, it's pretty much any non-trivial algorithm. Sure, it can require a bit more code to do right, but you don't want to block all your other background events from firing just because you have to write a bit more code.

If you really prefer synchronous style, and don't mind the drawbacks, there are plenty of languages out there that'll work better for you. PHP, Ruby, and Python readily come to mind.

<comment><USER9> Yes, but a big draw of using node at all is that it's JavaScript. I write some function "templateThisString" and I can use it on both the server and the client. Now I also want to use it in my build process. If I switch to another language I have double the work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> OpenResty does something similar. Code can be written synchronously, but all the network io for example happens in a non-blocking manner. The code still looks like synchronous, though - without call back hell. This doesn't come without issues as you need to change libraries to use OpenResty (Nginx) network primitives. Overall it is one of the nicest platforms I have worked with. A great webserver (Nginx) that can be programmed with a great language (Lua + LuaJIT).

At Nginx conf the Nginx developers where showing interest to bring Javascript to the platform. They said that they will take similar approach that OpenResty uses (aka no callback hell).

<comment><USER11> OpenResty is an evented model too. Coroutines are used to avoid using callbacks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I recently started programming more using promises and I can say that I am very satisfied with the way it does away with the callback hell problem.

Instead of taking a callback, a function returns a promise, which can be daisy-chained to do work.

Ex:

file.read().then(console.log);

Or using the example in the article:

var a = fileA.read();

var b = fileB.read();

promise.all([a,b]).then((data) => console.log(data[0], data[1]));

<comment><USER13> just wait till you try generators + async/await, it can be a lovely experience. No callbacks, and working try/catch.

<comment><USER14> +1 for generators. As a former PHP developer, I jumped into using generators that return promises in io.js (as well as es6 classes), and the code reads very much like PHP code, except all of the i/o is now asynchronous.

<comment><USER15> There is no benefit of io being async in itself until you have many users. The immediate and more accessible benefit is speeding up individual requests due to the ease at which you can perfom io in parallel. But if you just sprinkle await/yield everywhere (which everyone unfortunately does), you don't even get this benefit.

<comment><USER16> Sure you can.

      let [a, b] = await Promise.all([asyncA(), asyncB()])

<comment><USER15> I am referring to usage of generators without promises (or rather code that uses generators in a way that it wouldnt matter if promises or thunks were used). And even then I didn't say that you couldn't, even when using promises and generators together most people make their code unneceasarily sequential.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why is this even being upvoted? it confuses important concepts and what isn't wrong is irrelevant.

</comment><comment><USER18> We ([http://Clara.io](http://Clara.io)) run multiple NodeJS instances per machine and our code base is Async. I believe this gives us the best of both worlds.

Also Sync versions of calls in NodeJS are likely going to be deprecated, thus this won't even be possible in NodeJS going forward.

<comment><USER19> Sync calls wouldn't be deprecated IMHO as not everything utilizing Node.js is an HTTP server (think of build scripts, background jobs, etc.).

<comment><USER20> I often use it for ad hoc scripts, similar to the way many people use python

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If you look more closely at the actual code, this exercise compares the performance of readFileSync (an operation that deliberately blocks) on 1 core vs 2 cores.

</comment><comment><USER22> It makes sense to have both event-based and non-event-based options for server side javascript development.

OS-level multitasking won't be able to achieve the same level of concurrency, but the simplicity and maintainability of the application will go up. The right choice depends on the needs of the application, of course.

Both evented and non-evented approaches have their place, and most server-side languages allow development with either approach: Ruby, Python, C, Java all have solid options for evented and non-evented solutions.

<comment><USER23> > OS-level multitasking won't be able to achieve the same level of concurrency

Do you have a source for this claim? I've seen it repeated many times, especially in the node.js community but I've yet to see any evidence to back it up. From what I've read, a synchronous threaded model can be just as fast as an event-based system [1].

[1] [http://www.mailinator.com/tymaPaulMultithreaded.pdf](http://www.mailinator.com/tymaPaulMultithreaded.pdf)

<comment><USER24> A big problem with one-thread-per-connection is that you open yourself to slowloris-type DoS attacks.[1] Normal load (and even extreme load) is fine, but a few malicious clients can use up all of your threads and take down your server.

This is touched upon in the slides you linked to. On slide 62 (SMTP server) a point says, "Server spends a lot of time waiting for the next command (like many milliseconds)." A malicious client could send bytes very slowly, using up a thread for a much longer period of time. If the client has an async architecture, it can open multiple slow connections with little overhead. The asymmetry in resource usage can be quite staggering.

1\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slowloris_(software)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slowloris_\(software\))

<comment><USER25> You seem to be imagining a case where you only allocate a small fixed thread- pool and when it runs out you just stop and wait. I think the slide deck is advocating that you just keep allocating more threads.

<comment><USER24> I'm talking about hitting OS or resource limits. Let's say a server is configured to time-out requests after 2 minutes. A malicious client could do something like...

Every second:

1\. Open 40 connections to the server.

2\. For all open connections, send one byte.

Repeat indefinitely.

Steady state would be reached at 4,800 open connections. At 1 byte of actual data per second per connection, data plus TCP overhead would use around 200KB/s of bandwidth. The server would have to run 4,800 threads to handle this load. Depending on memory usage per thread, this could exhaust the server's RAM.

There are ways to mitigate this simple example attack, but the only way to defend against more sophisticated variants is to break the one-thread-per- connection relationship.

<comment><USER26> What i am truely missing is a good benchmark and comparisons between async vs sync. It seems true that everybody says that async is best but i don't see much evidence. For example, how should 4800 threads exhaust the servers RAM when the thread stack size can be as small as 48kB. That's a round 200MB of memory.

I'm not saying that the threaded approach is better, but that almost everyone comes around with some theoretical statement but nobody seems to care to find hard evidence.

