Ask HN: Is TMZ more "honorable" than TechCrunch? - <AUTHOR>

Everyone read TechCrunch's reasons for publishing stolen internal Twitter documents. Now, there's a "stolen" video of ESPN's Erin Andrews that's being shopped around to places like TMZ. And since I happen to watch TMZ, I've noticed Harvey Levin mention over the last couple of days that he won't air any of the footage b/c it's a blatant invasion of privacy.<p>It goes without saying that there's a difference b/w internal documents and a nude video, but both are stolen and both are "newsworthy" (in a sense that readers want to read/watch them). I just wonder where TC and others draw the line. In fact, maybe TMZ should've gone one step further and not even mention the video exists in the first place. <comment><USER2> Is $NOUN more $POSITIVE_ADJECTIVE than TechCrunch? Probably.

</comment><comment><USER3> One of the big arguments for TC releasing the documents (or parts thereof) was that it would happen anyway.

Are there any documented instances of that ?

Is it ok to do something because otherwise somebody else would do it instead ?

Mentioning something exists is not the same as getting tons of mileage out of stolen property.

Btw, the malware writers will have a field day with the search terms 'erin andrews video'.</comment>


Intel says Clover Trail will not work with Linux - <AUTHOR> http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2205462/idf-intel-says-clover-trail-will-not-work-with-linux <comment><USER2> Hasn't this been known for about 6 months now? Clover Trail isn't an Intel part, it's a PowerVR core licensed from Imagination. Intel doesn't have the rights to release the specs on PowerVR and Imagination has never wanted an open source implementation, even if Intel writes it.

<comment><USER3> > Clover Trail isn't an Intel part

I think what you mean to say is that the GPU is licensed IP. The design of the CPU and production of the SoC is being done by Intel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >However Intel said Clover Trail "is a Windows 8 chip" and that "the chip cannot run Linux".

This will merely be seen as a challenge by the Linux community.

Edit: Also it's not that it won't run, it simply won't be supported. Which shouldn't be new to any Linux user by now.

</comment><comment><USER5> Couple of ways to take this:

1) Microsoft has exerted leverage over Intel and got them to go down the preferred supplier route. Possible, and not overly surprising.

2) Intel is trying to carve a niche out and thinks its best bet is with the old hound.

3) The boring technical reason that there's loads of implementation and they can't be bothered making the changes to the Linux packages.

It sounds like it'll run but with none of the fancy features to shut down cores under low use, but Linux developers have been adding missing functionality for years so it's not exactly unusual.

<comment><USER6> Option 3 has no basis since Intel doesn't need to write a single line of code to get their new chip supported under Linux, they just need to release the specs. Which brings us to:

4) Just like many graphics chips, this processor does some black magic to boost performance and Intel doesn't want to give any clues to competitors by releasing specs and/or open drivers.

<comment><USER7> Intel don't own the design of the GPU, they can't release the specs.

This is a non-story, Atom versions following this one will be able to run Linux fine.

<comment><USER8> Interesting, do you know who the owner of the specs is?

<comment><USER9> Likely Imagination Technologies (PowerVR <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerVR>)

Ref: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_%28system_on_chip%29>

See also [http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTA1N...](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTA1NDU) which talks about Intel's plans to drop PowerVR and go back to an internal (Intel) design:

 _The future SoC that's expected to introduce the new graphics is "Silvermont" and expected availability by early 2013. Before the exciting Silvermont there is expected to be the "Clover Trail" Atoms released this calendar year, but it doesn't sound like that SoC will bear new graphics capabilities. I hope to have some more details soon and am very excited to see Intel do away with the PowerVR graphics and its horrific driver support._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's not that the chip won't run linux. It's that the device it comes shipped in will be UEFI locked down such as to make it impossible to install anything...

Until it's jailbroken and you install whatever on it you like.

<comment><USER11> Why do people keep saying this? The x86 devices are _required_ to allow loading other OS.

<comment><USER12> You are correct for laptops (for now, anyway). For tablet form-factor devices, UEFI will prevent other OSs from being installed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This will be interesting to watch. There is a whole generation of users that do not use Windows as their primary OS. The brand power that it once had is disappearing. Users can now pick between Linux and iOS for most of their computing needs. The failure of Windows Phone to compete on that market shows that there is a significant amount of mindshare being lost. My guess is that MS is trying to lock people into using the OS again, but this time it won't happen. There are too many options right now. Users are so much more educated than before. Every kid out there can root their Android and upload a custom ROM. When they see their smartphone (or pocket PC) being locked down, they will just get something that doesnt lock them. All of that and Apples marketing power. MS lacks it.

<comment><USER14> A better way of putting it is that there is a generation of users that do not differentiate between hardware and software. They just know devices.

And if you are only supplying one half of the device, you are in most respects going have trouble sustaining your business in 5-10 years time because the market for just the OS or just the hardware will be tiny or have tiny margins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well... I'm not going to buy anything with that stupid chip then. Period.

<comment><USER16> I was actually thinking about switching to AMD. Not that it'd make any difference...

<comment><USER17> For what it's worth, I'm incredibly satisfied with my AMD FX-6200.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _Intel's decision to support only Windows 8 on Clover Trail might work for laptops but seems very risky for tablets, where x86 tablets running Windows 8 look to be priced close to Apple's Ipad and significantly higher than Google's Nexus 7 and Amazon's Kindle Fire HD._

Uhm, they surely meant the other way around?

Practically no one have ever switched OS on a tablet/phone whereas on a laptop you'd certainly expect to be able to run linux.

And what's the point of talking about the price? An x86 windows tablet is the only tablet that is able to run real applications. For those that want that the price is more than justified. Those that don't want that should probably buy an arm + windows RT tablet (which is probably more competitive to the reduced feature set of smartphone-based devices such as android and iOS).

<comment><USER19> _"on a laptop you'd certainly expect to be able to run linux._ "

The fraction of end users to whom it would occur to consider Linux on their laptop is tiny. The fraction of consumers who would consider it is even smaller. The fraction of consumers who would expect their new laptop to support Linux is negligible. The expectations of the HN community are atypicle.

<comment><USER18> And regardless, you can, rightly, expect a laptop to be able to run linux (albeit you can't expect it to be quirk-free).

You can run linux and other operating systems on many phones and tablets as well. But the fraction of those that consider that is waay smaller than for a laptop (and I doubt anyone would expect it from a typical phone/tablet). As well as the result being barely usable and more of a proof of concept in the very most of the cases.

<comment><USER19> One should no more expect to be able to run Linux on their laptop than OSX.

<comment><USER20> The concept of _"should"_ is bizarre and irrelevant. The reality of the situation is that right now, you _can_.

<comment><USER19> To clarify: Based on current trends regarding hardware, e.g. the "post PC era", and software, e.g. "walled gardens"; an expectation that in the future one will be able to run the OS of their choice on common computing devices with the sanction of the hardware manufacturer increasingly looks less reasonable.

Yes, it is possible to boot Linux on an iPad. And it is also likely that one will be able to likewise boot Linux on devices using the new Intel parts.

But this does not make for a reasonable expectation that end users (let alone general consumers) will have a viable practical alternative to do so in the future. In general the trends are in the other direction, particularly in regards to hardware being configured as general computing devices rather than having systems more firmly embedded.

A few years ago, Napster, made it look as if music would be freely distributable. A few years before that, there was no advertising on the internet. Earlier, commercial software was shareable among people who did not purchase it. At one time computers filled large rooms.

Change happens.

<comment><USER20> The trick is that there are two different sorts of "expect".

Suppose a parent finds their teenage kid watching TV instead of studying for an exam and says, _"I expect you to do well on that exam tomorrow!"_. Do they expect their child to do well? Yes. Do they _expect_ their child to do well? No, they would be foolish to.

At the present, both types of "expect" apply to this discussion. Some companies seem intent on eliminating one of those expectations, but they cannot do anything about the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I presume this is some sort of deal to keep Android off it, as manufacturers will want supported chips.

</comment><comment><USER22> This takes the cake as the best example of trolling linux devs per <http://bash.org/?152037>

<comment><USER23> I'm a bit scared that I knew which quote that was before I clicked it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> In other words, the same "Windows 8 Mobile will come with a locked EFI Secure Boot" we've known about. The OS is signed and verified by the bootloader.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Int...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface#Secure_boot)

<comment><USER25> Where do you get that from?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> _"Unix BSD based IOS"_

When I read this, I realized that the author was supporting a preconceived conclusion. Apple uses ARM, in no small part because they bought a fan not long ago; and, of course, iOS is not out in the wild to be installed on hardware from OEM's such as Acer or HP.

<comment><USER26> "The company was founded as Advanced RISC Machines, ARM, a joint venture between Acorn Computers, Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) and VLSI Technology."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Holdings>

Apple have been involved with ARM since the start, back in 1990.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Minecraft has shown that good games don't need the latest and greatest video to be fun and popular.

</comment><comment><USER28> >that Clover Trail won't run Linux is not quite true - after all it is an x86 instruction set

Just need implementing, they've not locked Linux out, it's just unlikely device manufacturers are going to invest the time to implement it.

