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Misleading title. He tested his own eyesight and ordered glasses online. He didn't make his own glasses. Still an interesting read, just not what I expected fr
by scoot 7y ago
Misleading title. He tested his own eyesight and ordered glasses online. He didn't make his own glasses.
Still an interesting read, just not what I expected from the title and lead.
- cptskippy 7y agoEh... he provided custom specifications to a manufacturer. Apple makes it's own SoCs for the iPhone, only Apple can't make semiconductors. They provide specifications to a manufacturer. Apple makes the iPhone, except it's Foxconn that manufacturers it. The APU in the Xbox One is made by Microsoft, but it's composed primarily of off the shelf designed CPU and GPU cores from AMD and manufactured by TSMC/GF/<insert foundary>.
- emerongi 7y agoThe whole blog post was about measuring eyesight, not about what it takes to actually make glasses. My natural expectation was that the author made his/her own lenses and fitted them into a frame. Or designed their own frame, ordered the parts and then assembled them into a frame. I was expecting a technical rundown about all the steps it took to do something like that. The blog post is still a fun read, but the title is definitely misleading.
- jqadams 7y agoBy this logic, I am “making” my own pizza every time I tell Dominos to make me a 20cm pizza with cheese and sauce. I am “making” an IKA sofa when I order it online, telling the manufacturer the model, the size (2 seat, 3, etc). No, what the OP did was check/confirm his numbers and then bought a pair of glasses from a website. Many people buy them from websites, typing in the numbers they received from their doctor. None of these people are “making” anything.
- cptskippy 7y agoI don't disagree with you, and the line between ordering and making is fuzzy. Your examples of an Ikea Sofa and Pizza are great examples of either end of the spectrum. An Ikea sofa has finite configurations that could all be permuted into model numbers, the parts are interchangeable and swapped between models, and prefabricated. A pizza however is completely made to order on demand and if there's a mistake the components are nonrecoverable waste. With Apple's custom SoC, they're designing a custom circuit however that specification is sent to someone else to manufacture. At it's core, it's not unlike ordering a pizza of astronomically greater complexity. So what makes a custom pizza just an order and not a make? Is it the relative simplicity/complexity of the task? If I enlist a factory in China to manufacture custom mouse pads based on my exact specifications, did I make a mouse pad or just order it? Does it matter if the mouse pads are just press cut fabric backed neoprene in various colors and shapes? Glasses are somewhere between an Ikea Sofa and a Pizza in terms of modularity. The lenses and frames are off the shelf but once cut the lenses are spent if an error is made. Glasses however have much more exacting specifications than a pizza or a Sofa.
- adrianmonk 7y agoIt's not completely without precedent to speak that way. "Build" and "make" are different words, but it is common to say "we built our own house" to mean that you had one custom built for you. Also, you can go on almost any car manufacturer's web site and they let you "build" a car, which means selection options and packages to see what it costs and start the process of ordering.
- WC3w6pXxgGd 7y agoAgreed. This was nowhere close to the cool hacker story I was expecting.