<comment><USER25> You are right to distrust these claims. The reality is that threads can be significantly faster than async -- async code has to do a lot of bookkeeping and that bookkeeping has overhead. OTOH, threads have their own kind of overhead that can also be bad.

The slide deck that bysin linked above is pretty good:

[http://www.mailinator.com/tymaPaulMultithreaded.pdf](http://www.mailinator.com/tymaPaulMultithreaded.pdf)

This is by Paul Tyma, who at the time worked on Google's Java infrastructure team with Josh Bloch and other people who know what they're doing. Apparently he found threads to be faster in a number of benchmarks.

Ultimately which is actually faster will always depend on your use case. Unfortunately this means that general benchmarks aren't all that useful; you need to benchmark _your_ system. And you aren't going to write your whole system both ways in order to find out which is faster. So probably you should just choose the style you're more comfortable with.

Async is kind of like libertarianism: It works pretty well in some cases, pretty poorly in others, but it has a contingent of fans who think they've discovered some magic solution to all problems and if you disagree then you must just not understand and you need to be educated.

(Note: The code I've been writing lately is heavily async, FWIW.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> martin-adams I've adapted the node-fibers library to write synchronous style code. It works really well for my needs, but I do understand that my approach does litter the function prototype which is not ideal.

Code looks like this:

      var sync = require('./sync');

      sync(function () {
        try {
          var result = someAsyncFunc1.callSync(this, 'param1', param2');
          if (result.something === true) {
            var result2 = someAsyncFunc2.callSync(this, 'param1');
          } else {
            var result2 = someAsyncFunc3.callSync(this, 'param1');
          }

          console.log(result2.message);
        } catch (ex) {
          // One of them returned an err param in their callback
        }
      });

I haven't tested the performance, so no idea if it's a running like a dog.

<comment><USER27> Meteor does something similar with Fibers, but you wrap each function ahead of time, so you don't need to worry about littering Function.prototype.

[https://www.discovermeteor.com/blog/wrapping-npm- packages/](https://www.discovermeteor.com/blog/wrapping-npm-packages/)

It feels a bit like "get that sync code off my Javascript lawn!" but once you get used to it, it's pretty great in practice, and good for introducing newcomers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> >Cons: Larger memory footprint

The more annoying con is lack of shared memory. A single process can be much less complex when it doesn't have to worry about messaging systems and off process caching.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is unsuitable for real-world applications, where you will, inevitably, need at least a little mutable shared state. Async handles this reasonably well at a decent performance cost; shared-memory threads (near-certain catastrophic failure) and database-only state (awful performance) do not.

The only real competition is transactional memory but it hasn't become mainstream yet.

<comment><USER30> I'm not sure what you're saying here exactly. _What_ is unsuitable for real- world applications?

I will say this, though, regarding the need for shared, mutable state: You can communicate by sharing memory, but you can also share memory by communicating. This is I guess what you allude to with _database-only state_ , but it doesn't need to be a database. It could just as easily be a memcached server or some other fase key-value store.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> _" Asynchronous event-driven programming is at the heart of Node.js, however it is also the root cause of Callback Hell."_

I'd argue the root cause is... callbacks.

Asynchronous programming can be done elegantly, in a synchronous style using "async/await", originally (?) in C# [1], likely to be added to the next version of JavaScript [2], also in Dart [2], Hack [4], and Python 3.5 [5]. It can also be emulated in languages with coroutines/generators [6][7][8] (which in turn can be implemented by a fairly simple transpiler [9][10])

This:

        function foo(a, callback) {
          bar(a, function(err, b) {
            if (err) {
              callback(err)
            } else {
               baz(b, function(err, c) {
                 if (err) {
                   callback(err)
                 } else {
                   // some more stuff
                   callback(null, d)
                 }
               })
            }
          })
        }

Becomes this:

        async function foo() {
          var a = await bar(a)
          var c = await baz(b)
          // some more stuff
          return d;
        }

And you'll see even greater improvements when using other constructs like try/catch, conditionals, loops, etc.

[1] [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/hh191443.aspx](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/hh191443.aspx)

[2] [http://jakearchibald.com/2014/es7-async- functions/](http://jakearchibald.com/2014/es7-async-functions/)

[3] [https://www.dartlang.org/articles/await- async/](https://www.dartlang.org/articles/await-async/)

[4] [http://docs.hhvm.com/manual/en/hack.async.asyncawait.php](http://docs.hhvm.com/manual/en/hack.async.asyncawait.php)

[5] [https://lwn.net/Articles/643786/](https://lwn.net/Articles/643786/)

[6] [https://github.com/petkaantonov/bluebird/blob/master/API.md#...](https://github.com/petkaantonov/bluebird/blob/master/API.md#promisecoroutinegeneratorfunction- generatorfunction---function)

[7] [https://github.com/kriskowal/q/tree/v1/examples/async- genera...](https://github.com/kriskowal/q/tree/v1/examples/async-generators)

[8] [http://taskjs.org/](http://taskjs.org/)

[9] [https://babeljs.io/docs/learn- es6/#generators](https://babeljs.io/docs/learn-es6/#generators)

[10] [https://facebook.github.io/regenerator/](https://facebook.github.io/regenerator/)

<comment><USER5> Not only the simplified code you write with async/await (using babeljs for this today) ... There are a lot of complex processes that are easier to reason against in JS over low level C.

Not to mention, that the article's example is only comparing a small piece of work... A single node instance can easily manage 10K simultaneous requests... launching a thread per request, and you're going to hit resource bottlenecks at the CPU pretty quickly, compared to several node instances approaching a million simultaneous connections on a single server. Node uses not only an even loop, but a shared thread pool for isolation of work without blowing out resource contention.

I've seen issues with even a few thousand threads in poorly written simulation servers... going to an event-loop against a threadpool always worked out better under true load.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is great. I wonder how long til the node community "discovers" that using a dedicated httpd and communicating over a standardized middleware (fcgi, wsgi, rack, etc) is also a superior approach instead of handling http directly.

