Tesla worst for reliability in American driver survey - <AUTHOR> https://www.driving.co.uk/news/american-survey-claims-tesla-build-quality-issues/ <comment><USER3> This survey is garbage. Survey design is an art. And unfortunately, this survey does not differentiate between a big problem like "brakes are shot" and a small one like "My spotify playlist doesn't show up like I want". Dig a bit deeper, for Tesla,

> Infotainment is the source of more than a quarter of all problems

Another thing to point out is that J.D. Power's IQS does not differentiate between a problem that is the result of a physical fault or a design issue in which everything works as intended but the learning curve might be too steep.

No doubt Tesla has production issues like any other car maker in the world. But to truly compare them, a more credible source of information is necessary.

<comment><USER4> It's also useless in time frame. This is over the first few months of ownership. I've owned two of the cars that rank near the top of this list and it's problems after 5 years that I care about. That's when you start to pay out of pocket and the problems get big. Most cars, now, don't survive ten years, but I want a car that's reliable from year 5 to year 10.

<comment><USER5> It's not useless, it's just targeted at a specific audience. Some people only keep cars for 5 years and then get a new car. I buy used cars about 3 years old and keep them for 5-6 years, so reliability ratings over later years is more important for me (which is why I generally buy Honda or Toyota for my minivan/car needs), but it might not be for those people.

Consumer reports has traditionally been good about showing reliability over different stages of car lifetime, but it's been a while since I looked.

<comment><USER6> Consumer Reports relies on elective responses to their reliability survey. Doesn't this make their rankings problematic and statistically invalid?

<comment><USER5> As opposed to what? JD Powers seems to do the same. If you have a better survey with more rigorous standards that actually has enough data to by useful and comparable across many cars and years, I'm all ears.

Here's what both Consumer Reports[1] and JD Powers say about how they collect their data.

1: [https://auto.howstuffworks.com/buying-selling/consumer- repor...](https://auto.howstuffworks.com/buying-selling/consumer-reports- automotive-ratings.htm)

2: [https://www.jdpower.com/faq](https://www.jdpower.com/faq)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> JD Power is clearly in bed with the traditional Detroit automakers.

If you look at their history of rewards[0], you'll find that many times they choose the big three american companies vehicles over clearly superior import vehicles. They're vehicles on the page show one vehicle from each of the three big automakers in the US, one Chevy, one Ford, and a Dodge. There's also a Volvo in there that I'm sure fought some battles in conference rooms to get there.

I nearly get triggered every time I heard about these awards in commercials. They are not to be trusted.

[0] [https://www.jdpower.com/Cars/Ratings](https://www.jdpower.com/Cars/Ratings)

<comment><USER8> As someone who used to be an automobile engineer working for a big automaker in the a previous life, J.D power rankings are a complete farce.

Their surveys are designed so that a particular automaker will win (overrating certain metrics for no reason) and then make money by charging automakers to use those awards.

They have a vested interest in giving awards to automakers that are more in need of them. (not German or Japanese automakers)

<comment><USER9> So technically this is a pay-for-play kind of shenanigans?

<comment><USER8> Yes and No.

What JD power does is make a massive number of categories to give awards in. They then choose metrics for the survey that prioritize certain traits of the vehicle.

The surveys themselves are conducted in a fair manner and awarded companies truly deserve those awards. But, in some sense, them winning it was a foregone conclusion the second the metrics were selected.

It is like conducting a strongest man competition that prioritized height over anything else. Then the competition was conducted and people from Netherlands won handedly. By the metrics, Netherlands has won the competition fair and square. But, using height as the main metric for strength made their victory a foregone conclusion. Same thing.

Their surveys are free. But, they charge automakers money to use the awards in marketing. Honda or Toyota doesn't quite care for JD power awards because they win a lot in other comparisons. But, American manufacturers rely on these awards to look better, because frankly they don't have much going for them.

<comment><USER10> Yep. If you create enough awards, everyone's a winner. My understanding is that the data itself and the surveying services they offer is actually rather good, and many automakers actually pay for the raw data and that service.

It's the marketing/awards side that's quite literally garbage. And certain automakers will pay for this as well.

<comment><USER8> Yes. You're absolutely correct

We did used to buy the surveys to understand the results. But the awards themselves weren't worth much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I drove a rental Tesla recently. We were parked in a long line waiting to board a ferry and I was playing chess on the main console. When the line started to move, I tried to too and car just wouldn't go or start. People stuck behind me started getting impatient and honking while I was trying to figure out what had happened, turning off and on again, pressing random buttons, accidentally popping the trunk, etc. It took several minutes to realize that the car wouldn't start while you were playing a game on the console, so I had to quit the game, and then drive.

My point with this anecdote is that it seems to me that Tesla has many such features, some of which may change with software updates, and, given the expansive definition of "reliability" used here, perhaps this is a driver of issues.

I wonder what the rates would be if you restricted it to "issues requiring professional repair" or something like that.

<comment><USER12> As a Tesla owner, I think it's not a great rental car. A lot to learn.

<comment><USER13> I think it is clearly opposite: media in mazda is insanely hard to learn.

<comment><USER14> I bet that Mazda is stupidly easy to get into, start, put it in gear and drive though, and I bet it will behave predictably on the road like a normal car would. Everything else is secondary. Teslas definitely have a learning curve if you have never driven one.

<comment><USER13> No, tesla behaves just like a normal car. Changing gear is the same as Mercedes, default settings makes tesla same as any other car.

If you will change it's settings to something different than it is have to learn something. Chill Mode + No recuperation + no "one pedal driving" and you will get typical Mazda behavior.

The biggest issue with tesla is that it is freaking powerful if you are moving from other car.

<comment><USER5> > Chill Mode + No recuperation + no "one pedal driving" and you will get > typical Mazda behavior.

And how likely are you to get exactly that after receiving a rental that someone else has played with all the settings for? My guess is that the combined effect of rental agencies not taking the time to reset settings (bluetooth pairing is never empty on anything I rent) and people wanting to play with all the extra settings Tesla gives you means you more than likely receive a Tesla rental in a configuration that is not entirely the same as driving other cars.

<comment><USER12> Also, I don't think that is fully normal car driving.

Does a normal car have a situation where you need to reboot the MCU (media control unit, basically the computer that powers the screen) in order to open the glovebox?

Does a normal car have 2 ways to open the door, one of which damages the trim?

Does a normal car have no obvious way to "lock" the doors when you leave?

I am a _VERY_ happy Tesla owner as I said. There is still a lot to them that I think might be a bit much to throw on someone for a 1 day rental.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > _the Elon Musk-founded firm_

Musk didn't found Tesla. From Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tesla,_Inc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tesla,_Inc).

> Tesla was incorporated on July 1, 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc > Tarpenning.

and that they, with a third employee,

> connected with Elon Musk, who contributed US$6.5 million of the initial > (Series A) US$7.5 million round of investment in February 2004

<comment><USER16> Technically speaking his investment came with a retroactive co-founder status according to the company. But yeah no he wasn't there in the beginning.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Retroactive co-founder" \- I wonder if that approach would work in other areas too. Like, how much would it cost to buy the status of an "Original member of the Beatles"?

<comment><USER17> Ask Ringo?

Like, Pete Best was replaced by Ringo b/c George Martin thought he wasn't good enough in the initial recording sessions with the band.

Pete Best can claim to be an early member but that doesn't take away from the fact that Ringo was there from the beginning. The analogy works pretty well with Musk here.

Now, if you're talking a Destiny's Child situation where two of the early members were replaced in music videos — for songs they performed on and a record with their faces on the cover, you'd be correct. Michelle Williams can never claim to be an "original" member of the band, but she was part of the band from the time it started to take off, even if she didn't get to accept a Grammy for the second album with her two band mates (who had to awkwardly go on stage with the girls they replaced).

<comment><USER18> > but that doesn't take away from the fact that Ringo was there from the > beginning

That's a rather curious bit of revisionist history. They played hundreds of live shows and made several released recordings before they hired Ringo - <USER2> that's not even counting the Quarrymen/Johnny and the Moondogs days which represent another 2 years before that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is one of the more damning articles for me. It includes nuggets I used to say as joke about what would happen if MS made a car including:

"I have tried a reset but the glove compartment will not open after pressing the button…any ideas?" One response asked if the car was in Valet mode. When told it wasn't, they followed with: "ok. That's the 'normal' cause of random glove locking. Try putting it on and turning it off?"

The fact that it is normal is amazing to me.

I love what Tesla did to the industry in terms of advancing battery tech to force other players to move, but talk about Stockholm syndrome.

<comment><USER20> Some might consider it a feature if the glove box needs some known-only-to- the-owner quirk to open as basic security, at least prior to having voice/phone activation as an option. As i understood it, the valet mode is an early preparation for autopilot ride-hailing activity while the owner is working, otherwise known as robo-taxi mode, in order to keep the compartment locked in non-privileged cases. Can any owners confirm this?

<comment><USER21> Valet mode is a common feature on luxury cars; prior to the fancy infotainment stuff, it was a valet key that wouldn't unlock the glovebox or trunk, but would drive the car.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I traded in my Tesla Model S last December due to its degrading reliability. I ran into numerous issues towards the end such as:

\- The touchscreen bubbling and tearing away due to "delamination". \- Door handles "not presenting". \- The radiator breaking and dumping all its fluid on the garage floor. \- The fast wall charger overheating. It got so hot I often needed to use my shirt as a buffer between my hand and charger handle. I was told it was normal behavior for summer time.

