The subtle brilliance of Apple's product names - <AUTHOR> http://www.tuaw.com/2014/01/21/the-subtle-brilliance-of-apples-product-names/ <comment><USER2> This is quite possibly the craziest article I've read all day (and that's saying something as I've spent the better part of the morning on Reddit)

Let's start with the iPad. First iPad was called the iPad. Awesome start. The second, the iPad 2 ... even better. The third was not the iPad 3 but rather the iPad ... or the "all new ipad" aka 3rd generation. Starting to lose it a bit here but let's trust Apple. The iPad 4 was not the iPad 4 but actually the iPad ... with retina display/4th generation. Ok so maybe we're starting a new naming scheme? Good then. The 5th generation iPad is/was called the iPad 5th Gen... oh wait no it's called the iPad Air.

To top it off, the 3rd and 4th generations are discontinued, leaving the iPad 2 and the iPad Air as the only available models. Try explaining that to a non- Apple following family member and watch their face contort.

Now I did RTFA and was amazed at how the author could spin the atrocious naming scheme for the iPad into something that matched his hypothesis. Kudos to him for sticking with it.

This snippet taken directly from the article could almost prove my point

"The original iPad hit store shelves in April of 2010, soon followed by the iPad 2, which was released in March of 2011. When the third-generation iPad was released in March of 2012, Apple by and large decided to forgo the numeric naming scheme and instead advertised the device simply as the all-new iPad.

Instead of a scenario with the original iPad, the iPad 2 and iPad 3 floating around, Apple kicked numerical suffixes to the side and started anew. When the fourth-gen iPad was released, Apple, again, didn't refer to it as the iPad 4. Rather, it often began referring to it as the iPad with Retina display."

<comment><USER3> Lol. I agree the argument is a bit misleading. Apple products can be considered to be just as confusing.

Apple Product Names:

\- iPad \- iPad 2 \- iPad \- iPad /w Retina \- iPad Air

Which iPad do I buy!? I'm thinking, maybe, the iPad 2 because it must be the most current and advanced model :P

<comment><USER4> Admittedly, if you're the type of person who purely bases their purchasing decisions on the trailing number in a product name and whether it's bigger or smaller than that of an alternative, yes, this would be confusing. However, if you take other factors into account (price, weight, size, looks, maybe even - gasp - technical specifications) then it becomes a fair bit easier to determine which is the most current and advanced.

<comment><USER3> The article was about how great Apple names things and how bad everyone else does. My point is that Apple's names aren't some brilliant miracle of nomenclature like the article makes them out to be.

Obviously if I'm going to drop $500+ I'm going to kick the tires and take the product for a spin around the block to see how it feels (and maybe even read its specs).

I think what Apple _does_ do well, and which the article points out, is that they limit their offerings to a number I can count on one hand, the differences between each being obvious tradeoffs (e.g., performance vs. portability) which consumers can actually decide between. This empowers consumers, makes them feel good because they understand what's happening, and likely leads to increased sales.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Apple still has the exact same problem, they just hide it.

You may just buy an "iMac" from the store, but you could have purchased an A1224 (EMC 2210) or an A1224 (EMC 2266).

If anything, I prefer model numbers as the model name. This gives me easy strings to google, whereas with Apple products I have to type queries like "Late 2008 Macbook Pro" just to find the actual model number.

This is even worse with MBP's. The A1226 MBP had the same EMC code, but the order number denoted the 160GB vs the 120GB HDD. (MA895LL vs MA896LL)

</comment><comment><USER6> Idiocy of product naming goes even further when the only difference between two incomprehensible model names IS the name: two different products differ only by name for the sole purpose of ensuring that competing retailers don't carry the same product. Retailer BB doesn't want customers saying "your price for the SNY FB-1234 is higher than Fris' SNY FB-1234", so BB (being a big customer[1]) persuades SNY to produce the FB-1235, which nobody can prove is the very same device with a different SKU label (though BB, when pressed, vaguely promises is "superior").

[1] - And there's the problem: companies big enough they forget who their customer is. Dazzled by large-volume sales contracts, they focus on negotiation points and big numbers ... overlooking who is actually buying the product to _use_ , not just re-sell. I saw this at Kodak: when faced with the rise of digital photography, their resellers threatened to cancel contracts if Kodak pursued this new tech which would undermine their ulterior motives for selling film-based photography consumables (customers enter the store 3 times - to buy film, to drop off film, to pick up prints - and likely buy other stuff on each visit); they weren't interested in the product itself, only that it was "sticky" and increased sales of other stuff. Hence we get product names geared for large-warehouse retailers, products loaded with crapware paid for by advertising departments, and general ignoring of the people who actually _buy_ the stuff for what it is. Apple, however, knows that they must delight each _user_ , not just people signing for pallets of product.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's a fundamental difference between what they offer, though. Apple offers a very small variety of devices, generally one in each market they want to compete in (and all high quality, premium devices).

Lenovo competes in a lot more markets than Apple does, for example. Lenovo has its T series laptops, which are close to the Macbook Pro. They have the X series, which are close to the Macbook Air. Then they have the Yoga, which Apple does not have anything to compete with. It's a touchscreen computer that has a swiveling screen. They have the L series, which Apple used to have the Macbook to compete with but no longer have anything in that market. They have the W series with dual video cards and 17" screens, which again Apple has nothing to compete with. They have the Helix, where the screen detaches from the keyboard. Apple has nothing in this market.

The logical complaint is that Lenovo competes in too many markets. However, Lenovo is the biggest PC maker and post pretty nice profits, so that argument doesn't work either. Obviously Lenovo is doing something right, and people like their products (even the ones where Apple has nothing to compete with).

Other companies are not Apple. This is a good thing. There can only be so many Apples in the world, and consumers (for better or worse) demand more than what Apple is making.

<comment><USER8> My problem with Lenovo is that something like your one-paragraph summary is not on their website. I occasionally window shop for laptops, but I find it very confusing. If I drill down into one of the laptop series, what am I missing from the others? What's the price/feature difference between a top-of- the-line L series and the bottom-of-the-line T series?

(After a quick look, I see the (base price) cheapest T is more expensive than all the L, but the L allow up to 16GB RAM, while the T's cap at 8GB. ...and I've spent too much time window shopping yet again.)