<comment><USER31> FastCGI, really?

And Node has the equivalent of WSGI and Rack: Connect/Express middleware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Now forgive my naivety, but isn't this just threads?

I understand that because if the funny scoping rules it means that threading is actually surprisingly hard? surely you'd want more control over your threaded event loops?

</comment><comment><USER34> Do your apps run single-threaded? Why wouldn't you cluster? In-memory state is easily avoidable. Using in-memory sessions even prints a warning in express by default.

</comment><comment><USER35> Just add a pickle Promises</comment>


A Most Peculiar Test Drive – Follow Up - <AUTHOR> http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/most-peculiar-test-drive-follow <comment><USER3> Musk is filtering the NYT's response when he says:

"the Public Editor agreed that John Broder had "problems with precision and judgment," "took casual and imprecise notes" and made "few conclusions that are unassailable.""

Let me try to cherry pick some points from the very same NYT response (1), spun towards the opposite conclusion:

"Mr. Musk presented his data "in the most damaging (and sometimes quite misleading) way possible" and "I am convinced that [Broder] . . . told the story as he experienced it."

My point isn't that my choice quotes above are accurate, but that Musk's assessment is disingenuous to the NYT's response, and that's in the first paragraph of his article.

I'm not sure what Musk is trying to accomplish at this point, his "spin" is transparent and it feels condescending.

Tesla's goodwill in my eyes is fast eroding.

(1) [http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/18/problems- wi...](http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/18/problems-with- precision-and-judgment-but-not-integrity-in-tesla-test/)

<comment><USER4> Disagree. Go read the NYT editorial response, it's so full of spin it could serve as an amusement park ride. It only served to muddy the waters, give some kind of half-not-apology, in the hopes the issue would drop.

I'm surprised so many people are hating on Mr. Musk.

<comment> brown9-2 Can you elaborate on what you thought was "spin" or how the public editor was unfair?

<comment><USER4> Sure.

\</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---

First the NYT says Broder was honest:

 _Mr. Broder and The Times have maintained that the article was done in good faith, and that it is an honest account of what happened._

Then the NYT says Broder was misleading (dishonest):

 _Mr. Broder left himself open to valid criticism by taking what seem to be casual and imprecise notes along the journey_

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>---

Next, the NYT says Broder should have taken more detailed logs:

 _A little red notebook in the front seat is no match for digitally recorded driving logs..._

But next the NYT says more detailed logs are pointless:

 _I could recite chapter and verse of the test drive...I don't think that's useful here._

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>---

And the NYT says Border did the test drive in good faith:

 _I am convinced that he [Broder] took on the test drive in good faith_

But then the NYT criticizes his good faith:

 _...there is still plenty to argue about and few conclusions that are unassailable_

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>---

That's just a quick snapshot of the whiplash-inducing spin in the NYT editorial.

<comment> brown9-2 It's possible to both do something in good faith and fail to be precise in your notes. The latter does not make you "dishonest".

<comment><USER4> I personally believe that errors of omission and misleading details are identical to dishonesty, but I understand not everyone may see it that way.

That is why I said it was misleading, and parenthesized my judgement of it (dishonest).

<comment><USER5> NYT doesn't actually speak of errors of omission and misleading details anywhere. You can't just go making stuff up. To take what you quoted: _Mr. Broder left himself open to valid criticism by taking what seem to be casual and imprecise notes along the journey_ <\-- what this means is NOT what you are pretending it means. It simply means "this wasn't done in a laboratory, so you can hardly expect everything to be correct up to 6 sig figs. Therefore, feel free to point out if some specific details aren't quite right."

<comment><USER6> It seems to me that when your boss, the person who jumped to your public defense immediately when criticized without first checking the facts, and the person who's businesses reputation is made or destroyed by the public perception of your trustworthiness - prints this about you, you've just been thrown under the bus:

"I've also had a number of talks with my brother, a physician, car aficionado and Tesla fan, who has helped me balance what might have been a tendency to unconsciously side with a seasoned and respected journalist – my own "confirmation bias."

My own findings are not dissimilar to the reader I quote above, although I do not believe Mr. Broder hoped the drive would end badly. I am convinced that he took on the test drive in good faith, and told the story as he experienced it.

Did he use good judgment along the way? Not especially. In particular, decisions he made at a crucial juncture – when he recharged the Model S in Norwich, Conn., a stop forced by the unexpected loss of charge overnight – were certainly instrumental in this saga's high-drama ending."

To me - that's like responding to a phone call about a reference for someone from a recruiter/employer with "Ummm, they're punctual, and, umm, they fit in OK socially - most of the time".

You wouldn't jump to employ a guy who can't arrange a much more glowing reference than that - and you wouldn't believe much of what Broder writes - <USER2> least not without expecting to read poor judgement and results of flawed decisions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For all the talk about Broder lying and manipulating the record, I would argue that the follow-up is far worse in terms of intentionally misinterpreting the facts.

"Yesterday, The New York Times reversed its opinion on the review of our Model S and no longer believes that it was an accurate account of what happened."

Could not be further from the truth. NYT stands behind the integrity of Broder. And it's clear based on the cherry-picked quotes in the next few sentences that Musk omitted the inconvenient facts. (quoting "problems with precision and judgment," but omitting where NYT stands by the integrity of Broder's account)

The worst part of this is that Tesla still hasn't answered to the actual issue here: the advice that Tesla gave Broder. And until they actually address the issue at hand, Musk is playing games with a public that seems to worship him and want to take down NYT.

<comment><USER8> Heartily agreed. I am extremely disappointed with Musk over this incident -- and now with the NYT as well, for failing to stand their (valid) ground and failing to call out Musk's blatant lies and manipulations.

