10 ms·

Apple Factory Thefts: Secret Tunnels, Hidden Crawl Spaces

245 points by ballmers_peak 7y ago

nitrogen 7y ago
It's fascinating the lengths people will go to both when protecting and leaking unreleased products and manufacturing techniques. While I would do the same in Apple and Samsung's position, I am worried about the effects of durable secrecy on the sustainability of our society and markets. Markets need competition, and societies need public domain knowledge. If somehow a critical supplier is eliminated there would be no way for a new entrant to fill the gap quickly since all the critical knowledge is secret and centralized.
- briandear 7y ago
  That knowledge is created by the company. Why should everyone have access to it? Can’t competitors create their own processes? The formula to Coca Cola is still practically a state secret, but that didn’t stop Pepsi et al from competing. Secrets of iPhone manufacturing isn’t something that should be considered worthy of the public domain. Nothing is stopping a competitor from developing their own knowledge and processes. You don’t have to steal to compete.
  - wwweston 7y ago
    The question of whether knowledge is property isn't a simple one. Practically, knowledge belongs to anyone who has it. There may be benefits to setting up cooperative rules about how people can use it. But even in societies with capitalism-friendly approaches, there are cases where knowledge is recognized as a kind of temporary property (say, patents) and yet everyone may have access. There are reasons for that. Secrets are a different kind of protection. You can try to keep them, and perhaps you even have incentives to do so. This creates an interesting set of incentives for others trying to find out, as well as for those who know to defect (depending on the legal framework and reach).
  - nitrogen 7y ago
    A few points in response: 1. The knowledge is created by people working for the company. Both the people and the company are part of a broader society, and all (people, company, society) have an interest in keeping the ability to manufacture alive. 2. Reinventing everything from scratch while risking submarine patents is wasteful, especially for processes that are obsolete from the view of the original company. 3. The same secrets that go into making an iPhone go into making everything else. I'm not interested in exact dimensions and features being public before release, but I am interested in the general know-how of precision design and assembly being preserved in a way that can outlive the original company. 4. We have lost significant manufacturing capability before. Nobody knows how to recreate the Saturn V rocket. SpaceX, NASA, and others have to recreate that knowledge at high cost. Society at large has a greater interest in preventing this kind of technological regress than in preserving the secrets of one company indefinitely.
- wmf 7y ago
  Realistically people switch companies all the time and the knowledge distributes itself that way.
  - AceJohnny2 7y ago
    which is why blanket noncompetes are terrible.
- wongarsu 7y ago
  That's exactly why patents were invented: publish your secrets, in return the state gives you exclusive rights on the idea for 25 years. After that everyone can use the instructions from the patent application as they wish. Of course that system doesn't really work as intended anymore.
  - Terr_ 7y ago
    Most of the things Apple is trying to keep secret -- like case designs -- shouldn't be patentable anyway.
  - caymanjim 7y ago
    That works well when you only have to worry about one state with strong legal protections, like the US or Europe. An enormous part of China's economy is the manufacture of counterfeit goods and clones, due to lax enforcement. Patents are effectively meaningless there.
windowtoss 7y ago
Throwaway account to be safe. ———— While I did not deal with Apple specifically, I did however deal with another major mobile phone corporation — at that time — and i’m sure most of you have heard of them: Research In Motion, RIM, BlackBerry, etc. This was during a time, my guess is 2008-2010, when forums, unreleased product leaks, and blogs were a very big business and leaks were lucrative to everybody. As a BlackBerry user myself, I found myself spending a lot of time in the old Crackberry.com forums, which happen to have a lot of RIM employees, insiders, and also black market dealers. I’ve soon found myself in contact with people who were passing me (!) information — just an anonymous forum poster. After a while, I’ve gained the trust of some of my sources and things started to get a little different. Instead of just information, I was getting files of unreleased BlackBerry OS for products that weren’t even released at the time. [0] Eventually I was given the opportunity to gain access to unreleased devices. Without mentioning any specifics, just in case, let’s just say these phones were