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Comment by nottorp | Hacker News Reader

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nottorp·

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cone-of-silence/

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Indeed! From the article:

> In 2010, the Pontiac Division of General Motors received...

> This was a cool act by General Motors especially in this world of Internet when news can go viral in matter of seconds

From Snopes:

> This legend surfaced in print in 1978, but an anecdotal sighting places it even earlier than that, in 1971.

Yes. It's a neat story, but it has that smell of an urban legend. What engineer would come back for four nights in a row rather than just figuring out why the car didn't start the first time?

Why do you think he came back four times in a row? Not everyone has a complete and accurate physical model of their car in their head.

The story, as written, says that the engineer want with the father on four different nights. I would expect an engineer to at least try to diagnose the problem rather than spending all the effort of coming back on four different nights outside of work ours. Basically the story feels made up.

I agree only because just reading the problem description I guessed that it was a difference in distance or sitting time and I don't even know anything about car engines. I assume any automotive engineer would have been ahead of me on that and already looking for differences that could matter on the first trip.

An engineer who is using logic, reason, and observation to find the root of the problem instead of just patch it once?

Or an Engineer who likes ice cream!

Do you figure out every bug the first time you see it?

Or do you have to look into it for a while

The story reads like an email my grandfather would send me with 6 pages of fwds and signatures about emails being checked by Norton Antivirus.

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