As the dust settles, it appears that the worst that Broder is guilty of is being less than lab-test-precise in his reporting. (He did make some unfortunate decisions, such as not charging further on various occasions, but all of these decisions strike me as entirely reasonable given the facts as he understood them at the time, and -- critically -- the advice he was given by Tesla.) It should be noted that the basic thrust of his piece appears to be entirely accurate: everything started out fine; then he started having range problems; he took significant but not drastic measures in compensation; these measures were insufficient. For instance, he may have been a bit sloppy about details such as exactly when he turned down the cabin temperature or exactly what speed he slowed down to, but it's uncontested that he did lower both temperature and speed well below what a normal driver would expect in a normal car.

The car seems to have committed a sin larger than any of Broder's: it "lost" a large amount of range overnight. This was one critical element in the eventual failure (the other being various bits of bad advice from Tesla, in particular the advice to ignore the low range reading after charging for only a short period at the public station that morning).

But the worst sins, by far, are Musk's. He made many sensational accusations. Some seem clearly false, such as Broder "driving in circles" in a supposed attempt to kill the battery (Broder's explanation that he was simply looking for the charging station is far more plausible). Many more of Musk's statements are deliberate distortions of the worst kind. The "battery never ran out of energy"... which may be technically true, but whatever energy may have remained in the main battery, the car was so dead that it couldn't even be towed without a flatbed truck. "Why would anyone do that?" (leaving the last charging station with insufficient charge) when it now appears uncontested that this was under explicit advice from Tesla. "Drove right past a public charge station" -- which he didn't know about, Tesla staff didn't tell him about, and Tesla staff had implied he wouldn't need. And so forth. His entire "most peculiar test drive" piece reads like something Fox News would say about an Obama policy proposal -- nitpicking, distorting, misdirecting, and outright mocking.

I've always been a fan of Tesla, SpaceX, and Musk, but I will never look at him in the same way again.

<comment><USER5> "I've always been a fan of Tesla, SpaceX, and Musk, but I will never look at him in the same way again."

I felt the same way, and that's why I think it is appropriate to link to the following post:

<http://lesswrong.com/lw/31i/have_no_heroes_and_no_villains/>

(There are some valid criticisms of LessWrong and EY, but none of the problems really concern the above post, which is simply an excellent piece.)

What we're seeing here is that kind of thing happening.

<comment><USER9> Off-topic, but what sort of valid criticisms of lesswrong and ey have you seen? I'm not aware of any discussion about that community other than at that community itself. Just curious if there are any links/summaries.

<comment><USER10> I've found Less Wrong to be somewhat useful and interesting community, and I've made some friends over the past year at a few of the meetups in the Bay Area.

That said, it's possibly slightly ironic that many (perhaps even the majority) of the LW members, (in my personal experience) seem to naturally posses low levels of instrumental rationality, and tend to be unusually self-unaware of their own feelings and unconscious motivations.

Another way to say this: "common sense" is not something (in my experience), that is respected, understood or utilized in spades within the community.

Furthermore, while there are criticisms of LW out there, I agree with Aaron Swartz's central claim _[1]_ about a lack of skepticism. While I'm a huge advocate of Bayes theorem, I would be wary of calling myself a "Bayesian", or other self-reinforcing label. Although calibrated belief networks (eg BBN's) _[2]_ are powerful, they can also fall prone to delusional outputs where there exists a lack of sufficient external feedback.

Much of the rhetoric focuses around the charismatic and arguably pompous (don't mean to sound harsh) character of Eliezer Yudkowsky. IMHO this is considerably more evident, than the level to which HN centers around PG, for example. As for LW, further comparison's have been made to a cult before. _[3][4]_

In addition, and this is more a personal quibble, there seems to be an inclination towards debate vs dialectic. But that's probably true of nearly any community out there. HTH.

 _[1]_ [http://lesswrong.com/lw/atm/cult_impressions_of_less_wrongsi...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/atm/cult_impressions_of_less_wrongsingularity/75l5)

 _[2]_ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_network>

_[3]_ [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13018494520A...](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13018494520A06344600&page=3)

 _[4]_ [http://kruel.co/2012/07/29/possible-reasons-for-a- perception...](http://kruel.co/2012/07/29/possible-reasons-for-a-perception- of-lesswrongsiai-as-a-cult/)

<comment><USER9> That's a good summary, thanks. I know that with myself, I have a side interest in analyzing communication patterns (and argument patterns) in others - communities in particular. So I start getting analytical and looking at things in terms of rationality and bias. But I find that it might be making me slow down in my personal life - meaning, I start to arrive at things methodically and analytically that could be arrived at much quicker through intuition and common sense. It's frustrating. So I'm not sure it's just ironic - it might even be causal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What doesn't come across in this post is how squirmy the public editor's post is ([http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/18/problems- wi...](http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/18/problems-with- precision-and-judgment-but-not-integrity-in-tesla-test/)) .

It is particularly weird that the editor seems to imply that it was somehow _unfair_ of Tesla Motors to turn on the data recorder without telling Broder. If the Times had collected more rigorous data than Tesla and then cornered them on some claim or other without revealing that they had contradictory data, the Times would be patting themselves on the back for their hard-hitting investigative moxie. But I guess it's a different story when the shoe is on the other foot.

<comment><USER12> It was unfair to turn it on while representing to him that it is only turned on "with customer consent" and not telling him that they don't consider him a customer.

<comment><USER13> It's unfair to use your product's features to catch someone lying about said product during a review? Heaven forbid!

<comment><USER14> You're being pretty ridiculous. If Border had been told the data was on he would have probably approached note taking in a completely different manner. Having not been told that he took shoddy notes and relied on human memory, perception and so on. Now the real data comes back and makes it seem like he was lying and that's not fair.

<comment><USER15> Correct me if I am wrong, but this is what it seems like you are implying: It's okay for someone of his stature (from the NYT) to take "shoddy notes and [rely] on human memory", since he wasn't told that "the data was on".

