A Baseline for Front-End Developers - <AUTHOR> http://rmurphey.com/blog/2012/04/12/a-baseline-for-front-end-developers/ <comment><USER2> My baseline tools and resources for front-end development:

\- Page speed <https://developers.google.com/pagespeed/> <http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html> <http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/>

\- Valid HTML <http://validator.w3.org/> <http://html5.validator.nu/>

\- Usability <http://www.userfocus.co.uk/resources/guidelines.html> <http://www.useit.com/>

\- Accessibility <http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/>

\- On-page SEO <http://www.seomoz.org/> [http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrust...](http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en//webmasters/docs/search- engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf)

\- Design for the web <http://www.usabilitynet.org/tools/webdesign.htm>

\- Cross-browser compatibility <http://browsershots.org/>

\- Mobile ready <http://www.w3.org/TR/mobileOK-basic10-tests/> <http://www.marketcircle.com/iphoney/> Modify Headers add-on

\- Progressive enhancement [http://www.alistapart.com/articles/understandingprogressivee...](http://www.alistapart.com/articles/understandingprogressiveenhancement/)

\- Metadata <http://schema.org/>

\- Conversion Optimization <http://www.conversion-rate-experts.com/> <http://www.google.com/websiteoptimizer>

</comment><comment><USER3> You know whats absolutely stunning about this baseline and every discussion on here about it? Not a single mention of any kind of understanding of design. Thats nothing short of ridiculous.

I'd take ten front-enders who knew about baselines and typographic rhythm, relative font-sizes etc. before I took one of these guys. Why? Because these are the people translating your designs into the final medium, so you have to be damned sure they will get it right. Without knowing how to use CSS to represent designs you are pretty much useless to me.

If you've ever had to hold an HTML guys hand through properly aligning the type or matching up colours then you would understand how painful it can be, and how vital this knowledge is.

</comment><comment><USER4> I agree, but would point out that this list seems a bit more oriented to the type of folks doing web application development, rather than web publishing. Not every site or job demands knowledge of the latest tools or techniques. Is it good to know they exist? Sure, but I wouldn't count someone out who does't actively use git or only knows JS by way of jQuery.

One thing I would add to the list is a conceptual understanding of how a web page gets to someone's screen. E.g., how a webserver works, what headers are, how DNS works, caching, general CMS principles, etc. Perhaps that's implicit in the list, but I've been amazed sometimes by other frontend folks that didn't have knowledge of some key piece of that pipeline.

<comment><USER5> The lines are starting to blur though. These days a good generalist with a penchant for the front end is probably more desirable than a pure frot end design person. If you're working with teams then version control is mandatory. JavaScript is now being used far more beyond just DOM manipulation, SASS/LESS/Stylus are, for many, required knowledge even if you're just doing static sites, etc. Point being, the lines are blurring the the skillets are breeding with each other creating a need for generalists more than ever.

You're right when you say this is probably more useful for web apps than static sites but even static sites are starting to become more app-ish. More emphasis is (rightly) being placed on things like server optimization and load times which requires just a bit more knowledge of what's going on in the backend than before. Take HTML5 Boilerplate for example. Their Apache .htaccess file is something that the front end guys should understand and even if you're working alone buildin a static site you should start getting into setting up those rules correctly and putting a lot of that stuff into Apache's httpd.conf. Basic CMS knowledge _is_ required. Everyone ends up working with a CMS eventually unless your entire career is based on building single page static sites editable in Dreamweaver alone or something. Then there's new toys like Jekyll. Jekyll and its beginner friendly cousin Octopress require you to know a few things about the backend too and in fact require most of the skills the article describes.

So you're right to a point but it looks like as we move forward even web publishing will start to resemble web app development more and more as far as tools and workflows go. Gosh, even FTP is starting to go the way of Gopher. I hope I see the day that even shared hosts start allowing and encouraging SSH usage over FTP as the norm almost like MediaTemple does.

<comment><USER6> Totally agree here. While I hope youre right, it's very tough to push these ideas right now. I've been trying to teach advanced front end technologies to front end guys for a while (haml & ruby logic, sass & sassscript, controlling and compiling files and projects through command line), and generally people have a very tough time picking it up because as "front end devs" they don't really know any programming beyond a bit of jquery.

The popularity of twitter bootstrap pretty much proves your point. With better technology (like sass), it would not be difficult to make a framework that's smarter and more flexible than bootstrap. I made one, it is better, and I have been writing about it and talking about it as much as I can, but NOBODY CARES. Bundle install? Mixin functions that take parameters instead of putting a class on an html element? No curly brackets or angle brackets? Too difficult, too different. Front end devs _don't get it_. What they do get is "here, paste this stylesheet into the head and everything will automatically look nice." - and now bootstrap is the most watched repo on github.

As much as it drives me crazy right now, I'm hoping that eventually people will start to realize that a truly efficient front end dev needs to know how to program. If you pit me against a dev who is using straight html and css, making the same website, I bet I could double their speed. That counts for a _lot_... especially when someone's on payroll.

<comment><USER7> In my experience Bootstrap is a saviour to backend debs who don't want to think about the front end if they can get away with it, not something that particularly interests FEDs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Something has changed in the last couple of years

I don't think there has been nearly as much change as Rebecca suspects. It sounds like her skills have improved significantly, and that she's projecting this onto developers at large, but I doubt there has been much of a change in general.

<comment><USER9> No, Rebecca is right - the game changed for front-end developers when client- side scripting became ubiquitous, which is a somewhat recent development:

For example, while XMLHttpRequest was introduced in 1999 (IE 5), it took years to gain traction (XHR support was added to Opera with version 8 in 2005), and incidentally, JavaScript frameworks (Prototype 2005, jQuery 2006) and distributed version control (Mercurial, Git 2005) entered the spotlight at the same time.

While serious JS-based applications were definitely around before the advent of Web 2.0 (you can go a long way with hidden iframes, long polling, chunked transfer, forms, 204 status code), these were the exception, front-end work was mostly about layout and code-reuse virtually nonexistent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I often read these types of articles and wonder if the author considers that there are many flavours of what one might consider a "baseline". While I have cloned a repo or two, I wouldn't say that it is a mainstay of how I evolve my abilities.

I could interject all sorts of other expertise that I must use on a daily basis, where my lack of knowledge of such would render me unemployed. My skill set has evolved into what someone might call a _designineer_. Do I think everyone has to be a hybrid designer/developer to get the job done? Of course not. However, I wouldn't gather those skills and conflate that my skill set is necessary to getting the job done for someone else.

It reminds me of the _purist argument_ , where the evangelist will protest against web fonts, frameworks and the like. In 2001, if you were using CSS or JS you _were not a purist_. We can see that labels like these are to serve a purpose and it seems to be little more than an exercise in pedantry.

At the end of the day, it's about providing quality work and getting the respect you deserve for your work.

<comment><USER11> The exact set of skills that one needs in order to do one's job will of course vary from person to person. What I have tried to point out in this post is that these _topics_ are ones that anyone who calls themselves a front-end developer will need to be familiar with; if they are not familiar with them, then they risk being unable to keep up with the new information that is being shared about the front-end dev profession. This is based on my observations as much as my beliefs -- the set of things that you're expected to know in order to actively participate in the open-source front-end dev community is growing and changing, and this is my attempt to catalog those things in a way that I wish someone had done for me in the past.

<comment><USER10> > ...is that these topics are ones that anyone who calls themselves a front- > end developer will need to be familiar with

I don't know about that. With Github you profess that experience with git is necessary to take advantage of "the rich open-source community that has arisen around front-end development technologies" – but that's not true. Explain how downloading the repo as a zip is slower or less advantageous than opening Terminal and typing commands – while I'm already looking at the Github project page in the browser? How would a purely front-end developer tell the difference?

> At the very least, you should be aware of tools like UglifyJS or Closure > Compiler that will intelligently minify your code, and then concatenate > those minified files prior to production.

In what world? This grates on me because it looks to be little more than grandstanding. And I hate grandstanding. What if you're coding with RoR or _any other language with a sophisticated asset pipeline_? Ugh.

50% of the techniques/tools you mentioned could be replaced or removed entirely without much issue in any front-end developer position I've encountered – in fact, this rigid brick layering of relative experience may even be looked upon as negative to an employer as it's clear that you are unwavering.

> that I wish someone had done for me in the past.

I think it's great for you to catalog and share, but to declare your list as the defacto baseline is ridiculous and presumptuous.

> _Good front-end devs_ know to prefix any search engine query with mdn

Yeah, not an ego-derived rant at all.

<comment><USER11> I won't address the rest of your comments, but please note that I said "tools _like_ UglifyJS or Closure Compiler" -- if the RoR asset pipeline is taking care of this for you, then good! The point is that good front-end devs should be aware of the need for tools that address the various high-level topics I listed -- I just mentioned some tools that fill those needs _for me_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > This might go without saying, but simply knowing a JavaScript library isn't > sufficient any more. I'm not saying you need to know how to implement all > the features of a library in plain JavaScript, but you should know when a > library is actually required, and be capable of working with plain old > JavaScript when it's not.

