Reshared post from +Tim O’Reilly

Chesterton's Definition of Progressives and Conservatives

"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected."

– from Illustrated London News, 1924-04-19, per Wikipedia

The Tesla Model S is a fine car and it has much to recommend it. However, +Elon Musk should not be resorting to these kinds of shenanigans to sell cars. To claim that the time you spend filling your car with gas is worth $100/month is a bad joke. What about the time you have to spend looking for a charge station if you're getting low on electrons. 

Then there is the $227 you subtract if you are using the car for business. If you are using any other car for business, you could make the same claim so this one is a wash and if it's just a personal car, you can forget it anyway. 

You're going to pay $1,100/month to finance a  Model S and that's that. 

Users of +Android apps often miss out on some of the coolest capabilities of the system because developers are coding apps to work like the more limited iOS.

This is no doubt part of the reason why iOS hasn't advanced as much over its history as Android. Instead of treating iOS as the golden standard, developers should be using all the capabilities of the system they are working on and thus putting pressure on other platforms to improve. Don't just make the apps the same on all platforms. 

Reshared post from +Ford Racing

Today marks the 45th Anniversary of the Mustang Cobra Jet program. Thanks to all the racers that have made this unique production based Mustang a legend in drag racing history.

I got to put a lot of miles on the three development cars during 1990 and 1991 and from the first turn behind the wheel, it was clear this was no ordinary front-drive car. I've long believed that performance cars should split the workload between the front and rear wheels. That's especially true today as cars have been much more powerful than they were in 1990.

The turbocharged Isuzu four cylinder in the Elan only produced 160 hp so it was relatively manageable for front drive. More importantly, the chassis wizards at Lotus led by Roger Becker and Ken Miles did some really neat stuff with the suspension geometry to make this machine behave like a proper rear drive Lotus. Under lateral loads, the outside rear wheel would toe out to help counter the inherent understeer. The bottom line was remarkably neutral handling and the rear end could even be kicked out when pushed hard. 

As it happened, at the time this Top Gear was filmed the ABS was under development. Unfortunately, the high cost of producing the Elan meant heavy losses for Lotus and in mid-1991, the car was discontinued, just 6 weeks before the ABS was due to start production. 

As fun as the Elan was to drive, the build quality wasn't nearly as good as Goffey described it. Each of the three cars we had had leaky tops other fit and finish problems. They also had a nasty tendency to overheat in hot weather unless you kept them moving to maintain airflow through the radiator. Before long, Lotus changed direction and started development of the Elise.

via: http://jalopnik.com/can-a-legit-sports-car-ever-be-front-wheel-drive-464786742

http://www.techhive.com/article/2030042/why-i-switched-from-iphone-to-android.html

More recently +Lex Friedman has been spending a month with a Lumia 920 while he parked his iPhone. 

One of the key takeaways from Andy's series was:

An iPhone is a delight fresh out of the box and for the life of the device. An Android phone is a delight starting around…week two, after you’ve made a bunch of minor adjustments that change it from “Good for the majority of users” to “great for you, personally.”

On the other hand, Lex Friedman found that time spent with a Windows phone wasn't necessarily a good thing. While Microsoft maintains similar levels of control of its mobile platform to Apple and it has some really cool interface features, it is also sorely lacking in a many areas like notifications and app quality. 

I've used iOS and dabbled with some Windows phones, but I'll be sticking with +Android. 

If you're interested in learning more about all three platforms, both series are well worth a read.