like hot potatoes. If you were lucky, the device PIN hasn’t been blacklisted — meaning no BBM, service, your phone is now a brick — by RIM after they notice its missing. How long it’d continue working for was a mystery. Some would go for weeks, others would be dead by the time it arrived in the main. The one thing you wanted to look for? The “Property of Research in Motion Limited” sticker on the back. [1] But to get back to it’s relevance, I would sometimes learn from the sellers how these phones got out of the building without being noticed and there were a few ways. 1. Metal detectors and x-ray machines: In some areas, employees would have their bags and body scanned by security and this was one of the easiest, yet terrifying option of getting products out of the building. Along side the x-ray machine, there would be a gap between that and the wall. When you walk up to put your stuff down on the belt, just slide the phone down the side and grab it on the other side. With this you’re only doing 1 phone at a time. 2. Windows: Some of them would open so all you had to do was open the window and .. drop the phone down into the bush below. Pick it up after work and nobody can check. 3. Retailers: As with anything, it’s not what you know but who you know. If you’re becoming friends with your manufactures rep, you can get easy access to some gems. Mind you this was all being done in Canada so these phones were being handed around like drugs. 4. Self smuggling: They would just stick phones, shells, etc. in their pants and try to walk out without alerting security and/or bypassing it. Granted this all was before security tightened up and well before RIMs eventual downfall. While some of it may seem far fetched, let me tell you one thing: if you’re going to deal in unreleased phones, don’t use their phones built-in messaging system (BBM) to conduct business.. Because a nice fella from the security team at RIM will give you a call on your personal cell phone one late night and tell you that they know what you’re doing and to stop it. So I stopped that night. — [0]: RIM was notorious with changing product code ames and they also had multiple numbering schemes for GSM, CDMA, or international models (ie os v9.5 for 9200 would be the GSM version but v9.5 for a 9220 is the CDMA version). [1]: https://recombu-content.imgix.net/app/uploads/13578-M11755-10091.jpg?fit=crop&auto=format%2Cenhance%2Ccompress&w=670&auto=format%2Cenhance%2Ccompress https://recombu-content.imgix.net/app/uploads/13578-M11755-1...
jandrese 7y ago
I wonder how many of these extraordinary leak prevention measures would be necessary if Apple manufactured their devices in the US or Europe? The temptations for the workers would be the same (big payoffs are a universal temptation), but there might be more of a cultural barrier to overcome. Also I'm fully willing to believe that US authorities would prosecute the crap out of someone stealing from Apple, whereas in China the penalty seems to be that you lose your crappy sweatshop job and have to walk across the street to get a new one. Apple broke up the supply chain (and probably not a small number of bones) for the time being in China, but it will grow back. The money is too tempting.
- MuffinFlavored 7y ago
  > if Apple manufactured their devices in the US or Europe? Unless I wildly misunderstand something, I'm pretty sure Apple could not produce X amount of devices at Y quality + rate for Z dollars in the US or Europe.
  - littleweep 7y ago
    It's possible until you assign values to X, Y and Z
  - benologist 7y ago
    They couldn't hoard a quarter trillion dollars while doing it. It would be a nightmare if they only had a hundred and fifty billion to tide them over until their next big thing.
    - kccqzy 7y ago
      Do you want Apple to get into the business of manufacturing specialized screws? They could but it's not their core competency. So spend money?
      - BillinghamJ 7y ago
        They do have their own screws already
eugenekolo2 7y ago
Don't know what happened but the first time I clicked this link it brought me to unrendered HTML and obfuscated JS. Can't reproduce... but perhaps beware of malware.
- eugenekolo2 7y ago
  Reproduced. The error page contains malware. Appears to be some sort of keylogger, but I didn't actually analyze it. https://gist.github.com/eugenekolo/81c1e7ff1c699cfbb584fdd6bde3adf5 https://gist.github.com/eugenekolo/81c1e7ff1c699cfbb584fdd6b...
  - Deimorz 7y ago
    If that's not just on your end, hosting malware is a really big issue for a site that charges $400 USD/year for a subscription to be able to read their articles.
  - ballmers_peak 7y ago
    Thank you for flagging. This has been fixed. The page affected was a static file hosted outside our application only to be served when the app was inaccessible or offline. No user data was compromised at any point.
inlined 7y ago