I'd like to think this is because ideas of proper scripting have slowly propagated from goldmines like comp.lang.javascript and into the mainstream. People like David Mark have pulled back the jQuery curtain and shown developers that education really is the solution, not mindless abdication of responsibility.

> It wasn't so long ago that it was entirely typical for servers to respond to > XHRs with a snippet of HTML, but sometime in the last 12 to 18 months, the > front-end dev community saw the light and started demanding pure data from > the server instead.

Client-side templating was and still is a sham. It requires either an unstable "fragment builder" or `innerHTML` calls. Both are neither stable nor secure (IE is very strict with `innerHTML` in particular). I've dubbed `innerHTML` the "eval" of the DOM as it exposes an external parsing engine to do the developer's dirty work.

Server-side processing is still the best option, particularly because of powerful parsers and the ability to hide domain logic. OWASP has an article[0] that covers XSS and DOM scripting that's fairly interesting.

[0]: [https://www.owasp.org/index.php/DOM_based_XSS_Prevention_Che...](https://www.owasp.org/index.php/DOM_based_XSS_Prevention_Cheat_Sheet)

<comment><USER13> I'm confused by the contrast you're drawing. Aren't you going to be using innerHTML if the server sends back HTML? That's how I always remember seeing it done.

<comment><USER14> I'm not terribly plugged in to the front-end developer community, so don't take this as authoritative, but _my_ preferred (and more reliable) method of handling server input is generally to append new elements to existing, 'container' elements already present on the DOM.

In context, I might have a 'tweets' div on the page that is empty on page load, but which will be populated by appending new div or li elements to.

<comment><USER13> But how are you doing that if the server sends back HTML? Like, say you ask for a tweet, and the server sends back the following:

rihanna

Check out my new tattoo of a woman getting a recursive tattoo!

You can't send that to document.createElement. Your only options AFAIK are innerHTML and writing your own DOM parser to build up a tree and use the DOM API to create the elements one by one (which will be OMGslow).

And of course appending a new element doesn't make a lot of sense if your changes are transformative rather than additive (e.g. collaborative editing).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Years ago there was a job title at Microsoft called "Web Developer". I refused to give people this title or hire people into this role, because it was clearly a dead-end job.

The era of "Web Developers" -- people who can make an HTML page work but don't have fundamental software development skills -- lasted only as long as the Great Wheel of Client-Server Development took to make half a revolution.

Now the client has software on it again, and...surprise, you have to be a "Software Developer" to work on it, not a "Web Developer".

<comment><USER16> See, I'd call those types "Web Designers" and use "Web Developer" for someone who does a mix of frontend/backend for the web.

<comment><USER15> To be clear, I'm talking about how someone defines themselves and their profession. Be a "software developer" or a "software designer". Don't put yourself in a "web" box, because the web will be implemented differently in a few years...like software always is.

There's a professional skillset that developers and designers should have that is far deeper and more general than this year's popular web technologies. If you have that skillset, your career is a lot more secure.

If you're a software developer/designer, and you think of yourself as a "web developer/designer", you're selling yourself short. And if you're beginning your career, know that you'll need learn how to develop/design software, not just "web".

<comment><USER16> Might be different in different regions and sizes of business - I don't work for a large business, I run a small business. I have called myself a Web Developer (if anything; usually I don't give myself a title) since 1995 and got by OK. There has been more than enough work for 15+ years. If the technology changes a bit, we either adjust or we don't, right?

Maybe it's a lot different in large corporations?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd be interested to hear from Windows developers. I do most of the stuff on this list already, but I'm on a Mac and have been for a few years. Are the ecosystems noticeably different?

<comment><USER5> I'm not a Windows developer but I've tried my hand and work with a lot of people who are getting into the things described in the article using Windows.

Things really are harder and it's something I've been trying to explain to people I'm mentoring and they're finding it out the hard way. The thing about that statement is that a lot of times people will start a holy war over it. No one is saying Windows sucks here. It may or may not suck but that's beside the point. The reality of the situation today is that the majority of the open source community is creating things that will eventually be running on a Linux server. IIS is just not used all that much at all outside the corporate space and even they are moving toward Red Hat these days.

But any time I explain to someone that they'd have a much easier time on a Mac or Linux distro they start an argument and give me that "you're an elitist" look. I'll tell them to use Git but they need a special program for it. I show them SSH and they need another app for that. Same for Ruby, most local dev servers, etc. and then every mundane command for me turns into twice the work for them because they have to do what I'm doing plus whatever extra steps plus configuration on their machines.

It's really frustrating for them and they give up. A lot of times a person who has learned some basic HTML and CSS who wants to level up and start doing some version control and set up a remote server ends up giving up on the whole thing.

So the whole ecosystem really is different as everything is built with a _nix environment in mind. I'd been working on a Mac for a long time and needed a laptop. I got a cheap Windows laptop and thought I'd dual boot with Xubuntu so that I could deal with certain Windows file types and have an easy way to test sites in IE. Well, I ended up booting to Windows less than 10 times in 6 months and eventually got rid of it altogether because there was nothing Windows did that my Mac or Xubuntu couldn't. I even tried to write so,e desktop software and do some web dev and found that Windows is awesome for desktop apps... If you're only developing for Windows... and Windows is great for web development... if you plan to use an IIS production environment and/or you're going to program in ASP.net or C# exclusively.

But again, this isn't a Windows bashing party here. It's just the reality of working with open source and web dev in 2012. There are certainly things that make _nix systems difficult to work with depending on the context but as it stands we're living in a time where *nix is the default platform for web development.

<comment><USER17> Unfortunate truth. Microsoft made a major error in abandoning the command line so many years ago and it is crippling for developing in not-.NET. powershell isn't the solution. Windows doesn't even ship with an unzip cli tool It doesn't ship with a curl equivalent and to get curl you have to go to a page with pop-up ads and download some other dependencies on top of it. Windows doesn't ship with a Screen or Tmux equivalent. All of these things are unacceptable.

<comment><USER18> Played with Win7 today in a VM, trying to test IE stuff - you can't even drag the command line window handle to make it bigger. Your options are taller window or full screen, but the text just gets larger. Pure garbage. Glad I switched to OSX a long long time ago (Linux is also equally awesome, but I like the hardware/software integration Apple gives me).

<comment><USER19> This is possible to do, but you need click on the icon in the top left corner and then properties. Full instructions here: <http://stackoverflow.com/a/319317/478893>.

You can also do this by running a third-party console app.

As a post earlier in the thread indicates, you can often do the same things on Windows but it requires a little extra work.

<comment><USER20> Literally every third-party console app sucks, though. Making it even harder is that the terminal emulators available through cygwin are bad, too.

Last time I needed to use Windows, I installed sshd in Cygwin and used Penguinet to connect to localhost. It was that bad.

<comment><USER21> For what it's worth, I find Console2 tolerable.

<http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This sounds more like the author is saying "this is where I am at with my skills, and so everyone should adopt them as a baseline".

Maybe for his particular job what he describes is the baseline, but it's much too specific for a general baseline

<comment><USER23> You have a good point. All the skills listed are good things to have, but you wouldn't look for half of them in my current job, a lot of it would be useless.

And an understanding of design and usability is vital, even though we're not the designers, and most jobs I've seen require that, but it's not even mentioned in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is not a baseline of any sorts, it's a list of tools and techniques preferred by the author. While a personal list of preferred tech is fine, it's by no means a standard established baseline, without knowledge of which you'll "feel more and more left behind".

This should be titled "My top x tools and techniques for front-end development".

</comment><comment><USER25> Where is the boundary for JavaScript.

Is it:

1\. Just jQuery—some hide/show/toggle/etc

2\. That combo of "real" JS and jQuery—writing your own functions and calling them later on

3\. "Real" Javascript—knowing Node.js, writing plugins and the like.

I'm somewhere between 1 and 2, and I suspect most are. The jump to writing "real" Javascript is just huge—in fact it requires actual programming knowledge.

If you get to stage 3, are you still a front-end developer or are you a programmer now? And the question I'm really curious about, should I invest all that time learning to program actual Javascript, or should I focus on all the other stuff?

</comment><comment><USER26> _> scp to copy files to another machine or server_

Shouldn't that be rsync? I was under the impression scp has been fully superseded by rsync. Secure, more efficient, basically only transfers diffs instead of whole files.

<comment><USER27> when I want to grab the latest version of a 30gb database dump, I think rsync. When I want to grab a file off my desktop when I am in a meeting, I think scp

<comment><USER26> Interesting, why not rsync for the desktop file too?

<comment><USER27> It's mostly inertia, I know the scp command way better then rsync, and for small things (which are the majority for me),it doesn't matter so much what I use.