</comment><comment><USER29> An act of God will not help MS in the mobile or tablet market.

</comment><comment><USER30> Sounds like a perfect opportunity for AMD.

</comment><comment><USER31> Challenge accepted. ;)

</comment><comment><USER32> Whelp, that certainly makes knowing which chip to buy a lot easier.

</comment><comment><USER33> Where would Intel be without Microsoft today??? They need windows to continue to succeed. ARM chips are the enemy of Intel, thus IOS and Android/linux are the enemy of Intel.

<comment><USER34> For the left hand, maybe.

Meanwhile, the right hand is busy porting Jelly Bean to their x86/Android phones: [http://www.zdnet.com/intel-ports-android-jelly-bean- to-x86-p...](http://www.zdnet.com/intel-ports-android-jelly-bean- to-x86-phones-but-no-rollout-date-set-7000004200/)

<comment><USER33> This will never fly... That article you linked says that the Intel based phones will only run 90% of android apps. Who would choose one of these phones over an arm based one? It would take a lot of incentive for someone choosing between them. The cost would have to be significantly cheaper or the phone significantly better. I see a non-starter here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> In other news: AMD's Hondo will only support Windows 8 at launch.

[http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2205758/amds- hondo-...](http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2205758/amds-hondo-will- only-support-windows-8-at- launch?utm_source=Outbrain&utm_medium=Cpc&utm_campaign=Inquirer%252BReferral&WT.mc_is=977=obinsource)</comment>


Flickable.js - Zepto plugin for touch gestures - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tomlongo/Flickable.js

<comment><AUTHOR> Was pretty impressed by the performance of this plugin on iOS 5. Works really well in Safari and takes away the pain of writing all gesture code yourself.

Not to be confused with this unrelated plugin that was featured on HN seven months ago: <https://github.com/arnemart/Flickable></comment>


Lungo - HTML5 Cross-Device Framework - <AUTHOR> http://lungo.tapquo.com

<comment><AUTHOR> There's an iframe on the main page with a demo, but there's no link to it so pulling it up on mobile is sort of a pain in the ass.

Here's the demo:

[http://lungo.tapquo.com/example/index.html](http://lungo.tapquo.com/example/index.html)</comment>


Transfer Style but Not Color - <AUTHOR> http://blog.deepart.io/2016/06/04/color-independent-style-transfer/ <comment><USER2> I played with style transfer on a bunch of paintings from the Wikipedia featured paintings[0]. The result when it works well is absolutely fantastic but when it doesn't, it basically just applies noise. Even 'obnoxious' styles like Van Gogh need to be cherry picked for the most 'featureful' flavor images.

That being said, I am pretty hyped to get my 1080 to be able process more than 1 image an hour at 720p. Also, take a look at the featured paintings, they're all public domain and absolutely gorgeous.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_pictures/Ar...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_pictures/Artwork/Paintings)

</comment><comment><USER3> I just re-implemented something similar for Dreamscope that gets very similar results. If you want to do it yourself, simply convert the original and style image to HSV and create a third image like this:

        [H, S, V] = RGB2HSV(original)
        [H_s, S_s, V_s] = RGB2HSV(style)
        result = HSV2RGB([H, S, V_s])

You can play with the algorithm on Dreamscope, just click the "Original Color" star before processing!

[https://dreamscopeapp.com](https://dreamscopeapp.com)

<comment><USER4> Dude, you're fast :)

Our method is a little bit more involved than that, though. We're preparing a short writeup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there a github repository for this variant? Or a paper?

[Edit: found an attempt here: [https://github.com/pavelgonchar/color- independent-style-tran...](https://github.com/pavelgonchar/color-independent- style-transfer)]

</comment><comment><USER6> Can we do similar things with music?

<comment><USER7> This works for images because images can be decomposed into different scales: in classical image processing into image pyramids, and in this case using deep convolutional neural networks which capture progressively more complex features and larger scales. So you decompose an image, keeping the high level features fixed, and modify the image (using gradient ascent) to make the low level features match those from a sample of the artistic style.

So to use the same algorithm for music you would have to decompose audio in a similar meaningful way. There has also been a lot of success in speech recognition with CNNs lately, but I don't know what the situation is with modelling music.

<comment><USER6> > So to use the same algorithm for music you would have to decompose audio in > a similar meaningful way.

Well, in music, scaling could be compared to increasing/decreasing frequency. We all know that a song which is transposed by e.g. an octave still sounds the same (albeit lower/higher). So I think the concept translates well from images.

<comment><USER7> That doesn't sound like what I meant. The point of image pyramids is that they separate fine details (e.g. style) from coarse details (form). A note transposed down an octave is still exactly the same type of object; it's not more abstract so frequency is not an analog to scale in images.

What you want is a progression of abstractions, e.g. note, chord, melody... but one where 1) each is largely orthogonal so that they can be separated and recombined with a lot of flexibility (definitely not true of notes and melodies) 2) it be computed straightforwardly, preferably by a differentiable function 3) can separate style and form.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Real People Are Turning Their Accounts into Bots on Instagram - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexkantrowitz/people-are-turning-their-accounts-into-bots-on-instagram <comment><USER2> previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16946900](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16946900)

</comment><comment><USER3> Instagram is aware of this, and I'd be surprised if they found out through BuzzFeed News that this was happening.

So maybe this isn't a bad thing for Instagram?

<comment><USER4> There is one for twitter which is [https://autotweeter.in](https://autotweeter.in) which claims to tweet and upload fotos incessantly by reading it from an excel sheet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> My impression is that SV and ycombinator types are completely unwilling, or ambivalent to this problem, and mainly because these grey market like-bots only make their platforms look more popular, and give content creators a pay- to-win process towards what appears as social media success.

They gloss over points like this: "The risk of realizing that the internet is massively manipulated is that the cognitive overhead to process even the most basic interactions increases, suspicion increases, polarization potentially increases."

<comment><USER6> > or ambivalent to this problem

It's not a 'problem' for Instagram if it results in increased revenues from the increase engagement, even if it is from falsely inflated follower numbers, posts, comments, activity etc.

> In other words, Fuelgram creates fake engagement from real Instagram > accounts. And it's quite effective. Fuelgram makes posts appear more popular > than they are, tricking Instagram's algorithm into spreading them further, > sometimes right into the service's high-profile Explore tab.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> At first I figured Instagram would just rate-limit likes/comments via the API, but these people are handing over their account & password to services like Fuelgram....

Although I don't think that's a bad idea in principle - everyone has a set amount of likes & comments they can do per day. It'd make the value of a "like" much higher (a la Tinder).

<comment><USER8> Even with rate limits, you know there will be people that do thousands of interactions a day on instagram - more than enough for bots to work with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just in case anyone doubts this story, I have built 6 of these Instagram engagement bots within last month that operate on telegram and are used to monitor engagement of all the people who signed up.

</comment><comment><USER10> 12,000USD..... Holy sh*t that is good money for just having a RPie running!

<comment><USER11> I'll sell you mine for $1000. OK?

<comment><USER12> the code is worth money, not the hardware

<comment><USER13> I think that was the point - it's not $12k just for having a RPi running.

<comment><USER11> Points aside, the rpi is still for sale at $1000.

<comment><USER10> Yeah sure, just send me your full name, address, phone number, credit card info and picture of your driving license then I'll mail the dollars to you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > _Viral Hippo posted a photo of a black square._

> _And yet within 24 hours, it amassed over 1,500 likes from a group that > included a verified model followed by 296,000 people_

Are you sure it is fake? Modern art has long history of similar stunts.'Viralhippo' account has good following and posts memes, black square could easily go viral.

<comment><USER15> BuzzFeed created the Viral Hippo account and black square post.</comment></comment>


The Gift of Doubt - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2013/06/24/130624crbo_books_gladwell?currentPage=all

<comment> alan-crowe > As was nearly always the case with Hirschman's writing, he made his argument > without mathematical formulas or complex models. His subject was economics, > but his spirit was literary.

That observation explains what is so unsatisfactory about Exit, Voice, and Loyalty. Hirschman thought that if those in charge reduced ordinary peoples right of Exit, then they would respond with more Voice.

That's half true. Voice = Talk x Listen. When it gets harder to Exit, the trapped Talk more and the trappers Listen less. You could make a slogan out of it. "Halve Exit, double Talk, double Voice."

But Hirschman wasn't a mathematizer. It would not occur to him to factorise Voice into Talk x Listen. Thus he misses the opportunity to look around him and see the usual pattern: Halve Exit, double Talk, quarter Listen, halve Voice.

One also notices that Talk is a function of two variables: Exit and Listen. One Talks because ones Exit is blocked, but also because one thinks or at least hopes that some-one is listening. As Exit is reduced, those who should Listen become less inclined to bother. Those who should Talk are encouraged by the lack of Exit as an alternative, but also discouraged by not being listened to.

Mathematics is the language for these kinds of discussions. There are partial derivatives, of Talk with respect to Exit and Talk with respect to Listen. But Listen is a function of Exit. The basic model is Voice = Talk(Exit, Listen(Exit) x Listen(Exit). The distinction between the partial derivative of Talk with respect to Exit and the total derivative of Talk with respect to Exit (That is Talk(Exit, Listen(Exit)) wrt Exit) is easily made.