<comment><USER7> That's a perfectly valid complaint, where I can come back with a hundred other arguments: if you're looking for 16GB of RAM, you're likely to be looking for something pretty specific and willing to shop around or install the RAM yourself. Average consumers likely aren't going to go directly to Lenovo's site to compare laptops, they'll go to Best Buy and find the prettiest one or the thinnest one or the cheapest one or whatever meets their simple needs, or they'll ask a friend for recommendations. I could go on with arguments like that, but I won't.

Sure, it's inexcusable to us. We wonder how consumers ever manage to buy a computer, then we're saddened when a consumer makes the "wrong" choice or are unhappy with their laptops. Yes, buying a laptop should be easier. But it works, and people still buy PCs. Lenovo is profitable, despite these issues.

People come to me and ask what computer they should buy, that their old laptop died after a year or the screen hinges broke. I point them to a $900 Lenovo that I know is reliable, a $800 Dell that I know has gotten good reviews, or even a $1000 Macbook which I know will last forever with no maintenance. And invariably, they all go out to Best Buy and pick up a $400 HP with pretty plastic and blue lights and complain when it breaks within the year.

So why don't PC companies make it easier to understand their models? In my opinion, it's because they don't have to. Simple as that. People will continue to buy their cheap trash and continue to complain about it because that's what people do. No one cares, the PC makers profit, and the cycle continues. Apple has not had as big of an impact on the PC market as we like to think they did. We will see the laptop market die completely before PC makers and consumers learn the lesson Apple is trying to teach them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reminds me of the condom vs Android phone names list [http://insideintercom.io/whats-in-a-name/](http://insideintercom.io/whats-in- a-name/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Apple DOES have more specific model names for their computers, they just aren't advertised with them.

Otherwise, I thought all the different flavors of products were to make "price match guarantees" impossible to actually use.

<comment><USER11> Pretty much. Best Buy hard drives, for example - I Google, NewEgg and Amazon search to price match, but those model numbers are only at Best Buy, unsurprisingly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's not just about product names, but overall Apple's product line is much more narrowly focused. Apple chooses to focus on a few well made product lines rather than a shotgun blast of different variants for every budget and market segment. The shotgun blast approach is quite intentional because consumer electronics makers sell more product when they crowd the retail shelves with too many choices, the consumer sees a plethora of choices and feels and obligation to try a few, at which time has been invested, so now you have to make that time investment worthwhile by making a purchase.

Instead of playing the shelf space crowding game out in bazaars, instaed Apple built its own quiet Zen retail space which is decidedly focused on only a few types of products and each has many upgrade options. Apple realized that they needed the undivided attention of retail consumers, pull them away from the noisy bazaar of the big box stores, pull the shoppers into their private Zen garden to contemplate only on how the latest iPad while fullfill their journey in life.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think a lot of thought goes into a name. If you've worked on a product for long enough, it becomes family. Giving that product a name is like naming your own child.

I appreciate the subtle and nuanced names Apple comes up with. Even the name "Apple" itself I think a lot about. It conjures up images of Newton, Adam and Eve, The wicked witch from snow white -- just to name a few. I appreciate how much the apple object itself has been such a subtle not-so-subtle member of our culture, yet often overlooked as being simple.

I think in this simplicity we are allowed to explore our own imaginations and make some things better than they could ever explicitly be. I'd say strive for basic, simple names and don't pass up the easily overlooked.

<comment><USER14> Newton, not Darwin.

<comment><USER13> Ah thanks! That's what I get for writing this the first thing in the morning before coffee. :|

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This great naming happened when Steve Jobs returned to Apple in the '90s. At that point, they had industry-typical incomprehensible names and product lines. Legend has it that Jobs' first act was to draw a quadrant on the board with personal/professional columns and desktop/portable rows. That was the iBook, MacBook Pro, iMac, and Mac Pro.

</comment><comment><USER16> Not directly comparable but Intel processor names and architecture are the worst. I mean who can remember all the differences?

Same goes for OS X version names. Unless you are a Mac Dev nobody can remember what is what. I feel windows got their version names right. Easy to remember.

<comment><USER17> I'm sorry, but how is the Windows naming scheme superior to OS X?

For the past decade+, OS X releases have been named after "big cats". Puma, Cheetah, Jaguar, etc. Consistent and distinct.

Windows on the other hand has had positively _no_ common scheme.

Windows 95, 98, Me, 2000, XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1.

Worse still, the above "public-facing versions" actually _mismatch_ their underlying versions. For example, Windows 7 is actually Windows Version 6.1.x, while Windows 8 is Windows Version 6.3.x.

I think the simple fact is that Windows releases have been substantially less frequent and have been met with much more fanfare and obviously have much wider adoption. But to say that the Windows version names are superior to that of Windows is laughable, imho.

<comment><USER18> IMO it really is a bit easier to understand the Windows lineup. Any idiot can figure out that 98 came after 95 and 7 came before 8. But I cannot ever remember which "big cat" came first in OSX, or even which one we are on now.

I personally don't really care, but I definitely agree that "Puma Cheetah Jaguar" is less friendly to the uninitiated than "Windows 7 Windows 8"

<comment><USER4> But Windows 95 came out 94 versions too early according to that naming scheme. The advantage of "big cat" or similar names is that they don't really impart any meaning, other than acting as a unique label.

<comment><USER19> > But Windows 95 came out 94 versions too early according to that naming > scheme.

91 versions too early, since Windows 95 followed Windows 3.x.

<comment><USER4> Fair point; I was working backwards from Windows 7, which obviously makes even less sense than this naming scheme :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Apples to oranges.

An iDevice is not at all in the same kind of market as a Sony Camcorder or PC Laptops.

The magic here is that Apple only builds devices that don't have to compete in a commoditized market where everything is the same except what it's specs are.

In those markets people have tens of options from each manufacturer, and it doesn't matter what they're called because you're looking at giant matrix of all of their technical specifications the whole time. You pick the one that does whatever you need it to for whatever your budget is, and it's not personal. It's not a subjective experience.

It's not the magic of their frikken product naming, it's the magic of their entire overarching strategy.

</comment><comment><USER21> I somewhat agree that it is simple with Apple, but how did people not appreciate the same differences with the Surface. Where there is the Surface and the Surface Pro, and it seemed there was constant complaints about people understanding the difference.

<comment><USER4> Because one ran Windows RT and one ran Windows 8, and that distinction was massive, despite the fact that the Surface/Surface Pro distinction wasn't that huge in terms of names or looks. And people expected "Windows RT" to be compatible with "Windows", since before then, pretty much all things that were marketed as "Windows" were compatible, to some extent. And no-one understood what "RT" meant.