> Apple’s suppliers are forbidden from referring to Apple by name or its project code names anywhere in buildings. In which buildings? Surely (at least vendor specific) codenames are necessary for basic communication. I was affected when a partner team was sidelined by an Apple contract. It was a fireable offense to say <codename> was Apple or leak it, but you could use <codename> internally to indicate that you had mandated commitments and may not meet partnership goals.
- metalchianti 7y ago
  <codename> is Apple was the worst kept secret at my last company. Even our contractors knew who it was.
  - jonknee 7y ago
    When you're ordering in Apple like volumes it has to be very difficult to hide.
    - inlined 7y ago
      Yes. the volume narrowed the potential customer list greatly. I wonder if I would have guessed correctly had I not been on the need to know list.
    - yellowapple 7y ago
      And also when the things you're building (presumably) have Apple logos on them.
      - jonknee 7y ago
        There are tons of components in Apple's devices and only a few Apple logos. If you get an order for 70 million higher end tiny lenses you can narrow down the list of potential customers pretty quickly, no logos needed.
  - throwaway13000 7y ago
    "Fruit themed company" or "Company in Cupertino"
module0000 7y ago
I was hoping for pictures of the secret tunnels and hidden crawl spaces :(
- sverige 7y ago
  Here's a tunnel built by El Chapo's people instead. Hope it helps scratch that itch. https://viceland-assets-cdn.vice.com/viceblog/64645854tunnel.jpg https://viceland-assets-cdn.vice.com/viceblog/64645854tunnel...
  - Operyl 7y ago
    Wow. That’s a lot more professional looking than I expected it to be.
    - darkpuma 7y ago
      The men who made it were in fact professional miners and engineers from what I understand.
      - antod 7y ago
        I can't help wondering about your word "were" (past tense)? Doing secret work for a ruthless criminal gang must be risky.
        Simon_says 7y ago
        Were. Still are. But they were, too.
        thunderrabbit 7y ago
        Sorry for the convenience.
        darkpuma 7y ago
        You seem to be right. This article talks about mass graves of diggers being found: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/03/underworld-monte-reel https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/03/underworld-mon...
evmar 7y ago
It's interesting that Apple is policing this. Wouldn't it make more sense for Apple to have some sort of "if you leak you are liable for $X" clause in their contract with the factories, so that the factories themselves have an incentive to prevent this?
- ibero 7y ago
  Meanwhile, Apple’s suppliers are forbidden from referring to Apple by name or its project code names anywhere in buildings. Suppliers must reimburse Apple for investigations and often must pay penalties when leaks are traced back to them. - article
- dangerboysteve 7y ago
  The article mentions that penalties are possible with smaller suppliers but Foxconn is untouchable as they are vital and Apple would not dare impose penalties against them.
meerita 7y ago
I remember that huge mistake from one of the Apple employees that had lost an iPhone 4 in a bar. He was testing on the field, cleverly disguised as an iPhone 3GS.
Deimorz 7y ago
This is an aside, but I think it's interesting: The Information is a hard-paywalled site with a very expensive subscription ($39 USD monthly or $399 annually). Normally you can't read any articles on the site without a subscription. However, the query string on this link bypasses the paywall for this specific article: ?pu=hackernews11vvpt&utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=unlock If you remove the pu= variable, you'll hit the usual paywall. The submitter's profile says "Director of Growth @ The Information". They've been submitting The Information articles to HN for the last couple of weeks with paywall bypasses to try to attract new subscribers. It's good content, but it's also definitely advertising. Is that a problem? I'm not sure, this is a pretty unusual situation.
- paulcole 7y ago
  It seems to be acceptable for HN readers to share workarounds for paywalled content (although it's a practice I strongly disagree with) so I don't see why HN would have a problem with the content creator themselves providing a workaround.
  - dang 7y ago
    They've coordinated it with us by email. I think it's working out great so far.
    - paulcole 7y ago
      Yeah, I don’t disagree. I do disagree with your handling of other paywall workarounds.
- ballmers_peak 7y ago
  Honestly, it was more of a symptom of seeing our content posted on here organically and then the accompanying complaints about the paywall from the community. There's obviously upside to having more eyeballs on our content.
aogl 7y ago
"Audacious" "people familiar with the..." . How many times do we have to read that in this article!
- kuzimoto 7y ago