In the real world, as Exit rights are extinguished, the talkers complain for a while, until the listeners stop listening and then the talkers lapse into apathetic silence. Those of a mathematical bent can easily cloth such bones in an animating flesh of differential equations. The real world contains real problems and one can engage with them.

Those of a literary bent are not, of course, lost for words. This blinds them to the problem: it is not words that are needed.</comment>


The Beer Game -or- Why Apple Can't Build iPads in the US - <AUTHOR> http://blog.marksweep.com/post/20469283331/the-beer-game-or-why-apple-cant-build-ipads-in-the <comment><USER3> > Because of the bullwhip effect illustrated by the game, Apple needs to have > factories in China because the supply chain is there. We learned in the Beer > Game that minute changes have massive ripple effects along the supply chain.

> The U.S. has lost that industrial base and it's extremely difficult to get > it back. It's not about unions, jobs Americans don't want - it's about > delay.

Considering that Foxconn is starting to make iPads in Brazil, this article is way oversimplifying things. It's mostly about labor costs and environmental aspects. The iPad is assembled in China, but most of its components are from elsewhere. The CPU is from Texas, a lot of the other chips are from Korea, etc. It could be assembled in the US without supply troubles.

[http://www.macrumors.com/2012/04/05/apple-gains- certificatio...](http://www.macrumors.com/2012/04/05/apple-gains- certification-to-sell-brazilian-assembled-ipad-2-new-ipad-certification- pending/)

<comment><USER4> Brazil is an exceptional case because of their import tariffs which are far, far higher than any other country in the world.

From the linked article:

"with domestic production of the iPhone and iPad providing a means by which Apple could avoid hefty import taxes in one of the world's most populous countries. "

I don't know any of the details, but I would assume Foxconn is performing the absolute minimum level of assembly necessary to meet "domestic manufacturing" requirements. So it is in no way an effective counterexample.

Plus, Brazilians are used to long supply-chain delays (like major supermarkets in major cities running out of Diet Coke or Ruffles) in a way that Americans will not put up with. Something tells me Foxconn's Brazilian factory may not be too different.

<comment><USER3> > I don't know any of the details, but I would assume Foxconn is performing > the absolute minimum level of assembly necessary to meet "domestic > manufacturing" requirements. So it is in no way an effective counterexample.

It's absolutely a counterexample. The iPad is assembled in China, but its parts are from all over the world. Now it's also assembled in Brazil. The supply chain in China isn't critical to the iPad's assembly, just critical to the iPad's assembly at the current profit margins. Despite the hot air in the article, you could absolutely manufacture iPads in the US. Much like Brazil they would cost more, but that's not what the article was talking about, it said they can't be made anywhere else. That's bullshit, proven by Brazil.

<comment><USER5> I think that all that is going on with Brazil is that it's a miniature replica of the Foxconn plants in China, and as been mentioned numerous times, it's only because it would be MORE expensive to make them in China (however inexpensive) and ship to them to Brazil than to deal with an inflexible supply chain in Brazil and make them there. Even factoring in demand and supply volatility. If things don't go well for the plant, on the world scale, it's only Brazil. All of these were factored into the decision to build them there.

China is responsible for making every iPad in the world outside of Brazil. You can't assume the same amount of risk for that scale. If a component goes bad or if demand skyrockets, you want as many responsive factories around as possible to pick up the slack or to get you new components. Why wouldn't you want to locate your supply chain in China? Only if you have a situation that looks like Brazil--high import tariffs.

<comment><USER6> Correct. The retail price of imported consumer electronics in brazil is literally double that of the U.S.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Having gone through the painful exercise of building robots in the US, I appreciate the problem. Our end-end supply chain latency was 16 weeks, far too long to scale effectively to match demand. Many component changes we wanted to make would have created a 6-week delay, so we had to compromise. A place with a factory across the street that could make screws in 3 hours sounds like heaven.

<comment><USER3> You were also operating at an entirely different scale than Apple. You'd have a hard time getting your end product to the US, while Apple simply buys up enough air freight from China to screw up everyone else's supply chain.

Apple doesn't go to the factory next door and buy screws when it needs them, they need millions of screws to very specific specs and sign deals to have them made by different suppliers for years at a time.

They'll go as far as financing the new factory that is required to fulfill their monster orders. The same rules just simply do not apply.

<comment> excuse-me One of the examples ( in the original article that this posts copies ) Apple changed the glass on the screen with 6weeks until launch. Corning had opened a factory nearby to make the glass and were able to change the screen shape quickly another nearby company was able to drop everything and make new gaskets.

It takes 6weeks to ship product from Corning's US factory to China.

<comment><USER8> are you referring to this?

 _'I Want a Glass Screen'

In 2007, a little over a month before the iPhone was scheduled to appear in stores, Mr. Jobs beckoned a handful of lieutenants into an office. For weeks, he had been carrying a prototype of the device in his pocket.

Mr. Jobs angrily held up his iPhone, angling it so everyone could see the dozens of tiny scratches marring its plastic screen, according to someone who attended the meeting. He then pulled his keys from his jeans.

People will carry this phone in their pocket, he said. People also carry their keys in their pocket. "I won't sell a product that gets scratched," he said tensely. The only solution was using unscratchable glass instead. "I want a glass screen, and I want it perfect in six weeks."_ †

This is a anecdote that now seems to be repeated as fact, but I have serious doubts about it. For starters there was a six month gap between the first demo and launch, and the iPhone was demoed with the glass screen, as evidenced by this quote from David Pogue from January 9, 2007 _Apple went through numerous iterations of the glass surface, trying to find one that's not too slick or too rough, or that shows grease and fingerprints too much._ ††

† [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america- and...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a- squeezed-middle-class.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1)

†† [http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/01/09/some-hands-on- time-...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/01/09/some-hands-on-time-with- the-iphone/)

<comment><USER9> From June:

[http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/apple- upgrade...](http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/apple-upgrades- iphone-battery-adds-anti-scratch-glass/)

"Apple also announced that the entire top surface of the iPhone, including the 3.5-inch screen, has been upgraded from plastic to optical-quality glass for better scratch resistance and visual clarity."

<comment><USER10> I don't think that helps the original story. Supposedly Jobs is telling his employees that he "wants a glass screen", yet reviews months before this supposed conversation occurred state that the iPhone is already using a glass screen. Weather or not this was the anti-scratch surface or not is hard to say, but it does cast some doubt on the story as relayed in the NYT article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The reason why iPads are built in China is because of a thing called Comparative Advantage [1].

Even though the US could reasonably produce iPads _more_ efficiently than China, it doesn't. The reason is that the US is even more efficient at supplying higher-cost services (software, finance, etc.) than China that it would be at producing iPads. Therefore, the US is better off training more of its workforce for higher-cost services than to train them to be laborers.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage>

<comment><USER12> This is part of it, but there are other important factors at play here. In China, the contractors of Apple don't have to adhere to US labor and environmental laws. These are huge factors in decision to outsource production to China.

<comment><USER13> ...not to mention currency and wage issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I hear a lot of people saying that America needs more manufacturing jobs, but I can't recall ever hearing anyone say that they want to spend the rest of their life doing repetitive assembly operations on a production line.

We use Chinese workers because they're cheaper than robots. These are awful, tedious, soul-destroying jobs, but they're just marginally better than backbreaking agricultural labour. Nobody deserves to do those jobs and soon nobody will have to, because we will have automated them out of existence. That's unequivocally a good thing.

<comment><USER15> I wonder, would agricultural labour be backbreacking if you only had to meet your own demand (and owned enough fields for the purpose)? Serious question, I don't know.

<comment><USER16> I've only had to work in vegetable and fruit gardens belonging to my grandmother, but if it scales, then yes, it would be backbreaking. Only worth it if you enjoy it or otherwise derive self-actualization from it etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> From a practical perspective, it seems to me that the Beer Game rests in three parts: in imperfect information, time delays, and most importantly, independence of agents. If _each_ member of the supply chain knew consumer demand perfectly far enough in the future, they could compensate. Likewise, if _each_ member of the supply chain could instantly scale their process, they could compensate. The key, though, is that even if you perfectly forecast, or can instantaneously process and ship your stock, everyone down the line from you must do so as well.

From what I gather, having the supply chain in China or Brazil addresses the second two problems. The advantage of China isn't just cheap labor, it's cheap, _readily available_ labor. A change in demand (like switching the screens on the iPhone) can be met relatively easily, which partially solves the time delay problem. And the more of the supply chain you hold in one geographic location makes shipping time faster. The independence of agents issue gets addressed when Apple can coordinate the actions of each member of the supply chain better. I imagine this is, for the moment, easier in China than the US.

Where I part ways with the article is the bail-out. The US labor pool doesn't seem elastic enough to address the time-delay part of the bullwhip effect. If Foxconn suddenly had a temporary drop in demand and had to lay off thousands of laborers, it would not be a huge issue. If they need to hire them again, zip, pretty quick. Likewise if they need to request huge overtime commitments because they can't train new workers fast enough, no problem. US workers are particularly averse to uncertain job prospects, perhaps with good reason, but with the effect that scaling work (and wages) up and down is less tenable. And perhaps this is where the unions come in - the overtime payments from forcing workers to work more hours to meet demand is much more costly in a union than a non-union environment, for better or worse.

