skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: How does Apple manufacture iPhones/iPads (School Discussion)
Hello HN'ers.

My 12 year old son, 7th grade in Social Studies class is discussing "push" vs "pull" manufacturing and of course his first question is what does Apple/Foxconn do.

Can anyone shed light on how Apple/Foxconn manufactures devices?

Push manufacturing - is a "make to stock" philosophy. Utilizing Push a quantity of products is made without knowing if anyone really wants them. So it would be possible to have a number of unfinished products still on the assembly line, half made. Employee 1 could perform his/her piece of the process 80 times in a given say, while Employee 2 is backlogged and may only get 40 done. So there are 40 products still waiting to be finished.

Pull manufacturing - is a "make to order" philosophy.

I dont want to confuse him by stating that companies usually utilize a happy medium of both "Push" and "Pull" and the factors that drive that decision.

I also dont really want comments that say it doesn't matter since Apple sells out of devices quicker than they can be made so neither philosophy applies.

Does anyone have thoughts on the manufacturing ideology and maybe assembly line specifics I can talk to him about?
Unfortunately, unless you can verify them, you don't publish them. That does mean that some things that are genuine will not get published. But it avoids what's worse -- publishing things that aren't true.
Ask HN: Evaluate my startup, PoundWire
I'd appreciate any constructive feedback from the community. I set out to solve a real problem with noisy social news feeds. Essentially by ensuring that every post would include at least one hashtag, it would create both a new way to follow (by hashtag) and a new way to silence social connections (also by hashtag) within the same feed.

And even though I know I'm caught in the usual chicken and egg conundrum (need users to get users), the deeper issue is that new visitors don't even sign up to take it for a test spin.

So, in order to showcase the platform, I built a self-teaching/self-tagging aggregating service that pulls articles from top blogs to kind of seed the site. Still no takers.

So I ask, am I solving a problem that many blog about, but that doesn't really exist? Should I turn off the aggregator, and see what kind of community (if any) arises? Is there a better approach? Or is the only solution to the problem one that lives as an add-on to Twitter's established community?
Can you give me a link to it to the repo in question? It should be the number of commits. Was the initial master branch you used what you uploaded to github? I'm curious as well ....
If I was evil and suicidal I could wipe up many companies by "drop database including backup".

When you have DBA access to production databases, lack of root does not stand in the way of doing evil.

It does stand in the way of using message logs to troubleshoot, checking contents of /proc to determine which directory a process is running from, tuning TCP parameters to maximize data transfer rates without nagging the sysadmins, etc.
Not allowing unintented bags is one step to prevent bombings. The answer to your question ("Who would check a bag to some city they're never going to?") is "someone who is trying to blow up the plane."
I noticed recently that my Debian now comes with a "sudo" group that is effectively the same thing.
Distrust and widely perceived lack of credibility does not appear to have swayed Fox News very much — only when advertisers started pulling out did Fox can Glenn Beck. And they haven't really been in any situation where revealing their sources would have been advantageous as far as I can recall, so that's neither here nor there.
I almost didn't bother to read this because it sure as hell looks like a crackpot tract, but I found a gem of a tl;dr in the third section:

Because the legal world is comprised of contradictory rules, there will be sound legal arguments available not only for the hypothesis one is investigating, but for other, competing hypotheses as well. The assumption that there is a unique, correct resolution, which serves so well in empirical investigations, leads one astray when dealing with legal matters.

which I think is an interesting perspective on legal matters. Contradictory assumptions mean that there's usually a bunch of different "right" answers, and which one you get is kindof a matter of luck of the draw.

On the other hand, I guess the whole point of precedent is to slowly whittle down the space of possible answers. If the law can't always be right, it can at least try to be consistent.
You're exactly right that they do -- it's called reporters.