Then there were driving issues such as autopilot glitching out and steering out of the lane. It got frequent enough that I had just stopped using that feature altogether. Then there was the time when I was on the I-10 going 75 mph in the HOV lane and the car beeped a warning and quickly slowed down to 15 mph. I had to put on my hazards and weave through rush hour traffic to get off the freeway and park the car. I got out of the car and back in, rebooted the computer and it started worked normally. Rebooting seemed to fix various things.

This isn't to say that my entire Tesla experience was entirely bad. I use to be a big fanboy, and in fact this was my second Tesla Model S, my first being a 2013 P85+. But sadly that era has passed I don't see myself ever buying a Tesla again.

<comment><USER23> Same anecdotal evidence on my end (S85). Despite the fact that it's technology (less moving parts) could make it the most reliable car, it ended up being the least reliable. Usually one service appointment fixed 3 things and broke 2 other things in the process. Wait time for an appointment was 3 weeks. I was done after 3 years and 40k Miles. Life is too short.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> >The J.D. Power US Initial Quality Study, which gauges problems encountered in the first three months of ownership.

A very questionable definition of "reliability".

<comment><USER25> I don't doubt that Tesla's are less reliable by other definitions, but I agree that this isn't a great measure.

Tesla's have lots of new and untested technology. That's their appeal. If toyota wanted to be less conservative and start using blazing new technologies in their cars, I'm sure we'd see the same issues there.

Teslas are notorious for software bugs that eventually get fixed. What i'm more interested in is whether Teslas end up lasting a long time. Electric motors are a lot simpler and so in a sense, I suspect they have the potential to last for more years with fewer issues.

<comment><USER26> > Tesla's have lots of new and untested technology. That's their appeal.

This saw gets trotted out whenever Tesla gets dinged for reliability. So let's dig into it. What untested technologies are Tesla deploying and how does the affect reliability?

Well let's review. The Model 3's initial problems were metal panels not being installed correctly. A technology that has been successfully deployed on automobiles for over a century.

Now gaps are fixed, but they shouldn't have been a problem _at all_. From what I understand the problem was caused by trying to have robots do final assembly and just lax quality controls, problems "legacy" manufacturers had solved decades ago.

Tesla's iconic touch screens are delaminating [0] because Elon ordered screens to be installed that aren't up to automotive grade standards. This is another unforced error.

And we haven't even touched on the problems with the actual advanced technology, autopilot, which is once again oversold and underdelivers.

[0] [https://www.thedrive.com/tech/27989/teslas-screen-saga- shows...](https://www.thedrive.com/tech/27989/teslas-screen-saga-shows-why- automotive-grade-matters)

<comment><USER27> > Now gaps are fixed

Not really. They've improved on the 3, but people still routinely get some really wild tolerances on current Model 3s. And the Y has had an absolutely awful beginning of production, facing many of the same build quality problems that early Model 3s had.

Tesla is relying too much on buyer enthusiasm. As they expand into the mainstream, they need to avoid building a strong reputation of poor quality that will be really hard to shake.

<comment><USER26> I wouldn't buy a Tesla. I don't like the interiors, and like you said they've burned their reputation with me.

I was skeptical of how wide spread the the panel problems were with the 3's initial rollout, until I examined the 3s in the parking lot at work. Every car was bad, including one that was a shockigly horrible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Here's another source (consumer reports) that backs up the idea that Teslas are on the less reliable end:

[https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-makes-big-leap- consume...](https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-makes-big-leap-consumer- reports-car-brand-survey-ranking-2020-2)

My thoughts are that Tesla is a newer company, they are trying things that others aren't, and third, reliability never seemed to be a top goal for them.

<comment><USER29> I think it's more that reliability only really comes with maturity as a car company. In the same way that the reliability of a code base increases with maturity. A car is like a code base in that no one person ever fully understands the entire thing.

<comment><USER30> I've seen plenty of code bases become less reliable over time. I once took over a project that had been going on for 10+ years. Reliability was terrible. The first thing I did was stop all changes, and only allow critical blockers to be fixed. That eventually made it stable enough to be useful.

Reliability takes more that time. It takes competence and attention to detail.

<comment><USER31> Mature does not imply old; it means feature-stable, proven and understood.

An example I know, Canon's pro-level cameras are mature on the day that they go on sale to the public because they have been tested around the world for a year or more to verify and debug the design. That's part of their appeal, users know that they're putting $8000 into a mature camera that will get the job done, though with fewer features and baubles than a Sony.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Everytime Tesla is mentioned here the deluge of hate is overwhelming. I genuinely don't understand it. Here comes a company that is actually doing something fundamentally transformative and good for the planet and its inhabitants instead just another in the countless line of garbage apps that at best are a solution looking for a problem and at worst actively contributing to the destruction of our species (Facebook). Seperate the man from the accomplishments.

<comment><USER33> I will not argue that Tesla is doing things differently. I have one gripe with the absolute truth suggested by "good for the planet and its inhabitants" that so many EV manufacturers ride on. Are electric cars good for the planet? Nope. Are they less bad than gas cars? Maybe. It's like saying that Diet coke is good for you because it replaces normal coke that is bad for you. That's an erroneous and arguably dangerous dichotomy. Sorry if I'm being facetious but that kind of marketing bothers me and I believe is damaging (to the environment in this case) by making us more inclined to settle for non optimal solutions.

<comment><USER32> I understand your reasoning but this is a perfect example of the saying "Never let the perfect be the enemy of the good". I agree that there are better solutions in terms of environmental cost for mobility but given the constraints of human behavior and urgent need for massive immediate reduction of carbon emissions, EV's are currently our best shot.

<comment><USER34> Why? Why isn't more public transit, which in ever study is massively more greenhouse gas efficient than electric cars and is also already an existing and proven technology a better option?

Why aren't plugin hybrids a better option? Battery electric vehicles require massive emissions in assembling a Li+ battery of that size. Given that most trips for people are short distances that wouldn't end up using the fuel tank of a plugin hybrid, why is encouraging their adoption not a better solution.

There seems to be a belief that BEVs are the obvious and accepted solution to the climate crisis that I don't think meets muster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It seems odd that Dodge has the top score here, with Toyota and Honda significantly below the industry average. This runs counter to my personal experience and general perceptions. I wonder if historically unreliable brands like Dodge are becoming more reliable than Japanese brands, or if this is related to how this survey is conducted?

<comment><USER29> These surveys are a bit suspect. They tend to fluctuate a lot from year to year which makes little sense because car companies very minorly change their cars from one procution year to another. Major changes to design and construction only come every 5-10 years when a few models are often reintroduced together. Toyota ever ranking below any U.S. brand is almost hilarious but it will probably change on next year's survey. You can use these surveys to get a general idea of who is building more unbreakable cars by looking at them across multiple years.

Tesla though consistently ranks low on these kind of surveys. It's not really a surprise as small design or manufacturing issues take years to work out. There's a reason car companies that are very conservative with change like Toyota often top this list and companies that are pushing new technology into their cars frequently like BMW do not as well.

As an example, around 2000 BMW was one of the first companies to introduce variable valve timing on its whole line of cars. It was new and unsurprisingly VANOS seal failures soon became a frequent issue on higher milage cars. Basically every car has variable valve timing now and it's usually not an issue.

Edit: I use the term unbreakable instead of reliable because the kinds of issues that this survey tracks include things that aren't really about reliability in the traditional sense we think of it. If a company introcudes a particularly flimsy door handle and people are breaking them it comes up in this survey just as much as check engine lights. Minivans for example get docked a lot in surveys like this even though they are often well built because kids are hell on car interiors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This survey is incredibly suspect ... as the author themself states, there's an inherent bias for non-american brands.

I find it surprising the FCA and GM cars are topping the list, while being notoriously unreliable in the car community.

Also worth noting that both Toyota and Ford have been ranked as worse than industry average.

I'm not saying that Tesla(s) don't have quality issues, but this survey seems pretty meaningless.

<comment><USER37> It sounds like you are saying that this survey is meaningless because it disagrees with your anecdotal experience. If the survey is conducted in a rigorous and valid way, then it's the perception, not the study, that needs to be suspect. Does J.D. publish their methodology and data? The best I could find was this PDF: [https://www.jdpower.com/sites/default/files/file/2020-06/202...](https://www.jdpower.com/sites/default/files/file/2020-06/2020070%20U.S.%20IQS.pdf).

<comment><USER38> review consumer reports reviews of FCA and GM cars. They are crap. JD Power looks at the first 3 months. That's before the first oil change! The reality is that high-reliability cars require no mechanical repairs in the first 100k miles.

anecdotal evidence: 1989 Honda Civic only needed a/c compressor from 100-180k miles. 1991 Honda Civic only needed a/c compressor from 98-140k miles. 2007 Toyota Camry required a CV joint and a sun visor in the first 100k miles. It needed a Power steering hose at 120k. 2010 Honda Pilot required a Fuel Tank Vacuum Valve in the first 100k miles, and a a/c compressor, power steering pump and rack at 190k. 2012 Chevy Sonic needed a new turbo in first 50k miles. 2003 Chevy Cavalier went through alternators like underpants, and would quit running if you turned off the a/c while stopped.

