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Lol all the negative replies here really drives home the “hacker” spirit in “hacker news”

by gfodor 5y ago

lostlogin 5y ago
If Ford made the lights on some cars flash, would it be a mega corp trying to go viral, or the hacker spirit alive and well? I like it, the the cynical angle has some merit.
- gfodor 5y ago
  There is an awesome GitHub repo with lots of cool stuff to hack on for Christmas on millions of electric cars. This is about as hacker worthy as it gets.
- potatochup 5y ago
  Is it not possible for an individual engineer within Ford to have some creativity? To hack on something they weren't supposed to? Not every output from a company is top-down, corporate-overload, profit maximizing.
akira2501 5y ago
It's parsimonious of me, but "hacker" includes the idea of "pushing hardware into uses not intended by the manufacturer." This is an API that's being straight-up handed to you by the manufacturer, a manufacturer that historically has had a challenged relationship with the various hacker communities that have formed around their products.
- potatochup 5y ago
  Do you really think this was originally a planned feature by Tesla? That some cynical marketing manager sat down ans though "if we do this we'll get X impressions leading to Y new sales, lets allocate 0.7FTE engineers to the task"? I very much doubt the design requirement for the Model X include a specification for "muat be able to produce Christmas shows". This sure looks like some engineer had a spurt of creativity, which qualifies to "hacking" to me.
typon 5y ago
If this was a jailbreak to control the lights, people would be a lot more excited. Tesla closes off their hardware to hackers - not exactly the spirit of hacker news
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dang 5y ago
Please don't make it worse by being negative about negativity. The only thing that works is to post the kind of thing we want here: curious, informative, thoughtful. When so inspired.
vernie 5y ago
Well it fucking sucks, what do you want?

Lol all the negative replies here really drives home the “hacker” spirit in “hacker news”

by gfodor 5y ago

Lol all the negative replies here really drives home the “hacker” spirit in “hacker news”

If Ford made the lights on some cars flash, would it be a mega corp trying to go viral, or the hacker spirit alive and well? I like it, the the cynical angle has some merit.

gfodor 5y ago
There is an awesome GitHub repo with lots of cool stuff to hack on for Christmas on millions of electric cars. This is about as hacker worthy as it gets.
potatochup 5y ago
Is it not possible for an individual engineer within Ford to have some creativity? To hack on something they weren't supposed to? Not every output from a company is top-down, corporate-overload, profit maximizing.

akira2501 5y ago

It's parsimonious of me, but "hacker" includes the idea of "pushing hardware into uses not intended by the manufacturer." This is an API that's being straight-up handed to you by the manufacturer, a manufacturer that historically has had a challenged relationship with the various hacker communities that have formed around their products.

potatochup 5y ago
Do you really think this was originally a planned feature by Tesla? That some cynical marketing manager sat down ans though "if we do this we'll get X impressions leading to Y new sales, lets allocate 0.7FTE engineers to the task"? I very much doubt the design requirement for the Model X include a specification for "muat be able to produce Christmas shows". This sure looks like some engineer had a spurt of creativity, which qualifies to "hacking" to me.

typon 5y ago

If this was a jailbreak to control the lights, people would be a lot more excited. Tesla closes off their hardware to hackers - not exactly the spirit of hacker news

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dang 5y ago

Please don't make it worse by being negative about negativity. The only thing that works is to post the kind of thing we want here: curious, informative, thoughtful. When so inspired.

vernie 5y ago

Well it fucking sucks, what do you want?