The Forgotten Soviet-Japanese War of 1939 - <AUTHOR> https://thediplomat.com/2012/08/the-forgotten-soviet-japanese-war-of-1939/?allpages=yes <comment><USER2> Another interesting one is the Battle of Tsushima of 1905, where the Japanese navy all but destroyed the Russian navy. This affected the power balance in Europe and ultimately contributed to the start of World War 1. It also gave the Japanese an incorrect impression of their military strength, which helped set them on a course to Russia again in 1939.

edit: sausage fingers.

<comment><USER3> The podcast History of the Twentieth Century[1] did five episodes on the Russo-Japanese war of 1905 (ep. 31 to 36). I fully recommend the whole show!

[1] [https://historyofthetwentiethcentury.com/](https://historyofthetwentiethcentury.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article comes after one a few days ago on "The influence of railways on military operations in the Russo–German war 1941–1945" (the article's title, not mine) ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17486415](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17486415)). At the time I thought it was just because the intersection of programmers and railroad enthusiasts is high, but I wonder if it also indicates a hidden cache of WWII / Russian war history buffs?

(Anyway, although I run the risk of the usual "it's whatever's _interesting_ to hackers" retort by wondering about the place of this here, I don't complain! I think it's interesting, and certainly hadn't heard about the war.)

</comment><comment><USER5> This war accomplished 2 things: Japan decided to turn their attention to the Navy and attacking Americ. The Soviet Union didn't have to fight a war on two fronts thus beating Germany.

What wars and battles are remembered rarely reflects their importance.

<comment><USER6> Threwout the whole fight with German the Soviet Union had enough troupes in the East to fight Japan.

Japan had some great divisions and a great navy, but going up against the Soviet Union in 1941 would not seen them defeated.

So this "if Japan jad attacked the Soviet would change everything" meme is mostly wrong but every couple of years it comes back because somebody that doesnt know the history well digs it up.

The reason Japan did atrack was because they knew they had no chance.

<comment><USER7> I had the impression that the Soviets were forced to pull troops from the East to the West in 1941, enough so that a combined German/Japanese attack would have likely succeeded in one of the fronts.

<comment><USER5> Zhukov himself was in Siberia when the Germans invaded. Being able to redeploy troops equiped with full winter gear and combat experience saved Russia in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yeah, this was a lot more important than most people realize. I wrote about it here, in the context of Zhukov's rise as a general and what he'd later do on the Eastern Front after Hitler invaded —

[https://medium.com/the-strategic-review/background- ops-5-the...](https://medium.com/the-strategic-review/background-ops-5-the- nature-of-operations-eb8555059e48)

Incidentally, Zhukov's Autobiography is extremely insightful and the uncensored version has only been out in English for ~20 years now:

[https://www.amazon.com/Marshal-Victory-Autobiography- General...](https://www.amazon.com/Marshal-Victory-Autobiography-General- Georgy/dp/1781592918)

</comment><comment><USER9> A good read.

Another popular hypothesis why Germans were so confident attacking USSR is the "Japanese unkept promise." It suggests that somebody in German supreme leadership was assured by Japanese diplomats that they will "surely will attack USSR," but personal opinions of their generals were moving orthogonal to their diplomatic efforts

<comment><USER10> In August 1941 it became clear to everyone that Japan has no intention to attack USSR, see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Sorge#Wartime_intellig...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Sorge#Wartime_intelligence_supplied_by_the_Sorge_Ring)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There's a good book on the topic if you want more:

[https://www.amazon.com/Nomonhan-1939-Armys-Victory-Shaped- eb...](https://www.amazon.com/Nomonhan-1939-Armys-Victory-Shaped- ebook/dp/B007WSNQBS/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=)

<comment><USER12> Yes, this book is a very thorough and detailed account -- highly recommended.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Today I see a new episode of Dan Carlin 'Hardcore History' that specifically covers this time in Japan/Russia/China history.

</comment><comment><USER14> > The German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact - the green light for Hitler's > invasion of Poland and the outbreak of World War II

How about the earlier Munich Pact where France and England handed Czechoslovakia over to Hitler? In my eyes, that was the "green light" for Hitler's imperial ambitions.

Speaking of the Munich Pact - Stalin wanted to move Soviet troops through Poland to defend Czechoslovakia, but Poland refused passage. So if you're going to say the Ribbentrop Pact green lighted the invasion of Poland, you could say Poland green lighted the invasion of Czechoslovakia, which ultimately led to its own invasion.

The Soviet Union wanted self-defense pacts with England, which were not given. The Soviet Union had a very weak one with France in 1935, which former UK PM David Lloyd George said justified Hitler's Rhineland militarization.

Any how - Japan and the USSR staying at peace had an effect on WWII. From the time of the Pacific lend-lease, Russian flagged ships sailed from Vladivostok to Seattle and back, carrying needed supplies, unmolested by German submarines.

The Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact was signed two months before Operation Barbarossa. Stalin went to the train station to see Foreign Minister Matsuoka off, which is something he never did. Obviously he saw it as crucial. So too did the Japanese probably, as it saw the western powers encircling it in 1941.

<comment><USER15> >So if you're going to say the Ribbentrop Pact green lighted the invasion of Poland, you could say Poland green lighted the invasion of Czechoslovakia, which ultimately led to its own invasion.

Wow. That's one interesting interpretation of history.

Soviet Union presented an existential threat to Poland, a country that only gained independence from Russia (amongst others) post-WW1 and fought off an Bolshevik invasion a few years after. And with our 20/20 historical hindsight, it is only a few years later that the Soviet Union annexed the eastern half of Poland (which lead to mass murder of civilians and of course the Katyn massacre), and followed by 50 years as a Soviet vassal state ... but yeah, if only Poland had trusted Stalin's good-will.

Honestly ...

<comment><USER16> Poles(at that time) had territorial ambitions wrt Czechoslovakia. So it isn't a surprise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This misses a pretty key point that the western powers embargoed Japan right before the Nazis invaded the USSR. The "move North" strategy stopped being practical when they didn't have a way to get oil for that invasion.

<comment><USER18> Speaking of oil, there was another forgotten war, when in 1941 both Soviet and British troops invaded Persia / Iran, secured the oil fields, and replaced the then-current Shakh with his son. Significant Soviet forces stayed in Iran until 1945, to prevent Germans from attempting to capture the oil fields.