  I have to agree, those were getting kind of repetitive and annoying.
Theodores 7y ago
They should deliberately be leaking the whole time, some ideas being surreptitiously tested on an unassuming public. In this way any real leak gets ignored as the person making the leak is not as well connected as the posse from the PR company manufacturing fake leaks for Apple. As part of the operation some leaks can be genuine so the press have full confidence in the PR operation, with it always providing them with tid-bits of speculation. Who knows, Apple could have such an operation going already, unlikely though. Microsoft did a similar thing during the early OS wars when they just announced they would be doing something without necessarily doing it. This killed off the incentive for competitors to enter the marketspace. Apple could do a similar thing with phone features.
hthtegr 7y ago
It wasn't lost on me when I was working on a contract for a very large secretive tech company that if I leaked info that I had it would affect the share price. I didn't, but it made me realise how improbable it is that these companies actually manage to keep stuff so secret. I bet there are hundreds of people reading HN right now who are keeping quiet about stuff that would be explosive if made public. Quite impressive really.
- koz1000 7y ago
  In a previous lifetime I worked for a company that had a Lucasfilm merchandising license for Star Wars: Episode 1. It was made precisely clear what the damages would be if script details leaked out prematurely, and they would be enumerated in dollars and the figure was incredibly large. Multiple-commas large. At least two, possibly 3. The project team toiled for nearly a year behind a locked door, we couldn't discuss a single piece of the project with them until the premiere date.
  - CamelCaseName 7y ago
    If you're interested in seeing what happens when you do leak movie details (or in this case, the full movie) -- take a look at William Morarity, who leaked The Revenant, 6 days ahead of it's theatrical release. https://torrentfreak.com/man-leaked-revenant-online-fined-1-1m-160930/ https://torrentfreak.com/man-leaked-revenant-online-fined-1-...
- brianpgordon 7y ago
  It's not really much different from loads of the HN crowd having eye-watering access to production systems. It's just part of the job, and there are a lot of people whose lives and families depend on you not fucking it up, and the job pays well enough to not worry about going hungry or freezing to death in the snow. Yes, of course, of course, in day-to-day practice simply having integrity is the absolute end of the story, but even to the paranoid risk analysts upstairs it's not that outrageous to trust people who already have a good life and have no reason to risk going to federal prison just for an earlier retirement.
FruitCompanyEmp 7y ago
>>> Pregnant workers have complained about the use of metal detectors at facilities that make new products, only to be told they would have to change to less sensitive roles if they weren’t willing to submit to screening. Apple’s security policies specifically say no exceptions can be made for pregnancy. Throwaway for obvious reasons. Apple mandates that Foxconn worker's worker's wear uniforms with the only pockets on the knees. The goal is to minimize the perception of inappropriate touching during pat downs. Apple also mandates that exit security have a dedicated lane for female workers to be wanded by female guards.
- tinus_hn 7y ago
  What does that even mean? Do these people think you can just walk around the metal detectors in an airport if you’re pregnant?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - dangrossman 7y ago
    > If you are pregnant and still concerned, you can opt out of going through screening technology altogether and requesting a pat down. The pat-down will be conducted by a female Transportation Security Officer, who will advise you about the pat-down details. https://www.tsa.gov/blog/2014/07/22/tsa-travel-tips-pregnant-passengers https://www.tsa.gov/blog/2014/07/22/tsa-travel-tips-pregnant...
    - tinus_hn 7y ago
      That is about the ‘see through your clothes’ advanced imaging devices and not merely metal detectors. Anyone can opt out of these.
      - dangrossman 7y ago
        That is not the case. A pregnant woman may opt out of screening devices regardless of which type is in use. They are taken to the side and receive a pat down from a female agent. I thought I provided a sufficiently authoritative source for this (it's both in writing and shown in the video), but there are dozens of others you can look up on Google. Here's another, "reasons an individual may opt out of metal detection or AIT (advanced imaging technology) screening include: pregnancy" https://www.tsa.gov/sites/default/files/foia-readingroom/pat-down_training_procedures_april_2018-1600112rr-1_pt2.pdf https://www.tsa.gov/sites/default/files/foia-readingroom/pat...