I won't by GM or FCA vehicles with the exception of Dodge RAM diesels. I do maintenance myself and always use OEM parts when I sub work out.

<comment><USER37> I don't think it's as black-and-white as you suggest. This link seems to support the narrative that FCA has greatly improved, and it also agrees that Subaru and BMW, in spite of their high quality stereotype, statistically suffer from more than their fair share of issues: [https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner- satisf...](https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner- satisfaction/who-makes-the-most-reliable-cars/)

Anecdotal evidence is fun, but it's useless for making any kind of informed decision. We happen to have a 2008 Toyota Sienna. The general consensus for that vehicle is that its practically bulletproof. But we've had chronic issues with it since 50,000 miles. AC went out, plastic seals falling off, engine knocking, and many other issues. But I wouldn't hesitate to consider a Toyota when we replace it, because I know our experience has been an outlier.

<comment><USER38> when has BMW had a high quality sterotype? Fancy pants? sure. but Audi/BMW/MB all suffer from reliability issues, with BMW leading the pack.

Completely agree about anecdotal evidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> " _...as the Elon Musk-founded firm reportedly wouldn't allow its customers to be surveyed in 15 of America's 50 states..._ "

Sigh. This again? Tesla has joined the list of producers of quality products like Oracle?

<comment><USER40> In the other thread, this was phrased as Tesla not allowing those states to release the information of people who bought a car to third-parties because privacy. I'm sure if you wanted to take the survey in one of those states you can just reach out to JD Power yourself, they can't scrape your information though.

<comment><USER39> How does Tesla "not allowing those states to release the information of people who bought a car to third-parties"? That's purely between you, the state motor vehicle registration office, and the state's regulations, right?

<comment><USER34> Other automakers release this information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Previously discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23637920](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23637920)

</comment><comment><USER42> I agree with others that the survey is a bit suspect, but I do believe it is possible that Dodges don't have a lot of problems. Look at the cars they sell! They haven't changed their cars much in at least ten years. That is not a knock on them, Americans like Chargers and Challengers. If you are making the same car for ten years or more I hope you get very good at it.

<comment><USER26> The Tesla S was introduced eight years ago.

<comment><USER42> That is a long time, but the Charger (and the Challenger is essentially a two door Charger) was introduced 14 years ago. More to the point, the Tesla S was revolutionary in 2012, the Charger was old fashioned in 2012.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I saw that exact chart discussed elsewhere. The general trend I concluded was this is a measure of how picky a brand's customers are. Since "problems" is left undefined these could be anything from "I don't like this button" to "the engine randomly stops running".

Audi and Volkswagen; Chevy, GMC, and Cadillac; Ford and Lincoln, etc are essentially the same vehicles. I suspect the more luxury you go, the higher the expectations you have for your vehicle. The interesting exception is Lexus and Toyota.

Anecdotally, I'm surprised to see Subaru with such high defects. I know a lot of friends with Subaru's and have only heard one bad thing - the seat springs wore out after several years of daily driving.

</comment><comment><USER37> It would be really interesting to take brands that have improved dramatically over the years, and do a thorough analysis of what internal processes they changed to achieve that result. You know that there are QA folks within each company doing that kind of analysis.

After doing that analysis, it would then be a fun project to try to apply those manufacturing or design process changes to software development.

I suppose in such a competitive and proprietary industry, such transparency is not likely.

</comment><comment><USER44> The survey is meaningless if they do not disclose the questions.

<comment><USER45> You could also argue that Tesla is misleading since it won't allow customers in 15 states to fill out surveys.

<comment><USER46> > You could also argue that Tesla is misleading since it won't allow customers > in 15 states to fill out surveys.

What? Can you go into more detail?

<comment><USER45> In the article it says only customers from 35 states could fill out the survey since Tesla blocks customers in 15 states. So the data on Tesla isn't representative of the 50 states.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> One thing that worries me about Tesla, is all the electronics.

Modern consumer grade electronics, are not known for lasting very long. And by long, I mean on the scale of 20 to 30 years.

Often, circuit boards deteriorate. Either the solder goes bad, or some resistor, or what not fails.

This is one reason why I prefer old style appliances, with minimal electronics. And I refuse to buy a smart refrigerator, because when that circuit board goes bad, then your refrigerator is now a huge paperweight.

With an expensive Tesla Model 3, that can cost upwards of $50,000 USD, then the risk of an expensive paperweight here, is very real. And Elon is not in the business of repairing old Tesla cars, since it does nothing to boost his stock price.

And with all critical instrumentation now being virtual, and displayed to you on the center monitor, then, you now have a very high risk of cascading failures.

A better design, would have been to keep separate, the critical instruments needed to drive the vehicle, like the speedometer, battery charge meter, etc., from the infotainment system used to provide auxiliary support, like the GPS mapping, music, video, internet, browser, Netflix, etc. And especially the AutoPilot program, should definitely be kept separate.

Or maybe, the people who can easily afford to spend $50k to $80k on an experimental car, doesn't concern themselves with such frivolous things. And they buy themselves a new car every 5 years, so to them, everything I mentioned above is all irrelevant.

And a lot of people who bought the $80k Model S, did so just to drive in the car pool lane. Once that privilege is revoked, then, its importance will diminish.

</comment><comment><USER48> Since the criteria isn't disclosed I will just have to assume tesla have the least reliable cup holders.

</comment><comment><USER49> I think this is a bit misleading. The metric is "problems" per 100 cars. That could mean the car's transmission gave out or it could mean there is a software bug or paint issue that is causing the driver problems. In the case of Tesla it could be the case a lot of problems are due to software bugs that can be corrected over the air seamlessly for free. I think classifying each problem into categories with associated weights would help to make the metric more meaningful

<comment><USER50> Why? Because we're used to software bugs?

<comment><USER49> What? Just saying a minor software bug (possibly Spotify not integrating correctly) is not the same as a transmission or brake failure. Also, in Tesla's case the minor bugs can be fixed relatively quickly and for free. I don't know what you're talking about being used to software bugs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> JD Power has a number of surveys and it is important to understand the context for each.

IQS is the Initial Quality Survey, and it is basically "What defects did new owners notice". Historically, vehicle models with more years of production since model change/update have done better on the IQS Survey, which is why some unexpected cars score higher. Additionally, simpler cars have fewer things to go wrong.

Disclaimer: I work for General Motors, this post consists solely of my opinions.

</comment><comment><USER52> Necessary info because poor media are summarizing this incorrectly as "reliability":

> _Tesla's issues are primarily with production and things such as paint > imperfections and poor fit of body panels, according to J.D. Power_

[https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/24/tesla-lags-auto-industry- in-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/24/tesla-lags-auto-industry-in-quality- finds-new-jd-power-study.html)

</comment><comment><USER53> Tesla cars haven't been around long enough in a quantity to be able to even determine long term reliability. Short term reliability is obviously a joke assessment. My bet is as time carries on Tesla cars will rank low. No reason other than they are a new comer and you learn and improve reliability through real world experience like Honda. I would never buy a Tesla.

</comment><comment><USER54> Ive hear the wheel bearings are garbage because they use special ceramic ball bearings, rather than roller or spindle bearings which are like a bajillion times better at handling wheel loads and shocks. Maybe they have changed it in newer versions but I havent heard anything about it since.

</comment><comment><USER55> I own a model 3. It is a great car, far ahead of the competition. I've had more issues with it than i did with my previous car (honda accord). Eg, blackscreen - many times, and once an unintended acceleration.

<comment><USER56> Great car with unintended acceleration?

<comment><USER55> That only happened once.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Manufacturing quality is hard. Tesla, as a SV company, isn't really interested in manufacturing it seems. Think they could really benefit from merging with Toyota especially at this valuation.

<comment><USER58> >Think they could really benefit from merging with Toyota especially at this valuation.

Merging them would create a mass of online fanboys so dense that it creates an automotive black hole. It will be impossible for discussion of any other brand to build up enough speed to exit the fanboy-well.

Joking aside, brands that start with T and end with A seem to have a disproportionate number of very loud online fanboys. I can understand why they have the following they do but it doesn't make them any less insufferable.

<comment><USER27> > Merging them would create a mass of online fanboys so dense that it creates > an automotive black hole

Ha! It might not be as bad as you think, there are a lot of Model 3 owners who used to own a Prius, so there's already a lot of commonality there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> > the Elon Musk-founded firm reportedly wouldn't allow its customers to be > surveyed in 15 of America's 50 states

If this is true, I don't care how reliable Tesla's are, I already know enough to never be a customer.

</comment><comment><USER60> I thought Mahk made it clear JD Power is garbage

</comment><comment><USER61> Warning: anecdote.

My boomer parents have a Tesla and complain constantly about its reliability. However, often this is a consequence of their own disinclination to the more "techy" interfaces that Tesla favors. There are several cases where what they see as the car's failures might be seen, by Tesla say, as user error.

There's a good lesson about design and demographics there. If you're selling expensive cars in the United States, consider building interfaces that are generationally appropriate to the only generation that has much disposable income in the U.S.

<comment><USER62> > There are several cases where what they see as the car's failures might be > seen, by Tesla say, as user error.