Contrast this situation with Apple: all the mobile devices (from really small to pretty large) run iOS, and many of the Apps are cross-platform. The desktops run something completely different; contrast this back again with Microsoft's attempt to get the same thing running on desktops AND tablets, but - of course - only SOME tablets. That approach is a complete mind __ __.</comment></comment>


Cascaded Displays: Spatiotemporal Superresolution using Offset Pixel Layers - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XwaARRMbSA

<comment><AUTHOR> The research paper on it: [https://research.nvidia.com/publication/cascaded- displays-sp...](https://research.nvidia.com/publication/cascaded-displays- spatiotemporal-superresolution-using-offset-pixel-layers)</comment>


By November, Russian hackers could target voting machines - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/07/27/by-november-russian-hackers-could-target-voting-machines/?tid=a_inl <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12176165](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12176165)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm more worried about my own government manipulating the voting machines (closed source, black box).

<comment><USER4> Eh, I'm not. Our political parties (mainly the GOP) are far too successful manipulating the rules and regulations to make it so people who normally don't vote for them simply can't vote at all.</comment></comment>


C.S. Lewis's Greatest Fiction: Telling Kids They'd Like Turkish Delight (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/cs-lewis-greatest-fiction-convincing-american-kids-that-they-would-like-turkish-delight <comment><USER3> Proper Turkish delight is never coated with icing sugar, but always starch. I don't know where the author had it either, but it is nowhere near being "very, very sweet." Hell, I can't even imagine what an American may consider as being too sweet!

 _Source:_ Born and raised in Turkey.

<comment><USER4> The stuff you get in the UK is disgusting, it's a sugary jelly with a very strong artificial rose flavour. Sticky sweet goo.

I've had the proper stuff in Turkey and it's not sweet, it's not sticky or gooey. The flavour, at least of the stuff I had, was subtle.

<comment><USER5> I've had it in Greece, where tourist shops sell it under the name "Greek delight" because everybody hates and despises Turkey.

I recall it as being disgusting, but mostly because of the texture. I don't recall it being gummy or chewy at all -- it was soft and didn't put up resistance when you bit into it.

<comment><USER6> I am turkish, but never heard greek delight. Greek coffee, greek manti i heard it all, but not delight.

Gotta love the hate that shows up in the food names. Otherwise, i guess we like each other :)

<comment><USER7> I've never heard of "Greek delight" either. In Greece it's just called "lukum". Could be just how it is marketed to tourists at airport shops and such (since, why would they buy something labeled as "turkish delight" when they are in Greece? They'd rather buy something they consider local to experience).

For the coffee thing, it's not particularly any hate -- people just know this coffee for ages, from when they were kids, as the major domestic variety, so they call it like that. The same happens all over the Balkans, they call it X coffee in most countries X. That said, I think it's a general beverage that comes from the middle east / arab countries in general (Wikipedia says it originated in Yemen, existed in Egypt, etc before getting popular elsewhere), rather than something particularly Turkish, just that the Turkish branded it first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think it has a lot to do with context - I imagine candy with unusual flavors were probably not an everyday purchase 100 years ago, let alone something soft. That, plus the exotica of "Turkish" delight (since there was a lot of curiosity re: the Middle East back then) seems like it might have been why Lewis chose that. Roald Dahl has a great bit on going to buy candy as a kid in "Boy" ([http://dhunter.weebly.com/uploads/2/9/5/8/2958381/roald_dahl...](http://dhunter.weebly.com/uploads/2/9/5/8/2958381/roald_dahl_- _the_bicycle_and_the_sweet-shop_and_the_great_mouse_plot.pdf)) - which makes it sound much more of a magical experience than the jaded way I get m&ms at the corner store today.

An aside: not to be a snob, but the commonly found (especially in the UK) Fry's Turkish delight is kind of a bastardization, and I think the vacuum sealed airport kind is OK but doesn't really do it justice. If you happen to go to Istanbul at some point, drop by Haci Bekir, Divan, Cafer Erol, or one of the other myriad candy shops that have been at it for decades, sometimes centuries. "The Best" is very subjective, but I think all these will have good, fresh specimens. Or go to Pera Palace's cafe and have a Turkish coffee, which always comes with lokum on the side.

</comment><comment><USER9> The Turkish Delight in "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" was, for me, one of the first and clearest examples of how literature can project, even if unintentionally, a skewed view of a culture that bears little to no resemblance to reality.

I remember a while back having a debate over dinner (and eventually dessert) with friends as to which European country has the best variety and overall quality of desserts. It struck me as funny, and a bit sad, that an American who relied only on popular culture and mainstream media would think the answer to that question was easy: French! Of course!

Having had the opportunity to travel, work, and even live outside the US, I realize now just how wrong that view is! The variety of dessert foods in France pales in comparison to, say, Italy or Austria. Biased as I am, I argued that Turkish dessert cuisine was _far_ above the rest, but of course all most people think of when they think of Turkish desserts is...Turkish Delight! Thanks, C.S.!

...If you're interested, some items to Google to understand what I mean: Fıstıklı Dolama, Cevizli Baklava, Maraş Dondurma, Güllaç, Su Muhallebi (for the rose water lovers), Tavuk Göğsü (don't read the ingredients until you try it, it's great!), Kazandibi, and my personal favorite Kaymaklı Künefe!

<comment><USER10> Pastry, I would guess Austria since they have Wieners --what we call "Danishes". which is confusing since for us in the US "wieners" are "Austrian" sausages... but in Vienna, they are again called Danish pastries (Danisher plunder?).

<comment><USER9> And the strudel...oh, the strudel!

<comment><USER11> I've always wanted a strudel ever since I watched Inglorious Bastards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I still like Fry's Turkish Delight (made by Cadbury). The combination of thin chocolate covering to the weight and almost chewy mouthfeel of the rose- flavoured gel works well - it makes what chocolate there is more unctuous. The weight of it is part of what sells it for me, even though I expect it's mostly water captured in the gel.

Actual sugar-dusted Turkish Delight cubes are less impressive. I don't mind the rosewater flavour - that's what I associated with the product - but it's just thick jelly. There's no contrast. And since I despise nuts, I'll not be eating any with crunchy bits either.

<comment><USER13> Nothing Cadbury ever did was good for the world of sweets and chocolate. _Nothing._ I'm sorry your childhood was perverted by one of the first corporations to chew and regurgitate foreign cultural items for mass consumption.