<comment><USER19> > Significant Soviet forces stayed in Iran until 1945, to prevent Germans from > attempting to capture the oil fields.

Significant Soviet forces stayed there until 1946 - and they've tried to annex parts of Persia/Iran.

<comment><USER18> Soviets were always eager to annex something.

Though in 1942-43 when Soviets had to expend an enormous effort and spared no resource to annex back places like Stalingrad, the Soviet forces in Persia still stayed put. Their mission was seen utterly important.

<comment><USER19> Officially they were protecting western lend-lease route and fending off possible German incursions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Did you just listen to the latest Hardcore History?

</comment><comment><USER21> Not too dissimilar from The Unnoticed American-Russian War of 2015-2018.

<comment><USER4> Except that it's completely different …? This was an actual 'hot' war, with soldiers firing weapons in the field.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, I didn't mean that literally. Sorry if that wasn't obvious.

Just pointing out the irony of these historical references while there is near zero interest here in what is clear and present.

But, you know, carry on with the downvotes and confusion.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: The TuneBridge - <AUTHOR> http://kck.st/Kebc3J I just recently launched a new product concept on Kickstarter (my first one). It is a low cost, simple AirPlay enabled receiver that is 40% cheaper than any other AirPlay device on the market. I'm not getting the traction I was hoping for, and I'd love some feedback as to why that is. Also, any suggestions or improvements would be greatly appreciated. <comment><AUTHOR> This is my first KickStarter project. It is a low cost AirPlay-enabled receiver. It's priced 40% below any other AirPlay device on the market, but I'm not getting the traction I was hoping for. I'd love to hear feedback on why you think it's not taking off and any suggestions/improvements you may have. The HackerNews community has more great minds than anywhere else I could post this.

Thanks, Brandon</comment>


Show HN: A Super Straight-Forward Pomodoro App – With a 5 Minute Ramp Up Time - <AUTHOR> https://osnth01.github.io/pomodoro-app/ <comment><AUTHOR> A straight-forward focus app that's helped me tremendously. 30 minutes only. I added a 5 minute ramp up period to overcome the initial dread of starting work (mood follows action: [https://medium.com/personal-growth/mood-follows- action-3d3f6...](https://medium.com/personal-growth/mood-follows- action-3d3f651c60e3))</comment>


Tell HN: dnsexit.com is down since hours - <AUTHOR>

Check your domains, dnsexit.com has been down for probably half a day now - not only their website, but also their redundant DNS servers. <comment><USER2> I hope it's temporary and wont happen again, because I didn't see any free alternatives.

<comment><AUTHOR> 3h later and it's still not working for me.

Actually there are a couple of free alternatives. Previously I've been at zoneedit.com, which worked pretty nice. I can't even remember why I switched.

Google also offers public DNS[1] as well as a wide range of free service providers when you search for them[2].

1\. <http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/>

2\. <http://www.google.ch/search?q=free+dns>

<comment><USER2> But do you know one that offers free dynamic dns for top level domains?

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1800120>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It has been down for about seven hours so far

<comment><USER2> Website is up with message: "System Status ! Currently there is DDOS attack on our name servers. We are fixing the problem and everything should be up soon."</comment></comment>


Show HN: Map for Game of Thrones - <AUTHOR> We've updated Map for Game of Thrones with a lot of features since its launch, 2 years ago.
In addition to the app's staple feature, TV show recap, the user can now also review all 5 books in a similar, interactive manner.
You can now step through all the scenes/chapters of any TV episode or book and enjoy:
- a short summary of the scene/chapter
- full description or synopsis
- list of characters in the respective scene/chapter
- the location on the interactive map
- the full transcript (for episodes)
The app is also a handy Game of Thrones lore companion. You can search and browse through detailed information of 600+ locations and 1200+ unique characters.
For Season 8, we will be updating the app after each new episode.
Any feedback would be appreciated!
Links:
- Map for Game of Thrones - on the Play Store - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.minimapps....
- Map for Game of Thrones FREE -  on the Play Store - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.minimapps....
- GoT Map Recap - on the App Store - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/map-for-game-of-thrones/id11... <comment><USER2> Why a mobile app and not a desktop version?

<comment><AUTHOR> There are a number of websites which provide this sort of features, but they don't work well on mobile. The initial idea was to have a map on a tablet so you can use it while watching the TV Show. But we haven't yet implemented that feature - a sort of "live" minimap to show you where the action takes place, while watching an episode. :)</comment></comment>


Philip Wadler's talk on generics for Go ("Featherweight Go") - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq0WFigax_c <comment><AUTHOR> Here's the corresponding paper: [https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.11710](https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.11710)

<comment><USER2> And HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23368453](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23368453)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's fun to see all this people named on ACM journals chatting on youtube.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a "Stripe for ACH"? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for an easy-to-use API to process ACH transactions. I like Dwolla, but they force both parties to sign up before they can send or receive funds. I guess I'm looking for the Stripe to their PayPal. <comment><USER2> Check out <https://www.balancedpayments.com>

My co-founder posted this on HN today, you might find the comments useful:

Show HN: One curl command issues next-day ACH deposit - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5026802>

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi there - co-founder of GoCardless.com here.

We make it possible to facilitate ACH-style payments via an API, but we're currently UK-only. We'll be available across Europe in the New Year.

For ACH payments in the US, Dwolla is your best bet.

<comment><USER2> See my comment to the OP. Balanced is offering a stand-alone ACH service now: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5026802></comment></comment>


How to hire designers - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@intercom/how-to-hire-designers-960663e3a3e6#.9ufy2pfdd <comment><AUTHOR> Follow up post to this post "The Dribbblisation of Design": [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10626942](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10626942)</comment>


REBOL to become open source - <AUTHOR> http://www.rebol.com/article/0511.html

<comment><USER2> REBOL is very impressive.

My favorite programming language is K, which is super fast, super terse, and completely eschews modern abstraction paradigms like Object Orienter Programming. (Opened a file? get an int selector. Want to define your own data type? Sorry dude, you have to make do with the built in int+double+string+symbol+date+time+list+dict. That kind of spartan). K programs tend to be 10-100 times shorter than the equivalent C++, and of comparable speed.

REBOL is super terse and compact, but it is otherwise the complete opposite: It has tens of built in types (file, money, email, internet address, color), lets you modify its syntax and even encourages that (define new "dialects").