That includes fatalities at Tesla so this should be no surprise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> 2014 I got my tesla. I've had one issue and one recall... equivalent expensive luxury cars range rover,bmw, Benz of the past... by 2-3 year mark all are thousands in maintenance monthly. Tesla for me at least has been a game changer. Cost aside I don't think about my car much except for the occasional thread like this...

<comment><USER64> I don't doubt that your Benz is expensive to maintain but I have a feeling that thousands per month in year 3 is somewhat exaggerated. Edmunds estimates the 5-year maintenance cost of the most expensive Benz I can think of (the E63 AMG) at less than $9000, which is maybe a lot but that's $150/month.</comment></comment>


The truth about student loans - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXbbam141zk#t=31s

<comment><USER2> Summary: Political rant with editorialized title. Speaker advocates for cuts to student loan programs to produce massive cuts the university budgets leading to decreased program quality but affordable prices.

I'm not sure this is even worth criticizing because frankly this guy is completely clueless, but:

* The decreased program quality part seems to be skimmed over.

* Educational institutions that just react to market forces are bad educational institutions. Market forces result in grade inflation and low graduation standards, something I think most people agree are extremely unfortunate trends.

Alternative proposal: Redirect student loan subsidies from students towards institutions directly, possibly also bias the subsidies towards public institutions. The result should be lower tuition for everyone, mild downward forces on private institutions' tuition costs, hopefully no cuts to program quality and reasonable levels of affordability for reduced income students who will still rely on need-based aid more than loans and continue to have fairly cheap public schools they can opt to go to.

<comment><USER3> _The decreased program quality part seems to be skimmed over._

Some numbers: students pay $19,869.5 per term (<http://www.nyu.edu/bursar/tuition.fees/rates09/ugcas.html>). If each student takes 6 classes (between 18 and 24 credits), a class of 30 students pays $99,347.5 for one course.

Another number: a typical PTL in math gets $4-6,000 per class. Presumably the cost of a PTL in a less marketable subject is lower.

Unless rent for a classroom + admin overhead adds up to about $90,000/semester, there is plenty of waste to be cut.

Specific examples of waste: the climbing wall, counseling services, latino center, anime club, gym, soccer team, korean formal ball, resident assistants, multiple offices of affirmative action [1]. (These all exist at universities I've attended or worked for.)

 _Educational institutions that just react to market forces are bad educational institutions. Market forces result in grade inflation and low graduation standards, something I think most people agree are extremely unfortunate trends._

Come up with uniform standards, and separate the tasks of education and evaluation. Problem solved.

[1] If a university has _three_ offices of AA, that's either 2 or 3 too many (depending on your views on AA).

<comment><USER2> Also, the specific examples of waste I'd like to address, since I think you might have some misconceptions on how these are funded:

* Climbing wall: At most universities I've seen these types of services are usually funding through a university recreation department that gets paid via student fees... voted on by the students. I.E. students went to an actual ballot and chose to raise their fees to supply things like this.

* Counseling center: I disagree this is waste. Parents tend to get angry when students throw themselves from buildings. Universities that provide psych help for their students can lessen the number of students who do this, which is helpful for retaining not only the students who would otherwise kill themselves, but the students who object to seeing a rain of their peers from the tall building on campus. It also tends to increase alumni donation rates, IIRC.

* Latino center / other AA type things: These are often student funded or sometimes funded through restricted funds where some interest group gives funds to the university specifically for this purpose. This doesn't always happen, but does more than you think. And yet again, these usually increase alumni donation rates among minorities and therefore net the university more than they paid, which means the university is simply making a smart investment, doubly so if they didn't even pay for it because someone else gave them funds to build it.

* Various student clubs: Again, these are typically funded by students at most universities through an activities fee their own student government put onto the thing. They voted on this, they decided to spend it where they spent it and on some campuses the administrators are in fact legally prevented from doing anything about it.

* Soccer team / sport programs: I'm not really a fan of sports programs being part of a university, but from a waste perspective not all of them are revenue losers. Some universities actually find they make money of teams _and_ inspire a lot more private donations. Universities with strong sports programs tend to raise more money from alumni. I think this doesn't work out in practice for a lot of universities so I see this as potentially one of the better cases you've brought up as waste.

* Resident assistants: Actually a vastly cheaper alternative to paid university staff doing these types of tasks. This generally is a smart and low cost way to staff buildings and the opposite of waste.

<comment><USER3> _At most universities I've seen these types of services are usually funding through a university recreation department that gets paid via student fees... voted on by the students_

We have a better way than voting to allocate private goods than voting: a market. Rather than allowing some students to vote for other students to pay for their entertainment, we should simply require that everyone pay for their own entertainment.

As for sports teams/etc, if they bring in money, keep them. Most don't. As for RAs, their services are completely unnecessary. My apartment building simply _does not provide_ monthly pasta dinners, free light bulbs, an ice cream social at the beginning of the year, or endless spam about sorority events. Somehow I've survived.

<comment><USER2> If your apartment building had an alumni foundation that brought in substantial revenues it would. Also RAs do paperwork and some amount of administrative tasks that universities would have to hire a clerk or someone else to do. RAs are dirt cheap and it takes surprisingly little funds to make students feel like they're being pampered and money fluttered away on them when in reality it's almost nothing. But later they go "wow the university really cared" and they write checks.

Take up the market idea to the students. At most of the campuses they're the ones who control these fees and can chose to lower, raise, reallocate or toss them. Students overwhelmingly vote for certain types of fees consistently across campuses. Apparently they don't buy your market argument and frankly if they vote that stuff in that's their own choice and not much we can get riled up about. (These types of fees are typically not a large part of the overall cost of tuition. It depends on the system. A very few places are just absurd, most are pretty minor.)

<comment><USER3> I guarantee you that a temp to do some paperwork for a week or two would cost less than free rent for a year (the cost of an RA).

As for taking the market idea to students, I advocate doing exactly that. Allow students to opt out of student activity fees (but they can't join clubs) and make sure the government doesn't subsidize them.

Incidentally, a student in the 49% who voted against student fees is NOT paying student fees by choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The government is merely the enabler here. The other part is the unshakable belief by most Americans that four years at a private liberal arts college is worth $200K.

<comment><USER5> if corporations support this notion with inflated salaries the circle is complete. this is where the notion is slowly changing, and it will take years to trickle down to the other systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The problem is that the opposite system - publically funded high education has even deeper flaws.

Many students choose completely useless programs (straight to unemployment), students don't fell entitled to criticize anything, and of course the universities don't treat them like paying customers.

<comment><USER5> uh...the alternative to government intervention is more severe government intervention?

the alternative is to stop having the government directly subsidize higher education through grants and loans. instead let taxpayers keep that money and fund schools themselves. do you know how the ivy leagues got to be the ivy leagues? by raising prices until demand and supply met instead of artificially low prices and quotas^1.

the best plan would be to raise prices until demand is slightly lower than supply so that you have room for poor merit students.

1\. colleges were quite a bit different before WW2. that's when public funding of university research really took off, due to military interest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I heard about _The Underground History of American Education_ here on HN during a discussion about Bill Gates. Someone said they wished Bill were more into Gatto (author of Underground History) than the Knowledge is Power program.

I wish I could post this link to HN and have it sit at the top for a while because I think everyone should read this book.

Gatto, who was an NY and NYC teacher of the year and publicly resigned in the Op Ed of the WSJ, traces out the origins of compulsory school and it's detrimental effects brilliantly.

<http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm>

<comment><USER8> You could start by helping him with his website. It looks awful from here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Eh. It's the good old escalation argument all over again. Sure, you can fix some problems by cutting the broken solutions and letting it escalate until it solves itself. Sure, the end result will be better than the status quo, but why would anyone ever want to go through the mess that would lie in between if short-term planning is so strongly encouraged (by human nature, if nothing else)‽

<comment><USER2> Okay, let's be clear on something. The US higher education system remains the top higher education system in the world. This is relatively undisputed.

There are pieces of it that are broken, but the assumption that some new better system will inevitably and miraculously emerge if only we had the political will to smash what we have to pieces is silly.

I'm for reform, I'm not for blindly destroying something we have and simply crossing my fingers in hope that it becomes better that way. If you're concerned about how education runs, feel free to propose a new system, but don't simply assume that if we smash it with a sledge hammer something better will emerge. Frankly the only thing that's likely to result in is ensuring the US lose its superpower status permanently. (I think people often forget just how much of our military advantage is predicated on a research infrastructure that involves US universities. Universities here do a hell of a lot more than just teach students. Frankly anyone who supports our military needs to consider that our existing system of universities critical to its success. Smashing this system is as reckless as proposing to simply cut funding to the military and then expecting them go to fight China or take over the middle east or whatever.)

<comment><USER3> Is the US _education_ system the best in the world?

Or is the US _credentialing_ system, or perhaps _academic research_ system the best in the world? I don't see a compelling reason why controlling costs on the education side would harm the credentialing and research parts of the system.

<comment><USER2> The video advocates cutting professors salaries in half. The guy actually says that. If you don't see how that could impact a university's research operations then... I'm not sure how we can really agree on anything. :)

The education parts of the university and the research parts of the university are not staffed separately. In a research university the people who do research are some of the same people who design lesson plans. The idea is that this enhances a student's educational experience.