If you're going to submit to the WSJ, do it through a person -- not this system.
It's much more common practice in JavaScript. If you ever expect anyone else to have to deal with your code, it's nicer for them if you followed the conventions that most people are used to seeing.
If a random blogger doesn't understand the difference, what are the odds a random Joe understands?

The collective opinion of Joe is what constitutes public opinion, and public opinion is (as I understand it) one of the biggest obstacles.
I think it comes down to the readability and weight of the two, with underscore separated variables taking more horizontal space. But like same line braces, one persons readability is not the same as anothers.

EDIT: The other response is more accurate.
Those annoying “Rate this app” dialogs
It's so sad to me that people think of it this way -- not guaranteed. You should always be able to trust a reporter who promises you that. The unethical ones really burn us all.
I personally really like mspack and msgpack-rpc. There are a tone of well supported implementations for various languages and there are some speed and other advantages over thrift and Protocol Buffers. The core implementation is written in C++.

http://msgpack.org
This is laughable libertarian trash. Without a central authority, humanity would revert back to the animals that we are. The author of this piece should go back to licking Ron Paul's boots.
Sadly this is the attitude that some people really have. And if challenged on it, they'll rationalize it by blaming the airline for setting their prices that way.

It's much like the drug user's rationalization of the fact that the money he spends goes to support organized crime. "Well," he says, "that's the government's fault for not legalizing the drugs I wish to take!"
Can you post the url for ease of access? I'm assuming it's just poundwire.com, but you should probably include it in your post.
Performance Enhancement
Programming a Problem-Oriented Language (1970)
Those dialog boxes are a double edged sword. If I really like the app then I will go and leave a positive rating in the App Store (Tiny Wings is one example). On the other hand, there was one app that explicitly requested that I rate it 5 stars (and there were a few other annoyances), so I gave it one star. Normally I'd just ignore or delete the app if it's bad, but if you pop up something and ask me to rate it, you better be prepared for the consequences.
Still a lot that they could remove. Check out http://bywordapp.com/ for a simpler distraction free editor
True. But a _properly evil_ non-suicidal and supremely confident evil DBA could, if they wanted too, exploit the box from a local user account, rootkit it, and tidy up after themselves to remove all trace of who did it. I suspect that's actually script-kiddy-able these days, if you know the target well enough there's probably an automated tool ready to do all that for you.

(For evil-genius-DBA's bonus points for doing that via the database instead of the shell and censoring traces from the db logs too...)
This article was as much of a paradigm shift for me as reading Stephen Kinsella's work on intellectual property (http://mises.org/books/against.pdf). In one essay the author is able to convince me my fundamental understanding of Law is flawed. What he proposes may be hard to realize in the short term but I think if we move back towards States' rights and local rights we will be moving in the right direction.
Google at ACM CHI 2011
Who would check a bag to some city they're never going to?

A person who wants to blow up an airliner. That's the point.
Feynman just an ordinary guy with common sense?

If his IQ was measured to be 125, that tells us far more about the accuracy of the IQ measurement process than Feynman's intelligence. Feynman's extra-ordinariness is on clear display.
It is called managing expectations, and it requires communication, communication, communication.

You may have the contract on your side, but in the end, building a successful freelance practice depends heavily on repeat business, so it is up to you, the expert on the subject, to bring this issues up early enough and make sure they actually understand what you are talking about.

(I feel your pain)
Having to type your password twice is a perfect UI affordance -- it makes it obvious that you're signing up for a new account and not just logging in to an existing one.

It's especially important because a streamlined workflow will have both forms on the same page. It's infuriating to try to log in and get an "account already exists" error. HN is one of the very few sites that make this mistake.
The other news I read said they claimed they could create a version of it for $25, not that the existing one costs that. That's quite a bit different.
War Dog
Steve Wozniak Calls Paul Allen A Patent Troll
Researchers Say WSJ’s WikiLeaks Copycat Is Full Of Holes
Yes, that's the way it should work. It's not the way that they do, though.