REBOL programs that don't deal with math tend to have comparable length (in term of tokens, not characters) to the equivalent K program, while having abstraction facilities almost on par with LISP. That's quite amazing.

Unfortunately, it is also the complete opposite of K in terms of speed ... It's rather slow.

Both languages clock at a complete implementation (no dependency beyond basic OS) at ~300K while providing quite a bit GUI and some batteries (In the case of K, a full fledged ACID hot-standby order-enhanced relational database; In the case of REBOL, everything you need to do internets including mostly complete mail/ftp/http protocol implementations, sophisticated GUI layout, and a lot more).

My dream language would be something that is fast and terse like K, but has all the REBOL built-ins and abstraction mechanisms. I'm not sure if such a language can exist, or how it would look. But I would like one of those.

<comment><AUTHOR> Rebol clearly shows its Rexx roots with the battery-included nature. And the SyllableOS actually wanted to use it in a similar manner, sure they're glad that they don't have to clone the language anymore.

But if there's one thing the language needs if it wants to succeed after it became OSS is a good module archive, similar to CPAN/rubygems/PEAR. Not having that for a long while was one nail in the coffin of tcl, especially after web & infrastructure APIs became increasingly important.

I'm looking forward to it. Liked the language, but didn't want to bet on something close-sourced.

Running Rebol on DragonFlyBSD is going to get some Amiga fans a serious case of nostalgia.

<comment><USER3> >Not having that for a long while was one nail in the coffin of tcl, especially after web & infrastructure APIs became increasingly important.

The ActiveState distribution of Tcl comes with Teacup, FYI. And yes, it would have been nice to have had it back in the '90s.

<comment><AUTHOR> Tcl improved greatly in recent releases, also burying the "it doesn't look native" argument. But by then the momentum was gone, and it's hard to recapture that. Rebol will have even worse problems, not having the initial userbase of tcl.

<comment><USER3> It is still used often in test automation, probably because of Expect. I use it to automate database backups, performing ETL while acting as an intermediary between Oracle's sqlplus and MS's bcp as well as for one-off GUI utilities.

It really is a shame it lost out to Perl and Python. The language is so damn pragmatic. Programmers who enjoy snapping together executables in shell will feel at home with Tcl. It functions like a portable shell. Also, Tcl embodies the philosophy of simplicity in implementation better any other software I've encountered; the C API is simplicity itself. It's actually a great way to organize large programs too, just make the commands do more work with C algorithms and data structures and expose less text-output-chatter to Tcl, in other words, make the commands do "big" things and glue them together in Tcl. It's BSD licensed. It has a surprising number of packages due to it being so trivial to convert existing C libraries to Tcl commands using the dead simple API.

I'm surprised more open source OSs (Linux & BSDs) have chosen Ruby, Python, and Perl as opposed to Tcl. Tcl seems like the more consistent extension of the Unix Way.

<comment><AUTHOR> There was a surprisingly large "enterprise" crowd using Tcl, as it's pretty great for self-contained environments. You have to generate the binding to your own proprietary legacy interfaces anyway, and lots of situations benefit from proper event handling and easy enough GUIs (esp. canvas graphics). And every enterprise GUI looks bad anyway, so complaints about Tcls' L&F were rare.

I think it missed some important opportunities, and was too focused on GUI stuff. And after all, the Perl/Python/Ruby bindings to Tk weren't that bad, either. In the early days of the web, tcl actually was a pretty good option (as a rival to Perl/CGI). And aolserver was pretty neat (still is, I'd say). But then it didn't go with the times, gtk/Qt stole the Unix OSS GUI thunder, RMS ranted against it, lua came along for embedded interpreters, Ousterhout moved around from Sun, to Scriptics to whoknowswhere… It's easy enough to miss your window.

At least it's still more popular than Pike… I wouldn't rule out a small comeback, there aren't any technical reasons against it, it's well maintained, fast, has a _very_ good codebase etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I looked at REBOL years ago, thought it looked kind of okay, then ran into the whole issue that they wanted to be paid for it. I don't believe that anyone should be required to give their work away... but when I can get Python, Ruby, or Perl for free, why would I want REBOL?

Also, I think their announcement is a bit rude to the Open Source world. Sounds like they are reluctant to do it for fear that the unwashed masses (us) will come in and, I don't know, name a variable improperly or something.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think the lack of comments/votes on this post is representative of how much this open source release-to-be really matters. Unfortunately, it's years too late.

<comment><USER6> Curious though when one considers who is tweeting about this then [https://twitter.com/matz_translated/status/25061436079433318...](https://twitter.com/matz_translated/status/250614360794333184)</comment></comment>


Tips for You to Roll Maps in POE Merciless - <AUTHOR> http://www.upitems.com/news/index-159

<comment><USER2> wow, i love poe and lv70. Very helpful to me.</comment>


William Binney Explains Snowden Docs (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://alexaobrien.com/archives/900 <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8392378](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8392378)

</comment><comment><USER3> What happened to Frank Drake, Ed Loomis, et al. is an injustice.</comment>


MIT stacks solar panels like pancakes, increases their power output by up to 20x - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/123719-mit-stacks-solar-panels-like-pancakes-increases-their-power-output-by-up-to-20x <comment><USER2> (1) You can't improve on solar panels by a factor of more than 5 because 'regular' photovoltaic cells are already ~20% efficient.

(2) any geometric arrangement of solar cells that includes the 'third dimension' will shade an area behind it that is proportional to the height of the stack, that dead zone should we taken into account when calculating efficiency. In other words, the total surface area of the stack is what counts, not just the footprint. And placing these panels at a 45 degree angle actually _decreases_ their efficiency. The total output will go up but the cost per Watt will go up as well (and it will go up more than the power output).

Why is it that every announcement about solar panels is always accompanied by either gross exaggeration or inaccuracies? This really gives a bad rap to the whole renewables industry, if I had a 1% increase of efficiency on PV panels for every 10x announcement I'd be at 300% efficiency by now...

MIT really hurts their reputation with announcements like these.

<comment><USER3> As far as I can tell, (2) is already being taken into account. The original press release does mention that they need to see how the stacks perform when there's more than one though (because of shading).

Why does 45-degree panels reduce efficiency? I mean, it might reduce it when the sun is overhead, but solar power is generally measured in the total wattage it produces over a long period.