For god's sake, never buy Cadbury's. The chocolate is terrible and often is not even chocolate. Cadbury's is the worst that England can offer, an example of how English taste was destroyed by the search for profit. If there is one silver lining in the whole Brexit thing, is that Cadbury's chocolate will once again be uncompetitive in Europe compared to continental offers.

<comment><USER14> >"The chocolate is terrible and often is not even chocolate."

What do you mean by this? What is your definition of chocolate?

<comment><USER15> It is a convenient and easy way for the reader to spot the level headed and reasonableness of the commenter.

If the chocolate was so terrible, then why is it the most popular chocolate in the UK? Why would Nestlé have bought Cadbury's?

OP is just projecting their own irrational hatred for Cadbury's.

<comment><USER13> The relationship between popularity and quality (or rather the lack of relationship) is well understood. Cadbury's defined the UK market at one point in history and then basically defined what "chocolate" is for UK people; but it's unanimously reviled in the rest of Europe. It's also the chocolate manufacturer keenest on adding "bad stuff" to its products, among European companies.

It's not about being a snob - Cadbury's is objectively low-quality stuff. It's also very popular in a specific market for historical reasons, which makes it a good commercial proposition. The two concepts are not exclusive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Uh, dude, this was written in the context of rationing and austerity.

A kid whose had his sugar rationed is going to consider Turkish delight in a totally different way than a kid in 2017

<comment><USER17> I agree, and so did the author of the article, who discusses it at some length.

<comment><USER18> I rather like it to be honest. Much like marzipan its not super sweet and having a variety is always a good thing.

Unrelated story: I tried a keto diet for 2 months, all I remember is at the end of that two months I ate a piece of plain old whole bread. Tasted sweeter than any candy I remember.

So yeah, maybe we eat too much sugar in america...

<comment><USER19> That's exactly how I felt after living in Asia for a year and returning to America to find all food tasting like candy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> In Canada we had the Big Turk chocolate bar by Nestle. It was a reasonably hard/chewy turkish delight covered in chocolate. Getting one of these as a child was akin to punishment. There were also the miniatures that old folk would put out, you'd expect to find caramel or nuts in the center, but nope, just horrors. Sometime in my late 20s I tried real turkish delight and enjoyed it. Sweet, but not unnecessarily so, with some interesting flavours, especially the floral ones. On one of my last visits to Canada I picked up a Big Turk again... and loved it.

</comment><comment><USER21> Haters gonna hate.

I love Turkish Delight.

My wife had to travel to Turkey for work and frequently brought it back. I really like it. Actually in general, Turkish food is one of my favorite cuisines worldwide. I also like a lot of Indian sweets that many Americans find to sweet. No accounting for taste.

<comment><USER22> If you could name some of those I would like to try them. As an american interacting with immigrants and their food I've had a problem where everything they call desert tastes like a dinner item to me due to the lack of sugar. I can't imagine what too sweet for Americans could even be considering I happily ate nutella or pure sugar by the spoonful as a child

<comment><USER23> I don't know the names of them, but a lot of Indian sweets are sugar-based (or milk- and sugar-based), with only a bit of flour and some mild spices/flavours added. It isn't necessarily that Indian sweets are "too sweet", it's that they taste like sugar ("Duh, that's why they're called sweets"). They often use much larger sugar crystals, which greatly reduces the sweetness (its a surface area thing) and use unrefined sugar or cane-juice to emphasize the other flavours of sugar. At the extreme, there's pea-sized sugar crystals (and sugar clusters held together by I-don't-know-what) that you get from Tamil Nadu temples: [https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dh7AQ9EPWJ4/VV-E-0p17LI/AAAAAAAAS...](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dh7AQ9EPWJ4/VV-E-0p17LI/AAAAAAAASkc/YoYP0N4PbKA/s640/shirdi%2Bsugar%2Bballs.gif)

Western sweets by comparison almost always focus on a different flavour like chocolate, vanilla, nuts, fruits, mint, cinnamon, maple, etc (think of all the flavours of ice cream). Even Nerds, which are pretty much pure sugar, have malic acid to mimic the sour taste of fruit. There are western foods like marshmallows that are pretty flavourless though.

<comment><USER24> The sugar stuff in that picture is called "sakhar phutane" in Marathi.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> When I was young, my parents described Turkish Delight as being basically Applets & Cotlets, and that sounds like an accurate description based on this article. Substitute rosewater for apple/apricot/whatever juice and you've got Turkish Delight. Am I missing something? At least in the northwestern US, Applets & Cotlets have been a thing for decades.

<comment><USER26> The origins of "Applets & Cotlets" is reported to be based on Turkish delight, with the company started by immigrants from Ottoman Empire, around early 1900s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> > _Edmund's willingness to put himself in the thrall of an evil witch in > exchange for Turkish Delight makes him not only morally but gastronomically > suspect._

I disagree: it was _enchanted_ Turkish Delight, which made the one eating it always craving for more, eventually eating himself to death if he'd get the chance.

</comment><comment><USER28> When I was a kid, there was a small flavored-popcorn-and-candy shop called Karmelkorn in our town. They made fresh Turkish Delight (along with popcorn, marzipan, and other candies) in the store, and it was always my favorite treat. They had the traditional rosewater along with some citrus flavors, and it was dusted in cornstarch, not sugar. It was just sweet enough, with a firm, but pleasingly squishy bite.

I've tried the Cadbury chocolate-covered version, and a few packaged versions as an adult, and none of them are as good as we used to get from the Karmelkorn shop.

</comment><comment><USER29> This may be my sugar-drenched American palette, but I don't remember turkish delight being _that_ sweet. The rosewater ones are really good though.

<comment><USER30> That's my memory as well, although I have only had Turkish delight in the samples they have at duty-free in the Istanbul airport. (I bought other things, so I guess the samples worked to get me into the store...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> When my kids were younger, I took to reading the the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to my kids at the dinner table. Just for fun, on some of those evenings we'd have Turkish Delight at the table. The whole experience was really nice overall.

But I have to say, many of the Turkish Delight flavor variations weren't very appealing: rosewater, mint, etc.

We tended to like the fruitier ones such as lemon and orange. (And there was also pistachio, which I recall liking.)

<comment><USER32> That's a brilliant idea! When my children are of an age I will surely try this out myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> When my wife's parents come visit us from Moldova they usually bring over a box of Turkish Delight; it's always unveiled with cries of "Turkish Delight for the young prince! Ha ha ha!"