I agree though, that tuition is indeed too high. But I'm willing to stand by the assertion that our education system is the best in the world too, not just our research system. This is even more true when it comes to our graduate programs.

<comment><USER3> _The video advocates cutting professors salaries in half. The guy actually says that. If you don't see how that could impact a university's research operations then... I'm not sure how we can really agree on anything. :)_

It would actually be pretty easy to cut salaries without impacting research; pay separately for teaching and research. Teaching a class pays $4-6k/class, or whatever market rate for a PTL is. Grant supported research pays a market rate salary for research.

Then we get teaching for cheap, but don't sacrifice the quality of research.

As for enhancing a student's educational experience, meh. Some people are good at research and teaching. Far more people are good only at one. Because universities want grant money, this usually means good researchers but bad teachers provide teaching (and waste time not doing research). Not sure how this "enhances" a student's educational experience.

<comment><USER2> I agree that the value of being at a research institution for ones education is not much for quite a number of students. I think this is where the root of the problems are. Society needs to appreciate good teaching outside of research institutions. Until that happens we end up having floods of students go to research institutions to get job skills training and it's a waste of resources for everyone involved.

Until this happens it's generally not feasible to pay teachers next to nothing and research staff a lot on the same campus. Then all the students just complain they're not being taught by real professors and they truly will pay twice or four times as much at a different school to get taught by research- based professors. (Who often, as you point out, can't lecture for crap half the time.) Universities do some amount of work to ensure that research pays above grade and teaching only faculty get paid on a completely separate grade, but the expectations of the students generally keeps this from happening in a better way.

That said, there are some students that really do benefit from learning with and participating with the top researchers in the world. Those students do need to continue to go to research institutions for their education and do benefit substantially from the research activity on a campus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I always feel the need to squirrel away more gold under the mattress after listening to Schiff talk.

</comment><comment><USER11> I have doubts that the guy would manage to single-handedly publish any piece of legislation. So while there is some economical talk, it's actually more towards a political fund gathering talk.

</comment><comment><USER12> I have calculated that I will be 40 before my student loan will be paid off... I've been paying it since 2003

<comment><USER13> I had already started paying some of my loans when I finished undergraduate school in 1993. I started repaying the rest of them when I finished graduate school in 1996. I finished paying them around 2004. During my undergraduate years I was in an internship program, so over five years of school I had two years of fulltime work. And in grad school I was given a stipend and free tuition. This helped me (a) not borrow as much, and (b) have income to pay down my loans as quickly as I could.

I remember producing paydown charts in the early 90s and thinking it'd take forever to pay my loans off, but I planned the amounts I wanted to pay each month (more than the minimum whenever I could) and it got done. My rising income over the years helped more than I could have predicted when I started.

<comment><USER14> I don't know how much you owed, but was it worth it to pay the loans off so fast? It seems there must have been something more valuable a large sum of money could have done for you.

EDIT: I mean this as an honest question, not proving a point or something. I was under the impression that these loans have pretty low interest. If the interest is low I would pay as little at a time as I possibly could.

<comment><USER13> Yes, it was worth it. Being a debtor puts a drag on you, even when you've got a positive net worth. Owing debt reduces your freedom and flexibility, because you need to have enough cash flow to make your debt payments. That restricts your choices. Paying your debts off also improves your credit rating quickly, which is important after graduating college because sooner or later you're probably going to want a home, and mortgage you need for that will most likely be more than your school loans were. Paying your loans off first proves you can handle the mortgage debt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> amazing.</comment>


Show HN: Stories as a Service - <AUTHOR> https://storiesasaservice.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all,

For a few years now Mike and I have been dreaming of this day. We've seen the trends, we've watched from the sidelines, always waiting for the right moment for our big release.

Today, for no specific calendar related reason, we're launching Stories as a Service (SaaS for short).

SaaS enables you to add Story functionality to your site in just one line of code. We know you've all seen Stories by now, they're all over the face of the web. But you've not seen them like this.

Including revolutionary features such as +1™ (each story lasts for 25 hours), FaceStickers™ (our stickers are IRL and very sticky) and Photoshop1™ (pretend you're in Bali whilst in your underwear in your 1 bed flat), we think you're gonna love SaaS.

We're super excited to finally bring down the curtain on what we believe will be a revolutionary product.

We can't wait to see what you do with it (especially you, Facebook).

p.s. You can read the (short) story of the behind the scenes here: [https://twitter.com/FredRivett/status/847825413422415872](https://twitter.com/FredRivett/status/847825413422415872)

I'll be about today to answer any questions you have (but may be asleep at times due to last nights late night push).

</comment><comment><USER2> ahahah</comment>


Ask HN: Good sites where you learn by building a project? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Probably the best one I've found (for Rails, you build a Twitter like app):

[https://www.railstutorial.org/book](https://www.railstutorial.org/book)

<comment><AUTHOR> what's 2nd and 3rd best?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Build a todo list app in a dozen Javascript frameworks [http://todomvc.com/](http://todomvc.com/)</comment>


Cape Town Is 90 Days Away from Running Out of Water - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/5103259/cape-town-water-crisis <comment><USER2> On the plus side, this is a really nice and concise story: Hit's all the major questions (that can be asked in a short space) with no anecdotes about people showering.

Anyone know of any good longer form articles exploring the topic?

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16175757](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16175757)

<comment><USER4> The previous HN discussion was decent -- especially in ecological and practical terms -- but probably left room for more analysis of the cultural and political factors involved in the crisis (I say this as a cultural anthropologist!).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> An earlier article in The Guardian, that I cannot find atm said that only 54% of residents were meeting their water rationing quota (!)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm working in the Cape Town area right now and here are a few notes from on the ground:

\- If the city water system is largely shut down, like the article says, there will have to be a system of collecting water rations from distribution points.

\- It's provoked a lot of class antagonism -- one response has been, "Finally, the well off population will have to carry water home in buckets, the same way as the poor 'township' population has long been doing." Kind of like "welcome to how the other half lives."

\- It seems possible that in reality, people with more money will be able to buy their way out of the crisis somewhat (by paying private companies for water delivery, or in some cases by drilling wells on their properties, which isn't otherwise common in the metropolitan area).

\- My household has been using about 33 liters per day per person, using pretty standard and obvious water conservation measures (less use of washing machine, minimizing showers, reclaiming shower water with buckets). This is slightly inconvenient but basically allows life to continue normally.

\- The whole crisis is massively connected to local and regional politics -- I've only been down here since September so I don't totally understand, but it has to do with the ANC running the country and the oppositional party (the Democratic Alliance) running Cape Town. Some people say that there has been very little assistance from the national government because the ANC sees no reason to assist their political opposition.

\- Lots of rumors about private enterprise maneuvering to profit massively from the water crisis -- I even heard a pretty credible story about organized crime using threats of force to extract water from one of the local springs (which are a relatively small but non-negligible source of additional water).

\- There's a bit of a generalized sense of panic, like "maybe it will end in total social breakdown, anarchy in the pejorative sense." I can't tell how much of this is reasonable but my guess is that it would have everything to do with how well an alternative water distribution system could be organized.

\- One other weird political thing is that, I would think, logically, if you were the city government and you had calculated the maximum available water ration, you would want to start by sanctioning people who exceeded it, instead of just letting the water get used up and then having a complete system failure. There have been threats of increased charges for people who exceed quota, which is a small step in that direction, but it baffles me that they haven't just shut off the taps first for people who are over quota. Apparently there is massive local politics around this (even having a more punitive charge for quota exceeding was recently shot down).

I can provide a lot of links to local news sources if anyone is interested. I haven't seen really great coverage in the international media.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'll be in Capetown in two weeks. i'm only staying for a few days then driving the Garden Route.

South Africa should be on everyone's list:

[https://www.instagram.com/p/BVtyKWylFkt/?taken- by=mmellinger...](https://www.instagram.com/p/BVtyKWylFkt/?taken- by=mmellinger66)

[https://www.instagram.com/p/BVtxGoVlh6E/?taken- by=mmellinger...](https://www.instagram.com/p/BVtxGoVlh6E/?taken- by=mmellinger66)

[https://www.instagram.com/p/BVtx6EylczC/?taken- by=mmellinger...](https://www.instagram.com/p/BVtx6EylczC/?taken- by=mmellinger66)

[https://www.instagram.com/p/BVtxqkfFrW7/?taken- by=mmellinger...](https://www.instagram.com/p/BVtxqkfFrW7/?taken- by=mmellinger66)

<comment><USER7> Looks like pictures taken in Kruger National Park or elsewhere in the northeast of South Africa. Don't expect giraffes in Cape Town or the garden route.

<comment><USER6> I took them in Sabi Sands.

<comment><USER7> Ah OK. But enjoy the Garden Route. Currently bucketing down with rain there. Hope you include Wilderness in the itinerary.

[https://www.travelground.com/blog/big-tree-forest-walk- wilde...](https://www.travelground.com/blog/big-tree-forest-walk-wilderness)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tony Blair to Teach at Yale University - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a2d23742-ecb4-11dc-86be-0000779fd2ac.html

<comment><USER2> What would be the point in attending his lectures? Sad to say, but if you research his history as UK PM, it is clear you can't believe a word he says.</comment>


Show HN: Funny Tweet Ranking Site, laughlitm.us  - <AUTHOR>

About 6 months ago I made a joke twitter feed (@sustainabletips) that gained a small amount of popularity. It's since run its course, but it really opened me to the idea of twitter as a comedy medium.<p>With the success of @shitmydadsays and others, I set out to make a kind of 'funny or die' for tweets.  Laughlitm.us is the result. I'd really like to get some feedback from HN, especially in regards to the voting method and the nomination page. <comment><USER2> Hey, this is great. Following just a few of these people on twitter overwhelms my feed, but It's nice to see their tweets in one place when I feel like browsing good comedy.