<comment><USER2> > does mention that they need to see how the stacks perform when there's more > than one though

So how can they make this claim today? Besides that, that's pretty easy to calculate, all you need is one of these: <http://www.solarpathfinder.com/index>

It will show you quite precisely what the effect is of the object you place in the path of the suns rays.

As for the 45 degree reducing effeciency: solar panels produce power that varies with the angle of the incident light. So if you place one panel at exactly 90 degrees to the incident light (for both 'tilt' and 'pan' or elevation and azimuth if you want to be precise) then you have a panel that performs at maximum efficiency (anywhere from 15 to 30% depending on how much you were willing to pay for your cells). If you use two panels on a 45 degree angle relative to each other the amount of output per panel drops but since you have twice the active surface you can now combine the output of both panels. Since one panel is 100% and the output varies as the co-sine of the angle you now get 0.7 times the output per panel. This gives you 1.4 times the output of a regular panel for a cost-per-watt of 2.0 times the regular panel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's starting to get to the point where, if the title of the post begins with 'MIT', I put my expect-the-BS hat on.

Edit: to be clear, I think it's because MIT's PR departement is hyper- inflatory, which you can hardly blame them for. But maybe due to it's reputation, the regular press picks up on like it's golden.

</comment><comment><USER5> A much better version:

(<http://www.newsroomamerica.com/story/228653.html>)

([http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57404585-76/accordion- shap...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57404585-76/accordion-shaped-solar- tower-captures-more-light/))

([http://news.techeye.net/science/3d-solar-cells-could- increas...](http://news.techeye.net/science/3d-solar-cells-could-increase- energy-output-twenty-fold))

<comment><USER6> _Amazingly, the results from the structures they've tested show power output ranging from double to more than 20 times that of fixed flat panels with the same base area._

Lets say the current design takes up 1 cubic meter. (I can't tell from the photo).

Lets say you have a 10,000 square meter roof, 100x100 meters.

Does this mean you can put 10,000 of them up there or a number far lower since they need space in between them to let the light in?

The article isn't clear whether an arrangement of 20 of them is more efficient then the space required, but it does hit at it when it says: _Then, to confirm their model's predictions, they built and tested three different arrangements of solar cells on the roof of an MIT laboratory building for several weeks._

<comment><USER5> More testing and simulation is needed.

> _So far, the team has modeled individual 3-D modules. A next step is to > study a collection of such towers, accounting for the shadows that one tower > would cast on others at different times of day. In general, 3-D shapes could > have a big advantage in any location where space is limited, such as flat- > rooftop installations or in urban environments, they say. Such shapes could > also be used in larger-scale applications, such as solar farms, once shading > effects between towers are carefully minimized._

<comment><USER6> I have no idea how I missed that. But it is the most crucial part of the article. The equivalent would be putting a solar panel upright and saying it gets more energ per SM than one laying flat. Seems pretty obvious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of this: <https://www.google.com/search?q=solar+panel+tree>

Which it appears now has been debunked.

<comment><USER8> I think when you type in that sort of stuff in to Google they should offer advertisements for magic beans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is it me, or have we been seeing more garbage stories like these since PG disabled flagging for people who flag a lot? (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3689185>)

</comment><comment><USER10> You'd be blocking the view of someone else.

</comment><comment><USER11> We must eat really different pancakes cause I don't get it...

</comment><comment><USER12> Fresnel lenses come to mind. Another head-slapping moment.</comment>


Wolfram releases first demo of new language, 30 years in the making - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/24/knowledge-based-programming-wolfram-releases-first-demo-of-new-language-30-years-in-the-making/

<comment><USER2> I can't even wrap my head around this.

Is there anything that can even compare to this language?

<comment><USER3> It seems like APL, except exponentially not-shittier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> this is so awesome!</comment>


Impostor syndrome - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome

<comment><USER2> I read this book a while ago about the topic, [http://www.amazon.com/The- Impostor-Phenomenon-Overcoming-Suc...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Impostor- Phenomenon-Overcoming- Success/dp/0931948770/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398446534&sr=8-1&keywords=impostor+phenomenon)

It was very insightful. Also Scientific American had an article about it a few years ago as well.</comment>


College Faculty's New Focus: Don't Offend - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/college-facultys-new-focus-dont-offend-1488200404 <comment><AUTHOR> I think the trend is less severe than the article implies, but I've definitely noticed it: [https://jakeseliger.com/2014/12/22/how-do-you-know-when- your...](https://jakeseliger.com/2014/12/22/how-do-you-know-when-youre-being- insensitive-how-do-you-know-when-youre-funny/).</comment>


X-Tag - a cross-browser web components library - <AUTHOR> http://mozilla.github.com/x-tag/

<comment><AUTHOR> X-Tag was just added as an official Mozilla repo on Github - it's a small, JS- only polyfill that enables the Custom Element portion of the W3 Web Components spec ([https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/webcomponents/raw- file/tip/explainer/...](https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/webcomponents/raw- file/tip/explainer/index.html)) and other convenient mechanisms to generate awesome components. X-Tag has broad support coverage for a _huge_ percentage of browsers in active used today on both mobile and desktop - Firefox 5+ desktop/mobile, Chrome 4+ desktop/mobile, Safari 4+ desktop/mobile, IE10 desktop, Opera 12 desktop, and all Android 2.0+ stock browsers.

<comment><USER2> Really neat. I must be living under a rock, but I never had heard of this before. It seems to bring a lot of the advantages of component-oriented development with it - just declare and go and the implementers will have taken care of the necessary wiring behind the scenes to make the components work. What I don't have a feel for though is what disadvantages it might bring from component oriented development - how easy for example would it be to change the style and/or behavior of the expanded component dom objects, in a way that the original developers never thought of, if need be? In any case, very cool and thanks for posting.

<comment><AUTHOR> To change the style and behavior, you just use the DOM as you normally would. You can access the inner DOM elements of a component with regular ol' JS and style them normally with CSS if exposed - but even if they were created as Shadow DOM elements (in browsers that support Shadow DOM), you can still style them with CSS ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If I can get it compatible with IE9, is that a big thing for people here? I don't think it would be too hard, thoughts?

<comment><USER3> I, for one, would never use this while it remains incompatible with a large segment of the web-browsing public.

So, yes, I think it would be a big deal. IE8 would be even better. But with IE9 compatibility, at least it would be feasible to start using this when IE8 fades away.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure IE9 is such a huge win. This already supports IE10, and every Windows 7 computer will be auto-updated to IE10 (if Microsoft holds to it's decision to automatically update from now on).