245 points by ballmers_peak 7y ago

It's fascinating the lengths people will go to both when protecting and leaking unreleased products and manufacturing techniques. While I would do the same in Apple and Samsung's position, I am worried about the effects of durable secrecy on the sustainability of our society and markets. Markets need competition, and societies need public domain knowledge. If somehow a critical supplier is eliminated there would be no way for a new entrant to fill the gap quickly since all the critical knowledge is secret and centralized.

briandear 7y ago
That knowledge is created by the company. Why should everyone have access to it? Can’t competitors create their own processes? The formula to Coca Cola is still practically a state secret, but that didn’t stop Pepsi et al from competing. Secrets of iPhone manufacturing isn’t something that should be considered worthy of the public domain. Nothing is stopping a competitor from developing their own knowledge and processes. You don’t have to steal to compete.
- wwweston 7y ago
  The question of whether knowledge is property isn't a simple one. Practically, knowledge belongs to anyone who has it. There may be benefits to setting up cooperative rules about how people can use it. But even in societies with capitalism-friendly approaches, there are cases where knowledge is recognized as a kind of temporary property (say, patents) and yet everyone may have access. There are reasons for that. Secrets are a different kind of protection. You can try to keep them, and perhaps you even have incentives to do so. This creates an interesting set of incentives for others trying to find out, as well as for those who know to defect (depending on the legal framework and reach).
- nitrogen 7y ago
  A few points in response: 1. The knowledge is created by people working for the company. Both the people and the company are part of a broader society, and all (people, company, society) have an interest in keeping the ability to manufacture alive. 2. Reinventing everything from scratch while risking submarine patents is wasteful, especially for processes that are obsolete from the view of the original company. 3. The same secrets that go into making an iPhone go into making everything else. I'm not interested in exact dimensions and features being public before release, but I am interested in the general know-how of precision design and assembly being preserved in a way that can outlive the original company. 4. We have lost significant manufacturing capability before. Nobody knows how to recreate the Saturn V rocket. SpaceX, NASA, and others have to recreate that knowledge at high cost. Society at large has a greater interest in preventing this kind of technological regress than in preserving the secrets of one company indefinitely.
wmf 7y ago
Realistically people switch companies all the time and the knowledge distributes itself that way.
- AceJohnny2 7y ago
  which is why blanket noncompetes are terrible.
wongarsu 7y ago
That's exactly why patents were invented: publish your secrets, in return the state gives you exclusive rights on the idea for 25 years. After that everyone can use the instructions from the patent application as they wish. Of course that system doesn't really work as intended anymore.
- Terr_ 7y ago
  Most of the things Apple is trying to keep secret -- like case designs -- shouldn't be patentable anyway.
- caymanjim 7y ago
  That works well when you only have to worry about one state with strong legal protections, like the US or Europe. An enormous part of China's economy is the manufacture of counterfeit goods and clones, due to lax enforcement. Patents are effectively meaningless there.