I tried the voting, but I didn't enjoy it. First, I had already seen a bunch on the fron page, and they aren't as funny when repeated. Also, I kept seeing repeats of ones I already voted on, which isn't that fun. Finally, I didn't really enjoy having to say one was funnier than the other. It kind of takes the fun out of it.

So, my vote is for a different voting style, perhaps like HN or reddit. I wouldn't mind voting "funny"/"not funny".

Just my 0.02USD.

BTW, I love @sustainabletips.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for the feedback, I definitely get the sense that the forced comparison wasn't as great. I thought it was novel and had two big advantages: first, that it really mean you couldn't spam the voting mechanism to get your favorite up there, and second, I could just store the rating in the DB rather than a list of who has voted for what; it was a lot simpler.

However, I've heard from enough people that the experience wasn't great and the stats back it up. Up or down it is.</comment></comment>


Vert.x: A tool-kit for building reactive applications on the JVM - <AUTHOR> http://vertx.io/ <comment><USER2> I built a fairly complex app in vert.x a few years back. If you don't start with a promises library off the bat, you end up in a callback hell not unlike node.js.

You also realize very quickly how synchronous many of the Java libraries for things like databases, redis, etc are. The ecosystem just isn't built to work like that, but that's not the fault of the vert.x guys.

<comment><USER3> [http://vertx.io/docs/](http://vertx.io/docs/)

Vert.x provides the things like databases, redis, too. And no I don't use Vert.x However in Java it isn't that hard anymore to make a Sync Library Async, especially JDBC. Thanks to CompletableFuture on Java8, the problem is, is that not lot's of companies are on Java8, however if you are using vert.x that shouldn't be the case.

Libraries in Java are mostly Synchronous cause people use Java4, Java5, Java6, Java7 and not Lambda's and Futures. I mean there are really libraries out there who providing Java4 support. They provided Java3 Support until the end of 2014.. Especially Libraries who are generating content are having backwards compability to the beginnings.

Edit: Oh and the Vert.x JDBC Client is a wrapper around JDBC with RxJava / Future's. Which is basically the best thing you could do. Edit2: Oh and what I dislike more than synchronous code is code that has getters and setters, since that makes it hard to wrap a library into a thread pool since mutable data isn't a nice thing to deal with inside a async fashion. However it was traditional to have getter and setter classes . But more and more this isn't the case for newer things.

<comment><USER2> > However in Java it isn't that hard anymore to make a Sync Library Async

Not necessarily true. Sure you can create a set of worker threads that take requests, process them synchronously, and hand stuff back but that's going to inflate your thread count and it's nowhere as optimal as writing a library that is async-aware from the first line of code.

On top of that, lots of Java code assumes that you'll be making various sequenced calls from the same thread. You'll find that libraries will randomly corrupt data or return stale reads if they haven't been synchronized properly. Many protocols (ie: Redis) have built-in pipelining that isn't used in sync libraries.

<comment><USER3> > You'll find that libraries will randomly corrupt data or return stale reads > if they haven't been synchronized properly

Yeah that's what I meant with my second edit. it's really really aweful if libraries use a too mutual style.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Vert.x indeed looks pretty cool. But I found it a little bit weird that they used the term "reactive" in the title, but I'm not sure what the "reactive" is referring to: maybe Reactive Extensions, or at least RxJava? which should be perfect with vert.x to solve the callback hell problem. Or they just use it as a generic term for async technology used in vert.x/node.js/tornado etc?

<comment><USER5> > But I found it a little bit weird that they used the term "reactive" in the > title

"Reactive" is the new cool term that replaced "async" and "non-blocking" from a few years ago.

For maximum impact it is advised to combine it with microservices (or even unikernels) in the same sentence.

<comment><USER6> FWIW, "async" was called the "Reactor Pattern" in the Design Patterns world back in 2000:

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

<comment><USER7> But "(a)ll reactor systems are single threaded by definition"...

<comment><USER6> So is what we know of as "async" and "non-blocking". The point is that instead of spinning up many blocking threads, a single select/poll/epoll() call triggers a set of callbacks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Polyglot. You can use Vert.x with multiple languages. Vert.x doesn't preach > about what language is best

Gradle should learn this lesson and also offer multiple languages for its build scripts, and more people might adopt it.

</comment><comment><USER9> How is the ceylon integration going? I've been waiting for that before diving into vert.x 3.

</comment><comment><USER10> I enjoy working with Akka to build reactive applications. Clean, Readable, Testable</comment>


Analysing Apple Pay Transactions - <AUTHOR> https://blog.elcomsoft.com/2018/08/analysing-apple-pay-transactions/ <comment><AUTHOR> So, apparently Apple doesn't collect or back up transaction data to iCloud, and it can only be obtained by imaging the actual device that made the payment.

In this day and age where every shred of PI is routinely stored forever and sold to anyone who wants it, I find this quite amazing!

<comment><USER2> I recently wiped my Android phone and put lineage on with microg, to tide me over until I can replace with an iPhone. I'm simply done with the data collection on Android. Maybe I was naive, but I thought a user could switch most of it off, but you can't.

I really admire how Apple are pushing their secure enclave. AFAIK Google Pay uses temporary tokens pulled from their servers, whilst Apple replies soley on the ondevice SE for Apple Pay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> > Tap-to-pay is easy enough, but today's users expect evolving, personalized > experiences that sync as they shop. They willingly share personal > information to foster enhanced experiences with services like Netflix, > Amazon,

I'm not sure it's entirely willing. More that they have no idea how much data is being collected, and convenience outways finding out about the other implications.

</comment><comment><USER3> Apple may not retain the data, but the underlying card issuer does.

I trust Apple more than Visa or HSBC to keep my data from prying eyes.

If someone could make apple pay be backed by a local bitcoin wallet, then I could feel far more secure nobody is going through my payment history.

<comment><USER4> Wouldn't this mean everybody could then go through your public payment history?

<comment><USER3> Presumably such an implementation would use different wallet addresses for every payment so they couldn't be linked together.</comment></comment></comment>


Hard-drive prices going up due to Thailand floods - <AUTHOR> http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/hard-drive-prices-rise-thailand-flooding-news/

<comment><USER2> Manufacturing of Japanese-branded hard drives is big business in Thailand.

I have a friend in Bangkok who works for Seagate. He is Thai, and a brilliant engineer – hard working, smart, young and the kind of person any company would be lucky to have.

I think we are seeing now how important Thai industry is to the worldwide hard drive market.

On a somewhat related note, his family is fairly wealthy (by Thai standards) because they run factories that manufacture lots of random stuff. They once told me that they have 6 months to get products to market before the Chinese copy it. Compared to a Thai manufacturer, Chinese factory labor "is effectively free" – their words.

</comment><comment><USER3> My folks and older sister have been affected by the floods. They've had to evacuate as the water levels in their area have risen. It's really bad right now. Here are some photos from someone there: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/69324373@N07/with/6303088355/>

</comment><comment><USER4> I was in Thailand recently and it struck me that Japan is one of the biggest victims in terms of economy. Japan has a lot of factories in Thailand and it seems that after the earthquake and nuclear meltdown disasters they now also can add floods to that list, as odd as that sound.

<comment><USER2> Things are very, very bad in Japan. Big Japanese companies outsource tons of stuff to small Japanese companies and companies outside the country. Those small businesses are folding fast. I know someone in Japan who went from a long, wildly-successful run in his business (he employed around 40 people) to bankrupt within 6 months this year because of cancelled orders from big manufacturers.</comment></comment>


The Effect of Cycling on Cognitive Function and Well-Being in Older Adults - <AUTHOR> https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0211779 <comment><USER2> There's nothing better than cycling your way to close places.</comment>


Ready for changes with Hexagonal Architecture - <AUTHOR> https://netflixtechblog.com/ready-for-changes-with-hexagonal-architecture-b315ec967749?gi=d802b8fc4fc0 <comment><USER2> I came across an article a few weeks ago [1] that distils the idea of this architecture into a very simple pattern, stratified design, or the "Integration Operation Segregation Principal":

"A function either integrates or operates, it either only calls other functions or it does not call other functions but contains only logic."

Basically, you have code that interacts with the outside world, and you have logic (read: conditionals and branching). Don't mix the two.

It's such a simple concept that it seems obvious in hind-sight (so maybe that's why nobody ever talks about it, because it is obvious), but I don't see code written this way all that often.

If there's one thing I could teach every new developer it would be this. It's such a little thing, but it would make a lot of code much easier to work with.

[1] [https://medium.com/clean-code-development/stratified- design-...](https://medium.com/clean-code-development/stratified-design-over- layered-design-125727c7e15)

<comment><USER3> To me this article looks a lot like the kind of principle that looks very nice in articles but immediately breaks down in practice with even slight complexity.