XP users will never get IE9 or IE10, and IE8 can't be supported unfortunately. So I guess Chrome Frame will be necessary to target IE8 users.

<comment><AUTHOR> IE9 support lands today, and we've decided against supporting earlier versions of IE - too much headache and code bloat/hackishness to justify addressing the ever shrinking < IE9 user base.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The steps seem pretty dishonest to me. Correct me if i'm wrong, but these are the real X-Tag steps:

1\. Scour the web for a plugin 2\. Add the plugin script include to your page 3\. Copy/Type the new HTML tag 4\. Customise the plugin with your own behavior 5\. Wash, Rinse, & Repeat

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) Mozilla is generating a stock set of components that you wont have to "scour" for. 2) The components can be easily included using an app bootstrap builder that the Mozilla Marketplace dev hub will feature 3) You write the tags like you would any other in HTML, there is not complex copy or paste operation... 4) You can use components without modifying them, #4 is a red herring

Another huge benefit: the polyfill is 2k compressed composed of pure, library- independent JS

<comment><USER4> Maybe I'm misunderstanding, doesn't this mean I can use x-foo without including its js if x-foo is in the marketplace? That would be amazing.

<comment><USER6> The Marketplace is just the "app store" -- it's where you buy apps. You can run the apps on any supported HTML5 device after buying them. So the supported device would not provide anything more than a browser rendering engine (and some navigator.* JS methods). It won't include x-tags.

<comment><USER4> I'm aware, I submitted an app already :-).

I'm confused about what he meant about the marketplace having a "bootstrap builder" for x-tags.

<comment><USER7> We're working on a bootstrap that you can download to quickly start developing app, and it will include x-tags (with all components). There will also be a "builder" where you can customize your version of x-tags to only include the components you want.

So the bootstrap gets you up and running quickly, and the builder is a web- based tool that lets you optimize your build of x-tags when it goes into production.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Doesn't work on the Arch Linux build of Firefox. Tested both in safe mode and in a new profile. However, the Mozilla build works fine.

<comment><USER9> Can you file a bug (at bugzilla.mozilla.org) and CC me (":khuey")? I'd like to figure out what Arch is doing here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So, how does this impact Web Components? It seems to fill pretty much the exact same role, but with a rather different implementation. Should I expect to see this become the new standard because there's a polyfill for it so people will start using it already, or am I gonna end up with a bunch of legacy code when something else becomes standardized? And, again like Web Components, it's duplicating functionality that's been in Internet Explorer of all places since IE5.0 with DHTML Behaviors.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually I have been meeting with the W3 Web Components spec author for about 2 months while we readied this. The document.register method that was recently added to the spec was in large part a byproduct of X-Tag and when browsers implement it (Firefox soon) X-Tag will use it internally in browsers that support it, as a polyfill always does. Once one browser implements the JS mentod, X-Tag will truly polyfill the method on document as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Isn't there a risk of conflict with elements introduced in future versions of HTML?

<comment><USER12> It looks like you have to prefix the tag names you register with an x- in your html.

<comment><AUTHOR> The prefix is added as a default, but can be changed or even removed - it's up to you, the developer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is really amazing. After being used to custom XML tags in Android, I so wanted to build custom HTML tags for web apps. This is exactly what I wanted!

<comment><AUTHOR> You should be able to use this as a standard soon, X-Tag has helped inform the W3 spec. I've been working with Dimitri Glazkov (the W3 draft author) over the last 2 months. We reached initial agreement as a group that the standard, imperative JS DOM API should be "document.register" in the style of X-Tag's "xtag.register" (specs can change though, of course).

<comment><USER14> This looks extremely promising. Thanks for the great work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why won't the poly fill work in IE9

<comment><AUTHOR> Because it doesn't support CSS Animations, which I use for insertion detection. I might be able to finagle it for IE9 with Mutation events, but in their DOM Level 3 state, they destroy performance.

IE10 supports CSS Animations and will also be the first IE version to support HTML5 Windows apps, those are the two most significant reasons it is the current minimum version for IE. If IE9 is the thing people _really_ need, I can try to work it in, we'll see what folks say ;)

<comment><USER4> This really makes me sad. Mutation events gets you to IE9 but not 8, which means this cannot be used for enterprise apps. I'll start using it in personal projects though. Love the work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah the funny thing is I could actually even make it work in IE6 and 7 if I used Mutation for IE9 and then - ready your pitchforks and torches folks - proprietary CSS Behavior script ___ducks to avoid tomato_ __. IE8 screwed the pooch in this regard - they removed CSS Behaviors but failed to implement anything that could be used to do the same sort of thing.

<comment><USER15> Do it, because without IE7 or at least IE8 support this will barely get used.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm going to work on it this weekend!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ok, so is this like -vendor, but for HTML? Now browsers can implement their own components and, hopefully, push it as a standard?

<comment><USER17> Browsers were always able to implement their own tags. x-tag allows the developer of a website to write their own tags (and share them with others, etc.), which is huge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> A link to the github repo would be nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Surely sir! <http://github.com/mozilla/x-tag/>

<comment><USER18> I meant a link on the page itself but thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This sounds great! Can anybody compare it with angularjs (by Google)?</comment>


Show HN: The Bodgenator – Illustrator script for rapid prototyping in code - <AUTHOR> http://bodgenator.co/

<comment><AUTHOR> The Bodgenator is a script I wrote for Adobe Illustrator that exports a rough HTML layout from layers, to act as a foundation for a rapid prototype.

It doesn't try to export production-ready CSS - it's just PNGs and absolute positioning, which allows for designs to be easily updated, and for the emphasis to be on interactions and animations in jQuery, not on styling (which is already covered by static designs).

I wrote this for myself (as an interface designer), on the basis that I was keen to use my preferred tools – Illustrator, and raw HTML/CSS/JS – to prototype in the leanest way possible. I don't like wasting time rebuilding a layout from scratch in code, just to try out a simple animation. And I don't want to invest time in a tool like Quartz Composer or Axure, that has its own 'world' that locks you in.