Edit: I've just now recalled that one summer, I worked for a large bread factory. They loved hiring college students in the summer because they knew that they didn't really care about staying in the union. Summer demand for baked goods skyrockets. A plant manager showed me how they were lagging behind demand by something like 2 million dollars / week (I've forgotten the exact number, but it was staggering to me). In his words "you can imagine what that does for business." But they couldn't just start hiring more workers, or scaling up the plant, because then they'd have more workers than the knew what to do with once the winter hit, when people were working 20-30 hrs/week. And this is one case where almost the entire supply process was in the US, minus wheat they might have gotten elsewhere.

<comment><USER18> That's one piece. The other huge issue is that a Chinese worker can produce an iPad for less than a robot while an American worker costs more. A lean supply chain looks great on the books, but it's also a huge bet that nothing bad happens. However, add flexible enough automation like say having 500,000 humans and you are far less dependent on any one customer so you can ramp up and down vary quickly. Which both reduces the need for a large supply chain and cuts the response time to changing market conditions.

<comment><USER19> _The other huge issue is that a Chinese worker can produce an iPad for less than a robot while an American worker costs more._

Not by as much of a margin as one would think. Listen to part 3 of This American Life's retraction of the Daisey story: [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/460/r...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/460/retraction)

The conclusion is that the difference per iPad or iPhone is a small percentage of the profit. They argue that it is, in fact, the supply chain that makes the difference.

<comment><USER18> The estimate was moving manufacturing in the US would cost up to 65$ per iPhone and Apple is selling around 80 million iPhones a year. That approximation 5 billion dollars in lost profit each and every year just to build iPhones in the US. That's simply untenable for a publicly traded company even ignoring the added cost for iPod's and iPad's. Now they could probably give up say 100 million in profit per year and have dramatically better working conditions in China, but even that's a hard sell to stockholders.

Having said that, Apple could redesign the iPhone to be easier for robot's to assemble and move manufacturing back to the US, but it's simply untenable to have Americans assemble such things at this scale in the US. But, this is where the supply chain issues show up and if they designed the iPhone to be built by robots they would as you suggest probably locate those robots in China.

<comment><USER19> _The estimate was manufacturing in the US would cost up to 65$ per iPhone_

Versus how much in China? The conclusion I recall was that the difference was small - so small that even if the prices were flipped, Apple would still probably opt for China because of the speed. Which, again, is because of the integrated supply chain.

<comment><USER18> That was how much _extra_ the labor would cost to manufacture in the US not the total cost. They did mention a low estimate of 10$ but that's still close to a billion a year in lost profits on iPhones. Add iPod's, iPad's, and Mac's and you quickly get back around 5 billion.

<comment><USER19> You are correct, and I wanted to check what exactly they did say. Luckily, there is a full transcript: [http://podcast.thisamericanlife.org/special/TAL_460_Retracti...](http://podcast.thisamericanlife.org/special/TAL_460_Retraction_Charles_Duhigg_extended_interview.pdf) The discussion on this point starts on page 17. In there is the point I originally wanted to make, voiced by Charles Duhigg:

 _But labor is such an enormously small part of any electronic device, right? Compared to the cost of buying chips or making sure that you have a plant that can turn out thousands of these things a day or being able to get strengthened glass cut exactly right within, you know, two days of this thing being due, that's what's important. Labor is almost insignificant. What is really important are supply chains and flexibility of factories._

<comment><USER18> Let's put it this way if your adding 5% to the cost of the product adding a 4 week supply components that you sell at 1/2 price every year. Moving iPhone manufacturing to the US would cost Apple _significantly_ more than that. It's true that one of the major problems with a supply chain for computer components is how rapidly they depreciate, but labor costs are insignificant in large part because they are in China.

Honestly, I think he is thinking you assemble an iPhone like you do a car with giant welders and cranes. The reality is much closer to just a table with buckets for components and a small chain of workers that knows all the steps plus some basic quality control. Because, it's mostly just joining components.

The actual chips are created by machines which can be located just about anywhere, just ask Intel. Even boards are often done by machines, because it's so hard to tell if someone did it wrong when soldering by hand. There are robots that can do these same operations, but humans add flexibly and it's easy to see if they messed up. Plus at current Chinese wages they just plane cost less.

<comment><USER20> The PCBs in cell phones are almost exclusively done by machines. You can't hand solder a BGA, a machine applies solder paste as the last step in the PCB manufacturing process and then a pick and place (robotic arm pulling parts off reels) sets the chips before sending the PCB through a reflow machine (an oven).

Even for small batch runs of boards with QFP chips (which you can hand solder) you would machine all this, and I mean like 50 board runs. I've even done this in lab for 10 board proto runs. You make a solder paste stencil out of plastic to apply the paste after you get the boards back from the PCB manufacturer, place the chips and solder them in a reflow oven (or even a frying pan works if you paying attention and have an IR temp sensor).

The only bits you hand solder, even in Asian, are components that are too large or can't withstand the temperatures of machine soldering, be it wave or reflow (think full size RCA connectors on a board with many fine pitch ICs or a wall wart). This is normally a post processing step after everything else has been reflowed. Connectors of this type don't really exist in cell phones, they are all surface mount with some minimal unsoldered through hole supports.

The manual assembly that comes into play with a modern cell phone involves connecting the various PCBs with their interconnects and placing them in the proper location within the packaging and of course all the post electronics stuff.

<comment><USER18> I agree with what you said.

By putting boards together I meant something much closer to this: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTQXGLDXQk8> vs. [http://www.ethiotube.net/video/18959/Cell-Phone-Assembly- Pla...](http://www.ethiotube.net/video/18959/Cell-Phone-Assembly-Plant-In- Bahir-Dar-Ethiopia) where you can see several people using a soldering irons about 2 min 10 seconds into the video.

But, it looks like the iPhone uses screws where a lot of companies used blobs of sodder to secure things. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U6HjbGCtqE> Which I suspect increases their labor costs to reduce the number of assembly errors and allow them to be repaired. Of course if they did this in the US, the cost benefit equation changes and I suspect they would do more soldering because it's so fast.

PS: The point I was trying to make with Intel is once your 99.9% automated vs say 98% the laber costs stop being the major concern. Which is why Intel still builds chip factory's in the US. It's great to be close to your suppliers, but it's also valuable to be closer to your engineering team.

<comment><USER20> Both videos are about very different classes of devices from a "modern cell phone". For example you can't blob solder on a data link to a 960 × 640 full color LCD, you'd lose signal integrity.

Intel builds their factories in the US because they are required to by law (export controls on certain high tech). I think they are allowed to build some lower tech stuff outside the US (Israel for instance).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> In case anyone's curious why beer was used as the product in the game, it's likely because US law requires that alcohol be distributed in (almost) this way:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three- tier_(alcohol_distributio...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three- tier_\(alcohol_distribution\))

<comment><USER22> For a good documentary that illustrates the system we have in place, check out:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Wars>

<comment><USER23> It's also free to watch on hulu for anyone who's interested:

<http://www.hulu.com/watch/235712/beer-wars>

<comment><USER24> free to watch on hulu for anyone _from_USA_ who's interested

FTFY. Hulu restricts access pseudo-geographically using IP-based geolocation it seems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think they teach this game at most business schools, and it seems to be a popular and eye-opening experience. If you hit wikipedia, there are a number of links to online versions you can play (some for free, some not).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_distribution_game>

<comment><USER26> That's right. the Beer game is one of the first things taught in Operations Management in most b-schools, as an example of Supply Chain Management. [I was fortunate to have been introduced to the subject by John Sterman]

In general, delays (i.e. lead times) and variations in orders will do that Beer game effect to any supply chain, no matter where it's located. Apple products are "made in china" because of various reasons -- comparative advantage, business cluster etc.

I'd highly recommend a good reading of systems dynamics (and business dynamics) for those looking for more info.

For those interested, two recommended books:

 __* "Clock Speed" by Charles Fine (MIT)

 __* "Business Dynamics" by John Sterman (also of MIT, and a great professor):<http://goo.gl/K4OG> (Amazon.com link)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I love the article up until the lame political statement at the end.

GM / Chrysler bankruptcy != Business _disappears_ and all suppliers go bankrupt. This is the straw-man argument of the left.

The American auto bailout was a purely political play to save the unions who supported the Democrats. With billions in hard assets and a huge intellectual property base, the auto companies would have made great investments to potential buyers. Does anyone actually believe that _no one_ would even attempt to pick up the pieces of the auto industry, sans-unions, and try to come out ahead?

If you agree with the media/government spin, then you believe that the auto companies would have fired all employees, sold all of the manufacturing equipment and plants, and closed shop forever.

The reality is that the company could have used existing bankruptcy law to get rid of some of the union/pension overhead and return to profitability. This is exactly what American Airlines is doing right now. Only in the extreme case would they even need to sell the company.

