To expand on your concept. If that "covering" was actually a cushion, it could be flipped open and has two foldable legs behind it could be made into a bed

This.

Yeah, the author really seems to have tone mapping confused with HDR. They are used interchangeably now, but that's wrong. Even if it's the term used, it's just plain wrong. You know what else has high dynamic range (HDR)? Film, and digital medium format. You want to be able to see more than what regular digital…

maybe you should clarify that HDR 'done right' takes multiple images at different exposures in order to actually build an HDR image, instead of a filter that just pushes data around?

I think you're actually talking about poor tone-mapping considering the examples you cited. HDR image capture itself is a wonderful and very useful tool to have. They are not the same thing.