Hope you'll find it useful, and please share around if you do.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is very cool. Oddly enough, I am working on the exact same thing for my team but in Photoshop. I really like the idea of updating the project without wiping out your previous work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Regus, feel free to borrow some stuff from my code - it's largely the same principles in Photoshop, as I understand - just slightly different way of addressing layers and things. Correctly positioning layers was the hardest job - Adobe has some weirdly contradicting co-ordinates system...</comment></comment>


The Simpsons in China and Bullet Subtitles - <AUTHOR> https://www.eastasiaforall.com/home/2017/10/7/the-simpsons-in-china-and-bullet-subtitles <comment><USER2> It would be helpful if there were some explanation as to what a 'bullet subtitle' is...

<comment><USER3> agreed. "The word refers to the commentaries shooting across the screen, in the style of an arcade shooting game."

[http://www.theworldofchinese.com/2014/12/bullet-to-the- head-...](http://www.theworldofchinese.com/2014/12/bullet-to-the-head-intro- to-bullet-subtitles/)

<comment><USER4> maybe HN crashed the site?

here is the archive url [https://web.archive.org/web/20161110180302/http://www.thewor...](https://web.archive.org/web/20161110180302/http://www.theworldofchinese.com/2014/12/bullet- to-the-head-intro-to-bullet-subtitles/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there a plug-in similar to video speed controller that works for embedded audio widgets like these?

Being able to speed up slow video is great, wish I could do the same for audio without figuring out how to download it first.

<comment><USER6> I've gotten used to quickly bringing up the console (Command + alt + j on macOS Chrome, varies by platform) and running

      document.querySelectorAll("audio").forEach(x => x.playbackRate = 2.0)

(And "video" for video tags). But it doesn't seem to work on _this_ page because SquareSpace isn't actually adding any audio tags to the DOM (even though the mp3 URL is there). So instead you can run

      window.location.href = /http[^\s]+\.mp3/ig.exec(document.body.innerHTML)[0]

To navigate to just the mp3 URL, and _then_ run the playbackRate snippet in the newly-created tab to set the speed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Bullet subtitles are basically short comments that scroll over the video at a certain point in time in the video; they allow for commentary more localized to specific events in the video.

The first popular (and first, afaict) place where bullet subtitles have been used was the NicoNico Douga Japanese video streaming web service.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wish there was a [podcast] mark or something like that, like there's a [video]--I hate consuming information in audio form, this would help me avoid a click.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, that was a wasted click for me too</comment></comment>


Producthunt sucks, check out this subreddit which does a much better job - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/preddithunt/

<comment><USER2> I like the idea of the process being much more transparent, ProductHunt feels a lot like an old boys club.</comment>


How to move to Canada and become a Canadian citizen - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-move-canada-2016-11 <comment><USER3> Unfortunately, this attitude of "my way or the highway" seems to apply to more and more things these days... election results, marriages, employment situations,... Let's adult-up, and learn to work through problems rather than running away, starting with working to hold our new legally-elected - <USER2> odious - president elect accountable.</comment>


1 Million Google Android Phones sold by T-Mobile - <AUTHOR> http://www.tgdaily.com/html_tmp/content-view-42164-145.html <comment><USER2> I've just started tinkering with developing for the Android. The whole iPhone development experience (Step 1: Buy a Mac) just wasn't appealing, so I've mostly sat out that market explosion. We did do an iPhone theme for our products using iUI, and luckily, it works pretty much unmodified on the G1 and looks great (and never required Mac ownership, just an iPhone for testing). But, I feel like I can actually be involved and do useful work on Android, without having to drop a few grand just to get a development environment to tinker with.

It's also the perfect phone for a Linux-y developer or sysadmin. Great ssh client, great browser, multi-tasking, good little keypad which I can type dramatically faster on than the iPhone, and as a developer you can access just about everything on the phone, even in apps that aren't approved by Google or T-Mobile. Being able to download a random .apk and install it, without permission or jailbreaking, is a beautiful thing.

<comment><USER3> A used MacBook is all you need to do iPhone dev and is much cheaper than a few grand.

Nonetheless, I am also not a fan of Apple's control freakishness. I am not willing to invest in development of a product that Apple can disallow at a whim. Nor am I fond of Apple's willingness to use software patents to discourage competition. So Android it is.

iUI/Phonegap are great for cross-platform development and I believe Google's long-term vision to be much more ambitious and interesting than Apple's.

<comment><USER2> Agreed. The Mac expenditure is just the beginning of my hesitation to jump on board the iPhone development bandwagon. With Android, I know I can make my applications available regardless of whether Apple thinks they are worthy of the store. And that one tiny bit of certainty is worth a huge amount to me.

I'm also much more fond of open platforms, but I didn't want to get all "Linux rules, Apple drools" as I reckon it's a personal choice rather than an objective business imperative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've got one and I love it. With a real headphone jack and Flash support, it would be the perfect phone IMHO.

<comment><USER5> I've heard complaints about the poor battery life on the G1. How is that working for you?

<comment><USER2> I think there's a bit of a quality control issue, or perhaps early batteries had problems. I have two G1s...a standard issue that arrived on release day, and a developer edition that I just got a few weeks ago. The former doesn't last a whole day of moderate usage with 3G enabled (but lasts about 1.5 days of moderate usage with 3G disabled). The latter easily lasts all day with 3G enabled. I charge every night, and I've never found it to give out by the end of day on days when I remember to charge it (and when I have forgotten to charge it, I've been pleased by how fast it'll charge up).

I have no complaints at all about battery life on the newer phone. The older one was disappointing, and I was afraid I was stuck with something that would never really be great.

Someone else suggested a "break in" period, but my older phone never got better after extensive use. The new phone was good from day one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You should remeber that these numbers are only the selling numbers of the US. I think the numbers from Europe will easily add up 1 Million additional phones. And with the HTC Magic (already played with it :)) coming to Europe in the next days in much more countries and further releases in the coming weeks there will soon be a much higher install base...

</comment><comment><USER7> I want one but the price for a current T-mobile customer is just over the top.

<comment><USER8> I was a current T-Mobile customer, and I was still able to get two of the phones for the standard $179/each by renewing my contract. If you don't want to deal with contracts, you should expect to pay much more for your phones anyways...

<comment><USER7> On the site they give a price of $359 with a contract renewal, $399 without. Were you at the end of the contract when you renewed?

<comment><USER8> No, I was only about a year in from the last point at which I had renewed in order to pick up the MyFaves plan. However, I am on a family plan for my wife and I, but I can't imagine that changes much. Just try going to your local T-Mobile rep and asking about the G1, and see what they say.

