It's not just self-driving cars. It's features like autonomous parking, lane-assitance, cruise control that automatically keeps the distance to the car in front of you and the like. Stuff like that has been repeatedly hailed by HN'ers as revolutionary when Tesla introduced it. Neglecting that other companies had those features for years.

Whenever Tesla is the topic it's almost guaranteed every negative comment on HN will be downvoted (I just see that right now with my comment above. It's constantly gaining and losing me karma).

Besides that, the self-driving Tesla isn't news. That is the joke here. It's a press release that gets frenzied on HN's #1 spot.

I've read comparisons of tesla's system vs others. They aren't even in the same ballpark. C&D has one with Infiniti, Mercedes, Telsa, and BMW.

They drove 50 miles on a fairly challenging road and recorded the number of times they had to grab the steering wheel. BMW and Mercedes were twice as often, infiniti about 3 times.

The #2 BMW "City streets also foil this equipment; occasionally the BMW lost the trail on clearly marked straight sections of pavement for no obvious reason at all."

The Tesla (with driving hardware 2 revisions ago, and software at least on revision ago) "the Tesla Model S locks onto the path ahead with a cruise missile’s determination and your hands resting on your lap.","The Tesla’s Autosteer performance can be distinguished from our other contenders by two words: no wobbling.", and "This system rises well above parlor-trick status to beg your use in daily driving.", "to Tesla’s credit, this is the only car capable of hands-free lane changes.", and " but by ­tallying only 29 interruptions in 50 miles, Tesla’s Autopilot app lives in a class of one."

So do other companies have lane following and related features... yes. Do they do as well as Tesla, not from what I've seen.

True. In a way this is kind of analogous to how Apple 'fanboys'/users behave when new features are introduced in iPhones but have already been present in Android for many years prior to that.

The oldest: copy & paste. The most recent: water resistant

I guess you've never downvoted anyone who disagrees with your opinion?

Can't speak for him, but I haven't. And I know others that haven't. Doing so only reflects an insecurity in your own opinion. I downvote for ad-hominems, or blatantly (easily verifiable) false claims.

Assuming that others downvote over differing opinions does paint you in the light of doing that yourself, though...

The downvote button isn't a disagree or dislike button. If I disagree (and care enough), I use the other button, reply, to try to understand their point of view and try to get them to understand mine.

The forum founders have stated that the downvote button is for disagree/dislike. If you think a comment is very bad, there's a 'flag' function if you click on the comment's timestamp (if you have the requisite karma).

My understanding was that downvoting was for comments which do not contribute to the conversation.

I'm both surprised and sad to hear that the downvote button's intended purpose is disagreement. This seems like it would discourage people from posting alternative points of view if their view is the minority.

As much as I tried looking for it on my own, I couldn't find one, so would you mind posting a source as to where the founders stated the purpose of voting?

I found this, but it's clearly Unofficial

http://jacquesmattheij.com/the-unofficial-hn-faq#downvoted

That said, the author currently has karma 111515 so he likely knows something about it.

The guidelines[0] do mention "Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

From pg: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

That... kind of makes me want to visit this site much less.

I often upvote both sides of a polite to-and-from between two parties with differing opinions, if the discussion is interesting, since that, I feel, adds to the quality of the whole page. I frown upon learning that it is encouraged to downvote if you disagree. Isn't it an equivalent of childish sticking fingers into your ears and hoping the other opinion goes away?

I usually try to argument with them, that's what a discussion is about, a exchange of argument and a test of there validity. Everything else, is just bubbling oneself into another ideology.