The other day, a coworker freaked when I searched for a file using find . | ack file,instead of just using find properly. I gave pretty much the same argument, so he measured it, and found I was losing about 0.002s. He basically said it was he principal of the thing, but for command line tools I really need a good reason to learn something new without any noticble benefit 99.9% of the time

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is a fantastic list of great things to know. Right now.

However, I wouldn't consider this a "baseline" as A) all of it can be quickly learned by an experienced dev and B) not all environments are rails/node.

This industry changes languages/platforms/techniques like I change my socks. The key is not to memorize this list and use everything on it, it's to understand what's on this list, what else is out there, and _use the right tool for the job_.

</comment><comment><USER29> Less talk more action, posts like this are great as most devs will know most of it - and for those that dont, they now do. Just keep doing what you do, improving your skills and bettering yourself as much as possible.

Surround yourself with great people, share, discuss and don't be afraid to ask silly questions. Everyone is a noob in some aspect.

</comment><comment><USER30> Am I the only one who is wondering why the hell Firebug is missing from the list of "In-Browser Developer Tools"?</comment>


Plasma 5.18 - <AUTHOR> https://kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.18.0 <comment><USER2> I just recently switched to kubuntu (KDE) back from fedora (Gnome 3).

On one hand I do like that the desktop does not try to re-define basic muscle memory things, like changing the shortcut if you try to switch between two windows of the same application. (Seriously Gnome, WTF?).

On the other hand it crashed left and right after install (less so now that it settled down a bit) and there are a million QA type problems. I have a 4K 27" screen and everything is tiny by default, so I put scaling to 1.3 and Kate + Terminal are full of lines. The computation of the window update is broken.. I browse the internet and the ticket is open - since two years.

Then there is Wayland, which I got used to on Gnome and think is a great achievement - not in KDE though, that is still highly experimental and so back it goes to ancient protocols. Yay!

So yes, we are building fancy new stuff on an eroding foundation is the message I am getting from KDE nowadays. Compared to Gnome - which is stable but weird.

Thinking back on the Gnome 2 / compiz / beryl days we have gone downhill so much it's not funny..

ps. I know I'm complaining too much and that's unfair to an open source project. And I still perceive Liunx desktops as superior to Windows which has it's own issues (technical and non-technical). Just wondering what all the effort was spent on in the last decade or two. I just don't see it.

<comment><USER3> As a die hardcore kde fan I am not of a fanboi enough to admit that Gnome has the best HiDPI multi-monitor wayland fractional scaling support of any DE I am aware of.

<comment><USER4> Things like dwm / i3 handle this much better since there isnt any UI to scale. You just set the right font size and you are good to go.

<comment><USER5> HiDPI support is more than setting a font size for the task bar. The tricky part is getting application windows to rescale their UI as they're moved between screens with different scaling factors (e.g. from a notebook screen with high DPI to a projector with low DPI).

<comment><USER4> That was kind of my point - the more starkly minimalist the workflow the easier it is to make it pixel perfect and look exactly as you intended.

<comment><USER6> So the parts of the UI that are i3/dwm scale. Everything else like email, browser, image editing, applications, the stuff that actually matter, doesn't.

Sure, if you only ever need a text editor you don't need to care about scaling anything but fonts, but that is not the case for most people and unrelated to which WM or DE you use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How about proper multi-display support (including mixing HiDPI and low-res displays)? Every time I connect my FHD laptop to my UHD monitor the windows on the desktop move around completely randomly. It is better than before, because they used to move outside the visible area, they fixed at least that.

But hey, at least there is an Emoji Selector now (???).

<comment><USER8> Generally speaking, multi-display monitor support is a mess on Linux (especially if you so anything slightly out of the ordinary).

KDE honestly seems the best for this, although on the latest version of GNOME has fractional scaling available behind a flag (although also buggy and very slow).

<comment><USER9> > [...] multi-display monitor support is a mess on Linux (especially if you so > anything slightly out of the ordinary).

Testify :(

I'm still struggling to get my (IMHO, extremely vanilla) setup working (Ubuntu on Thinkpad T430 + 2 external QHD monitors), and I'd appreciate any pointers to any resources that can help me resolve this.

<comment><USER10> [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI) has lots of information.

I have a Thinkpad X1C and an external monitor, both with QHD resolution. What I ended up with is using xrandr scaling to increase the resolution of the external monitor (probably should have gotten a 4K instead...), and tweaking font sizes and Firefox's UI scaling until it looks okay on both screens. For QT apps I also had to set QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR=0. Some proprietary apps are still too small though, so I tend not to use them ;-)

The xrandr scaling is applied through a script and not persistent, so I mapped it to a keyboard shortcut I can press when I reconnect the monitor.

My script looks like this:

      xrandr \
        --output eDP-1 --pos 0x0    --scale 0.9999x0.9999 \
        --output DP-2  --pos 2560x0 --scale 1.25x1.25

The silly 0.9999x0.9999 scaling on the first screen is to work around a mouse flickering bug in the modesetting driver: [https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/issues/70](https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/issues/70)

<comment><USER9> This looks useful -- thanks! Will try out some of the suggestions mentioned here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Been using KDE for a few years now and I've always been impressed with the experience. I'm really looking forward to this update, for me night mode is critical. (I understand there were third party solutions but I often found them to be buggy or otherwise difficult to use). Here's hoping my distro adds the update to its repositories soon.

<comment><USER12> I've been using gnome for more than 15 years, but I have to say I'm feeling quite an urge to try KDE again

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Maybe something is wrong with me, but it irks me that there are 40 seconds of meaningless video before they show stuff in that video. I ended up skipping the video and skimming through the poorly formatted article.

My first impression is that it looks good. Lots of useful features. But I can imagine that if I had sent it to a bunch of other people who have no interest in KDE they would have closed the page again.

That said I have a question:

It seems that Plasma has tiling WM features. How useful are they?

One thing about tiling WM is that typical it's only part of a package. Another part is that people are typically looking at a lightweight hotkey driven workflow and the ability to script where and how windows appear with occasional non tiling things to fit applications that don't work well for tiling systems.

The other question I have is that one of the reasons why I go for these "lightweight" setups. Althouh xfce-settings daemons + tiling wm is what I do is also because of power usage. How is KDE in terms of power usage?

And yes, I realize that firefox, blink based browser, slack are the biggest power drains.

<comment><USER3> > Maybe something is wrong with me, but it irks me that there are 40 seconds > of meaningless video before they show stuff in that video. I ended up > skipping the video and skimming through the poorly formatted article.

I am a dedicated follower of Plasma and to be honest counting features this is a lame relase.

BUT it's also a LTS release. Some will upgrade specifically for that somehow quality statement. You do not want a ton of new features without time for stabilisation in such a release?

<comment><USER14> It's true this release doesn't bring is as many features as the last ones. However, the jump between LTS versions wil be impressive. Everything is more polished, more functional, and more intuitive.

I'll upgrade as soon as I can, so I can check out the quick audio device switching. Audio routing in Plasma is featureful but not intuitive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just started using KDE neon in a vm on my iMac for office work and it's really really good and productive. Kudos to the KDE team.

</comment><comment><USER16> I may be in the minority here, but I _really_ like the Emoji Selector. I'm in the terminal most of the time, and anything that has quick keyboard shortcuts but adds character makes me happy.

</comment><comment><USER17> Looks like a nice update! I also like the fact that they use a PeerTube embedded video as their official video announcement [https://peertube.mastodon.host/videos/watch/cda402b5-2bcb-4c...](https://peertube.mastodon.host/videos/watch/cda402b5-2bcb-4c0c-b232-0fa5a4dacaf5?start=)

</comment><comment><USER18> Every time there is a new KDE announcement/release I give it another try. I don't like it. I miss the KDE 3.5 days. The DE seemed more cohesive then and worked very well. Ever since they went down the plasma route it looks like they focused on making it look pretty. The whitepapers and announcements made it sound like there was hefty backend improvements but each update was buggy for me.

I still use KDE apps, I find that a lot of them are perfect; but the DE has been limping along since the 4.0 re-write.

Rant: Why the fuck would I ever use a DE "app-store-thing"?! I use my OS's tools for installing/upgrading/uninstalling programs. Stop trying to help, you are making it worse.

Side note: I really liked the music in that video.

<comment><USER19> > Rant: Why the fuck would I ever use a DE "app-store-thing"?! I use my OS's > tools for installing/upgrading/uninstalling programs. Stop trying to help, > you are making it worse.

The DE "app-store-thing" is a front end to packageKit and packageKit is a front end to your package manager.

<comment><USER20> On some distros there is an additional software store that connects into Snap[0], so they're technically not distro supplied packages.

[0] [https://snapcraft.io/](https://snapcraft.io/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't think this is a good idea:

> There are quite a few new things in Plasma 5.18's System Settings. First and > foremost is the optional User Feedback settings. These are disabled by > default to protect your privacy.