<comment><USER7> I'll try that, thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Man hacks Tesla firmware, finds new model, has car remotely downgraded - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/03/man-hacks-tesla-firmware-finds-new-model-has-car-remotely-downgraded/ <comment><USER2> "They punished him by remotely downgrading his firmware" is a frankly absurd claim... and incorrect, too.

The guy's own post [1] said it was "pending" (e.g. downloaded and ready for an automatic update), not installed. Given that someone else in the same thread notes that the update when installed on their car didn't actually fix the important charging bug it was supposed to, it's much more likely that it was "somebody in engineering decided to cancel a bad update" than his paranoid claims.

[1]: [http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/63905-Tesla-s-...](http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/63905-Tesla- s-response-to-me-leaking-info-about-the-P100D)

<comment><USER3> > The guy's own post [1] said it was "pending" (e.g. downloaded and ready for > an automatic update), not installed.

This is correct. It was an attempted downgrade. He stopped it.

> it's much more likely that it was "somebody in engineering decided to cancel > a bad update" than his paranoid claims.

This is unlikely. He wasn't being downgraded to the version prior to the current one. He was being downgraded to a much older version that did not contain any of the secret info. And nobody else was experiencing the downgrade. If there is a critical flaw that requires a rollback, you do it for everyone and it's big news. He also made it clear that he found a ton of other stuff and was not disclosing that (yet).

It looks like somebody at Tesla pushed code to production that shouldn't have been pushed since it isn't relevant to any production vehicles. Once the leak happened, there was a bit of a panic and to stop anymore leaks, they tried to downgrade ... which was silly, because if you know how to root the car, you probably know how to make a backup and stop remote access.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So a rogue corporate exec ordered an unauthorized op against a ronin hacker who Robin Hood'ed the underhood of his electric car.

We are living in cyberpunk times.

<comment><USER5> _So a rogue corporate exec ordered an unauthorized op against a ronin hacker who Robin Hood 'ed the underhood of his electric car.

We are living in cyberpunk times._

I remember when cyberpunk was fresh and new, before it was a codified collection of cliches. Mind you, this was also a time when an author could write, "His buyer for the three megabytes of hot RAM in the Hitachi wasn't taking calls," and think this sounded futuristic and criminally lucrative.

<comment><USER6> That reminds me, I was as a public service going to make an auto-updating epub of Neuromancer which simply incremented the units as needed to sound duly impressive.

"His buyer for the three petabytes of hot RAM..." etc...

<comment><USER7> Better off making something up. Flebibytes or something. Gibson should've done that in the original.

<comment><USER8> Flebibytes? That's a crazy amount.

<comment><USER6> On the street, sure.

In academe anything under ten mangabytes is noise these days tho and I imagine the dark economy is two factors beyond anything we have access to. :/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great article, and the best is Musk's response. Just one more example of how, ala Allison and Zeilkow's "Essence of Decision," so much of what happens in industrial organizations ("industrial" in the philosophical sense -- meaning organizations with hierarchies, divisions, etc.) is motivated not by the overall interest of the organization (cf. Musk's response), but rather of the more parochial needs of the individual managers. Which is to say someone within the Tesla organization, fearful of an error they made, sought to retaliate against the guy -- even though the retaliation was unauthorized, and even counterproductive. An amazing use case for how Twitter, when optimally utilized as a total free-speech zone, can really help move the world forward, as things like this enable information to percolate directly to the top without winding its way through the "mittelebureaucracy."

<comment><USER10> What would you do if your latest commits went live and they indeed did have new things in there, e.g. attribute values?

You might just roll the whole thing back a release, in the first instance to 'update' the hacker to a 'safe' version. If there were a need to roll everyone back then some type of patched new version would need to be released, or, if speed really mattered, just remote downgrade everyone to something safe. The major version numbers might not be the safe releases, the last release from a previous major version might be safer. Hence back to v.12.x.y for him. No malice be involved, just prudent reaction.

<comment><USER3> > No malice be involved, just prudent reaction.

It's not malice, it's panic and it's _profoundly_ stupid.

Only those with root access to the car can access the secret info.

There are a handful of people out there who rooted their cars. They are individuals of extraordinary technical ability.

You think they don't know how to make a backup? Or how to stop remote access?

That's exactly what happened. He blocked them and then deleted the pending downgrade.

<comment><USER11> Let's assume there is a problem caused be the rooting and as a result the Tesla spins out of control and kills a bystander.

Would you agree that this extraordinary technical ability individual should be criminally liable in this case?

<comment><USER3> > Would you agree that this extraordinary technical ability individual should > be criminally liable in this case?

No. There's no mens rea. He should be liable for damages in civil court.

<comment><USER11> By this logic killing someone while driving drunk is also not criminal since there is no mens rea.

<comment><USER3> There is such a thing as criminal negligence.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_negligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_negligence)

In your case, the person was being reckless. I don't think gaining access to hardware you own can be considered reckless, regardless of the _unlikely_ circumstances that may result. Your death-by-rooting example is entirely hypothetical and has _never_ happened.

<comment><USER12> Absolutely it could be considered reckless. You think some guy messing with his car's firmware understands it well enough to be as safe as the manufacturer? If an accident caused by manufacturer firmware can make the manufacturer liable for an accident, then someone tampering with it obviously can make them liable.

It has never happened? Who cares, what does that matter?

<comment><USER3> I never said the hacker shouldn't be liable. I said he shouldn't be _criminally_ liable.

By your logic, if the manufacturer puts out software that is responsible for a death, would you throw the software developer who wrote in jail? That's silly.

All this stuff is limited to civil liability.

<comment><USER13> It really depends on what the developer did. If the developer knowingly removed all tests that weren't passing because the car, sometimes, did not recognize old ladies crossing the street, then this person should go to jail. This is evidently negligence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I do not understand "Good Hacking is a gift" remark.

I would love if Tesla's were open for hacking but a previous article [0] pointed out that there appears to be a strong stance [1] against this.

Disclosure:I am a huge fan of the Tesla brand, just cautiously optimistic.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11233898](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11233898) [1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11234465](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11234465)

<comment><USER3> Elon Musk != Tesla

Or at the very least, Elon Musk is the voice of Tesla, but there are many other people who work there. You judge a company by their actions, not their words. I'm a huge fan of what they're doing, but not necessarily how they're doing it.

