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Comment by radicalbyte | Hacker News Reader

After reading the problem definition, my reaction was: you'd either weigh it and use a solenoid to kick it into a defect box, or you'd use air to knock the empty boxes from the line.

I've seen both methods in use on production lines; so I assume that this story is something made up by someone trying to sell some kind of consultancy service?

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It's not just made up, the story is almost a word for word translation of a story that's been circulating for years in Chinese. Of course people have called bullshit on it before.

If you can read Chinese, you can check the thorough debunking of this myth right here, from someone that actually works in a soap factory: https://www.zhihu.com/question/27132006

And that was from 2014.

And here it is in a comment on a Siemens blog from 2009: https://blogs.sw.siemens.com/embedded-software/2009/06/18/ho...

In this age of the internet, memes get translated pretty quickly. I'm curious whether you found some definitive source that tracked this meme to its origin in a Chinese story.

for what it's worth, I don't think they claimed that it originated in Chinese, merely that it was translated from Chinese at some point. it's possible that it originated not in Chinese, was translated to Chinese at some point, then translated back into English.

The claim that is was translated from Chinese was invented in this very thread from someone who happened to see a Chinese version.

> a story that's been circulating for years in Chinese

I don't think I claimed that.

You literally wrote: "the story is almost a word for word translation of a story that's been circulating for years in Chinese".

Is it not?

There's a story that has been circulating for years in Chinese. CHECK.

This story is almost a word for word translation of that. CHECK.

What is wrong with that statement? At the same time, A story that has been circulating for years in Chinese would also almost be a word for word translation of this story.

I remember my college professor telling me this story in college. I have a feeling he'd been telling the same story for decades.

Pusher https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUVdHAUC7_g

Pneumatic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7H9QyHUojFE

Somehow they've installed sensor but don't know about these. Add "$8 million", "0" cases yet guy "was tired of walking", "three weeks of production use" and only CEO bothered to check.

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