First of all, the difference between operations and integrations makes no sense, even in his examples. All of his functions are calling other functions. All of his integrations are doing some logic (passing results between functions in particular ways). There is no fundamental difference between 'if a then b else c' and 'other_function(a, quote(b), quote(c))'.

Second of all, this idea that you don't have dependencies between Presentation and Business only looks like that because he's passing very simplistic data between them. But in real code you have complex data structures and complex interactions and complex invariants and they almost unavoidably introduce dependencies between 'strata'. Even if you force yourself to use maps and strings and lists so you don't have explicit type dependencies, you still get implicit structure dependencies.

<comment><USER2> The premise is not that there are no dependencies of any sort, or that you aren't allowed to pass complex structures from one to the other. Its more about splitting logic (and by logic, he is referring to code with multiple, branching paths) from side-effects.

When you mix effectful code (rendering to the UI, accessing a database) with conditional logic, you need to resort to mocking (potentially complex) objects just to perform basic unit testing. He's simply stating that if you split those out into different functions (operations in his case) and use a simple function to integrate them together, it will make life easier, and I agree.

Its a very functional approach; get data, perform calculation, return data.

Like I said, I thought article did a good job of distilling an important idea into a simple pattern. It doesn't have to be an overarching architectural design; even just using it locally in a larger code base can make life easier.

*As an aside, I'd say there is a fundamental difference between:

'if a then b else c'

and

'other_function(a, quote(b), quote(c))`

The first, when tested inside the scope of its parent function needs multiple unit tests for full coverage, the second only needs one.

<comment><USER3> I think the last point is the most important - if there really is a difference between those two pieces of code, then the article does make some sense. If there isn't, the the article's pout is weakened.

The reason why I think they are equivalent is that other_function may well be really reusable and have many different use cases, of which only one is right in my current use case. For example, it could be the 'if' special form in Lisp. That means, I can know for sure that other_function is itself perfectly correct, but still be calling it badly, so I still need to test whether my function does the right thing for any possible value of a, b and c.

<comment><USER2> True.

I actually thought about the same 'if' special form when formulating my response (I've been playing a lot with Clojure lately, and your other_function looks a lot like a functional conditional when compared to an if/else), but figured that most people would be viewing this stuff through a more typical imperative lens, in which case, those constructs (if/else vs other_function) would likely be different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was disappointed that the article didn't mention Alistair Cockburn, who came up with this architecture style, which is also sometimes called ports and adapters. I like hexagonal architecture a lot, but I change one aspect. Instead of Interactors I use composable Functors and Pipes. A Functor is an Interactor that takes in one Entity and produces an Entity. A Pipe is software that implements one of the different Router patterns from Enterprise Integration Patterns ([https://www.enterpriseintegrationpatterns.com/patterns/messa...](https://www.enterpriseintegrationpatterns.com/patterns/messaging/MessageRoutingIntro.html)). I guess you'd call what I use a hybrid of the EIP style and the Hexagonal style.

<comment><USER5> This sounds really interesting, and reminds me of "Domain Modeling Made Functional". But could you describe the pipes a bit more? EIP from the link your provided says that any interactor/filter in a pipe is interchangeable with another. Based on the model you described you say you'd have each interactor take in an entity and output a possibly different entity (which seems reasonable). But if you did that and had a chain of interactions, then removed one from the middle wouldn't you now have a type mismatch where you try to connect the remaining interactions?

<comment><USER4> Good question. You're right in that the Interactors can only be chained according to their types. Let's say I had an A->B, C->D, B->C, and C->E. I could form a chain (A->B)->(B->C)->(C->D), but I couldn't do (A->B)->(C->D). The Pipes come into play for routing, splitting, and combining. I can use [] as syntax for a splitter and => for a combiner. The combiner is used in conjunction with {} to represent an input that's a combination of the inputs inside of it. I can then represent textually a pipeline to produce F from A with functors (the 1-1 Interactors), a combiner pipe and a splitter pipe. (A->B)->(B->C)->[(C->E), (C->D)]=>({E,D}->F). As a side note, you can tell I like to make sure I can have a textual syntax for describing things..let's you process it with sw and I am horrible at graphics.

Regarding interchanging the different, I think it means you can swap a router for an interactor, or vice versa, as long as the types match. It's basically enterprise architecture level functional programming, kind of.

<comment><USER5> I like your approach to problem solving - it's very similar to mine and in domains I also think about.

Your syntax is very convenient thanks for sharing.

And finally, I assume you're familiar with Scott Wlashin (of F# for fun and profit & "Domain Modeling Made Functional")[1][2]. If not you _100%_ should read it as it is right up your alley. It's the intersection of Functional Programing and DDD/EIP. (I have no affiliation).

[1] [https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/ddd/](https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/ddd/)

[2] [https://www.amazon.com/Domain-Modeling-Made-Functional- Domai...](https://www.amazon.com/Domain-Modeling-Made-Functional-Domain- Driven/dp/1680502549)

[3] [https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/rop/](https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/rop/) (Railway oriented programming)

<comment><USER4> Thanks, for the compliment and for the links. I wasn't aware of him until now. I've little experience with the X# family, other than some Mono hacking on an OpenSim clone. Sounds interesting and will definitely read at least the Domain Modeling one, possibly the F#s too (never too late to add a piece of kit to your toolbox).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love the idea, and maybe this works well for them in a position of relatively lax performance.

The truth is that all abstractions around data fetching are inherently leaky; making an API call does _not_ have the same runtime characteristics as reading from a file. Different access patterns have different performance implications across different data sources.

I would love if somehow we could put runtime performance characteristics in the type systems. Implementing readFile<T extends Readable, S extends SomeRuntimeCharacteristic> would go a long way towards sealing those leaks.

<comment><USER2> It's all about the right tool for the job.

I always push this approach when developing applications, but I work in large enterprise where performance often isn't critical, but applications can live on for _decades_.

Should you use this approach when developing something like nginx? Probably not. But if you are developing a line-of-business application that has to interact with an ever-evolving mish-mash of other systems over an embarrassingly long time frame, it's a great approach.

</comment></comment><comment> UK-Al05 People have been using this for years. One of things I recommend is not using the repository pattern. You end up with a repo with lots of methods on and overly generic.

For each of the use cases/interactors, any database action should be wrapped up in a specific interface for that database action. Then implement those database interaction by implementing that interface. Query and command objects instead of repos.

Much finer grained then repos. Also allows for finer grained control over which data source you use for each interaction.

<comment><USER7> It depends. Sometimes a repository can cover all needs with relatively few and relatively generic methods, sometimes specialized database interactions can be application logic layered on top of a much less specialized repository, sometimes a repository becomes unpleasant because it should be split up, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some thing I was wondering about this kind of architecture, how would you express some constrains, like foreign key constraints or unique key constraint? Would they still be in the database, or would you put them into some inner layer?

<comment><USER9> My understanding is that only the storage layer should care about that, and only if it's a relational store. The concept of looking things up by "id" will obviously make it to the application layer but the application layer "id" isn't directly linked to the PK column of a particular SQL table, even if it's going to be the most common use case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I guess I've been staring at LLVM CMake output for too long, because I thought this had something to do with [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualcomm_Hexagon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualcomm_Hexagon)

</comment><comment><USER11> This architecture might bring back monoliths. Or at least it'll bring back monolith first.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wonder if they have some source code examples, this also seems very similar to DDD.

<comment><USER13> I have been following hexagonal architecture recently, found some good references,

* This article [https://herbertograca.com/2017/11/16/explicit-architecture-0...](https://herbertograca.com/2017/11/16/explicit-architecture-01-ddd-hexagonal-onion-clean-cqrs-how-i-put-it-all-together/) have detailed explanation on the components of hexagonal architecture.

* There is COLA framework [https://github.com/alibaba/COLA](https://github.com/alibaba/COLA) based on spring boot from Alibaba. Description is in Chinese but google translate does good enough translation. There is some pretty interesting things happening in Chinese universe that are hidden for language barrier.

* Another sample application in .NET [https://github.com/kgrzybek/modular-monolith-with-ddd](https://github.com/kgrzybek/modular-monolith-with-ddd) which gives good overview of code architecture.

<comment><USER14> > There is some pretty interesting things happening in Chinese universe that > are hidden for language barrier.

Are there any other things you can point to that you think are overlooked?

<comment><USER13> I occasionally check trending repositories of chinse language in github [https://github.com/trending?spoken_language_code=zh](https://github.com/trending?spoken_language_code=zh) and github repositories of Alibaba, tencent etc. From the look of it they are very focused on tooling/tutorials on highly salable distributed systems architecture. Java is very popular and spring cloud is their preferred choice. One thing I found interesting is that hibernate ORM is not used anywhere, instead they prefer MyBatis data mapper framework. Some of those projects are moved to apache foundation.