</comment><comment><USER34> How can you _not_ like Turkish delight? I have some every time I see it --- which is rarely, granted.

<comment><USER35> textures nasty

<comment><USER36> Texture is like pre-industrial gummy bears. I like it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> In the U.S., the TJ Maxx and Marshall's liquidation department stores often carry it in the winter.

The most poignant comment from anyone to whom I have introduced it was "a flower shop just exploded in my mouth."

I am partial to the rose flavor, but I am reaching the age where I must watch my sugar intake, so it is a rare indulgence.

I'm surprised that (german grocer) Aldi doesn't carry it. They always have Turkish dried apricots, and a number of odd confections in the winter.

</comment><comment><USER38> I liked the Robot Chicken sketch on this where the nerd thinks Turkish Delight is some kind of sex act.

Caution: NSFW

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrplL8orvac](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrplL8orvac)

<comment><USER39> Interestingly enough, the song "Afternoon Delight" by Starlight Vocal Band was named after a dessert, despite the song itself being 3 minutes of sexual innuendo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Food from other countries that we haven't tried before generally tastes weird. As an Englishman I found U.S chocolate (e.g. Hershey) and Indian desserts (e.g. jalebi) unpalatable. No doubt there exist similar assessments of British sweets and puddings! I'm sheepish to admit that Fry's Turkish Delight is not a favourite, but I do enjoy Baklava (a _true_ delight from Turkey, imo).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFd0SP_ZiV8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFd0SP_ZiV8)

<comment><USER41> Hershey's _is_ unpalatable though! Worst chocolate in the US :(

<comment><USER42> Hershey's contains butyric acid, which is the smell of vomit.

My colleagues bring something sweet back whenever they travel, and it's usually gone by the end of the day. The Hershey's was the only thing still left a week later -- even the salty liquorice was eaten!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butyric_acid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butyric_acid)

<comment><USER43> Yes, Hershey's chocolate tastes bad, however seeing as all dairy contains butyric acid and thus all milk chocolate: maybe lets not go around trying to draw an equivalence between Hershey's and vomit.

<comment><USER41> While true, Hershey's contains _a lot more_. That's why it tastes stronger.

Why? We don't know, trade secret, but it's assumed the milk is lipolized somewhere in their process - as that would produce more of the acid.

<comment><USER44> An industrial chemist giving a public lecture on chocolate production at a UK University informed that the issue was that milk would go bad due to getting hot whilst collected and poor ongoing refrigeration. Thus Hershey was made with spoilt milk, and tasted as it does. When they were able to fix it there was opposition from the customers as they'd grown accustomed to the taste (of spoilt milk). They thus added the flavour back in artificially, and so we have it.

The lecturers handed out a samples bag at the start with all sorts of samples (including new unreleased confections) - they were like "and this is American chocolate" followed closely by wretching and heaving sounds from across the auditorium, we were not warned! Very memorable.

So that is why, according to a production chemist working in chocolate c.1996.

I dare say they don't publicise the origins of the flavour.

<comment><USER41> haha, well it's quite possible: stranger things have happened.

I doubt it's verifiable but it seems reasonable. It's possible that it's lipolyized to stop it from spoiling so fast (as it would) and that could start that kind of story.

They also used to add various oil-based emulsifiers that European chocolate doesn't - which is why it has a much more greasy texture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> As children, we very much enjoyed the 88 miniseries, and so my brother asked my mother once for 'Turkish Delight.' She supplied instead a product called 'Aplets and Cotlets,' which I understand _is_ Turkish Delight, as manufactured and consumed in North America. So we had a clear picture of what exactly Edmund was eating fairly early on.

</comment><comment><USER46> If you like Turkish Delight, you might want to try Gaz - a type of Persian Nougat - as well.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaz_(candy)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaz_\(candy\))

(Along with reading C.S. Lewis, we got to try and enjoy Turkish Delight and Gaz as kids - thanks to world-traveling grandparents.)

</comment><comment><USER47> I am not a fan of packaged Turkish delight. It seems to always be terrible.

When I was a child, my family would occasionally buy made-in-house Turkish delight from a small, family Turkish food store, which has long since closed, near where I lived, and it was different and better. It had a softer, gooey-er texture and more delicate, less sweet flavour. Rose is the most memorable flavour for me. I believe our original inspiration for buying it was, in fact, _The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe_.

My mother and I tried making some myself a few years ago to reproduce that memory, but the result was fairly sub-par, although still better than the packaged versions.

</comment><comment><USER44> I first encountered Turkish Delight through the Fry's product advertising - <USER2> sultry lady scantily dressed, as if from a harem, the product on a silver platter, a Bedouin looking fellow in flowing robes, he cuts the confection with a shining scimitar, "full of Eastern promise". Bleurgh, hated the stuff; enchanted by the advert though.

I can't recall but I don't think I made a connection between that and the book, as a child I just read it as him being offered sweets by a stranger (something we'd been warned of specifically).

</comment><comment><USER48> Back when I read the Narnia books at the age of 11 and 12, I remember reading of lands and people other than Narnia as being portrayed negatively. Back then I did not know, who the lands were being referred to, but the more I started reading into other cultures, the more I found a strong resonance with the cultures of Iran and Turkey.

Turkish delight was served by the evil witch and it turned Edmund unto a spell. In other books, I cannot remember which one, but there is the story of being lost and traveling through other lands and falling into the control of shahs and pashas.

The Narnia books were C.S. Lewis's attempt at turning thinking, particularly child thinking, against the cultures found in the Middle East.

I found a great article that connects a lot of the references and provides background behind C.S. Lewis. [https://prunusdulcis.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/baklava-in- bea...](https://prunusdulcis.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/baklava-in-beaversdam- the-turkishness-of-narnia/)

I am now perplexed with recommending or not recommending this book. It was a terrific joy for me, very much like Harry Potter is a joy for children these days.

Edit: corrected link.

<comment><USER49> You're currently being downvoted and I'm not sure why. However, I don't think you're quite right about Lewis' motives so that may be part of it.

Yes, he had a hidden agenda: the books are somewhat allegorical and intended to turn the child towards Christianity, not against a particular culture.

I'd assume that the negative portrayal arose out of the conventional thinking of his time far more than anything more sinister. Which is not to say that it's palatable now.

I too loved the books as a child, utterly failing to realise their subtext until much later in life and I too would hesitate about passing them on to a child unexplained.