> That said, if you do decide to share information about your installation > with us, none of the options allows the system to send any kind of personal > information. In fact, the Feedback settings slider lets you decide how much > you want to share with KDE developers. KDE developers can later use this > information to improve Plasma further and better adapt it to your needs.

<comment><USER22> Why not? So long as it's disabled by default and users are therefore intentionally turning it on, I think it's fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm a Debian user that uses KDE (most of the timel, in many cases people insist on suggesting that the standard KDE experience in Debian is subpar. I'm am fairly happy with it but is anyone aware of a solution to enhance that experience to something more close to what the KDE community considers ideal?

<comment><USER6> KDE on debian is fine. The issue is that debian wants long term releases and kde only releases those sometimes and not necessarily at a time that fits debian's schedule.

So you often get "kde as it was two years ago". The horror! After all, we all remember how using computers two years ago was pure agony until things radically changed...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> No news from the wayland front?

<comment><USER24> I use KDE on Wayland. It works pretty well; there's still bugs I hit once in a while (vscode especially sometimes is missing dialog windows and I have to restart it).

<comment><USER3> Blurry firefox, blurry thunderbird anybody? Still plasma on wayland related fixes in the pipeline. But getting close...

<comment><USER25> At least for Firefox that probably means it's running with X emulation. But the Firefox Wayland backend works fine, it just needs to be enabled. But sure, Wayland still has quite a few corner cases like that.

<comment><USER3> I know about

GDK_BACKEND=wayland firefox

That works on Gnome and sway, not on plasma. Intel GPU. Still open bugs on bugs.kde.org

<comment><USER25> I believe the correct variable these days is:

MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 firefox

This makes firefox a full wayland app. But I only use sway, so maybe there are KDE specific bugs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Still waiting for subsurfaces clipping bug fix on Wayland.

</comment><comment><USER27> I am a huge fan of kde and the only feature I really want is better tiling and snapping

</comment><comment><USER28> I use XFCE. Are there any good reasons to switch to KDE? Honest question.

<comment><USER29> I think so, but what exactly depends on what you need. Commonly liked features are:

\- User intuitive widgets that can be easily dragged around in panels with a third party store directly in Plasma itself, containing useful widgets such as calendar events sync and todo lists

\- Complete customization but also pretty by default and getting better; browse third party colorschemes, plasma themes, global themes, panel layouts (latte), application styles (kvantum), etc etc

\- Powerful notification system that allows you to reply inline to telegram messages, embed screenshots so you can drag those around [[https://postimg.cc/q6qLMXK1](https://postimg.cc/q6qLMXK1)], embed files that you can also drag around + interact with, sticky notifications for ongoing operations - still having the ability to go with a do not disturb mode for a custom time and set notification importance in a granular way

\- Powerful integration with phone (see phone battery, see and send messages, see incoming calls, see/stop/play videos [youtube / vlc] playing on the pc from the phone, see phone notifications, and so on) and integration with browsers (native notifications, native downloads [see notifications above], search and open browser tabs from krunner, etc)

\- Powerful search (krunner) that can check spelling errors, find browser tabs, convert units, do mathematical operations, search the apps store, run command line programs, open locations, see recent documents, add task to the todo list (zanshin), supports third party runners, etc etc etc

\- System tray that only shows relevant widgets so you can keep it minimalist but without loosing any possibly useful option (system tray elements for usb drives, night color, display configuration, clipboard, vaults, media playback, printers, kate sessions, etc etc)

\- Third party stuff like Latte and Kvantum that allows you to customize your desktop in any way imaginable (quick browse for "Plasma" on r/unixporn will confirm this)

\- Consistent apps that follow the general theme, some of them also convergent, e.g. all maui apps (index [files], vvave [music], buho [notes], pix [images], ...) work exactly the same on desktop and on your Android phone as well, so you don't have to learn to use different applications on each OS

\- Light and fast. Yeah, I know xfce is very light and fast, but Plasma 5 is very light as well recently. I have a pinebook, the $100 machine, and it's usable both with Plasma and xfce (both uses around 340mib of RAM there).

\- Kontact suite with Akonadi integration that allows for various apps all integrated with each other (todo from one app will appear in the other), with the generic Kontact app containing all them and being able to show a dashboard with all recent notes, to-dos, events, mails etc.

\- Support for phones with Plasma mobile and other tech things (e.g.: TVs afaik and the mycroft thing), with Plasma Mobile using the same underlying plasma base component, so it's consistent + compatible

\- Any application you could need, there are a lot of those all made by the KDE community, and those are all following the KDE human interface guidelines and following the global theme, so that's nice

...I kinda lost track of time, sorry for the essay, I just think that Plasma is great and this is how I can best explain why

<comment><USER22> > e.g.: TVs afaik

Wait, TVs? Where can I read more about this?</comment></comment></comment>


Tesla Software Version 10.0 - <AUTHOR> https://www.tesla.com/blog/introducing-software-version-10-0?redirect=no <comment><USER2> I want a well-put-together electric car that's completely analog _from the user 's perspective_. There's not a single user-facing digital feature I've ever seen on a car that I wanted, and in fact most of them make things worse.

Obviously there's some non-user-facing stuff, i.e. all-wheel-drive, which computerization has revolutionized. But any user-facing stuff is just awful. I want an electric car, but I don't want to be forced into some awful proprietary OS touch screen just to adjust my A/C, and I'm afraid companies are using the switch from gas to electric as an excuse to go in that direction.

<comment><USER3> Tesla 3 owner here. Beyond tapping up / down temperature arrows I don't ever need to touch my A/C settings and it remembers my settings when I pick my profile (and soon it will recognize me automatically) so I think it's less annoying than analog setup personally.

<comment><USER4> Tesla owners are known to be willing put up with things other car owners aren't. I don't want to fool around with a touchscreen in traffic.

<comment><USER5> You can use the steering wheel and scroll up or down and you changed the temperature. No fooling around with touchscreen in traffic. It's way better than any analog system I've used across Jeep's and Audi's.

You can control temperature, fan speed, brightness, and more all from the steering wheel.

<comment><USER6> Yes: [https://youtu.be/kLIBYlgsHis?t=560](https://youtu.be/kLIBYlgsHis?t=560)

That video tutorial is now outdated since there has been many UI improvements, but the steps should still be the same.

<comment><USER7> Are you not highlighting another problem.

Buttons are always in the same place, I know where they are, I don't have to go hunting for the thing that used to be there, but is now in a sub sub menu, meanwhile you aren't looking where you're going.

<comment><USER6> Geez people. It's NOT a submenu.. You just move the scroll-wheel up and down or push it to turn it on/off. It's that simple. It's also the default behavior.

Here: [https://youtu.be/_eyxkzaNZX0](https://youtu.be/_eyxkzaNZX0)

Do you get it now? Taking your hands off the steering wheel involves more steps compared to this.

<comment><USER8> > Taking your hands off the steering wheel involves...

Taking your hands off the steering wheel has never been a problem. Taking your eyes off the road is.

That being said, if you want to set a certain temperature with analog controls, you still need to look at the number (showing the degrees). Still, in other cars you can see that number all the time, you don't have to go into some menu. There is a dedicated physical button for that one function.

<comment><USER9> I avoid looking at the number by turning the dial all the way down (so I know where it is) and then up to where I want it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Bit of a bad look that the video clip showing Smart Summon shows the Tesla driving the wrong direction down a one-way lane...

This might be a situation where Tesla Smart Summon works only when Tesla's are still rare. In areas where they are more common, I imagine a traffic jam of confused driverless Teslas trying to move past each other but get stuck in a small lane like the one in the video.

<comment><USER11> Owner of a Tesla model 3.

Summon is the canary in the coal mine. As in, unless it shows signs of life then the fairy tale of self driving cars is just that, a fairy tale. If they cannot get a safe an accurate summon to work why should I ever believe my car will ever drive on its own. Do I believe it will come, not for years. My car cannot even identify a speed limit sign, maybe version 10 will help on that. I doubt it, v10 is all about what it can do while parked.

I am so damn tired of them adding features for when I AM NOT DRIVING MY CAR. As in, I don't need Hulu or Netflix or such, this is all part of the disconnect at Tesla. They have sold even themselves that autonomous driving is RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER that they completely ignore improving quality of life features while driving, namely their blue tooth support for smart phones is poor, ten year old poor. It is illegal to use my phone physically while driving but if I want to change the play list my car is getting from my phone I have to resort to using my phone. This is a common feature on most cars today but Tesla never has had it. when pressed we get sycophants defending the decision because autonomous driving is coming "real" soon.