Heck, has a single Wikileaks document ever been proven to be genuine?
There are two Go compilers gc and gccgo. gc is based on the Plan 9 C compilers and has very little optimisation; gccgo is a front-end to gcc and as such has all of its optimisation. gcc's concurrency support is thread-based so slower than gc's which is coroutine based.

tl;dr:

gc: slower code, faster concurrency.

gccgo: faster code, slower concurrency.
This website seems to pop-up on hacker news each week. I've got nothing against it but I'd suggest saying the difference between last time..?! If I remember well, it was way more minimalistic before. I find "The best text editor" to be a bit "strong" as google doc is clearly better and I don't really see why quietwrite would be better..?
There are legitimate cases for (2). I've worked in companies that have lost the source code to programs developed. If you're wondering how source code can be lost---think of no revision control, a poor backup policy, and a program that goes a long time between modifications.
Poll: Do you use a website monitoring service?
I'm curious to know how many people use a monitoring service to notify you when something goes wrong with your website.

Just answer 'Yes' or 'No' and which service it is that you use. Thanks!
I've been trying to follow the "do what is typical in the language in which you're writing" philosophy. So, in Ruby, I use underscores, because most methods and variables in common Ruby libs use underscores. In Javascript, I use camel-case, for the same reason. In CSS, I use a dash. In PHP, I do whatever tickles my fancy at that moment in time.
I wasn't forgetting: I was editing for effect :)

Having said that, how much are four bricks?
Oh man, I'd forgotten about those. They were everywhere in the nineties and I haven't seen one since.
I should have submitted the original Register article. Sorry about that:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/03/woz_talks_patents_an...
is it just me or are the embedded links unclickable?
If you look at the specs. This doesn't include the cost of storage (SD card etc) which would push the price beyond the $25.

Still I am blown away by the size
Neither: we bought themes off themeforest.
If not iOS, then I'd expect Android. The XDAers would be all over it, I think.
I tried the exercise ball and, to be blunt, they have a big disadvantage that Aeron chairs don't: Sweaty Crack Syndrome.

Sitting on a rubber ball all day is not good for one's posterior crevices.
Article mentions it's ready to browse the web by default, how is it connecting to the internet though? No mention of ethernet or wifi.
I sure hope that everyone voting in this poll has extensively tried working on an Ergoman Mesh, a Humanscale Freedom, an Aeron, an exercise ball, nothing, and several other options, or else how are they to know which option is the best?

Me? I have a (goes and looks) Steelcase Rapport. It's definitely better than most of the other (much cheaper) desk chairs I've had over the years, but I can't promise anything about it being the best.
this post would suggest that HN is/has turning/turned in a votebrigade-for-fire. It really should've been a "here is why head.js is awesome, you should go vote for it/star it".

But here is the reason you should star head.js:
Head JS loads JavaScript files like images without blocking the page. Your page will be faster even with a single combined file.

As our JS gets longer and longer and heavier and heavier, HeadJS will improve loading/time to render by an order of magnitude faster.

edit: post #28 asks people to stop commenting due to auto-notifications, but then people keep commenting.
Nobody who is commenting here cares (or I strongly suspect they don't care) about the Airlines and people making money. It's the hundred or so people who are sitting on the airplane that are being inconvenienced - possibly missing their own connections later on, that our concerns are for.

In general, airlines don't like to have people's checked luggage travel separately from them - and they don't know if the missing person checked luggage or not. So, they either have to do a count, get everyone in their correct seat, or delay the plane until the person gets back on.

It's a cute hack, but an annoying one for everyone caught up in it.
Webhosting sysadmin here, we start off with a strict ruleset for mod_security and then add exceptions as needed....they really stick out in the per-vhost error log, so it takes all of about 5 minutes to fix. We err on the side of caution, and the set we use allows the majority of sites to operate without issue. We'd rather spend 10 minutes on a ticket explaining to the customer that it's just us being overly cautious than any real issue. We have to weigh risk mitigation vs usability.