windowtoss 7y ago

Throwaway account to be safe. ———— While I did not deal with Apple specifically, I did however deal with another major mobile phone corporation — at that time — and i’m sure most of you have heard of them: Research In Motion, RIM, BlackBerry, etc. This was during a time, my guess is 2008-2010, when forums, unreleased product leaks, and blogs were a very big business and leaks were lucrative to everybody. As a BlackBerry user myself, I found myself spending a lot of time in the old Crackberry.com forums, which happen to have a lot of RIM employees, insiders, and also black market dealers. I’ve soon found myself in contact with people who were passing me (!) information — just an anonymous forum poster. After a while, I’ve gained the trust of some of my sources and things started to get a little different. Instead of just information, I was getting files of unreleased BlackBerry OS for products that weren’t even released at the time. [0] Eventually I was given the opportunity to gain access to unreleased devices. Without mentioning any specifics, just in case, let’s just say these phones were like hot potatoes. If you were lucky, the device PIN hasn’t been blacklisted — meaning no BBM, service, your phone is now a brick — by RIM after they notice its missing. How long it’d continue working for was a mystery. Some would go for weeks, others would be dead by the time it arrived in the main. The one thing you wanted to look for? The “Property of Research in Motion Limited” sticker on the back. [1] But to get back to it’s relevance, I would sometimes learn from the sellers how these phones got out of the building without being noticed and there were a few ways. 1. Metal detectors and x-ray machines: In some areas, employees would have their bags and body scanned by security and this was one of the easiest, yet terrifying option of getting products out of the building. Along side the x-ray machine, there would be a gap between that and the wall. When you walk up to put your stuff down on the belt, just slide the phone down the side and grab it on the other side. With this you’re only doing 1 phone at a time. 2. Windows: Some of them would open so all you had to do was open the window and .. drop the phone down into the bush below. Pick it up after work and nobody can check. 3. Retailers: As with anything, it’s not what you know but who you know. If you’re becoming friends with your manufactures rep, you can get easy access to some gems. Mind you this was all being done in Canada so these phones were being handed around like drugs. 4. Self smuggling: They would just stick phones, shells, etc. in their pants and try to walk out without alerting security and/or bypassing it. Granted this all was before security tightened up and well before RIMs eventual downfall. While some of it may seem far fetched, let me tell you one thing: if you’re going to deal in unreleased phones, don’t use their phones built-in messaging system (BBM) to conduct business.. Because a nice fella from the security team at RIM will give you a call on your personal cell phone one late night and tell you that they know what you’re doing and to stop it. So I stopped that night. — [0]: RIM was notorious with changing product code ames and they also had multiple numbering schemes for GSM, CDMA, or international models (ie os v9.5 for 9200 would be the GSM version but v9.5 for a 9220 is the CDMA version). [1]: https://recombu-content.imgix.net/app/uploads/13578-M11755-10091.jpg?fit=crop&auto=format%2Cenhance%2Ccompress&w=670&auto=format%2Cenhance%2Ccompress https://recombu-content.imgix.net/app/uploads/13578-M11755-1...

jandrese 7y ago

I wonder how many of these extraordinary leak prevention measures would be necessary if Apple manufactured their devices in the US or Europe? The temptations for the workers would be the same (big payoffs are a universal temptation), but there might be more of a cultural barrier to overcome. Also I'm fully willing to believe that US authorities would prosecute the crap out of someone stealing from Apple, whereas in China the penalty seems to be that you lose your crappy sweatshop job and have to walk across the street to get a new one. Apple broke up the supply chain (and probably not a small number of bones) for the time being in China, but it will grow back. The money is too tempting.

MuffinFlavored 7y ago
> if Apple manufactured their devices in the US or Europe? Unless I wildly misunderstand something, I'm pretty sure Apple could not produce X amount of devices at Y quality + rate for Z dollars in the US or Europe.
- littleweep 7y ago
  It's possible until you assign values to X, Y and Z
- benologist 7y ago
  They couldn't hoard a quarter trillion dollars while doing it. It would be a nightmare if they only had a hundred and fifty billion to tide them over until their next big thing.
  - kccqzy 7y ago
    Do you want Apple to get into the business of manufacturing specialized screws? They could but it's not their core competency. So spend money?
    - BillinghamJ 7y ago
      They do have their own screws already

eugenekolo2 7y ago

Don't know what happened but the first time I clicked this link it brought me to unrendered HTML and obfuscated JS. Can't reproduce... but perhaps beware of malware.

eugenekolo2 7y ago
Reproduced. The error page contains malware. Appears to be some sort of keylogger, but I didn't actually analyze it. https://gist.github.com/eugenekolo/81c1e7ff1c699cfbb584fdd6bde3adf5 https://gist.github.com/eugenekolo/81c1e7ff1c699cfbb584fdd6b...
- Deimorz 7y ago
  If that's not just on your end, hosting malware is a really big issue for a site that charges $400 USD/year for a subscription to be able to read their articles.
- ballmers_peak 7y ago
  Thank you for flagging. This has been fixed. The page affected was a static file hosted outside our application only to be served when the app was inaccessible or offline. No user data was compromised at any point.