On top of my head I found these projects interesting,

* Dolphin Scheduler [https://github.com/apache/incubator-dolphinscheduler](https://github.com/apache/incubator-dolphinscheduler)

* Echarts [https://github.com/apache/incubator-echarts](https://github.com/apache/incubator-echarts)

* Ant Design [https://ant.design/](https://ant.design/)

* Sky walking APM [https://github.com/apache/skywalking](https://github.com/apache/skywalking)

* Seata distributed transaction system [https://github.com/seata/seata](https://github.com/seata/seata)

* EasyTransaction distributed transaction system [https://github.com/QNJR-GROUP/EasyTransaction](https://github.com/QNJR-GROUP/EasyTransaction)

* EShop-SOA [https://github.com/songxinjianqwe/EShop-SOA](https://github.com/songxinjianqwe/EShop-SOA)

* RocketMQ [https://github.com/apache/rocketmq](https://github.com/apache/rocketmq)

* Sharding Sphere [https://github.com/apache/incubator-shardingsphere](https://github.com/apache/incubator-shardingsphere)

* Jeecg-Boot [https://github.com/zhangdaiscott/jeecg-boot](https://github.com/zhangdaiscott/jeecg-boot)

* SOFA Stack [https://github.com/sofastack](https://github.com/sofastack)

* Dubbo RPC framework [https://dubbo.apache.org/en-us/](https://dubbo.apache.org/en-us/) . Also it seems that every big companies in China have their own RPC framework.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If someone has some good, open source examples- please share!

</comment><comment><USER16> cool... but it is not hexagonal, it is almost quadrilateral :D :D

</comment><comment><USER17> This sounds like something a politically astute developer came up with and built short-term career growth on it at Netflix while the rest of the developers at Netflix look on and say "yeah ok but that's just <FOO METHOD> drawn like a hexagaon. AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO SEES THIS ISNT SPECIAL????"

(Because of course, I created something like this more than a decade ago that is still in use)

<comment><USER18> The term was invented something like 15 years ago by Alistair Cockburn. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexagonal_architecture_(softwa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexagonal_architecture_\(software\))

<comment><USER17> The originality is not really relevant. I've seen this type of thing take place before.

<comment><USER18> It is in fact relevant to your claim that it sounds like somebody came up with it as a career advancement technique. Rather than it being part of a decades- long dialog about how to build software.

<comment><USER17> Ah, I seem to have have met the politically astute developer on HN.

You might like this version better

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22566315](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22566315)

<comment><USER18> Anything can be used for politics. But I've met Cockburn a few times. Ditto Fowler and Evans, all of whom have related work in software architecture. They are all people sincerely trying to figure out better ways to build software.

By the way, making spurious accusations is very much a political technique. So bravo you.

<comment><USER17> Jesus Christ, you are the reason I decided against working for FANG companies.

<comment><USER18> Me personally? Great! I'm always glad to help people stay away from large companies.

<comment><USER17> On the off chance that you are genuinely seeking truth, perhaps you would like to venture an opinion on one of the following rephrasing:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22566315](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22566315)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22569847](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22569847)

<comment><USER18> Sorry, what truth do you think I should be seeking here? My point was that you were needlessly (and apparently ignorantly) trash-talking a serious contribution to the long, ongoing discussion of software architecture. If you've decided to stop doing that, great.

<comment><USER17> Point proven. Your political astuteness is well honed man, well done. But no one who works with you likes you, guaranteed.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


WIP: Discuss California Voting Guide - <AUTHOR> http://michaelkirk.github.io/discuss_voting/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a quick hack (started 2 hours ago) combining a pdf->html translation of the CA state voting guide and an inline commenting system.

Does it have promise?</comment>


Robot With Broken Leg Learns To Walk Again In 2 Minutes - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/robot-with-broken-leg-learns-to-walk-again-in-2-minutes-40b8f24bd26 <comment><USER2> The "ground contact" parameter while walking sounds functionally very close to the "proprioception + pain" parameters for animals in a hobbling situation. An animal (me, specifically) quickly discovers a hobbling strategy by experimentation and a continuous sense of pain levels.

I think that pain will become a major part of the design in learning robots of the future.

<comment><USER3> _I think that pain will become a major part of the design in learning robots of the future._

This is something that Hollywood has been warning us about. We _do not want_ to program robots to "feel" pain. We should build in avoidance algorithms, but not pain.

<comment><USER4> Hollywood? :-(

<comment><USER3> I believe fiction plays an important role in shaping the philosophy of science. Forward-looking science fiction, especially, considers issues that have yet to be encountered by society, providing the opportunity to decide how to handle or avoid those issues in advance.

In the case of robots, I was imagining a line from the less-than-serious The Simpsons, when a robot flees a flaming building, asking, "Why was I programmed to feel pain?" ( [http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nQ- ggzfdsMs](http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nQ-ggzfdsMs) ). Indeed, why would a robot be designed to suffer when enough suffering exists already? We should design our non-sentient robots now with that thought in mind, in anticipation of the possibility of creating self-aware AI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Part of me loves this and the rest of me worries about how little chance I'll stand surviving the robot apocalypse. The adapted behaviour looks like a wounded, yet unstoppable, machine hell-bent on carrying out its mission.

In a different life I'd definitely have worked in robotics.

<comment><USER6> Well, I think we'll merge humans and robots before having advanced AI robots.

Basically cyborgs will be the ultimate creation, and since we'll have a human brain with empathy (hopefully) then we will be able to prevent any uprising before it happens.

Just look at all the advanced stuff that DARPA is funding and succeeding in creating. In the next 20 years there is going to be some insanely awesome technology coming out.

I don't like the idea of creating 2 classes of humans though, (those with BCIs/other advanced technology embedded in them and those without) that just seems like it's going to cause a problem.

It would be really nice to have an alien civilization come down and tell us the potential mistakes to try to avoid when maturing. Technology is so close to increasing at an exponential rate that something is almost certainly going to wipe us all off the planet. We'll be very lucky if we don't end up killing ourselves in the next 50 - 100 years, in my opinion of course.

<comment><USER7> "Well, I think we'll merge humans and robots before having advanced AI robots."

That seems like extremely wishful thinking to me.

Anecdotally, it looks like progress in making machines do human like things is progressing much more quickly than reverse engineering the human brain.

<comment><USER8> He doesn't mean human-like robots (with a human-like brain). He means a human brain with partly machine body.

Even that's real damn hard, though, and I'm not optimistic.

<comment><USER9> I thought good progress was already being made with this, with devices like cochlear implants, retinal implants, and cyborg monkey arms: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxIgdOlT2cY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxIgdOlT2cY)

<comment><USER6> Yep, lots of teams working on BCIs.

The rapid learning by introducing an electric current at a specific certain parts of the brain: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_direct- current_sti...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_direct- current_stimulation)

[http://www.technologyreview.com/view/427177/diy-kit- overcloc...](http://www.technologyreview.com/view/427177/diy-kit-overclocks- your-brain-with-direct-current/)

BCIs are getting more and more attention. Imagine being able to hook up a processor, external storage, or even directly connecting to the internet using a BCI. Even connecting two brain is possible (and has been done). Some people say that one day we'll all be one connected organism, when we die just throw the brains in a big tank and let them live forever, like Futurama.

[http://www.technologyreview.com/news/527561/military- funds-b...](http://www.technologyreview.com/news/527561/military-funds-brain- computer-interfaces-to-control-feelings/)

[http://www.army-technology.com/features/featurebrain- compute...](http://www.army-technology.com/features/featurebrain-computer- interfacing-military-mind-control/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My 8th grade science fair project studied a very simple version of this problem! I used genetic algorithms to have a 6-legged robot relearn to walk after 1 leg was injured. It won 1st grand prize in Texas in 2004 :)

<comment><USER11> How is that a very simple version of the problem :)

<comment><USER12> Its more of a 'brute force' method ... genetic algorithms take one or more variables and randomly change them. Then keep iterating on a solution that works - you don't need to know why something works only that it works better than the previous solution.

<comment><USER13> While genetic algorithms are highly iterative and often computationally expensive approaches to randomized search, they are vastly more efficient actual brute force methods. It would be better to say "it is more of a 'randomized search' method", especially with the connotations associated to actual brute force techniques.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Reminds of these cool evolutionary algorithm simulations:

[http://vimeo.com/79098420](http://vimeo.com/79098420)

</comment><comment><USER15> Is it just me or does it look a lot more animal-like when it's limping?

<comment><USER16> Yeah, it's "pre-damage" gait looks really stiff. As if it's been pre- programmed, but _not_ been subject to whatever learning algorthims the researchers have given it to "recover" with.

I think I'd like to see the robot move, after those algorithms have had a chance to improve it's initial non-damaged gait.

<comment><USER17> It looks like they did try that, and it moved faster:

> "When the robot is undamaged, our approach yields dynamic gaits that are 30% > faster than the classic reference gait," say Cully and co.

However, there don't appear to be videos of that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The second video gave me an idea: it would be really great if the thing was damaged and could create a model of its damaged self in a simulation... Then it could play out different gaits (presumably at faster-than-reality speeds) to determine an optimal new gait. It doesn't seem like this team is too far away from that.

<comment><USER19> It would take some exercise of movement to quantify the damage and the resultant qualities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Okay... but actual animals do way better:

[http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_full_the_secrets_of_nature_s...](http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_full_the_secrets_of_nature_s_grossest_creatures_channeled_into_robots)

As a rule of thumb, any walking robot that uses servos can't approach the performance of its animal colleagues. The leg impedance is way too high.

</comment><comment><USER21> I love the part where the sim flips on its back and starts flailing. Thinking outside the box!

</comment><comment><USER22> Url changed from [http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics- hardwar...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics- hardware/hexapod-robot-gets-even-better-at-being- indestructible#.U9fg3l3jGMI.hackernews), which points to this.</comment>