Also, probably >95% of the "website hacks" I see are automated, so mod_security really does greatly cut down on the number of exploits. Sure, if you have a dedicated hacker who knows his or her way around things like modsec, then it won't matter at all, but the number of hacks we've seen has decreased greatly due to mod_security. You only get into trouble with it if you pretend that it's anything more than it is: regex filtering for requests.

To the guy talking about validating input...perhaps you should spend a bit more time on the internet and notice all the sites running copies of WordPress with defaults. This is how the vast majority of websites are...default everything. Input validation is great if you have a custom app and a development team, but most people don't. While it's arguable that they should even be running their own site, it doesn't change the fact that they do. They don't have time, and we don't have time to go through all of their PHP that accepts _GET and _POST and make sure that they're handling input validation / sanitation properly. Yes, the people who develop wordpress / whatever CMS they're using should set some good defaults for input validation and use proper sanitation techniques, but the truth is that tons of sites run on shaky code bases and old versions...so mod_security is the "quick fix" that covers the vast majority of cases and protects tons of our users.

suPHP is great too (privilege separation). Combined with jailkit, our systems are pretty well locked down for shared hosting.

That all said, Sony SERIOUSLY screwed this up. Their system should have better secured the Cardholder Data Environment (the PCI-DSS name for any system that touches CC info). My guess would be poor architecture planning / implementation as to why this obviously wasn't done. Also, mod_security has some filters for data leakage which can be tweaked to prevent obvious HIPAA stuff and obvious PCI-DSS stuff, such as plaintext transfer of zillions of CC numbers. If a skilled hacker broke into this, he/she again could pretty easily find a way around this.

Network firewalls probably wouldn't have helped much in this case, unless they did something really stupid like leaving SSH open to the world. If it was just a site exploit, shame on them for having such a poor system (shame on them anyway for setting up a system that allows this to happen).
Ah. I was wondering why my profile didn't seem to ever get generated.
The authors of all kinds of extensions could do all kinds of trickery, when you install an extension you generally are trusting the author of that extension.
It depends on what the new stuff involves. If it's details on already-decided features, just tell them "well that's going to take some more hours than already estimated," and if it's for things that are out of scope (design is a common one), just say, "that'll be extra." Have a sense of the scope and don't be afraid to tell them that will cost more. You should be able to explain the scope as you understand it and why the request falls outside of it. If you treat the agreed-spec like a checklist, it makes it much easier to clarify the amount of work you'll be doing.
Yes, there will always be safe seats - I think any system where Wentworth wasn't liberal would be suspect.

Your vote is still important in the Senate (as Harradine showed). I'm from South Australia, and we have a independent senator and it's worked out much better than just having senators from the major parties. It means they end up representing the state instead of just voting on party lines.

Yeah, some of the concessions are annoying (especially with Harradine), but in a way that is more democratic than the normal vote-down-party-lines system.
Is there any conversation about expanding the scope/purpose of Google CDN? It seems like it could "benefit the web" beyond simply increasing cache hits ratios.

Most obviously, it could speed the web up (a core goal of Google, as I understand), by placing files on CDN - regardless of cache hits/misses. I mean, even if head.js isn't cached in a browser, I'm going to guess that, on average, it'll download faster from Google CDN than from my server.

It can also act as a sort of javascript repository and legitimize those libraries that deserve to be legitimized. I see a chicken and egg thing here, to be on Google CDN you need millions of hits, yet being on Google CDN might help you reach that goal.
If pretty much every home has a PC, if the schools teaching ICT have computers then how is this going to make people 'learn computers' better?
Would kids be more turned on by this than by, say, developing apps for android phones?
Yeah, I forgot about IDS in my reply further up. Web Application Firewalls or Intrusion Detection Systems might have saved this, or they might have just slowed the attackers down.