inlined 7y ago

> Apple’s suppliers are forbidden from referring to Apple by name or its project code names anywhere in buildings. In which buildings? Surely (at least vendor specific) codenames are necessary for basic communication. I was affected when a partner team was sidelined by an Apple contract. It was a fireable offense to say <codename> was Apple or leak it, but you could use <codename> internally to indicate that you had mandated commitments and may not meet partnership goals.

metalchianti 7y ago
<codename> is Apple was the worst kept secret at my last company. Even our contractors knew who it was.
- jonknee 7y ago
  When you're ordering in Apple like volumes it has to be very difficult to hide.
  - inlined 7y ago
    Yes. the volume narrowed the potential customer list greatly. I wonder if I would have guessed correctly had I not been on the need to know list.
  - yellowapple 7y ago
    And also when the things you're building (presumably) have Apple logos on them.
    - jonknee 7y ago
      There are tons of components in Apple's devices and only a few Apple logos. If you get an order for 70 million higher end tiny lenses you can narrow down the list of potential customers pretty quickly, no logos needed.
- throwaway13000 7y ago
  "Fruit themed company" or "Company in Cupertino"

module0000 7y ago

I was hoping for pictures of the secret tunnels and hidden crawl spaces :(

sverige 7y ago
Here's a tunnel built by El Chapo's people instead. Hope it helps scratch that itch. https://viceland-assets-cdn.vice.com/viceblog/64645854tunnel.jpg https://viceland-assets-cdn.vice.com/viceblog/64645854tunnel...
- Operyl 7y ago
  Wow. That’s a lot more professional looking than I expected it to be.
  - darkpuma 7y ago
    The men who made it were in fact professional miners and engineers from what I understand.
    - antod 7y ago
      I can't help wondering about your word "were" (past tense)? Doing secret work for a ruthless criminal gang must be risky.
      - Simon_says 7y ago
        Were. Still are. But they were, too.
        thunderrabbit 7y ago
        Sorry for the convenience.
      - darkpuma 7y ago
        You seem to be right. This article talks about mass graves of diggers being found: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/03/underworld-monte-reel https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/03/underworld-mon...

evmar 7y ago

It's interesting that Apple is policing this. Wouldn't it make more sense for Apple to have some sort of "if you leak you are liable for $X" clause in their contract with the factories, so that the factories themselves have an incentive to prevent this?

ibero 7y ago
Meanwhile, Apple’s suppliers are forbidden from referring to Apple by name or its project code names anywhere in buildings. Suppliers must reimburse Apple for investigations and often must pay penalties when leaks are traced back to them. - article
dangerboysteve 7y ago
The article mentions that penalties are possible with smaller suppliers but Foxconn is untouchable as they are vital and Apple would not dare impose penalties against them.

meerita 7y ago

I remember that huge mistake from one of the Apple employees that had lost an iPhone 4 in a bar. He was testing on the field, cleverly disguised as an iPhone 3GS.

Deimorz 7y ago

This is an aside, but I think it's interesting: The Information is a hard-paywalled site with a very expensive subscription ($39 USD monthly or $399 annually). Normally you can't read any articles on the site without a subscription. However, the query string on this link bypasses the paywall for this specific article: ?pu=hackernews11vvpt&utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=unlock If you remove the pu= variable, you'll hit the usual paywall. The submitter's profile says "Director of Growth @ The Information". They've been submitting The Information articles to HN for the last couple of weeks with paywall bypasses to try to attract new subscribers. It's good content, but it's also definitely advertising. Is that a problem? I'm not sure, this is a pretty unusual situation.

paulcole 7y ago
It seems to be acceptable for HN readers to share workarounds for paywalled content (although it's a practice I strongly disagree with) so I don't see why HN would have a problem with the content creator themselves providing a workaround.
- dang 7y ago
  They've coordinated it with us by email. I think it's working out great so far.
  - paulcole 7y ago
    Yeah, I don’t disagree. I do disagree with your handling of other paywall workarounds.
ballmers_peak 7y ago
Honestly, it was more of a symptom of seeing our content posted on here organically and then the accompanying complaints about the paywall from the community. There's obviously upside to having more eyeballs on our content.

aogl 7y ago

"Audacious" "people familiar with the..." . How many times do we have to read that in this article!

kuzimoto 7y ago
I have to agree, those were getting kind of repetitive and annoying.