Even more laughable, they never delivered on promised voice commands. I can tell the car where to go but heaven help me if I want it to change radio stations or select a new play list from my phone. Even voice control for Slacker is nothing more than a glorified Siri look up a song and hope it gets the right one.

love my car but am not impressed much with their direction when it comes to adding features to the car. They almost got automatic wipers working consistently but automatic high beams is as spastic as a Jack Russel Terrier.

ps: when asked, would I buy the car again? No. I do not care for their direction in software; namely focusing on what it can do while I am not driving it. I want a car that responds to me and makes tasks easier, not one that focuses on stuff to do while parked and charging, if its charging I certainly am not going to sit around in it. I already have been sitting for three plus hours driving it likely

<comment><USER12> Also owner of a TM3.

Best car I've ever owned by a lot.

People sure do get mad about Blutooth.

Also, at least they're able to have a 'software direction'. Not aware of any other manufacturer who provides anywhere near this level of OTA upgrades.

And obviously the autopilot team is a different one than the people installing games. Chill.

<comment><USER13> Here is what I don't understand: you paid a small fortune for your car and if this was any other car from any other manufacturer you would react like your parent comment.

But because it is a Tesla you are dismissing all the issues and sell it as the best car ever. This wouldn't fly with any other car. If you spent 50k$ on a Audi with poor quality you would probably complain about it.

It is a pattern I see with nearly all the other TM3 owners that dismiss every single issue.

Really trying to understand but what is so different with a Tesla? Is it the Hype factor? The feeling to be in a religious group?

<comment><USER12> Yeah so I don't care about the blutooth because my car DRIVES ITSELF a big percent of the time. it's fundamentally changed how I view driving. Stop and Go traffic no longer makes me mad. Road trips no longer exhaust me.

There's probably some issues but none that I care about. It feels like driving the future. It's an absolute joy to drive.

No gas stations is pretty nice too.

<comment><USER13> I'm driving a Toyota Corolla with lane assist which does 95% of what Tesla "Self Driving" does. It accelerates and brakes for me in traffic, and correct courses to stay in my lane. This is a 18k$ car and I would not accept trading Bluetooth issues with fancy parking summon features.

<comment><USER14> Having driven a car with Toyota's smart driving features... I view them as a negative. Cruise control keeps me too far back from whatever vehicle is in front of me. Dealbreaker with no clear way to disable. I'll stick with my 7 year old Yaris (which also has shitty Bluetooth)

<comment><USER15> I rented one once, you can adjust the follow distance for the adaptive cruise control. Annoyingly it resets each time you turn on the car though.

<comment><USER14> In my experience, none of them are a reasonable distance back. If it gave an audible chime first or something, it would be fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Really excited to finally get Spotify integration, that's huge.

Also hoping they install WiFi at superchargers so you can watch youtube/Netflix while charging there. Not sure where else I'd use that feature.

<comment><USER17> Imagine how much bandwidth they'd save if Superchargers with WiFi offered the latest software version cached locally at full WiFi speed to the cars...

<comment><USER18> CDN costs must be negligible compared to the cost of managing that.

<comment><USER19> Potentially the expensive cost they would mitigate is the mobile data

<comment><USER20> I think it only upgrades over WiFi? I remember someone complaining that it was difficult to upgrade because of network issues.

<comment><USER19> They prioritise upgrade downloads over wifi, even faster over service centre wifi (from my experience)

<comment><USER21> I think they stopped doing the service center wifi thing. It used to be if you just parked in front of the service centers you'd get the update right away, so of course too many people were doing that.

Now you can just select the option to get the software update right away though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is why I am a Tesla fanboy (although somewhat begrudgingly due to Elon's recent antics). They have made car ownership such a joyous experience. I am eagerly waiting to download this and go to town

<comment><USER23> Is it a joyous experience when you have to wait 1 month+ for basic replacement parts to arrive? How about when your consumer grade touch panel dies from heat and vibration?

<comment><USER24> Imagine describing sitting in a parking lot watching YouTube in your car a "joyous experience".

<comment><USER25> As strange as it is to a pedestrian such as myself, sitting in parking lots with the climate set to your liking, the doors locked, and a media on the screen, seems to be an increasingly popular past-time. I personally don't understand it, but cars selling to this use-case are seemingly more successful than cars that don't, and these parking lot homebodies are popping up more and more.

<comment><USER26> One place where I can see this as a being useful is to give people something to do while they're waiting for their car to charge.

<comment><USER27> Which is exactly why they are installing Wi-Fi at Supercharger stations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The depth and breadth of anti-Tesla sentiment in HN threads is curious. It's rarely from owners. By all satisfaction surveys, owners love their Teslas.

<comment><USER6> It's very intriguing indeed... I always thought the HN demographic is a pretty smart bunch, because I often learn quite a bit from the comment section.

I don't get all of the anti-Tesla vitriol, I'm honestly curious what fuels it. It's like all objectivity get's thrown out the window.

<comment><USER29> I think the people that read HN is a different demographic from those that submit, and again different from those that comment. If you look at people's profiles you can quite starkly see some are uploaders, some don't upload or comment, some only comment. Having said that, HN is more obnoxious nowadays to me than earlier.

<comment><USER6> > HN is more obnoxious nowadays to me than earlier.

Yeah... I noticed this recently too. The early days were very enjoyable and insightful. Do you have other alternatives?

<comment><USER29> [https://quiethn.com/](https://quiethn.com/)

I would maybe prefer something that is linux inspired, but [https://www.phoronix.com/](https://www.phoronix.com/) is too wordy for me. Something like [https://www.planetizen.com/](https://www.planetizen.com/) is cool for me, but maybe too specific.

Suprisingly, Reddit is cool if you choose your subreddits wisely. But apart from that, tbh I think it's probably better to read actual books on topics you find stimulating or maybe something like the Economist.

<comment><USER6> These are great, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is there a specific reason why Tesla refuses to integrate CarPlay or Android Auto?

<comment><USER31> It's really baffling. The CarPlay experience in our Volkswagen is so good I cannot imagine ever going back to an automaker's in-house system. Even the ones in the luxury cars I've had -- BMW, Mercedes -- have been absolute crap compared to CarPlay.

I don't even care that it requires USB.

<comment><USER32> I have used and liked CarPlay and was put off by tesl not having it... until I tried Tesla's. CarPlay is essential for routing around the horrible crap put out by most carmakers but the Tesla ui is awesome. It's big, it's fast, and it's 100% focused on automotive use. I'd still like the option, but I can't say I miss it.

<comment><USER33> Second this. I love Android Auto. But I love my Model 3 UI more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> "Those using Smart Summon must remain responsible for the car and monitor it and its surroundings at all times. "

Does this come with an "oh god, stop!" button of some sort?

<comment><USER35> I wonder what happens if your phone freezes and you can't push the "oh god, stop!" button? Would you still be at fault?

<comment><USER34> I guess it's an "keep going" button that you have to hold down, but still, if you're phone freezes - is there a fail state we can be absolutely certain of between the phone and the car?

<comment><USER36> You hope the car relies on continuous signal from the phone to proceed. It's certainly possible that the phone freezes in a way that the "keep going" signal continues to be sent, but it's probably not the more likely failure mode. Definitely a good thing to be concerned about!

<comment><USER34> I may be just a bad developer but my first thought when I see or build a new feature for anything is "how could this go wrong, and who will it kill if it does?" Thankfully, I don't make self driving vehicles, so the second question is usually at worst a handful.

<comment><USER37> That sounds exactly how a good engineer would think...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Not sure why they called this new feature "Joe Mode". Who is this Joe? An employee? Why not call it quiet mode?

<comment><USER39> I may be incorrect, but I recall it being about someone on Twitter had sent a message to Elon asking if they could turn down the volume of the alerts because it would wake up their kids while they were driving. His name was Joe. So Tesla implemented "Joe Mode".

<comment><USER39> From Tesla: [https://www.tesla.com/support/software- version-10-0#joe](https://www.tesla.com/support/software-version-10-0#joe)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Enhanced summon is great. I had early access and used it on rainy days. Never again worried I'll forget my umbrella.

</comment><comment><USER41> Is this memeified announce video typical for official Tesla marketing? It's so casual it is hard to take seriously.

Tesla is not your father's car.

<comment><USER33> They changed their branding 2-3 months ago. I thought it was weird at first, but it's kinda working. I'm personally sick of all the nice car commercials looking more like a Calvin Klein cologne ad.

<comment><USER41> Do you recall exactly when? I suspect this video cost almost zero to make. Would be curious to see the changeover. Was it addressed / highlighted at the time?

<comment><USER42> Around July when they hired one Adam Koszary

[https://twitter.com/AdamKoszary/status/1130837644827660289?s...](https://twitter.com/AdamKoszary/status/1130837644827660289?s=20)

He apparently got hired because Elon likes his "absolute unit" sheep meme.