<comment><USER14> No, there are many problems with it. For example, how do we even know the data is right? If the people Broder called gave him bad advice, maybe it's because something was inaccurate? Maybe the data isn't quite right. If Broder had known this whole thing was going to be recorded he could have brought his own recorder to protect himself from an overly aggressive company lying about his experience.

<comment><USER13> Shoddy data collecting/telemetry? Seriously? Is that what you're suggesting? Because SpaceX (another Musk company) has rockets that dock with the space station.

Definitely not worshiping Musk here, but if you can get a rocket to dock with the ISS, I'm pretty sure you can collect charge state, speed, and cabin environment control settings pretty accurately.

<comment><USER14> This is very much Musk worship. You really think they use the exact same software at Tesla as they use for SpaceX? Is there any reasons _at all_ to believe the programmers from these two companies have ever even met each other? Or share code via some kind of cross-company repository?

<comment><USER13> Since Musk drives product development at both companies and owns both of them, yes, I'm confident engineers collaborate between the two companies. It would be stupidity not to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Musk's post does not reflect how a paper, and specifically the NYTimes Public Editor position, works.

The Public Editor's opinion is not the same as the NYTimes' opinion, so it is wrong to say, as Musk does, that "The New York Times reversed its opinion".

It can be an easy mistake to make, if one doesn't read carefully or understand journalistic conventions (such as the difference between signed and unsigned editorials). But the sidebar of the Public Editor's page helps to clarify:

 _Margaret Sullivan is the fifth public editor appointed by The New York Times. She writes about the Times and its journalism in a frequent blog – the Public Editor's Journal — and in a twice-monthly print column in the Sunday Review section. The public editor's office also handles questions and comments from readers and investigates matters of journalistic integrity. The public editor works independently, outside of the reporting and editing structure of the newspaper; her opinions are her own._

That is, the Public Editor is an in-house critic and independent opinion, but not a final arbiter or official mouthpiece.

<comment><USER17> I hope more people read this. There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding by some people here about the Public Editor (which is actually an ombudsman). That's not going to stop Elon from capitalizing on their ignorance though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am losing respect for Musk with every subsequent chapter of this PR blitz.

What at first promised to be a battle of facts vs fiction is instead turning into yet another word-twisting smear campaign.

This is disingenuous. In fact, his willingness to blatantly twist the words of the NYT calls into question all his previous statements (including some of the interpretations surrounding the data collected during the drive). Unfortunate.

</comment><comment><USER19> For a person so obsessed with journalists' accuracy, he is pretty quick to interpret/cherrypick/adjust the public editor's piece in the best possible way for him.

<comment><USER20> I don't think journalists' accuracy is what he is obsessed with. This was a single PR battle and while Elon is an admirable engineer, he is proving he is an equally good marketer.

<comment><USER19> I don't know if declaring a concession when there wasn't one is good marketing. I can almost guarantee this post is going to blow up in his face. Playing fast and loose with the truth in an argument based on the whether the other party told the truth? Press is going to love this response and tear him to pieces.

<comment><USER21> "Press is going to love this response and tear him to pieces."

Agree. As the saying goes don't pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel. Journalists probably stick together and have each others back more than they don't. Not to mention that they could very well be jealous of Musk's fame and fortune as well.

In many people's eyes as well where there's smoke there is fire. For example if this story appeared on 60 Minutes even as fair and balanced it would not be good for Musk and Tesla. (Not the same situation of course but to anyone curious dig up "60 Minutes Audi" to see what happened to that brand.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > _"The New York Times reversed its opinion on the review of our Model S and > no longer believes that it was an accurate account of what happened."_

Contrast with this:

> _"The Times have maintained that the article was done in good faith, and > that it is an honest account of what happened."_

It's hardly accurate to say that the Times "reversed its opinion." Revised, maybe, but the article he's referring to did more side-stepping than anything.

Elon isn't winning points with me by trying to spin the story to sound more favorable.

<comment><USER23> You're right, but this is a PR battle at this stage, and these are rarely known to be won on nuance and accuracy.

<comment><USER22> Perhaps that's true for most people, but I expected more from both sides.

<comment><USER24> What more did you expect from the NY Times? They seem to be quite forthcoming and balanced.

<comment><USER25> Their reporter was busted for at best being sloppy and at worst lying to grind an axe against electric vehicles -- and they delivered a mealy mouthed half- admission of fault. A controversial, sensational story that isn't "unassailable" and was shown to be very questionable should have been withdrawn without mincing words. If they want to run the tests again under more rigorous circumstances, then they're free to do so.

We really should expect better from those with the job of giving us information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> For those who are curious, here's the NYT article Mr. Musk is talking about: [http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/18/problems- wi...](http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/18/problems-with- precision-and-judgment-but-not-integrity-in-tesla-test/)

" _[...] I do not believe Mr. Broder hoped the drive would end badly. [...] Did he use good judgment along the way? Not especially. In particular, decisions he made at a crucial juncture – when he recharged the Model S in Norwich, Conn. [...] were certainly instrumental in this saga's high-drama ending.

In addition, Mr. Broder left himself open to valid criticism by taking what seem to be casual and imprecise notes along the journey, unaware that his every move was being monitored._"

<comment><USER27> Here's the full quote of the last one: "few conclusions that are unassailable."

>"People will go on contesting these points – and insisting that they know what they prove — and that's understandable. In the matter of the Tesla Model S and its now infamous test drive, there is still plenty to argue about and few conclusions that are unassailable."

It is disingenuous to misquote to that extent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Let's figure what the important points are.

The Times effectively said "well, our review wasn't quite true but..."

And Tesla figuratively jumped in and said "Hey, I'm glad you admitted your review wasn't true".

Seems like a fine way to end things.

Sure, one could say "But - but, the 'truth is the middle'..." Sure but when you're publishing a review that going to have an economic effect on a company, you have an obligation to both not be false and to not be "sloppy to the point of falsity". So what if Broder was found to not be engaging in an malicious falsification? That the Times admitted Broder was far too sloppy is enough so that Tesla's job of protecting his company's reputation is done.