<comment><USER50> > Yes, he had a hidden agenda: the books are somewhat allegorical and intended > to turn the child towards Christianity,

That's not really a _hidden_ agenda, and the books are more than _somewhat_ allegorical.

<comment><USER49> Well, hidden to the child I used to be. But you're right of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Well Lewis was a genius after all.

</comment><comment><USER52> Pistachio flavored lokum -- i.e. Turkish Delight -- made with chestnut honey is good stuff.

That said, after I had fun bargaining for some in the Spice Bazaar in Istanbul, I ate little of what I brought home. I still like chocolate better. :)

</comment><comment><USER53> Strangely, "lokum" is a Danish synonym for toilet, deriving from the Latin "locus" (place). No other language have this meaning for the word that I know of -- it makes this discussion rather amusing.

<comment><USER54> "Locus" is sometimes used in German, though it's considered fairly archaic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Has no one ever heard of Aplets and Cotlets? Shit sells like hotcakes, and it's literally just Turkish Delight with an Americanized name. This author has no idea what he's on about.

<comment><USER56> Never heard of it before this thread. Google tells me it's a Washington State thing. Is it available outside of Washington?

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> That is because 1 when cs lewis wrote those stories sweets where on ration and 2 Turkish delight at the time was a common charismas treat in the UK.

</comment><comment><USER58> Another obscure and interesting Atlasobscura article. Turkish Delight are great indeed and no, had not heard about them before Narnia either.

</comment><comment><USER59> As a child, I really liked the nut flavored Turkish delight. I never liked the regular rosewater flavor though.

</comment><comment><USER60> Turkish Delight is amazing, what are you talking about? Rose water?! It's amazing!!!

</comment><comment><USER61> Even after growing up and finding out what it really is, it still sounds pretty tasty.

</comment><comment><USER62> Israeli Turkish Delight is great. I always wash off the starch, though.

</comment><comment><USER63> I always thought it was made out of turkey.

<comment><USER63> Why the downvote? I seriously thought it was made out of turkey! It sounded weird and thus all the more magical. N.B. I was better at math than I was at reading. Plus, American. (Turkey the bird, far more well known than Turkey the country here).

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Heh... I knew this looked familiar. Per the note at the end of the article, it should probably be tagged "(2015)". Previous discussion under a slightly different title:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10686217](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10686217)

</comment><comment><USER41> Fry's Turkish Delight is nasty sugary gloop, and is nothing like the real stuff (what Lewis was referring to)

The real stuff is much more delicate, subtly sweet, and has a much nicer mouth feel - not to mention flavor.

Rose water is one of those flavors you either like or dislike a lot. However it comes in other flavours! Various nuts, citrus, etc. very tasty.

</comment><comment><USER65> There is certainly a xenophobic strain in the Chronicles of Narnia, most evident in what is otherwise my favorite book in the series, "The horse and his boy." I can only think that to Lewis's ear, the word "Turkish" had a certain brutality to it that contrasted well with "delight" and paired well with Edmund's perdition.

<comment><USER66> You're really shoving a square peg into a round hole there. It was an exotic and expensive treat.

<comment><USER65> Enh, maybe. But a few counterpoints: 1\. We can assume C.S. Lewis intended a lot. Don't confuse the ease of his style with careless choices. 2\. Have you read The Horse and his Boy? C.S. Lewis specifically talks crap about food that sounds Arab. Like almond chicken. 3\. Come on, "Turkish Delight"? It sounds like a kinky sexual position. "Turkish" has a strong association with fascism and brutality in--specifically upper-class--Western culture, (cf., Igby Goes Down, New York City Cops, Lawrence of Arabia).

<comment><USER67> He didn't invent the name.

<comment><USER65> He didn't invent most of the words he used.

It would seem to me that most writing consists of two parts: 1.) choosing words from an existing register and 2.) putting them in order.

But feel free to theorize that authors can only apply connotations to words that they invent.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Intel accused by workers of prioritizing chip output over safety - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-08/intel-accused-by-workers-of-prioritizing-chip-output-over-safety <comment><USER2> I can't imagine what higher ups in Intel are feeling about the current state of things especially since they are spending nearly 10x on R+D as AMD is($1.5b AMD[0] vs $13.1b Intel[1]). Of course AMD doesn't need to spend R+D money on the process they're using from TSMC although I'm sure some of the money they're handing over to them goes to R+D.

I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the board meeting room.

[0] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/267873/amds- expenditure-...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/267873/amds-expenditure- on-research-and-development-since-2001/)

[1] [https://www.investopedia.com/news/amazons-23b-rd-budget- sets...](https://www.investopedia.com/news/amazons-23b-rd-budget-sets-record- recode/)

<comment><USER3> I was recently putting together a desktop PC for some light gaming after being out of the market for a long time, and I couldn't believe how incremental Intel's progress has been in the CPU space over the past few years.

I know there's a non-trivial mobile performance penalty, but a fourth gen mid- range i5 I got on eBay for $30 has nearly the performance of the 8750H in last year's Dell XPS (my work laptop). Even when you get away from mobile, compare two i7 chips that were released _five years apart for basically the same price_ , and userbenchmark.com shows just a 21% overall performance difference in them:

[https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel- Core-i7-4790-vs-...](https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel- Core-i7-4790-vs-Intel-Core-i7-9700/2293vsm816180)

This windows shrinks even further when you look at what overclockers get out of the older chips with fancy cooling setups. But yeah, when else in the history of personal computing has five years of progress yielded such small gains?

I know eventually I'll upgrade my system for real, probably to something AM4-based, but when I saw these numbers, it became a no brainer to just bump up the CPU on an old LGA1150 system I had lying around rather than spend a bunch of money on an all-new motherboard, new RAM, etc.

<comment><USER4> Five years? Make that ten; the progress since Sandy Bridge has been incredibly slow. If you take a Sandy Bridge i5 or i7 CPU and turn off the mitigations, it's still within spitting distance of the current i5/i7 models. The only reason I changed out my old i5-2500K two years ago was that the motherboard had finally failed. It was holding up fine with any software I was running, including modern games from that time such as Doom 2016.

Intel really has got to be in an internal panic. The last time AMD pushed Intel this hard, Intel went to extraordinary tactics to push AMD out of the market. I wouldn't be surprised if pushing their workers well beyond safety limits was in the current playbook.