<comment><USER28> > The American auto bailout was a purely political play to save the unions who > supported the Democrats.

Are you kidding?

<http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1208/16740.html>

<comment><USER29> To be fair, the article this whole discussion is referencing says, "Obama was right in bailing out the auto industry when GM and Chrysler were going bankrupt."

As usual, both sides want to take credit for the positives and blame each other for the negatives. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> See also: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_cluster>

It's worth noting that one needn't offset all the advantages of a cluster for production outside of it to make sense: There is no shortage of US auto manufacturing plants that are not in Detroit nor in places with anything remotely like its cluster advantage.

But for rapidly-changing products, the advantages of a cluster are compounded. If you're not changing screens and screws and implementing brand new technologies on an annual basis, being able to get a custom part ASAP is less of an advantage. But if you _are_ changing things every single year ...

I wouldn't be surprised to see US manufacturing return. Particularly as energy (shipping) prices continue to increase, China's wage advantage dissipates and automation matures. But it's going to start with fairly mature, static and/or commodified products.

<comment><USER31> What do you think is going to provide more short term profit, move manufacturing back the the US and build X with US workers, or move manufacturing out of China to another cheap country when Chinese labor gets too expensive?

What's gone isn't coming back until it's cheaper to build it in the US. That's what moved it to China in the first place, and that's what will move it from China.

<comment><USER30> > _"What's gone isn't coming back until it's cheaper to build it in the US."_

Yes and no. Yes, at a high level that's true. But you seem to be making an assumption that human labor costs will remain an important component and that the "it" being manufactured will remain constant.

Consider that automation may not even be cheaper on a 'net screws turned per hour' basis than cheap humans. But quality and consistency matters. Speed of line changes matters. Speed of retraining matters. And, further, current designs are limited to what can be assembled cheaply (that is: reasonably quickly/safely/accurately) by two human hands and ten human fingers, with a human attached (who hopefully doesn't require slow or expensive tools/safety equipment/etc).

Automation removes those concerns entirely. Caustic compounds could be mixed on the spot, fixation technologies that are infeasible for human dexterity are possible, multiple steps could be completed in parallel, etc.

So keep in mind that while it may be sufficiently cheaper to have, say, Brazilians turning screws than Chinese, such that iPads could some day be cheaper to build in Brazil - it's entirely likely that before that happens, robots will be building newer iPad designs, more cheaply than could ever be feasibly constructed by humans even at a zero wage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> People often draw analogies between software development and manufacturing. If you're going to do that, it's vital to take the "supply chain" of information into account. The inefficiencies inherent in creating a supply chain consisting of a developer, a tech lead, a product manager, an operations manager, and finally a user resemble the supply chain in the drinking game. Orders go one way, features go the other way.

<comment><USER33> Did you finish the article? I think it's more focused on the hardware aspect of apples supply chain, and not so much on software development.

<comment><USER34> I think GP is drawing an inferred analogy in the software development process, using the supply chain to explain the relationship among all the parties involved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Considering less than 1% of the price of an iPhone or iPad "stays" in China as the cost of assembly, moving all production back to the US for that 1% seems ridiculous.

In any case you guys should concentrate in the 30% (or so) of the price that goes into parts and components, almost all made by Korean and Taiwanese companies.

Besides most of those components are already made using highly-automated processes because humans lack the precision needed to manufacture at such small scales.

Not saying it would be easy, just that it isn't impossible, and 30% is a much better deal than 1%.

</comment><comment><USER36> If they can build iPhones in Brazil, why can't they build iPads in the US?

That it's not cost effective to do so now doesn't mean that this will always be the case. The US has high import taxes on lots of stuff, if they raised them on electronics we would have US made iPads in a flash (not that I'm saying this is the right approach).

I think Apple's "tell us all the details about your cost structure and we'll talk business" approach to their suppliers combined with their enormous cash reserve and history of pre-paying for parts (and even factories) should enable them to make their devices pretty much anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER37> Apple could afford to reopen the plants they had in Fremont, _they just might not be able to produce 100% of their products there_. From the NY Times article he refers to: paying American wages would add up to $65 to each iPhone's expense.

Fender does this--they offer you the choice of a Chinese, Mexican, Japanese, or American made guitar and just price accordingly. I would pay more for an iPhone that I knew was made in America. I'm sure I'm not the only one. Other examples: Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Annie's Homegrown (BNNY).

<comment><USER38> Disclosure: I'm a Brit, and my wife is Chinese.

Frankly I have no time for flag-waving 'Buy American' and for that matter 'Buy British' favouritism. I've seen the poverty in rural China first hand, industrialisation over there has it's rough edges that need to be addressed, but if we care about world poverty then that means cutting all the jingoistic claptrap and 'allowing' them to earn a better living.

There are legitimate cases where buying locally makes sense, especially in the case of regional foods or traditionally crafted goods. I'm all for preserving traditional ways of life if it makes sense, but I don't think iPhone assembly line production falls in that category.

The US, Britain and the western world in general has grown rich exporting goods and services to the rest of the world and importing cheap commodities and goods. Fair trade benefits both sides of the bargain. It's time to set aside protectionism and recognise it for the pernicious imperialism and borderline racism it really is.

<comment><USER39> Don't you think that decades of isolationist Maoism had more influence on the rural poverty in China than US and British protectionism?

<comment><USER40> The Mao isolation was just a continuation of _centuries_ of Ming isolation, and, emphatically, yes.

I think the GP meant modern protectionism in the sense of "Buy American/British/etc" movements.

<comment><USER39> By talking about how the US and Britain had grown rich through trade and 'imperialist' protectionism and mentioning racism, the GP seemed to be implying that the poverty in China was somehow created by these western countries.

Aren't those modern "buy British" or "buy American" movements voluntary? Might there not be good reasons for supporting those who are economically tied to you by culture and legal jurisdiction?

<comment><USER40> There is no possible way I can read the GP to mean that. He only mentions imperialism and racism after talking about, and with clear reference to, "Buy American".

Most of the movements are voluntary for now, but not all: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestm...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestment_Act_of_2009#Buy_American_provision)

> Might there not be good reasons for supporting those who are economically > tied to you by culture and legal jurisdiction?

Yes and no. But if the support takes the form of a bail-out, you're just wasting your money while delaying the inevitable and making the eventual crash much more painful. If you instead let industries fizzle out over time, it's much easier for something to appear to take it's place.

<comment><USER39> So, do you disagree with the point in the original article about the bail-out of the auto industry preventing a much wider loss?

<comment><USER39> Good grief. Downvoted multiple times without explanation?

The original top-level article that this thread is about made what seemed to be a reasoned point at the end about the bailout of the auto-industry, and I am simply asking mseebach whether he disagrees with it, since he made reference to bailouts.

Why on earth would that get downvoted?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Great article until "Obama was right in bailing out the auto industry when GM and Chrysler were going bankrupt. Because it wasn't just GM and Chrysler that were going to fail, it was an entire ripple-effect of suppliers, tool manufacturers, raw material suppliers, trucking companies and dealers that were going to go away."

That's not the full reason that they did it though. It's because they were making vehicles for our military. If our country started relying solely on foreign countries for our military, they could disable our ability to replenish or grow our ground fleets.

But, even that is not far enough down the rabbit hole. There are enough non- government owned vehicles in the U.S. to more than make up for the lack of vehicles they would have lost, even if every other country simultaneously decided that we were the enemy, our military could use the country's existing resources (assuming we were ok with that).

And moreover, we are already reliant on other countries for our military and the running of our country. The only "advantage" of a government that pumps everyone's tax money into a select number of private companies, directly or indirectly, is that "survival of the fittest" is damaged. The "disaster" is delayed- the inevitable damage grows greater. It is the economical equivalent of forestry agencies that protected forests from forest fires, when forests naturally managed themselves via fires started by lightning strikes, such that large fires would inevitably start and be uncontrollable. Large bailouts can cause incredibly bad things to happen.

So, the question is, why did they do it? Band-aids and politics. It was not long-term thinking. And that is the story of our government. For the most part, no one is willing to make the political sacrifice for long-term gain. What we need now is for someone to help make government stable and predictable again, and to reduce the amount of red-tape it takes for U.S.-based businesses to succeed. But, it is going to take a disaster for that to happen- a disaster that will be much worse because of bailouts and other shenanigans. But, as for now, we will live in the growing forests our forest rangers protect for us.

</comment><comment><USER42> Maybe politicians will finally understand that "manufacturing jobs" are not coming back to US and stop wasting money by trying to get them back. "Manufacturing" itself could be back - if they start encouraging 99.9% robot manufacturing facilities, and manufacture stuff more efficiently than any Chinese company.

Yes, it won't bring "manufacturing jobs", but it will bring a lot of capital into the country, and will also spur new type of jobs and businesses in relation to that, or it would make it a lot easier for US entrepreneurs to mass-produce their products just from a prototype.

That's the sort of thing politicians should be encouraging - not try to bring back blue-collar jobs.

</comment><comment><USER43> It's about the need for "low impedance" or "low inertia" systems.

"Low inertia" means that the affected area can support a higher rate of change than a "high inertia" system.