<comment><USER29> Interesting. Only when it comes to the defense of Musk, we can "figure what the important points are"?

The Times review's important points were "Supercharger distances are a bit iffy and cold weather drastically affects driving distances"

Tesla's important points were "Hey, since you quoted your speed wrong, I'm going to accuse you of lying/intentional sabotage and ignore all other issues/bury the criticisms"

To be honest, the Tesla owners telemetry drives confirms Broder's issues on the first 200 mile leg to Milford. I believe 4 out of 6 drivers ended with < 30 miles remaining (one with 3 miles remaining I believe) on a full 100% 270 mile range charge. Broder charged to 240.

Broder made many stupid choices. But the "important points" are that more superchargers are needed (confirmed by CNN), and cold weather affects battery level (confirmed by Consumer Reports). There were many ways of dealing with those two issues while showing that Broder had a outlying experience without turning this into a media whinestorm.

<comment><USER30> The Consumer Reports article can be found here [http://news.consumerreports.org/cars/2013/02/tesla-model- s-w...](http://news.consumerreports.org/cars/2013/02/tesla-model-s-winter- chills-limit-the-electric-cars-range.html)

Its events like this which only go to show, even a 100k

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > But, most of all, we would like to thank our customers, who rallied > immediately to the defense of Tesla and the electric car revolution, sending > hundreds of heartfelt letters of support to The New York Times in the space > of a few days!

Holy propaganda style writing batman. Does Musk's business card for Tesla have the job title Dear Leader?

</comment><comment><USER32> "Entirely of their own volition, several customers spent the past holiday weekend recreating the Broder test drive route and showing that it can be done easily using the Tesla Supercharger network on the East Coast. "

Musk loses some points here by not being exactly forthcoming about the details of the 'community drive' that took place, which actually required an over the air update to complete due to one of the cars not taking a full charge:

Source: [http://green.autoblog.com/2013/02/18/tesla-model-s-road- trip...](http://green.autoblog.com/2013/02/18/tesla-model-s-road-trip-drivers- have-no-problem-video/)

He should have just left that bit out, now it calls the rest into question.

</comment><comment><USER33> I know I am walking upon a mined field here, but I think that, despite his hero status, a certain kind of insecurity is showing these days from him. I mean, if you are sure you have a good product would you argue to death with a journalist or will you answer him then let the public try and judge the product on his own when it comes out?

I mean, I don't think that if someone would have badly criticized the iPhone someone at Apple would have been deeply concerned, because they were certain that thousands of authors and thousands of users would have praised it soon thereafter, and a few bad opinions wouldn't have harmed it much.

<comment><USER34> While I fully agree with your point -- This response rubs me the wrong way too -- when it comes to cars bad PR can be way more damaging than with phones.

Check this out: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Minutes#Unintended_accelerat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Minutes#Unintended_acceleration) (referenced by someone higher up in the thread). One TV show with a car that had been tampered with caused a massive amount of lost sales for Audi, to the point where they considered pulling out of the US market entirely. Sales didn't bounce back for a full 15 years.

I can definitely see why someone in the auto industry would be extremely touchy about things they think were written by journalists in bad faith.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> While it does seem Musk might actually feel personally aggrieved, I see the situation as follows: In spite of a lot of progress on making a fully electric car, the Tesla S has obvious shortcomings as a replacement for an ICE car. Mainly, it requires constant vigilance to maintain the battery, and the battery is subject to unpredictable behavior with regards to predicted range and maintaining a charge, which are worsened by cold.

These weaknesses were illustrated by the original NYT article, and no amount of spin, or "better" reporting can change this.

Musk knows that once a meme gets started along the lines of ""Tesla is the car that leaves you stranded unpredictably and doesn't work in cold climate" gets started, it is game over for reaching a mass market. So the story is a potential existential threat to the company, requiring maximum response. Losing credibility with some of the HN crowd is not such a threat, the market they represent is tiny.

He mainly needed to bring up doubts about the story enough to prevent it from becoming a defining story on the S. It might not have been pretty, but in this I would say he succeeded.

</comment><comment><USER36> I had better recycle some electrons to mention a neglected article about the Tesla Model S that is not part of the crossfire between Elon Musk and the New York Times. There was an extensive, and on the whole rather favorable, review of the Model S from The Verge

[http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/12/3969260/going-the- distance...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/12/3969260/going-the-distance- driving-tesla-model-s-in-the-real-world)

submitted to HN while most participants were discussing the original New York Times review by John Broder. (Most participants missed the discussion on the article from The Verge.)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5208154>

The author of the report in The Verge takes care to mention, "Tesla hopes for its first quarter of black ink this year after a decade of operation, but make no mistake, it's still in the throes of startupdom. Much of its working capital has come from nearly half a billion dollars in low-interest rate government loans. It has just a few dozen dealers around the world." Elon Musk seems desperate to stay in spin mode about any article on the Model S that is less than laudatory precisely because he can't brag up his company by referring to market share or sales growth or other issues that most entrepreneurs refer to.

AFTER EDIT: I appreciate the kind reply that mentions that Tesla Motors reports fourth quarter results tomorrow (Wednesday 20 February 2013). That will be interesting reading. Of course I was referring to the kind of general statement that a president of a successful company can make along the lines of "We have a growing, profitable business, and the word of mouth from our customers in cold states speaks for itself." But that's not what I hear from Musk, but rather nit-picking about published reviews.

The comment below prompted me to look up some investor news about Tesla, and I found a Motley Fool blog post

[http://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/this-weeks-5-dumbest- stock...](http://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/this-weeks-5-dumbest-stock-moves- tesla-motors-inc-tsla-65147/)

commenting on the results of Musk's initial response to the New York Times review: "Tesla had to defend itself on this, but drawing more attention to the incident in a way that forces Tesla drivers to be patient through recharging stations, lighter on the accelerator, and focused on the most direct path from one destination to another doesn't sound like potent marketing material for a car that costs at least $60,000."