<comment><USER3> That's a good point; past a certain point I think it's less about the single threaded performance and more about interconnect constraints— slower RAM speeds, slower PCIe lanes, slower SATA, USB, etc.

There's a funny series of LTT videos from this past fall where they bring up a 2008 Skulltrail mobo and try running some modern games on it, with and without overclocking:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNo7qoLRtkQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNo7qoLRtkQ)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl7Dx895ND4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl7Dx895ND4)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I worked at Intel in a fab for 2 years. The culture is extremely safety conscious, if not safety obsessed. The moto is Safety, Quality, Output, in that order. In my experience, Intel strives to create an environment in which workers are safer at work than at home.

<comment><USER6> Speaking as someone who knows nothing about fab: What are the most dangerous aspects of the job? What's the most likely injuries to happen doing x?

<comment><USER7> I've done lithography in research settings. To me, the chemistry is the scariest.

High voltages, high-power optics, vacuum systems, etc, all exist, too, but the risks associated with chemistry/process-gas accidents are perhaps the greatest.

As a teaser, HF is used throughout the industry -- it is spooky stuff (and _awesome_ at getting things done).

<comment><USER8> Seconded. TMAH is particularly scary, though less common than HF. If enough splashes on your skin, you die. Highly toxic stuff.

<comment><USER9> Off topic, but that reminded me of some horror stories from my chemistry days:

Dimethylmercury able to kill through 2 drops absorbed through a latex glove: [https://www.acsh.org/news/2016/06/06/two-drops-of-death- dime...](https://www.acsh.org/news/2016/06/06/two-drops-of-death- dimethylmercury)

And of course the amazing series of 'things I won't work with'. E.g.: [https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2014/10/10/th...](https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2014/10/10/things_i_wont_work_with_peroxide_peroxides)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have firsthand experience with this, albeit not at Intel. Several known positive cases have appeared Samsung's fab in Austin. Samsung mandates they not return and quarantine at home.

Before any of that, I'd already decided back in early March—when it became clear that things were more serious than people had been taking everything—that I'd stick around until we either temporarily shut down or when the reported cases start getting too close for comfort.

A few weeks ago I sat down in the morning to find another company-wide email sent out at 9:00PM the night before (don't know why they hadn't also forwarded a copy of this one to my personal inbox that I could access from home, as with the ones before). In this case, symptoms were reported 4 days before, and now with confirmation having tested positive. This time it was on my floor, not far from where I sit in our open office. I sent an email that I was leaving and would not be returning for at least two weeks and pending further info about any spread. That was a Friday. I got fired over email (although not in those terms) at the end of the day the following Monday:

 _Although you did not resign failure to report to your scheduled shift(s) has been taken as a voluntary resignation. We have gone ahead and ended your assignment for you. Please do not report back to the SAS site as your assingment here is done._

This was all within the last two weeks. At the time, our group had been doing a piss poor job of observing both company and local rules about distancing. It had been less than a week since people around me had finally gotten moved to different workstations. It wasn't an availability problem, because (a) half the office was already a ghost town due to select folks ordered to work from home, and (b) the rest of the company had been been working spread out for something like a month already—but not our group.

At the beginning of April, we were supposed to get a scheduled payout for earned PTO, but we received an email that due to COVID they were actually going to _delay_ the payout. I had to jump through a lot of hoops alternately taking on extra days that I wasn't ordinarily scheduled and taking off other days to burn the PTO to give the effect of getting the payout for the hours I'd accrued.

<comment><USER11> The issue here is you could probably have not lost your job if you had made this a request to HR or your manager instead of a blanket email.

There is a big difference between unilaterally announcing that you won't be coming to work and having your request refused and getting fired for leaving anyway.

<comment><USER12> This seems correct.

It looks like the employer interpreted the message as a type of ultimatum. In the face of such an ultimatum, they basically have no choice but to treat it as a resignation.

The ultimatum is a very dangerous negotiating tactic, and generally harmful to long-term relationships. As an example, I recommend against posing an ultimatum to a spouse or partner.

<comment><USER13> No, they also have the choice to implement proper safety measures. You sound as if you believe the employer is entitled to abuse every bit of power they have over an employee.

Edit: speaking of "ultimatums," what do you call a strike? Is it only an "ultimatum" (thus unacceptable) when one person does it, but not when a large group does it?

<comment><USER12> The problem is not the legitimacy of the issue; the problem is the approach. Grandparent comment said: "I sent an email that I was leaving and would not be returning for at least two weeks and pending further info about any spread."

If they had said that they have concerns about safety, and requested an urgent (possibly remote) discussion, the employer would have more options. By telling the employer that they were leaving immediately, and not coming back until they felt something had changed, they force an immediate decision of either treating it as a resignation, or accepting and condoning unilateral actions by employees.

Strikes are definitely ultimatums, though they generally have clearer objectives, and are usually preceded by a series of discussions. Strikes are not conducive to good relationships.

<comment><USER14> I think you missed the part where the employee was notified of a coronavirus case on their floor _by an email they could only read at work_.

Read this again, and comprehend that the HR unilaterally and knowingly subjected them to risk of contacting the virus.

Subsequent self-quarantine at home benefits the company as it reduces the chances of spread. It was the right thing to do, and there's not much to negotiate here given the initial screw-up.

<comment><USER12> You are looking at this issue from a moral/ethical lens, while I am looking at it from a game theory perspective.

I am not making a judgement as to who is at fault for the situation. I am only stating that the decisive move was the grandparent's e-mail, which left the employer only one rational option (that I know of).

<comment><USER13> You seem to be making an argument for unionization in the tech industry, then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> All in all, COVID19 is just about the one thing that's _not_ a safety concern in a chip-fabbing cleanroom. Hydrofluoric acid is somewhat harder to deal with though, so I'm not at all sure that 'deprioritizing' workplace safety is the right approach.

<comment><USER16> We're not talking about the folks in bunny suits here, obviously.

<comment><USER17> Idle concern -- what about the _inside_ of those bunny suits? Are they sanitized between uses? As I understand it, folks wear 'em to keep the cleanroom clean, not so much to keep them safe from eachother's germs

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Since reading about Paul O'Neill's turnaround of ALCOA, I've been convinced that worker safety (or well-being for less life-and-death office environments) should be the one OKR/KPR/whatever-you-want-to-call-it every company is focused on. Especially for manufacturing companies. As Charles Duhigg notes in writing about O'Neill's leadership, it's a focus that can improve communication and performance all around:

[http://txti.es/duhigg-keystone-habits](http://txti.es/duhigg-keystone-habits)

Instead, it feels like most corporations are managed by the people who run Royco in Succession:

[https://youtu.be/UcTmBfA7Qik?t=48](https://youtu.be/UcTmBfA7Qik?t=48)

<comment><USER19> I heard about that story, albeit through "The Power of Habit" by Duhigg, which is probably what your referencing. My reservation about just saying "safety is the top priority" is that it can quickly turn into management cargo culting if someone doesn't actually understand what changes it made at ALCOA and why it worked.