This affects all facets of business, from the supply chain to labor.

I have to disagree with the protection of highly unionized systems. They are bad, bad, bad for the economy and for the survival of the affected industry. Not only do unions burden business with unreasonable rules and wages, they also create a very high inertia labor force. Making any change falls on a range from impossible to very difficult. In sharp contrast to this, a low inertial non-union labor force is far more flexible.

Let's face it, workers in the US have grown comfortable with their reality and don't want to change. I'm sure this is what it looked like when buggy whips and horse-drawn carriages started to loose market share. A low inertia system would allow the entire enterprise to pivot quickly, make adjustments and try to evolve into whatever might be the new wining paradigm. Not so when you have a highly regulated, highly taxed and unionized framework to contend with.

</comment><comment><USER44> There's another, perhaps overlooked, place that does exactly what the author proclaims as China's manufacturing advantage (proximity, flexibility, etc). And it shouldn't be surprising: It's Toyota's auto manufacturing empire in Aichi Prefecture, Japan.

Aichi is only 2000 square miles in area[1], and Toyota's supply chain is concentrated on its Eastern half. It takes less than 1 hour by car (or more relevantly, by truck) to travel between all of the major players in the supply chain (Aisin, Toyota Industries, Denso, etc). Of course, all of Japan's manufacturing is in Jeopardy with increased manufacturing costs and the strong yen (which are analogous to what HN posters here have discussed as distinct Chinese advantages over US manufacturing).

Another place that I suspect has a similar centralized, flexible manufacturing ecosystem: Germany's auto industry (with the granddaddy of all industrial suppliers, Bosch, situated right in the middle of it all).

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aichi_Prefecture>

<comment><USER45> Coincidentally, this is also why "vertical" integration almost never works when the various horizontals are not colocated. The supply chain complexity often introduces enough extra cost (whether time or money) that it's more efficient to just purchase components locally rather than ship things around within a global corporation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Will 3d printing and manufacturing advances (Foxconn can hire 3,000 employees overnight, but robotics lower labor needs) make the supply chain effect less important, lowering the costs of moving manufacturing back to the US? Will they come back to be closer to retailers?

<comment><USER47> The robot tech might be developed in the US (or where ever) but is still built in China. That makes sense, because it's used in China. And as expertise in building stuff concentrates in China all they need to do is keep quality high, keep costs low, and maybe keep an eye on human rights, and they'll keep the jobs.

The barriers to US companies become higher. You've got to get the machines. You then need people to run those machines. Those people will consider themselves to be skilled or semi-skilled, and require high wages. You need to run the machines 24hours, thus you need 3 shifts per day; two of those shifts will require higher wages than the day shift.

I doubt that huge volume manufacturing is going back to the US anytime soon.

<comment><USER48> _The robot tech might be developed in the US (or where ever) but is still built in China. That makes sense, because it's used in China. And as expertise in building stuff concentrates in China all they need to do is keep quality high, keep costs low, and maybe keep an eye on human rights, and they'll keep the jobs._

If we assume raw materials are bought on the global market (so same price in the US and China), then the only cost variables are labor and shipping to market. Once Robotics drives the difference in labor costs below the difference in shipping costs robots in the US makes more sense than laborers in China. There is an inflection point even if you assume the use of robotics in China.

<comment><USER49> I believe you are missing regulatory compliance costs, which are significant in the US. I'm not quite sure how robotics alters that variable though.

<comment><USER48> They help some but it doesn't go away 100%. Robots mean lower worker regulatory costs, but environmental regulation costs still count against the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I think there's another aspect to this, which is the fact that Apple is not primarily concerned with the US market. 80% of Apple's most profitable product, the iPhone, are sold outside the USA.

Even if you could get cost parity in production, there's no real reason why Apple should move manufacturing back to the US, just because they started off as an American company.

</comment><comment><USER51> Would it be fair to say that the reason Apple has their entire supply chain in China is because those "supply clusters" were already there because of the Japanese consumer tech companies that built them up in the 80's?

(I have no idea when or how exactly, but the "80's" seems to be around the time of the "Japanese Electronic Invasion")

In other words, for a "new" company like Apple, starting out with all their new iDevices, it simply made sense for them to go where the supply was?

It's kind of like Apple "piggybacked" and exploited all the gains made by the Sonys, Sharps & Casios of the world, and beat them at their own game.

I think if we move beyond the analogies of cars and other consumerables, and focus on what Apple is really doing, which is essentially Consumer Tech, then it simply makes sense for them to be where the guy that makes those fancy LCD screens is at?

</comment><comment><USER52> That is an interesting theory but I would guess that the real reason is their devalued currency which allows apple to save a huge percentage on production.

Sure cheap labor helps, but is cheap partially due to the currency difference.

Despite anecdotal stories, The US still makes up 20% of world manufacturing and retains its spot as the global leader. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States>

The colocation theory (the theory which the author is talking about) is a good thoery to explain silicon valley though.

If you want to run a tech company, you want it to be colacated near your supply chain (engineers), and other service providers. This is probably a big reason why Silicon Valley has remained dominant despite so many other cities trying.

<comment><USER39> How is it that you accept that 'colocation theory' explains Silicon Valley, but you dismiss it as explaining Shenzhen without explaining why one is different from the other?

<comment><USER52> That is a good question, sorry I wasn't more clear. The basic reason is that there is plenty of manufacturing all over the Midwest that could easily produce the entire Apple supply chain.

Shenzhen can also produce that supply chain, but they are no more capable than a lot of American cities.

What Shenzhen has that America doesn't are cheap labor, and a devalued currency.

Silicon Valley is different primarily because there is no other city with the concentration of brilliant engineers vs others. NYC for example probably has more computer engineers by numbers, but there are more opportunities for those engineers to make huge pay in other industries outside of startups. The fact that Silicon Valley is full of amazing engineers who are excited to work in the tech industry means that it is the best location for your startup to locate (relatively, and if you need a lot of engineers, not all startups do, some need more sales focused or science focus etc and there are better cities for those companies).

<comment><USER53> >>The basic reason is that there is plenty of manufacturing all over the Midwest that could easily produce the entire Apple supply chain.

Do you have a source for that? Foxconn has greater than 1 million employees. I don't think there is any company with a labor force of that scale in the US, or anywhere else in the world. And, per the article at the top of this thread, the bigger issue is the supply chain. If iPhones were made in the Midwest, they would still be importing glass, simple hardware, and thousands of other parts that are still made in China.

<comment><USER54> For comparison, the USPS is one of the biggest private employers in the US if not the biggest, and it has just under 600,000 employees. The active US military is around 1,500,000 strong. China's active military is closer to 2,300,000 strong. There are more full-time Foxconn employees than active troops in the militaries of any but about three countries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> If you're interesting in learning more about this read the book "The Goal" it's presented as a novel and the main character is rather daft, however it has a lot of insight in it if you can look past that fact they everything is explained as if the main character is really _slow_.

<comment><USER56> +1 because The Goal teaches The Theory of Constraints, which is useful for anyone managing team resources.

<comment><USER57> +1 Had to read "The Goal' at SMU to graduate. I suggest all developers, managers or entrepreneurs to read it today! If you are a startup, when you read it think developers/designers as your industrial machines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I don't know, do all the unemployed people in a America right now _want_ to work on assembly lines in factories? I know, just because I don't want to doesn't mean everyone else thinks that way, but it just doesn't seem like the correct long-term fix for unemployment. Factory work just doesn't seem like a viable long-term career.

I suppose it's the non-hourly-wage assembly-line jobs that come with manufacturing that are desirable, but how many of those jobs would be created by making the huge investment to build factories and supply chains here in the U.S.? A non-zero number, but is there a more efficient way of creating career- for-life support-a-family type jobs in the U.S.?

<comment><USER58> It's not that they necessarily want factories, it's that they're looking for stable career for life jobs for people with _low skills_, which is the difficult part.

There are tons of openings in the US for plumbers, and (i believe, not sure post housing boom) also electricians, welders, pipe-fitters, etc.

The problem is that these are all jobs that require a few years of training, which the US system isn't very well set up for. The factory thing is an easy- out because we have this huge base of people who have basically no skills and we want (need) to absorb them into the economy as fast as possible, and without investing tons of money to train them. Even if we had this money, and the capacity to train them, dropping an extra 100k nurses (or whatever) into the system at once probably wouldn't be a good thing either.

This is a long term problem that we probably won't solve until we hit the point that we're educating enough people in the right things that competition for unskilled jobs hits more or less equilibrium.

<comment><USER59> _The problem is that these are all jobs that require a few years of training, which the US system isn't very well set up for._

Automation is also making the skill/demand curve look more step-like I believe, where your value stays near zero up until you cross the "better than a machine could do" threshold, instead of scaling in some more smooth way. That makes it harder to get training on the job by just taking low-end jobs and moving up.

From what I've read about welding (e.g. [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/business/24jobs.html?pagew...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/business/24jobs.html?pagewanted=all)), highly skilled, experienced welders are very much in demand. But, since low- end welds can be done by machines nowadays, there's much less demand for a welder with <10 yrs experience than there used to be. Consequently, there's no obvious path to _get_ that first 10 years of experience.