<comment><USER37> Well, he can't because Tesla (TSLA) is a public company and releases its Q4 report tomorrow on the 20th. He can't possibly "leak" detailed numbers on market share, sales growth etc.

That said, the Verges review is worth reading (and watching) for the video editing alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I think it's telling that the blog post fails to link to the NYT article. Ie - if you _really_ need to know what the public editor said, go google it.

This is a painfully obvious PR war in which the truth is the first casualty.

</comment><comment><USER39> At this point my head drops in t my hands and I sigh.

Basically, with out having to say anything it can look like the NYT did concede. Just superficially, but enough. However, now we have yet another response form Tesla, people, like the people here, will go over it work by word to see if it all squares up now. And of course it doesn't. So what's next, another response from NYT?

If it were me, I'd have stopped this right after the NYT article. Both sides could declare some sort of victory and lessons learned, and move on. Now, of course, Tesla open up again fro more scrutiny, and as people here have pointed out in detail, Tesla don't stand up.

All this will do is entrench opinion and further increase the notion that Musk is a man who makes false claims and freaks out when called out. That is how the motor world sees him. Which to my mind is mad because Musk will need the support of these guys to sell units.

Perhaps Musk feels he can ignore the motor industry culture entirely and create a whole new one for electric. If that's the idea, then OK, fine. But if so, he has a right battle on his hands, and I suggest he doesn't need it when IMHO what he needs to do is continue to develop and perfect his product. But then, why keep trying to court the motor industry?

Maybe that is the way to go. Completely ignore the current motor culture, and create a whole new culture for electric vehicles. I mean, the railway industry doesn't court the motor industry. Or vice versa. Car manufacturers dont try to impress train manufacturers. They are totally separate. So, separate out the electric car culture. Just a wild thought!!!

</comment><comment><USER40> I think that Tesla has a legitimate complaint with the NYT for the article. But the very first sentence of this post is a bald falsehood:

> Yesterday, The New York Times reversed its opinion on the review of our > Model S and no longer believes that it was an accurate account of what > happened.

The public editor is not the New York Times' opinion. She is the newspaper's ombudsman. Her opinions are entirely her own and are independent of the newspaper, and indeed often are at odds with the newspaper's policy or opinion.

This is not just spin, it's a petty and unnecessary lie. Musk has blown a lot of credibility with me.

 __Edit. This post comes at a curious time: Tesla's potentially make-or-break quarterly earnings report is due the next day.

</comment><comment><USER41> Things to take note if you ever decide to do business with Musk's companies as a customer: He will twist every word and fact possible if something doesn't go right publicly.

</comment><comment><USER42> The two biggest failings of the Tesla S highlighted by Broder still remain unaddressed. The overnight discharge of the battery and the questionable instruction by Tesla representatives are still question marks that Elon Musk has done nothing to refute.

</comment><comment><USER43> I think we should get a Model S review done by Clarkson. That's the only way to be sure if the car is any good.

But somehow I don't see that happening after Top Gear's handling of the Roadster ... (Tesla made a big fuss when Top Gear had two teslas break down and/or run out of power during a day of testing on their track)

Top Gear's conclusion at the time was the the Tesla is not suitable for the real world [yet]. Tesla of course disagreed ... publicly and loudly.

<comment><USER44> The 'fuss' with top gear is that they implied the car ran out of energy and had to be pushed, while the car logging shows it never ran out of energy and had enough juice to drive back into the garage from any point on the track.

Top Gear could have tried to be accurate, and just kept flogging the machine around the track until it actually ran out of energy, but they really dont care. Top Gear isnt a news show, its entertainment. Its a soap opera about cars.

<comment><USER43> Yes. And if you figure out their idiolect it is the single most informative car show about cars I will likely never be able to afford I have ever seen.

<comment><USER45> _> idiolect_

A mashup of idiocy, intellect, idiosyncrasy, and dialect?

<comment><USER43> In compliance with my "educate, don't ridicule" rule:

"In linguistics, an idiolect is a variety of language that is unique to a person, as manifested by the patterns of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation that he or she uses."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiolect>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> > _The bottom line is that the Model S combined with Supercharging works well > for a long road trip, even in a cold, snowy winter._

No. The bottom line is you can't drive the Model S in winter even if you have the time or inclination to call a dedicated Tesla support line a total of twelve times during a two-day trip.

The bottom line is Tesla's advice is worthless.

The bottom line is you should plug the car in every instant it's not running (which is exactly what the user manual says).

\- - -

I used to be a heavy smoker. What made me stop is, everywhere I went, the only thing I could think about was "where can I get cigarettes if I run out?"

I would not like to drive a car that would put me in the same state of mind.

</comment><comment><USER47> Here is the piece by the NYT's public editor, Margaret Sullivan, that is referenced by Tesla:

[http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/18/problems- wi...](http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/18/problems-with- precision-and-judgment-but-not-integrity-in-tesla-test/)

</comment><comment><USER30> okay, so what instructions were given to Mr Broder prior to his trip? Surely they don't just hand the keys over and say "have fun".

Reading one owner's story it appears there are settings one could use to get more range than standard range, range mode settings to extend the range, and so on. As in, perhaps the people handing the car off should have done a better job at it.

There are still stories from owners of Tesla S cars who have not had the greatest experiences. Any car where it comes down to a comfortable cabin or having the range to reach the next charger screams "work in progress".

I am all for new technology in cars, I just don't think the taxpayer needs to help foot the bill for luxury versions of such.

</comment><comment><USER48> I'm not going to say he's wrong, but Musk's response is a little condescending.

Two parties are fighting over public image, I get that. It didn't have to escalate to this point, but it did. And now, when Musk has essentially emerged victorious, he makes a _further_ blog post to grind his heel into Broder while he's down?