Its the same as a manager who hears that being interested in the well being of his employees can get them to work harder so he starts pretending to be interested in his employees, not because he cares but because he wants performance improvements. It ends up being insincere, creepy and off putting instead.

If the brass of a company try and emphasize safety to try and get the benefits ALCOA got, they won't pull it off, not because safety isn't important but because they didn't really care about safety in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> How has demand for chips looked over the past few months? Has it been enough to potentially necessitate from a business perspective keeping output high? I can imagine arguments for higher or lower demand that seem perfectly reasonable (low because consumer segment slowdown, high because surge in cloud service use increasing failures/expansion demand or business laptops for WFH) and I'm wondering what the dominant force is.

<comment><USER21> Personally demand for chips is not the measure I'd want them to use.

Stabilizing employee mindset is the measure they should care about.

Hard to ship chips if they feel the company doesn't care about their demand to stay alive and they all quit. AMD wouldn't mind a bunch of chip experts being suddenly available.

Ogling market economics first and foremost is really not the priority for agency these days.

If demand falls such that we're just generating chips for science and industry, so be it.

No one owes tech nerds tech to fetishize.

<comment><USER20> Oh I completely agree that it's a bad measure. I'm not looking for a _justification_ , I'm curious for an _explanation_ of why management might be incentivized to act this way. If theres a business case for it it's fairly easy to rationalize as a manager why you have a moral responsibility to put employees at risk (the economy is running in WFH powered by our CPUs! They need us!). Especially if they're in for a nice bonus if sales spike in higher demand. I'm more curious if there's even a business case to be made which might explain (but not necessarily justify) reckless behavior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Even safety conscious employers have a hard time reacting to new and different safety related areas.

For instance, see the USCSB's video on the BP Texas City refinery explosion. The refinery operator had a great record for safety, but it was measuring individual worker safety, ie PPE and recordable injuries. It was not measuring Process safety.

[https://www.csb.gov/bp-america-refinery-explosion/](https://www.csb.gov/bp- america-refinery-explosion/)

\---

Edit: I should probably make clear that I don't think BP actually had a great safety record. I think they measured and cared about a certain class of safety, but not another class of safety, and that's the point I was trying to make.

</comment><comment><USER23> The whole notion of priorities in safety vs. revenue never works for me. (And you can s/safety/security/ or s/safety/privacy/.)

In a very limited scope, it could work. If a team has a sprint or something, they can work on the safety tasks first.

But that's not really how a company operates. You have a whole mess of tradeoffs and often the costs and benefits can't be clearly quantified.

What they do is work out an operational model, some people work exclusively on examining safety, and they put out guidelines to management and employees who then have to practice safety themselves. Generally, you only know if it works after the fact by examining the results, maybe even tally up the costs of lawsuits or bad PR.

But it's meaningless to say "safety is job #1" because you're doing all the jobs 2 and on or you're going out of business. And that means _all_ of them; no one says "taking out the trash is job #1" or "sending out W2s is job #1" but a company grinds to a halt pretty quickly if they aren't done.

</comment><comment><USER24> Not the location in the article but my roommate is a technician for one the fab plants in Hillsboro and he is still required to go to in-person classes alongside his main role despite the non-essential lockdown order in Oregon.

</comment><comment><USER25> The fab is probably the safest public place on earth right now.

</comment><comment><USER26> Let's be specific: _managers_ prioritized chip output over safety. The call came from the top -- the board of directors.

<comment><USER27> This seems redundant. Who else would be?

<comment><USER12> You might be surprised to see how many times manufacturing/warehouse employees ignore safety protocols for reasons of aesthetic/fashion, comfort, or convenience. Many managers have to discipline employees for disregarding precautions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Doc-Saintly As for the original topic, it's patently wrong. It sounds like an individual case being blown out of proportion or a disgruntled employee trying to leave a mark. I can speak from experience that their safety standards are above and beyond regulation, and sometimes reason.

</comment><comment><USER28> [https://archive.md/8cE95](https://archive.md/8cE95)

</comment><comment><USER29> Intel should have placed that fab here in Sweden. What this accusation is saying is the norm here.

</comment><comment><USER30> At first, I thought the headline meant chip designers were pressured to create chips that had huge performance at the risk of catching fire.

<comment> the-dude They have an opcode for this : [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire_(computing...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire_\(computing\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> So this is how it's going to be right? Endless lawsuits based on what really??

</comment><comment><USER32> If you are a healthy adult, COVID-19 is barely more lethal than the Flu, so what is the concern here?

<comment><USER33> Many healthy adults have parents and non-healthy friends.

That's the pretty much entire reason for pandemic-mitigating measures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Are workers rights a thing in the USA? Seems like it's not.

<comment><USER35> The serious answer is: yes, but it requires courts, which are slow.

I'm curious how this works in other countries; if a company lets someone go inappropriately, is there faster recourse than the courts? Can you go to the police and have them escort you back in, or what?

<comment><USER36> This is what the NZ government says: [https://www.govt.nz/browse/work/workers- rights/your-options-...](https://www.govt.nz/browse/work/workers-rights/your- options-when-you-have-a-problem-at-work/)

If you need to get legal, it says "It can take a few weeks or a few months for an application to be processed, heard, and determined by a member. The length of the process will depend on things such as urgency of the application, whether parties have tried to resolve their problem at mediation, the availability of parties, representatives and the complexity of the case."

<comment><USER35> That does not sound dissimilar to the situation in the US. (But it's hard to know without having been involved in a labor dispute in either country.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This posting made I am buying AMD CPU the next time.

<comment><USER38> AMD's superior CPUs is why you should be buying them

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Oh wow, who would have thought weak labor protection laws and no unions would end up reproducing exactly the same conditions that lead to labor protection laws and unions?

I'm shocked.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle)

<comment><USER39> "your boos mean nothing to me, I've seen what makes you cheer"</comment></comment>