<comment><USER58> That's an interesting point, and one that further suggests that we're better off shifting to more services and less manufacturing for the low-end stuff.

Eventually automation might replace the bottom level of nurses and plumbers, (more so nurses than plumbers), but it will take _much_ longer.

I have some family/friends who are in that 'only high school diploma, no credentials/money/drive to go to a non-community college' trap, and one big barrier is that the training programs for Nursing Aides, Auto Tech, and even office/clerical have 1 year+ wait times. Even though they _want_ to gain these skills, they need to support themselves until they get into the program, and while they're working through it.

Even though there's great demand for the skills, and workers who want to gain them, the training pipeline just hasn't expanded yet.

<comment><USER60> I've long wondered why we're not investing more in skilled labor/vocational training as a country - any idea what the bottleneck is there? A lack of qualified instructors? Specifically, I think it'd be great if the govt. made training a valid alternative to "looking for a job" as a requirement for continued welfare/unemployment (might already be the case, but I've not heard of that being so).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> There is a difference between the bullwhip effect and JIT (just in time) manufacturing. Building your assembly plant near your suppliers is JIT and it helps reduce in-process inventory. Less in-process work and faster delivery to the assembly plant means you can ship product faster. This is important for a fast-moving tech manufacturer.

The bullwhip effect is caused by delay and uncertainty in demand. JIT helps minimize its effects, but doesn't ensure its elimination. Coordinating your demand with retailers is one way to prevent the bullwhip effect. I'm guessing Apple has effective inventory and order coordination with their retailers.

</comment><comment><USER61> There are plenty of counter examples to this. Boeing has suppliers for key components for its airplanes as far away as Italy and Japan.

Toyota and BMW assemble vehicles in the US from imported parts.

A CPU from intel is often fabricated in a US based factory, tested in Costa Rica, and packaged in Asia.

The issue has too many variables related to margins, tax breaks for factories, and import tariffs; to say the whole electronics supply chain is moving one direction.

As wages and living standards rise in China it is likely that some production will move to other countries and regions, which in the longterm is a good thing because it spreads the wealth.

<comment><AUTHOR> Some good points here. There are a lot of variables however, Boeing has run into the problem of the bullwhip effect too with the Dreamliner: [http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/15/business/la-fi- hiltz...](http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/15/business/la-fi- hiltzik-20110215)

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> We used to occasionally get to play games like that for actual money when I was an undergraduate. Every so often, grad students in economics would come around to the undergraduate houses at dinner time to announce that they were looking for volunteers for economic experiments that night.

The experiments would typically take place in the social sciences building, with each participant being put in a separate office (that was one of the reasons they were at night--so there would be offices they could borrow). We'd be given instructions on the game to be played, and the phone numbers of other offices if the game involved communication between the players, and the game would start.

Each player would start with a certain amount of game money, and when the game is over that would be converted to real money and the player kept it.

On average, if I recall correctly, players would make about $20-30 or so each in these games. That doesn't sound like a lot, but for a college student in the '80s that would be enough for several nice meals away from food service, or for 3 or 4 albums at the record store. You'd almost always get at least $10, and sometimes someone would make $75-100.

</comment><comment><USER63> I found the in depth reporting at the Atlantic last month a bit more revelatory:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/01/making-i...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/01/making- it-in-america/8844/)

Though it sort of agrees that supply chain is important, just frames it differently.

The reason Standard Motor still employs (expensive) low skilled US workers like Maddie is because it wants to have her seal up a part immediately after the high skilled worker (Luke) finishes his precision machining role. Workers of Luke's caliber (with knowledge of metallurgy, coding, specific machine training) aren't reliably found in the lowest labor cost countries (at the moment, Poland is getting competitive here).

If robots for Maddie's job get cheaper, or demand grows such that the factory needs to run multiple shifts, or if the factory can somehow move Luke overseas, then Maddie loses her job. If any of these things happen, but firms like Standard keep their Maddies, they get bought out by gigantic German manufacturers, or just undercut on the store shelves until no one's buying their products anymore.

</comment><comment><USER64> The beer game is also mentioned in Peter Senge's The Fifth Disciple, where he suggests it originated from MIT in the 1960s. I think he had one less link in the chain (3 players not 4) but still the effect was the same.

btw, His book is a good intro to the way small changes effect integrated systems, particularly in business.

</comment><comment><USER65> I'm not sure this a correct explanation: if this is correct then Foxconn would _never_ starting making iPads in Brazil ([http://www.webpronews.com/foxconns- brazilian-ipad-factory-to...](http://www.webpronews.com/foxconns-brazilian- ipad-factory-to-begin-production-2012-01)).

</comment><comment><USER19> This is a great explanation, but this statement is wrong: _The U.S. has lost that industrial base and it's extremely difficult to get it back._

It's important to keep in mind that the US still makes a lot of stuff. In fact, we still make more than most: [http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/02/07/133561265/3-ways-o...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/02/07/133561265/3-ways- of-looking-at-manufacturing-in-america)

However, we're employing less people to do it, and those that we do employ require more education than before: [http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/13/145039131/the- tran...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/13/145039131/the- transformation-of-american-factory-jobs-in-one-company)

</comment><comment><USER66> Do we even have the affordable housing & mass transportation required for something like this anymore? The 'FoxConn cities' in China look a lot like the old factory towns in the United States that have mostly disappeared. Even with the huge number of home foreclosures most cities simply do not have affordable housing for an influx of even 100,000 people. Most cities don't have the mass transit capacity to carry them to work. They don't have room in their schools for tens of thousands of new students. They could be built of course but it's not a turn-key solution the way it is in China. If Apple started the process today I bet it would take 5-7 years at minimum.

</comment><comment><USER67> There ought to be an app for the beer game.

</comment><comment><USER68> Or they could just do like Dell does - require suppliers to carry inventory (on _the suppliers'_ books) within minutes of their factories. You can do that in America just as easily as you can in China.

<comment><USER69> That may insulate factories from fluctuating inventory supply, but it doesn't solve the problem of fast turnaround when changes are needed. If a part needs to be redesigned, the supplier may still have a weeks-long lead time to get the new part shipped, and has the additional problem of obsolete inventory that is now wasting space near the factory.

<comment><USER68> You're missing my (sloppily made) point. China vs US has nothing to do with that. Either you consolidate your suppliers and squeeze the snot out of them, or you suffer the bullwhip effect. It can be done in the US, China, or the North Pole. The reason it's in China is cost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> From near the end: "Obama was right in bailing out the auto industry when GM and Chrysler were going bankrupt."

It's myopic to equate GM and Chrysler with the American auto industry. My hope was that those tragically unfit companies and their corrupt unions would go bankrupt, only to have their assets swept up at fire-sale prices by a company or person willing and able to ignite a rebirth of the industry.

Sometimes you gotta clear out the brush. The old, rickety, terribly designed, onerously-high overhead, ridiculous pension brush.

</comment><comment><USER57> Cost is the main driver here. I am lefty, but I agree the unions are a little out of control. I am sorry, but a guy who stands in a production line building cars should not be making $125k per year (source was a series on TV, think 60 minutes where they talked to some of those workers).

I am glad unions are there to help make sure people are not overworked and have benefits, but come on guys. You shot yourself in the foot there.

<comment><USER71> _> I am sorry, but a guy who stands in a production line building cars should not be making $125k per year_

You should be pleased to learn then that they don't:

* [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/business/economy/10leonhar...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/business/economy/10leonhardt.html?_r=3&hp)

* <http://www.factcheck.org/2008/12/auto-worker-salaries/>

<comment><USER72> Fact-checking FactCheck.org:

Let's assume that a union worker won't get an extra $15 per hour worked that current retirees are receiving. So take $15 off of their labor costs of $70 per hour (complexity through obfuscation). So that's

      $55 = VALUE of actual wages and benefits EARNED by WORKING 1 hour
      hours_worked_per_year = 52*40 = 2080
      earnings_per_year = hours_worked_per_year * $55 = $114,400

So you're correct, according to FactCheck.org, it's not $125k per year. But the point is still valid when you account for benefits. If my employer gives me a new Ferrari each year as a benefit, no one would consider me underpaid if I made $10/hour doing secretarial work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> The end of the article is bit of a nonsense: why, we have to save big failed corporations like GMC just because of the supply chain ?Are you kidding me? The supply chain of these manufacturers is going nowhere. If they were dismantled, other companies would buy their assets anyway and keep using them on American soil. Nothing is completely lost.

</comment><comment><USER74> Supply-Chain is certainly a point, but I doubt it's the only factor - <USER2> labour cost play an important role. Questions to ask:

1\. Why did the factories move in the first place.

2\. Why can companies like Airbus oder German car manufacturers survive - their supply chain is distributed all over the planet, with the best paid workers in Germany.

</comment><comment><USER75> I first read about the beer game in _The Fifth Discipline_. That was the first book on business I ever bought.