[https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-hires-social-media- man...](https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-hires-social-media-manager-from- elon-musks-favorite-museum-2019-5)

Their twitter has been a lot more whimsical since. For example:

[https://twitter.com/Tesla/status/1175048579829944320](https://twitter.com/Tesla/status/1175048579829944320)

<comment><USER41> This looked like a fan made video, and I started to speculate in my comment that it was somebody that Elon liked, possibly emailed with occasionally so this is no surprise. Actually thought that kind of speculation we get down voted

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I was really excited for a minute there hoping that they finally fixed the "autoplay media on the phone on opening the door" bug that plagued the car since its launch. But no such luck.

<comment><USER6> This might be phone OS specific. I have an iPhone and the latest iOS13 update seems to have fixed this.

<comment><USER44> Agreed. iOS 13 fixed that for me when I installed the public betas at the start of summer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Smart summon is here; hide your young children.

<comment><USER46> The supposed use case described here is a parking lot also, where there will be lots of pedestrians darting between cars.

<comment><USER47> This might work out ok at low speed. The algorithm is simply "Don't hit anything. Stop if confused."

<comment><USER48> Considering that they haven't perfected the "don't accelerate into stationary objects" algorithm, I'm not sure I trust this in an area with a lot of pedestrian traffic.

<comment><USER25> The freeway control regime is entirely different from a low-speed control regime required to safely maneuver in a parking lot. Where I'd expect strange things to occur would be when a car confuses a baby rolling on the asphalt with a garbage bag being blown in the wind, and runs it over.

<comment><USER49> Your second sentence doesn't follow from your first.

On the highway the car has to distinguish between garbage bag and human, and avoid false positives because they can cause an accident.

In the parking lot the car doesn't exceed I think 3mph and had no safety reason to avoid false positives. It will stop for the garbage bag every time.

Is it technically possible for Smart Summon to collide with something? Perhaps it is. And I guarantee we will see people testing this heavily on YouTube with styrofoam in the coming weeks.

Incidentally, it's also possible for drivers to hit other people in parking lots too. It's actually one of the most likely locations for a vehicle to collide with a human.

The sooner we have algorithms driving in parking lots that are safer than humans driving in parking lots, the better.

Again, to your original point, it's a particularly good place to start as you can allow the false positives in the name of a strict collision safety regime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Does anyone know if the user interface is still Qt/QML?

<comment><USER51> It probably is. Why would they rewrite their UI if the Qt one works?

<comment><USER50> It would not be the first time a company has dropped Qt overnight, especially with their recent push for royalties on all products.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I'm always surprised how many ycombinator news readers keep repeating utterly false trite that they heard in some news report that is completely false or was true years ago and has long been fixed. It's like people are just only listening to things that confirm their anti-Tesla biases. People need to take a step back and just read the Wikipedia on things more often.

</comment><comment><USER53> I have a VW radio with a touchscreen.

Fortunately the volume knob is in a fixed location so I can use it without taking my eyes of the road and the skip/play buttons are on the steering wheel.

While aircraft use glass cockpits , the important controls keeping it in the sky are still good old button/levers even with different shapes/textures.

<comment><USER6> [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EFbKj5CUwAEA_Wt.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EFbKj5CUwAEA_Wt.jpg)

<comment><USER54> That image is actually quite powerful, I never thought about it like that.

\- jaguar vs tesla

\- blackberry vs iphone

\- accessibility vs simplicity

\- function vs form

\- classic vs modern

They are both really good products, but some will prefer the blackberry and some the iPhone. The only thing we have in common, is always be ranting about why the other product is bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I have seen a few comments talking about how Tesla's can't even read the traffic signs...

This is a conscious decision because signs are easily spoofed by black tape. Because speed limits change so infrequently, it is much easier and safer to pull from a lookup table than to read dirty signs and rely on CV...

<comment><USER56> What about reduced speed at road works?

Humans can also be spoofed by black tape but humans, usually, have common sense to realize that going 100 in a small city road is probably a very bad idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> The entertainment system improvements are amusing. I installed an Android- based radio in my 19 year old ICE car for less than $300 and have all of these features.

For internet, you have to be in Wifi range, add a SIM card to the radio, or tether from your phone. (I tether or use the house Wifi).

It's fun to add a bluetooth OBD2 dongle, so I can watch vacuum/boost on the screen with the Torque app (or diagnose car problems, it is an old car..).

[https://www.amazon.com/Eonon-Bluetooth-Navigation-Support- Sy...](https://www.amazon.com/Eonon-Bluetooth-Navigation-Support-System- GA9353/dp/B07QK4G16S/ref=sr_1_19?keywords=android+radio+vw+passat&qid=1569536406&s=gateway&sr=8-19)

<comment><USER58> I remember putting one of those in my old Jetta. Thing was a piece of crap. Slow UI, programmed for Japanese radio stations. Looked much better than the stock head unit though. Its saving grace was Bluetooth streaming.

<comment><USER57> I think they are improving over time. The one I have from a few years ago has a fast GUI, but admittedly has a few annoyances:

The FM radio overloads when I drive near a transmitting tower (the stock radio and an aftermarket Kenwood I have in another car don't have this problem).

It's nice that it integrates with the car's computer, but it could be better. When I back up it switches to back-up cam mode, which turns off the radio or anything else you're doing. This has the side effect that I try to rush through the back-up manoeuver to get the radio back.

I'm tempted to upgrade to a more recent one to see if these things have improved. An upgrade from one aftermarket radio to another is pretty easy, because the wiring is all done.

Yeah, I did this upgrade in the first place just to add bluetooth and figured I give the Android radio a try.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> How is Smart Summon legal to use?

I'm guessing parking lots are private property?

<comment><USER60> > How is Smart Summon legal to use?

I can't imagine it is legal anywhere fully automated, unsupervised cars are not, even places that have supervised autonomous testing, since there is no driver at the controls. Of course, if you are someplace the public driving laws don't apply, and no private rules have yet been adopted against it, you might be okay even in jurisdictions where self-driving vehicles aren't allowed.

> I'm guessing parking lots are private property?

They are, but in CA they frequently have signs notifying that the public Vehicle Code applies and is enforced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I kinda wish Tesla made a few regular petrol cars for the enthusiast type such as myself, as this sounds like a ton of neat technology to play around with. I'm just not in the market for an electric car, unfortunately.

Edit: By enthusiast, I mean track/motorsport/etc enthusiast. I borrowed a Model S from a friend of mine for a few days and while I enjoyed it, it wasn't the most exciting drive, and I can't imagine it would be much good on a track. Amazing technology though.

<comment><USER62> I used to be a huge enthusiast, drove mr2s, z06 corvettes, a wrx, bmw 3 series, autocrossed the competitively.

Driving an electric tesla made all of those cars feel utterly _dumb_.

If you drive cross country a lot or do long track sessions, I get it, tesla won't work well, but if you don't think an enthusiast would like a tesla, give one a try.

<comment><USER63> > I used to be a huge enthusiast, drove mr2s, z06 corvettes, a wrx, bmw 3 > series, autocrossed the competitively.

> Driving an electric tesla made all of those cars feel utterly dumb.

Why do they feel dumb? I hear this kind of stuff but I don't get it.

Do you still do all the things you did with your old cars but now with your Tesla?

<comment><USER62> instant torque available all the time. everyone loves big v8s because of this, electric cars do it more. and without any drivetrain lashing, no pauses or upsetting the car for shifting

<comment><USER63> Is that it though? I mean, I get the appeal of torque but there's more to cars than a straight line pull.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Great non-driving features.Not going to complain about Tesla making my car continuously better, but I was hoping to see, "Autopilot now does more".

<comment><USER49> It's strange they don't highlight many of the driving improvements. AutoPilot has definitely improved, and particularly visualizations of the AP state-of- world are significantly richer.

They are presently testing red-light detection in shadow mode on the whole AP2/3 fleet, for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Use Smart Summon if you want to feel like Tony Stark.

</comment><comment><USER66> With all the entertainment features they are releasing, they should cash in on the trend of home smart speakers / TVs.

</comment><comment><USER67> Too bad the Tesla has been nerfed so bad it's useless / dangerous in Europe. ( because of regulation ).

</comment><comment> enahs-sf hoping to see that upgrade that recognizes stop signs for full self driving soon!

</comment><comment><USER68> I love the push buttons on my radio 1-10 for 10 channels. If i wanna change, i intuitive press the right button. I drive a Mercedes, i can skip through 20 channels on my steer-wheel, or use the touchscreen and go to radio and... Push buttons for me.

</comment><comment><USER69> I love that hype video, Spotify is a god-send.

</comment><comment><USER70> This may seem petty but it annoys me that after all this time I still can't make a hands free call to anyone that has more then one phone number in my address book.

<comment><USER6> Really? My wife has her mobile and work number on my phone contacts (iOS) and I can use the voice command to say:

"Call wife on mobile" or "Call wife on work" and it works.

I tested this on a 2016 Model X, 2015 Model S and 2019 Model 3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> What a bunch of odd features.