The cars are absolutely awesome.

Unfortunately, they only provide service manuals in Massachusetts (where they are required to by law) and charge $100 per day to view them. Do not sell parts to the public. Ports in the car (obd/ethernet/etc.) are disabled by default. API is undocumented/proprietary. No access to OS. No access to diagnostic information.

Very similar to how Apple does things.

<comment><USER15> > Elon Musk != Tesla

He is the CEO, he is responsible for the actions of his employees that are work related. Under the same guise, he shouldn't receive praises for anything everyone else under him does either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> [http://mashable.com/2016/02/03/tesla-refuses-rude- customer/](http://mashable.com/2016/02/03/tesla-refuses-rude-customer/)

</comment><comment><USER17> How did someone manage to find the image from the SHA hash?

<comment><USER18> I just made a lucky guess from the keywords in the article:

        $ echo -n 'P100D' | sha256sum
        5fc38436ec295b0049f186651ebba5fd55e8d7b81eb61cbd00d3f1bf18dd9c81

<comment><USER19> It's so short that you can also just brute force it. Using hashcat in "try all short alphanumeric+symbols strings in increasing length" mode on this hash produces the resulting string in about ten seconds on my computer.

I imagine it was just guessed, though. Any Tesla fan thinking of "cool new upgrade to the car, currently secret" would put a P100D model near the top of the list of things to try.

<comment><USER20> Yep. There are plenty of sites that have already brute-forced hashes for arbitrary n-length alphanumeric strings.

[https://md5hashing.net/hash/sha256/5fc38436ec295b0049f186651...](https://md5hashing.net/hash/sha256/5fc38436ec295b0049f186651ebba5fd55e8d7b81eb61cbd00d3f1bf18dd9c81)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Do you own your car? Just the metal, but not the software that's required to actually make it do anything useful.

</comment><comment><USER22> "Root the car" man what an amazing time we live in.

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't see any evidence that this guy's car was targeted specifically. From the info in the article, a much more likely scenario is that they accidentally pushed an update with private data to all cars, realized their mistake after the tweet was posted, then rolled back the update on all cars, so they could fix it before rolling it out again. That's exactly what you'd expect them to do and not sinister in the least.

I haven't read the 48-page forum discussion linked in the article, so there may be more info there, but at the very least the article writer hasn't adequately backed up his claims.

<comment><USER23> I seriously have no idea why this is getting downvoted. Anyone?

<comment><USER24> In TFA it quotes Musk himself confirming OP's claims. Why would Musk do that if they weren't true?

<comment><USER23> He doesn't say that, though. "Wasn't done at my request" means that _if_ it was done, he didn't order it; it neither confirms nor denies that it actually happened. Musk is being cagey; it's possible that he didn't yet know exactly what had occurred or who had ordered it.

Again, maybe there's something in that 48-page thread that proves me wrong. I'm fine with that. But it makes no sense to swallow the article's simplified interpretation without first doing the homework.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> $100 a day to view basic service manuals? I will Never buy a Tesla; even if one day I can afford one.

I can't believe you wealthy boys are putting up with this.

Do you guys really want to be sitting on the side of a road clueless over your toy? I don't expect you boys to pull out the DVOM, and Snap-on tools, but a little knowledge of why it broke down?

Isn't it kinda the American way to at least know what the underlying problem is? Or, have we been conditioned into being good obedient victims?

Personally, I feel emasculated if I need to ring a ding ding AAA? Especially, if the problem is minor. Will never know if we aren't able to read up on the toy?

<comment><USER26> If you can afford a Tesla, you can probably buy a new one before the warranty wears out. And you probably/definitely have roadside service.

<comment><USER27> Not a very good argument considering they're coming out with cheaper models. Not to mention, just because someone bought something doesn't mean they can afford it by a wide margin, it's sad but true. I think the poster you respond to has some points on why it isn't optimal for the end user, but they certainly could have phrased it a bit better.

<comment><USER26> I'm not saying I endorse this position. (I'm amazed I got downvoted as if I did.) I'm just saying this is why people have put up with it: Almost nobody realizes it, because people who buy Teslas generally aren't servicing their own cars, and most of them are still under warranty and they'll probably upgrade before that date arrives.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Don't believe Orson Welles - <AUTHOR> http://www.spectator.co.uk/arts/arts-feature/9520712/dont-believe-orson-welles-says-his-biographer-simon-callow-especially-when-he-calls-himself-a-failure/ <comment><USER2> As a child, watching the Tonight show I really liked the episodes when Orson Welles was on!

In a Film Appreciation course in college--the only movie I really liked was Citizen Kane. The camera work was brilliant.

I actually liked all his movies, and they didn't become dated with age. I would like to see The Stranger Remastered, but that's another topic.

As to embellishment--he knew Hollwood, why not play with them? Hollywood is magic, and escapism; why not quild the lilly? It's not like he didn't know the real problems of his generation--people dying in wars, the depression, being accused by Mccarthy.

(I have an off topic question about remastering old film/video. This is really off topic, but here goes. As a child I really liked a The Boy in the Plastic Bubble. It was a made for t.v movie and shot on video tape(I believe). For years the only copies of the film were severely degraded. So degraded, I was told it was beyond remastering. I noticed Starz had it in their line up. I watched the movie and someone did a great job remastering the old video tape. Does anyone know who did the work? I couldn't find anything.)

</comment><comment><USER3> At the time he was doing liquor commercials, Welles was really, literally, the most interesting man in the world.

Well, Feynman could top him maybe, but the list of men who could is short.

</comment><comment><USER4> The Simon Callow biographies of Welles are really well-written books and worth the reading time.</comment>


Toward a Better Markdown Tutorial - <AUTHOR> http://blog.codinghorror.com/toward-a-better-markdown-tutorial/ <comment><USER2> What is the _real_ problem?

Is it:

* People don't know Markdown because they haven't heard of it

* People have heard of it, but don't know how to use it.

* People know how to use it, but don't know what formatting methods to use (e.g. what should be bold, italic or underlined)

* People know how to use it, but don't know that it's supported on the site they are using.

You can probably think of more points to add to the list, but this seems to suggest a solution without a complete understanding of the problem, which is "Why do people not use Markdown?"</comment>


The Art of Powerful Questions - <AUTHOR> https://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-art-of-powerful-questions.html <comment><USER2> "If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes." \--Albert Einstein</comment>