That's not honorable.

</comment><comment><USER49> Musk is showing bad judgement by mis-characterising the change in attitude of The New York Times.

Broder showed poor judgement by leaving a charging station with an estimated range of half the distance he wanted to travel.

Margaret Sullivan is the one person who seems to have good judgement in this whole affair.

</comment><comment><USER50> Viewing one's product through almost ridiculously rose-colored glasses seems to be a necessary attitude for a visionary product leader. Steve Jobs certainly had it. Perhaps that level of enthusiasm is required in order to get these products built.

In any case, Broder's review and the subsequent donnybrook don't make me any less likely to buy a Tesla -- not that I have that kind of cash lying around :-) I've owned rechargeable devices for years. I'm well aware of what's involved in maintaining batteries, and it would never even occur to me _not_ to plug in my electric car overnight, if I had one. D'oh! as they say.

</comment><comment><USER20> Judging by this thread, is appears Elon Musk is losing his innocence.

</comment><comment><USER51> The NYT article seemed overly dramatic, as do Tela's responses. I don't know what the point of the NYT article was - the range wasn't as stated? It loses charge overnight in cold? And of course it's going to run out of charge if you don't fully charge it. But then Tesla keeps making statements that are also exaggerated to their benefit. The NYT rebuttal wasn't as one-sided as Elon's post suggests. Hard to find someone to 100% root for in this soap opera.

</comment><comment><USER52> I guess Broder will be looking for a new job shortly. If that's the case, is this guy now finished as a journalist? I mean, he made some pretty big mistakes here (even if not intentional) his actions have been seen as damaging to the Tesla brand (only short-term though).

<comment><USER52> Would be nice to know why my comment is being down voted. It wasn't spammy, insulting and I thought it was on cue. This is my opinion, it's these kind of unwarranted actions that are detrimental to HN. The community of this place has taken a massive downward spiral in the last year or so

<comment><USER53> Here is what pg had said about downvoting over the years: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2435588>

In short, downvoting to express disagreement has always been done and is reasonable. Also, "Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> If nothing else, the media will now think twice before giving an unfavorable review to Tesla cars.

On the other hand, the paid-for crtique and general crusade against electrical vehicles will now probably shift to less notable outlets, but on a larger scale. Think - dozens blog posts detailing bad ownership experiences, and not with company loaners that log every bleep, but with actually bought cars. It'd be interesting to see how Tesle is going to handle this... because frankly I don't think they can.

<comment><USER14> >If nothing else, the media will now think twice before giving an unfavorable review to Tesla cars.

You think so? I would think the opposite. Tesla has no power but to throw a fit and act foolish. If anything, I would expect future reviews to approach the review negatively and defensively.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Are there really such things as honest car reviews?! ...I guess EM just made a really bad judgement: he pushed his "candy money" _too late_ towards NYT, or he somehow managed to _push it to the wring person_! (this really bodes bad on the public image of his business skills, so this could make some over-cautious people reconsider investing in his businesses - though I'd still place my bet on him ;) )

</comment><comment><USER56> "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

\-- Hamlet, Act III, scene II

</comment><comment><USER57> Anyone on HN own or reserved a Model S? I'm thinking of reserving the cheaper configs.

</comment><comment><USER58> Musk's response has no answers to the following key questions

1) Was Broder advised to brake frequently to use regenerative braking? (This kills the battery).

2) How much displayed/real charge does the car lose overnight in cold weather?

3) Was Broder advised that heating the cabin will increased the displayed range?

4) When Musk said the battery never ran out of charge what did he mean? That was meant to cast doubt on Broder implying he called the towing company needlessly, but a Tesla rep spent a long time with the towing truck driver on the phone and couldn't get it to release the parking brake. Why the technical BS nitpicking stating the battery still had charge if it was totally useless?

Broder gave us the times and names of support reps and all we get is this extreme piece of worthless spin?

The fact that he's not answering the above questions leads me to believe that Broder was given some really bad advice by incompetent reps and Musk is trying to shift the blame completely onto Broder.

Broder should've recorded the support phone calls without telling Tesla, just like they turned on logging on the car he was driving.

<comment><USER59> Add to that

5) What were the cruise control setpoints?

This data must certainly have been logged, and Musk hasn't released it. Musk accused Broder of lying about using cruise control. So why not back this up with direct evidence, why only release speedometer logs?

My inference is that these logs must support Broder's account _very_ strongly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> This is a major blow to Broder. (Career ending?)

As unlikely as it may be, Imagine he was giving his best effort and his car did act as he wrote. What shitty luck.

One thing is for sure- Reviewing a Tesla is a risky thing to do. Most other car companies wouldn't go out in public to say the review was incompetent/fake/staged.

<comment><USER61> _This is a major blow to Broder. (Career ending?)_

Is it? Musk again seems petty and vindictive, and he is quite transparently very carefully selecting pieces that essentially pitches to the converted.

The editor gave a very coached response that was hardly the win that Musk seems to think it was.

<comment><USER37> In Germany, if you ask your employer for a job reference, he has to write it in the most positive words or invite a lawsuit. This leads to the bizarre situation where in such a job reference, everything is a testament to the capabilities of the employee. You can only detect the intended statement by comparing various levels of exaltation and looking for key phrases.

How does this relate to Sullivans statement? It's the same situation: you can not openly condemn the work of a colleague or the NYT as a whole. So you write everything in the most conflict-averse way as possible. That is why its such a "coached" response and 1/2 of it is even the quote from a Tesla supporter.

But frankly, everything you need to know about Broder is in the headline:

 _Problems With Precision and Judgment_

<comment><USER62> ___In Germany, if you ask your employer for a job reference, he has to write it in the most positive words..._ __

The US, in my experience, is no different, whether it be job references or letters of rec. Good writers will be able to use nuance to make their meaning clear, and good readers must be able to interpret the nuances appropriately.</comment></comment></comment></comment>