Also, re: blacklisting DDoS...hahaha, against a real botnet, good luck with that. I could take down RioRey in 30 seconds if I wanted to right now (google "slowloris.pl") by myself. Kind of hilarious seeing as they sell DDoS protection. All the DDoS prevention in the world can't stop crazy traffic with real-world-emulating usage patterns. It literally is indistinguishable from legitimate traffic if done correctly...just ask paypal.
Many people suggest that you can increase your job security by becoming an "irreplaceable" member of the team, by becoming a domain expert (the article's "go-to guy"). But my boss advised the opposite: if you cannot be replaced, then you are stuck. Management may prevent you from switching teams or being promoted to a different position if no one else can cover your irreplaceable knowledge. And you will be the one fighting all the fires on nights and weekend. Always ensure you have an "escape plan" by sharing your knowledge and grooming your possible successors.

And these days, there is no such thing as job security. If your employer cancels your team's product, you will still lose your "irreplaceable" job.
"Normally I'd just ignore or delete the app if it's bad"

I think the popups are counting on this. People who have used an app "n" times probably have a favourable view of it, which is why they are being prompted to rate it.
Any chair is fine, but make sure you have one of these small balls handy and sit on it often.
I'm pretty sure public-figure factors into paparrazi as well, not just libel/slander.
Maybe they were still on RHEL 4 ;)
It's terrible in the biggest way you can fuck up your UI: doing the opposite of what every user expects

Billions of people are all used to typing into masked (or unechoed) password fields, having done so in a wide range of UIs a shitload of times. Typing into a password field and seeing it reflected back feels like a slap in the face, the security context is irrelevant, it's just a massive discourtesy.

Your website is not going to be the very first thing the user has ever logged into. It is not your place to try to reinvent such fundamental things, changing this on your site is on the same level of jackass hubris as reversing the tab order or mouse coordinate system with javascript. All you're going to do is infuriate people.
Poppit | Free Pogo Games
He is spot on. Patents are meant to reward original innovator not the guys who buy them in bulk and profit out of it. And if you are not using those patents to do some innovative products then you've wasted them. Something should be done about patent trolls. Seriously!
It appears that it just hadn't finished acquiring the data for the profile. It grabbed a minor, outdated fork rather than the latest version. After some time, it's caught up to the more central fork and more believable percentages.
Yes DSLreports.com
One of the issues with a "forgot password" link is that it's visual clutter. Could only have the link show if the user has moused over the form area?
Reasons like....what, exactly? We're a hosting company and we use them on most servers. They're not perfect, but they prevent probably about 95% of the automated attacks that we see come through. If it's enough protection to make them move on to something easier, it's better than nothing. I agree with you that they're pretty easy to bypass, and shame on companies like Barracuda Networks who sell Supermicro servers with CentOS and mod_security and a proxy set up with a fancy web interface and call that a "web application firewall", but they ARE better than nothing.
Did you know Retina displays look better if you DON'T have perfect eyesight?
It sounds like you skimmed half the article and then formed an incomplete opinion based on what you think the article was probably about. Just read it! The author goes into great detail with good examples about what you're talking about.
Nice guide & nicely written!

This example snippet actually generates a Javascript error (at least, in IE9):

var foo = null;

// foo is null, but bar is undefined as it has not been declared
if (foo == null && bar == null) {
// still got in here
}

It will work if bar is declared but has value undefined, but not if bar is completely undeclared as shown.
Been a fan of this login (http://www.janrain.com/products/engage) service by janrain for some time. Use it where I can on apps.
The article has an example of saving $189 (about 50% of the published price of the ticket in question), and a post in this thread had an example of saving 500 euro on a transatlantic flight. So it's not always trivial amount of money.
It has a USB2.0 port so presumably you can hook up a hub with additional peripherals such as a wifi adapter.

The preliminary specs are listed on the website:

http://www.raspberrypi.org/