</comment><comment><USER72> I really wish they offered a dumb car with the electrics but no screen.

</comment><comment><USER73> > "Car-aoke"

Oh no.

</comment><comment><USER74> Netflix in a car that doesn't yet have fully autonomous driving.

Perhaps not the greatest of ideas

Or maybe its while stationary only?

<comment><USER75> Yes, it is only enabled while the car is parked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> So glad they've made it possible to watch Netflix and Youtube and play games on the screen. Those things are exactly what I'm looking for in a car operating system. After all, I can't do any of those with my phone.

<comment><USER77> So glad I can watch Netflix and Youtube and play games on my phone. After all I can't do any of those with my computer.

<comment><USER78> I am not always around my computer. I almost always have my phone around while in my car.

<comment><USER79> Is your phone 15"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> > Our new "Car-aoke" feature lets you sing your heart out with friends on a > road trip – or by yourself.

Wait what.. you're encouraging drivers to look at the entertainment panel to read song lyrics? While they're driving?

<comment><USER81> [https://electrek.co/2019/09/15/tesla-v10-first-look- release-...](https://electrek.co/2019/09/15/tesla-v10-first-look-release- notes-features/)

> Tesla notes that while you can play the tracks while driving, the feature > will only display the lyrics when the car is in park. That's a bit of a > shame for road trips with the family, but safety first.</comment></comment>


Erlang: An introduction to gen_event by creating Account Notifications (Part 3) - <AUTHOR> http://spawnlink.com/articles/an-introduction-to-gen_event-account-notifications/

<comment><USER2> He's churning these out faster than I have time to step through them!</comment>


Why I Don't Hang Out With People Named David - <AUTHOR> http://mentalpandiculation.com/2011/03/why-i-dont-hang-out-with-people-named-david/

<comment><USER2> It's a nifty experience when you're browsing the web and come across a blog that uses the same exact wordpress template that you do... (<http://allanchao.com/blog/>)

</comment><comment><USER3> What about Larry David?

</comment><comment><USER4> :(</comment>


Ask HN: Where to look for startup jobs in Europe? - <AUTHOR>

I mean on which job sites. <comment><USER2> Try enternships.com - its a really great site that lists entrepreneurial jobs (mainly internships). I am from Ireland and got a job with a startup in San Francisco for the summer. I found the job posting on Enternships.com. Looking at the site now their database has grown hugely since I found that posting a few months ago. Would highly recommend it! Let me know how you get on!

</comment><comment><USER3> If you are in the UK, you could try <http://www.coderstack.co.uk/>

</comment><comment><USER4> What is your skill set? developer? designer?

<comment><AUTHOR> Developer: .NET, Java, Axum, Cloud Computing, Perl, C, SQL and NoSql :), basic Perl and Ruby, Windows (Win32 API) and Linux</comment></comment>


Use security vetted NPM and Python packages - <AUTHOR> https://asciinema.org/a/FzKoD8hjTcg9r1ZPMRZY6Vt7c <comment><AUTHOR> They are from Georgia Tech [https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/1255975503057440768](https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/1255975503057440768)</comment>


How LinkedIn's Site Design Helps Them Rank Well on Searches for Names - <AUTHOR> http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/linkedins-seo-strategy-own-names/

<comment><USER2> "better data can beat better algorithms" well said.

Scribd is another good case study of how to present data to rank high in searches. Could this be that the view of documents is different to a crawler than one presented to a normal browser?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not the first to say it! But thanks.

You can get a pretty good idea by using Links, w3m, or another text-based browser. You can also use Google Cache's 'text-only version' option in the upper right. Here's a random Scribd page:

[http://220.127.116.11/search?q=cache:v4ARQX- cc0AJ:www.scribd....](http://188.8.131.52/search?q=cache:v4ARQX- cc0AJ:www.scribd.com/doc/19743756/Excerpt-from-The-New-Vampires- Handbook-+Excerpt+from+The+New+Vampires&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1)

</comment></comment><comment> onreact-com The problem with sites like LinkedIn is that they own your name and can sell it back to you. When you use them they own your contacts as well and will stop you from contacting your peers when you don't pay (LinkedIn competitor Xing already did that to some users).

Before we reach the age of data portability or proper ownership of data you have to limit the power of third parties over your name. You have to use those services or someone else might do for you unofficially but you have to keep your name and contacts to yourself.

So basically you need a good SEO and CRM strategy where you own your name and contacts yourself independently of services like LinkedIn or Facebook.</comment>


Epistemology of Wave Function Collapse in Quantum Physics [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/pdf/1307.0827v1.pdf

<comment><USER2> A note: This is not about standard quantum theory, but about GRW theories.

Basically it's an ad-hoc modification of quantum theory, in which you postulate that the wave function collapses at random with some probability.

As long as you say the probability is low enough, the theory is not really experimentally verifiable. (Currently there is no experimental evidence for GRW type theories.)

<comment><USER3> There is no experimental evidence that the collapse is caused by magical consciousness, either, but that doesn't stop people from perpetually claiming exactly that.

<comment><USER4> There are hypotheses that say that the collapse of a quantum wave is involved in producing some sort of intelligence and in some cases consciousness. But I'm not aware of any that say that intelligence is involved in producing or guiding the collapse. See Orch-OR theory by Penrose and Hameroff.

<comment><USER5> There are also much more sane theories that involve no collapse at all (many- worlds).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For arXiv.org links, please link to the abstract page rather than directly to the PDF: [http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.0827](http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.0827)

Also, it's often good practice not to link to a specific version (the "v1" in the original link here), since papers are often updated with corrections or additional references. (That's _sometimes_ desired, of course, but it's not the usual case.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tips. I will definitely use them next time I post an arXiv link.</comment></comment>


6 things SaaS founders should keep in mind in 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://christophjanz.blogspot.de/2014/01/6-things-saas-founders-should-keep-in.html

<comment><USER2> This is so true: "But since we're still in the early days of Cloud adoption and since it usually takes 5-10 years to build a large SaaS company, you also need lots of patience."

It all goes soooo much slower than expected.

We've also been distracted many times by this: "Similarly, if one user requests a new feature or a change in the product that's no reason to do it, unless you think it makes sense for a large part of your target group."

And we've also failed to plan, but a certain level is indeed necessary (once you hit a certain point). A defined roadmap is very necessary, albeit not always desired... "Become clear on what you want to achieve in 2014 and what this means for your product roadmap, your marketing plan and your financial plan."

Spot on article. Thank you so much :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, glad you like it!</comment></comment>


Judge Orders Google To Deactivate User's Gmail Account and Disclose Identity - <AUTHOR> http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=114264 <comment><USER2> There are many things wrong with this order, but the most obvious ones are: 1\. Both the emails could be in the spam folder of an account which the user is heavily dependent on. 2\. In the future, to deactivate somebody's account just send a sensitive mail to that account.

<comment><USER3> I think people on this board especially understand that something as simple as an email account can directly affect our means of making a living and can have very serious consequences, therefore we understand that a blanket deactivation could be the equivalent of "to help me fix my mistake, you must lose your job."

To non-geeks loosing an email account isn't as big of a deal, so it's easy to see why a judge would not realize the significance.

<comment><USER4> I know many non-geeks who would consider losing their email account a big deal and would be upset. More than just geeks rely on their online identities to talk and work.

<comment><USER5> I think the point he was trying to make was how much does the Judge value electronic mail. Not much apparently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Apparently, the judge who ordered this doesn't have very good judgement:

 _"In 1998, Judge Ware was reprimanded by the Judicial Council of the Northern District Court of California for fabricating the story of being the brother of Virgil Ware[5], a 13 year old black boy shot by teenage racists in Alabama in 1963 on the same day as the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. According to a story Judge Ware had told many audiences, he was riding his bike with his brother Virgil on the handlebars when Virgil was shot and killed by white racists.[6] The incident was a real one, however it happened to a different James Ware,"_

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Ware_%28judge%29>

<comment><USER7> No he doesn't...

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Ware_(judge)#Noted_ruling...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Ware_\(judge\)#Noted_rulings)

<comment><USER8> How come the guy didn't get thrown off the bench for that ?

Judges are supposed to be beyond doubt, if a judge has done something like that their career should be over.

<comment><USER9> Especially if they have a lifetime appointment.

If you fuck up and are re-elected, that's one thing. If you fuck up but have a lifetime appointment, well, I can't see the benefit to the people he represents to keep him on the bench.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The thing that really blows my mind about this whole story is this:

What the fuck was a bank doing sending the confidential information of thousands to a GMail account in the first place?

<comment><USER11> And why _all_ emails were _not_ strongly encrypted?

<comment><USER12> Have you ever seen an encrypted email sent to a wide audience?

<comment><USER11> Did I say its easy?

The point is that there is an organisation. And some people are responsible for security.

And yes, it _will_ cost.