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Fifth-Discipline-Practice- Organiza...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Fifth-Discipline-Practice- Organization/dp/0385260954)

</comment><comment><USER76> Relevant article by Andy Grove on US manufacturing from 2010: [http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/10_28/b41...](http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/10_28/b4186048358596.htm)

</comment><comment><USER77> In the UK, you pay much higher taxes for importing components than you do for importing final product, so manufacturing anything in the UK that requires parts from overseas is economically pointless, even if you wanted to (such as in the case of the raspberry pi).

I have always been suspicious of the concept of post-industrial economies as I have always thought that they relied on a colonial logic of intellectual superiority which doesn't really exist.

The plan seemed to be that the western world is good at organising and designing stuff, and those people over there are much cheaper for doing the actual work of building this stuff for us, especially since our local labour market started getting ideas about rights and profit share and stuff.

However, the organising and designing of stuff turned out not to be quite as difficult as we had so arrogantly assumed, so all we do is get rid of out ability to make stuff by having an entire generation used to someone else doing it for them, while eventually all the white collar jobs go overseas as well.

Personally, I think that if you try being a post-industrial economy for long enough, you will end up being something much more like a pre-industrial one, but with a few rich people left, all flying around on those nifty new Chinese jetpacks.

</comment><comment><USER78> Because Apple and the whole USA IT industry can not build good enough software for industrial automation. I mean, today's software building technology is too primitive.

<comment><USER45> This is an idiotic post and you have absolutely no idea what you're saying. If you'd like to discuss the situation, email me and we can talk.

....

Actually, after thinking about it a little more you may be more accurate than I thought, if I read your statement literally. Thankfully, the US manufacturing industry _is_ building good enough automation software.</comment></comment>


Court says evidence is valid despite police error - <AUTHOR> http://fe11.story.media.ac4.yahoo.com/news/us/story/ap/20090114/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_evidence

<comment><AUTHOR> As bad as this ruling is, the fact that it was reached over such a meaningless and small crime is even more of a slap in the face -- It's like hey let's not even bother pretending the constitution means anything.

If the ruling came out this way because they caught a serial killer, or some other sort large crime we could at least excuse their horrible judgment by them being blinded by the case and not its ramifications, but this is just ridiculous.

<comment><USER2> I temporarily disabled your account. Please email me to have it re-enabled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've read a lot of stuff criticizing this ruling around the web but it seems reasonable to me. The facts of the case indicate a clear cut "in good faith" error. I guess I just dont see it as the huge afront to the 4th ammendment that others do.</comment>


Analysis of the new Microsoft "I'm a PC" ad.  - <AUTHOR> http://www.globalnerdy.com/2009/03/27/at-last-a-truly-impressive-im-a-pc-ad/

<comment><USER2> It's an interesting campaign, on a side note: does anyone else think that the new IBMer is a bit from the I'm a Mac/PC playbook?

Next we'll have I'm a McDonald/BKer.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, I am sure HP is happy for the free advertising.</comment>


Ask HN: How to design an array lang (ex: APL or J) LLVM compiler? - <AUTHOR> Are the standard compiler books all still relevant here? Anything else one should know? <comment><USER2> I'm in a similar path, but with a relational language. However I have find have a lot in common with arrays, in fact, I think make sense, similar to kdb+, to model relations as columnar tables.

You can read about J here:

[https://sblom.github.io/openj-core/ioj.htm](https://sblom.github.io/openj- core/ioj.htm)

(From my long list of resources: [https://gist.githubusercontent.com/mamcx/e1743571b9a1ea163a7...](https://gist.githubusercontent.com/mamcx/e1743571b9a1ea163a7f9f07aa6a8ae2/raw/cf89dd40a6d98c185cf6896600d8b1f77a9acb76/Lang.mkdown))

The main gist is understand that you can generaliza arrays and scalars in one single structure (aka a array!)

A scalar is a array of 1. Others list are of N. You tag the structure with the type alike:

       [Type; N, N2, N3...]

and then you can do things like:

       for i in 1:

because is totally legal here!

I expand the idea to say that a relation is a multiple-array (aka: Columns), and array is a relation of 1 column, a scalar is a relation of 1 column and 1 value.

This mean is potentially easy to exploit SIMD and stuff like that, but I haven't explored that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the help! Does your project have a public presence?

<comment><USER2> No yet.

If interested, we can share ideas?

My web with contact details: [http://elmalabarista.com](http://elmalabarista.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The standard books (e.g. Engineering a compiler, or Appel's stuff) would be fine.

I've never implemented a array language myself, but one way of doing this while minimizing cognitive overhead would be to lower it to more C-like IRs (Similar to how Haskell is compiled by GHC). The advantage here, would be that by the time the AST has been lowered into these IRs translating directly to LLVM IR would be mentally trivial. Whether this is worth doing or not, I have no idea.

I'd have a look at some LLVM APL compilers and see how they do it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think there are any LLVM APL compilers or I would definitely look. I think both Dyalog, J, and K use regular C as the VM. Arthur Whitney is said to have written the first K compiler in only a few (like 3-5) pages of C. Do you think it'd be easier to start with using a custom C VM over LLVM? I have a little C experience and no LLVM, but I see it being used for a lot these days (Julia, D, Rust, Swift, Crystal...etc).

<comment><USER3> Are you implying writing one's own JIT? This would involve either writing a new LLVM backend or implementing the same optimizations. Easier to start with, yes: This doesn't really justify the design decision. (In short: Easier != Better)

You could compile to C, then use Clang or GCC to compile to a final executable: This should, if possible, be avoided as it limits what you can (C is not a good IR for a compiler). I suspect this is what you meant by "use regular C as the VM".

As these things go, LLVM is fairly sane/clean. The point of using LLVM would be to produce an optimized executable, rather than bytecode to be run on a VM.

Also, LLVM is C++ (Complex C++, in fact). If you don't already, I thoroughly recommend reading about optimizing compilers work (It's either very useful or fascinating, depending on whether you're the kind of person to find this stuff interesting). Using LLVM is, after getting over the C++ build times, actually quite simple (Take a look at [http://llvm.org/docs/tutorial/](http://llvm.org/docs/tutorial/))

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the explanations and advice. APL isn't as fast as I'd like, so I thought LLVM would be nice, but then you lose REPL functionality I believe which is vital for this kind of language. Julia JITs every expression to LLVM (I think)which is how it has a REPL, so that seems like a good choice to get said REPL. So maybe just the Julia route would be smart. It appears to be taking off in the areas that APL, J, Matlab, Numpy, Octave, Mathematica have typically reigned supreme in.

<comment><USER3> If the compiler is fast enough, then one could make a REPL out of it (by modifying it slightly). LLVM also has interpreters. The trick would be finding a consistent way of representing high level state in the REPL (You can't just lob bits of LLVM IR together), unless you can manage without (of course).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Even though you'll be outputting LLVM as the intermediate representation, I think you'll still have to think a lot about the design of the internal structures and the operation of the "virtual machine" so to speak (although there isn't one in the traditional sense). You'll still need to think about how functions interact, what anonymous functions/lambdas boil down to, etc.

To that end, it may be interesting to study the source of J, Klong, Kona, etc. There are a lot of older papers about representation and performance in APL as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea, I started reading Hui's book on J's internals before. Maybe it's time to take another look.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why LLVM?

Aaron's Co-dfns[1] is an APL compiler that compiles to C++ and there's some advantage to doing this.

[1]: [https://github.com/arcfide/Co-dfns](https://github.com/arcfide/Co-dfns)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think Hsu's Co-dfn compiler compiles to GPU for running very high performance code if you use the parallel co-dfn paradigm. I'm not sure if you have to just use GPUs or if it gives you a native binary you can use for other purposes. The other problem is you have to have Dyalog APL, which ain't cheap. I think a new array language that has a REPL that JITs to LLVM (good for prototyping, debugging, and testing) and AOT compilation to LLVM for scripts would be amazing for sharing code and deployment.

<comment><USER5> > I think Hsu's Co-dfn compiler compiles to GPU ... [I'm not sure] if it gives > you a native binary you can use for other purposes.

It compiles to C++.

> The other problem is you have to have Dyalog APL, which ain't cheap.

Good isn't.

However, you can download Dyalog APL for free and use it for noncommercial purposes, including _trying it out_ and _personally_ learning how to build an APL compiler.

I think this is pretty clear from the website.

> I think a new array language that has a REPL that JITs to LLVM (good for > prototyping, debugging, and testing) and AOT compilation to LLVM for scripts > would be amazing for sharing code and deployment.

Why do you think that?

I don't see how LLVM helps with any of that. The hard part of writing an APL compiler is parsing and analysis, and that means finding an algebraic morphism between APL and CPUs (or GPUs) that you can do meaningful things with. It isn't making executables.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Lots of good advice, I'd start small and work on end-to-end examples.

[http://www.compileroptimizations.com/category/loop_fusion.ht...](http://www.compileroptimizations.com/category/loop_fusion.htm)

[https://www.google.com/search?q=array+language+loop+fusion+f...](https://www.google.com/search?q=array+language+loop+fusion+filetype:pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Will do!

<comment><USER6> I should have mentioned the Programming Language Zoo [1]. Beware of the LLVM bog of dead compiler writers.

[http://plzoo.andrej.com/](http://plzoo.andrej.com/)</comment></comment></comment>