Theodores 7y ago

They should deliberately be leaking the whole time, some ideas being surreptitiously tested on an unassuming public. In this way any real leak gets ignored as the person making the leak is not as well connected as the posse from the PR company manufacturing fake leaks for Apple. As part of the operation some leaks can be genuine so the press have full confidence in the PR operation, with it always providing them with tid-bits of speculation. Who knows, Apple could have such an operation going already, unlikely though. Microsoft did a similar thing during the early OS wars when they just announced they would be doing something without necessarily doing it. This killed off the incentive for competitors to enter the marketspace. Apple could do a similar thing with phone features.

hthtegr 7y ago

It wasn't lost on me when I was working on a contract for a very large secretive tech company that if I leaked info that I had it would affect the share price. I didn't, but it made me realise how improbable it is that these companies actually manage to keep stuff so secret. I bet there are hundreds of people reading HN right now who are keeping quiet about stuff that would be explosive if made public. Quite impressive really.

koz1000 7y ago
In a previous lifetime I worked for a company that had a Lucasfilm merchandising license for Star Wars: Episode 1. It was made precisely clear what the damages would be if script details leaked out prematurely, and they would be enumerated in dollars and the figure was incredibly large. Multiple-commas large. At least two, possibly 3. The project team toiled for nearly a year behind a locked door, we couldn't discuss a single piece of the project with them until the premiere date.
- CamelCaseName 7y ago
  If you're interested in seeing what happens when you do leak movie details (or in this case, the full movie) -- take a look at William Morarity, who leaked The Revenant, 6 days ahead of it's theatrical release. https://torrentfreak.com/man-leaked-revenant-online-fined-1-1m-160930/ https://torrentfreak.com/man-leaked-revenant-online-fined-1-...
brianpgordon 7y ago
It's not really much different from loads of the HN crowd having eye-watering access to production systems. It's just part of the job, and there are a lot of people whose lives and families depend on you not fucking it up, and the job pays well enough to not worry about going hungry or freezing to death in the snow. Yes, of course, of course, in day-to-day practice simply having integrity is the absolute end of the story, but even to the paranoid risk analysts upstairs it's not that outrageous to trust people who already have a good life and have no reason to risk going to federal prison just for an earlier retirement.

FruitCompanyEmp 7y ago

>>> Pregnant workers have complained about the use of metal detectors at facilities that make new products, only to be told they would have to change to less sensitive roles if they weren’t willing to submit to screening. Apple’s security policies specifically say no exceptions can be made for pregnancy. Throwaway for obvious reasons. Apple mandates that Foxconn worker's worker's wear uniforms with the only pockets on the knees. The goal is to minimize the perception of inappropriate touching during pat downs. Apple also mandates that exit security have a dedicated lane for female workers to be wanded by female guards.

tinus_hn 7y ago
What does that even mean? Do these people think you can just walk around the metal detectors in an airport if you’re pregnant?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- dangrossman 7y ago
  > If you are pregnant and still concerned, you can opt out of going through screening technology altogether and requesting a pat down. The pat-down will be conducted by a female Transportation Security Officer, who will advise you about the pat-down details. https://www.tsa.gov/blog/2014/07/22/tsa-travel-tips-pregnant-passengers https://www.tsa.gov/blog/2014/07/22/tsa-travel-tips-pregnant...
  - tinus_hn 7y ago
    That is about the ‘see through your clothes’ advanced imaging devices and not merely metal detectors. Anyone can opt out of these.
    - dangrossman 7y ago
      That is not the case. A pregnant woman may opt out of screening devices regardless of which type is in use. They are taken to the side and receive a pat down from a female agent. I thought I provided a sufficiently authoritative source for this (it's both in writing and shown in the video), but there are dozens of others you can look up on Google. Here's another, "reasons an individual may opt out of metal detection or AIT (advanced imaging technology) screening include: pregnancy" https://www.tsa.gov/sites/default/files/foia-readingroom/pat-down_training_procedures_april_2018-1600112rr-1_pt2.pdf https://www.tsa.gov/sites/default/files/foia-readingroom/pat...