<comment><USER9> Why do it right when the legal system is perfectly happy to violate the rights of innocent people at no cost to you? "It's the economy, stupid."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> By the same reasoning:

1\. If I "accidentally" send an email to the bank I could get the court to kick the bank off the interwebs.

2\. If I send a sensitive snail mail "accidentally" to the bank, can I get the court to lock down the bank's premises and order a search for my mail (and any copies of it)?

<comment><USER13> No, because your not a bank ;). Our government thinks very highly of banks, don't expect similar treatment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does Google have any incentive to fight this? I find myself wishing that they would just reply with "No, that is ridiculous."

Why, WHY?, would someone be held legally responsible for not replying to an email!? That is the most ridiculous and stupid thing I've ever heard in my life. The bank messed up, we all mess up, but isn't it within his legal right to publicly distribute that list if he wanted?

Obviously he didn't, but it's not his problem that they sent it to him!

Frustrating. Maybe I should move my email to my own servers.

<comment><USER15> I doubt he would be able to legally distribute the list.

<comment><USER16> Plus it wouldn't be fair to the 1300 bank customers who don't know how crappy their bank really is - and how insecure their personal information is.

<comment><USER15> Err.. Offtopic: I can't see how many points the parent comment has. That's weird. I see the uparrow, followed by "by mikeyur 8 hours ago", but the "N points" part is missing.

<comment><USER17> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=844979>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Someone should accidently send some confidential info to the judge's email account.

</comment><comment><USER19> Imagine if someone emailed confidential data to various of the folks involved in the court case, and then demanding its return under the same terms as this decision. This decision would then become a whole new form of denial of service.

</comment><comment><USER20> There should be some way to fight this. It is not acceptable for some one send you a wrongly addressed email and then make court deactivate your email account. I wonder how could a Judge rule this way?

<comment><USER21> Imagine the consequence if it was sent via an old-fashioned method: snail mail or fax. Clearly the remedy would not be to destroy the home, office or deactivate the phone line of the receiver. It's an extremely poor understanding of technology but sadly, not at all surprising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> New business idea: start a email service similar to Gmail and operate it in a country with a more reasonable judiciary and/or better privacy rights.

<comment><USER23> There isn't such a country. A conflict with money will get your ass served anywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> And what of the 1,300 people? They should all be notified that their security was breached, AND they should be suing the bank.

</comment><comment><USER25> Does anyone know what sort of precedent is set for the rights someone has who unintentionally receives confidential information? I think that it would apply directly here.

</comment><comment><USER26> The bank was completely out of line to request this. What they should have done was to insure every single person on that list against identity theft for the rest of their lives. Then, if a significant number of them _did_ have their identities stolen, request the identity of the gmail user; only then would their be evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the gmail address owner.

</comment><comment><USER27> How do they know he didn't already download a copy and keep it? (not that I think they ought to pursue that, I just think that if the bank is worried about their security - they screwed themselves over long ago!)

</comment><comment><USER28> It's just as well the bank didn't send it by smail mail, then the judge would have ordered the recipient's house to be bulldosed.

</comment><comment><USER29> Wouldn't it be funny if this person had a desktop client auto-fetching their e-mail via POP3, and released the data just to spite the judge & bank afterwards?

</comment><comment><USER30> I have a serious question about this entire thing.

Does this set a precedence for future "mistakes" by large companies to deactivate and identify accounts simply because they send compromising information?

Put another way, what if you wanted to "nuke" someones gmail account - do you simply need to send "confidential information" then ask for the court order?

It is certainly a far fetched and expensive plan, but the question is really about precedence this case has set.

I spoke to a lawyer friend about this entire thing:

"The judge should have conducted a "balancing test" in which he asked whose rights it was more important to protect: those of hundreds of people whose account information was in the hands of some schmuck, or those of the schmuck who won't be able to email that dirty joke to his Mom if his email is suspended. It seems that the rights of the hundreds of account holders are more important, but you can protect their rights without suspending the schmuck's email address (and that is where I agree with Mr. Morris). The court could have ordered him to turn over all of the data he inadvertently received and swear under oath that he did not retain any further copies and that he did not distribute the copies to anyone else. Once that is done, if it turns out that the sensitive information was compromised in any way, the account holders can hold the bank accountable AND the schmuck. If the schmuck is a decent guy -- and if an IT professional certifies that he purged all the data and that it was not otherwise disseminated to outsiders -- then the story should end there and there is no First Amendment violation."

I think this balance test makes way more sense than what happened in this case.

<comment><USER31> The schmuck can't "turn over" the data and there's no conceivable way to verify that he deleted it, so this scenario just puts the blame on him if any of that data ever leaks and there's nothing he can do about it.

Also, I'm no legalologist, but I don't see how the rights of the bank's customers are being violated. Their agreement with the bank has been severely breached, but that's between them and the bank. Violating the schmuck's fundamental rights to correct someone else's mistake doesn't seem very balanced to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> What would they have done if this guy e-mailed back and said "Yea, I found your e-mail in my spam folder. It's been deleted. K bye."

Would we have even heard about this?

</comment><comment><USER33> I wonder.. the easy reaction to this is "Don't use a third party for your e-mail" which is easy enough if you're a geek, but then if you have your own server/domain, could you end up with a court order taking your server or domain off the air under similar circumstances?

<comment><USER34> I imagine that if you didn't reply to requests in that instance they would just go to your hosting provider. If you _were_ your own hosting provider, then they would just take your to court, and if you didn't show up then the ruling would be in the bank's favor.

At _some_ point, you would have to respond to them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Google must not have very good lawyers. This is clearly a miscarriage of justice.

<comment><USER36> Google most likely doesn't that care much; it's not their email account being terminated. They go through the proforma requirement that a judge sign off on or require whatever, then stick it to their customer since it's no longer their fault.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> You've got to wonder who's paying the judge's salary

<comment><USER13> The federal government? He has a job for life and can go home and get baked on some righteous NoCal weed every night. Really, what else do you expect?

<comment><USER37> Rather single minded response, I'm not sure what you are asking. To spell it out, asking who is paying his salary is to ask a number of questions (I think you've immediately assumed conspiracy):

\- If it is the people/government are they getting their money's worth?

\- If he's taking backhanders is it corruption?

\- If it's neither of these what is the motivation for this sort of justice?

Perhaps I don't understand the make-up of the federal government in the US but it's presumably has to answer to the citizens.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I will be happy to hear which was this bank so that I put my money of there if I have account. I wouldn't like my money support an institution with such poor practices and with such disrespect for people's privacy.

</comment><comment><USER39> I don't understand why the order is to deactivate the account, and not just recover/delete the email and maybe release the identity of the account owner?

</comment><comment><USER40> time to move my email offshore

</comment><comment><USER41> There is a mad logic to it:

Reasoning for de-activing the account: gmail account holder has not replied to follow up emails from the bank to destroy email and sensitive content. Therefore it is possible that the account is dormant and/or infrequently used. If that is the case, deactivation insures that the sensitive data is protected if the user happens to at this late date access their gmail account and lo and behold, surprise email from idiot bank. (This also applies if sensitive data is in the spam folder.)

Reasoning for disclosing identity: gmail account is active and frequently accessed, but the user (for whatever reason) has decided not to respond to the idiot bank. This raises the possibility that s/he has malicious intent of misusing the idiot bank's customers' information. Therefore lets find out who this person is in case the idiot bank's customers' information happens to show up elsewhere on the internet.

<comment><USER5> Dude the guy/gal does not have to respond to any email unless he wants to. This is not a conversation. It was a request to communicate, and s/he can decide to remain silent.

<comment><USER41> > Dude the guy/gal does not have to respond to any email unless he wants to.

Obviously. (There is nothing in the earlier comment that in any way addresses the recipient's rights.)

Equally obvious is the fact that the bank in question certainly has to take every possible measure to limit the impact of their stupid mistake. Its possible (ianal) that they even have a legal obligation to do so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> This kind of stuff only happens in America

<comment><USER26> Not really. A lot of European countries, particularly the UK, are a lot worse.

<comment><USER43> Although at least in the uk the company would get prosecute for sending client details unencrypted over the internet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> While the bank obviously made a monumental screw up, Google's initial response to the bank is at least in part to blame. Regardless of the privacy rights of the person who's Gmail account it is, there obviously should be an interest in protecting the confidential information of the 1,300 customers.

Google could have responded by helping the bank recover and delete the file, as well as sending an unmissable notification to the Gmail user.

<comment><USER45> An 'unmissable' notification from Google wouldn't be anymore unmissable than the request email sent by the bank. Which is why the bank wanted Google to disclose the identity of the user. If Google deleted a users emails and disclosed their identity to a third party then Google would be in breach of their own privacy policy. They would be exposing themselves to litigation, hence the requirement for a court order.

<comment><USER36> Except that it could have ended up, possibly along with the original email, in a never read spam folder. Google has more direct means of reaching an account holder.</comment></comment></comment>