Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers

hackaday.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 164 posts

Re: Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers

#71

Post by Canada »

revelation wrote: post #23
bllguo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's reductionist to the point of absurdity. WeChat does far more than WhatsApp. I'd say it certainly started off aping others, but WeChat has now grown into a substantially more innovative platform.

Yes, it's AOL, powered with guns and tanks. You are making my point. It's all in the one app because there is the state in the background intervening to make it so. But dictatorships are not market validation.

You are absolutely correct - WeChat is what it is because of the great firewall. It's not that China blocked other messaging apps (though they do now), it's that China crippled the web and as a result users have been driven into these apps.

You can see it in other ways as well - In the US people generally shop on the web, but in China people shop in an app and the web version is not as good.

I guess some might call WeChat payments and mini programs innovative, but they're not very impressive technically. Take mini programs, they are basically a web app hosted within WeChat. It's kinda cool, like Facebook apps were kinda cool, but neither holds a candle to the power of a real browser. So Facebook apps were kind of a fad and then we got bored and went back to the open web. But Chinese people can't do that. It's not that they can't have web browsers, it's that they don't have any web innovation. It's not surprising, the web is so locked down with license requirements to even put up a simple web site. And so there's no good hosting options, which in turn makes it more productive just to stay on WeChat and sell your wares though Alibaba.

Re: Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers

#72

Post by logicallee »

yzmtf2008 wrote: post #10
logicallee wrote: post #5

This was an interesting article! At the same time, there are innovations out of China (that surpass anything which may have inspired it, or which they could have started out copying). So judging by their output, whatever cultural issues surrounded: >For Chinese, this means you think you know better than a professional, than experts. It’s the act of seeing something and saying “why don’t they do this instead?”. Tradit…

As a Chinese reader, every sentence in this article rings true, even more so in the historic perspectives. Especially in the PRC, you're in general incentivized to be an "excellent cog in the machine", and they teach this value to you in schools. "Being unique" in your first 18 years of life is considered a bad thing, and respect for hierarchy is enforced every day. I wouldn't write everyone in China off to the type…

Thank you. Especially since you write that "every sentence in the article rings true" for you, can you expand on this from the article:

>engineers that you know to be otherwise reasonably competent simply choosing not to bring up glaring and obvious problems.

What does it refer to? How would/should someone guard against it? Normally we are usually used to being able to receive a bit of push-back (maybe polite) if we propose something with a glaring and obvious problem. Does this mean engineers would build something that doesn't work at all? (For some reason that's completely obvious to them.) In point of fact, I'm not sure what the article refers to, as it doesn't give an example. Could you give an example of what you think they mean, and how someone might protect against this effect? Thanks.

Re: Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers

#73

Post by logicallee »

bllguo wrote: post #13
logicallee wrote: post #5

This was an interesting article! At the same time, there are innovations out of China (that surpass anything which may have inspired it, or which they could have started out copying). So judging by their output, whatever cultural issues surrounded: >For Chinese, this means you think you know better than a professional, than experts. It’s the act of seeing something and saying “why don’t they do this instead?”. Tradit…

Chinese reader here. It's a very valid characterization of the culture. Respect is much more important. Less anti-intellectualism when compared to the West. Much more communal than individual, in all aspects. But there's definitely change going on in China. Juxtapose all of that with increased Western exposure, and increased sense of Chinese pride. More individualism. More "We're Chinese, we can do better!" attitudes…

Thank you. I would also be interested in your answer to the question I asked yzmtf2008 here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15153379

(sibling comment to this comment.)

Re: Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers

#74

Post by chrischen »

rawnlq wrote: post #40
chrischen wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The blog post doesn’t provide concrete evidence... but I did checkout some videos and in some of the non-scripted dialog her Ad-lib English skills (grammar) definitely don’t match the writing. That being said you do have much more time to correct writing and people can edit it for you...

Her natural english is actually pretty bad if you check out her reddit comments (which are not as edited): https://www.reddit.com/user/SexyCyborg/comments/?sort=top . She admits to getting help with english editing here: > *As always when my English gets native I had help proofreading and editing. This applies and yes I get frustrated sometimes. Words are still mine. Lots and lots of people have met me in person and…

I would say the much more likely scenario is that she's not necessarily some wholly engineered creation like Lonelygirl15 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonelygirl15) but rather just someone fully taking advantage of her sexuality and getting a lot of help from people.

Re: Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers

#75

Post by bittercynic »

Animats wrote: post #61
fiblye wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Christ, none of the issue is with women using tools. It's everything but that. The blog post's focus is clearly that someone as apparently young and busy as this isn't merely a jack of all trades, but a master. Gender isn't what is making people stop and think here. >I'm just going to tell you, OP, and everyone who agrees with you right now: fuck off. This kind of debate shutdown is better suited to Facebook politica…

Ever meet Jeri Ellsworth? She's usually in Silicon Valley and fairly visible. She can do both software and hardware. She made money selling a box with a joystick that connected to a TV and all the Commodore-64 games in it. She built race cars as a teenager. She's now working on augmented reality, while fooling around with ham radio. Jeri is one of those rare people who thinks things through from first principles. She…

I have, along with several members of her entourage. She seemed like a genuinely nice and generous person (on top of being an extraordinarily talented and productive engineer), who has surrounded herself with other awesome people.

Her work is more geared towards education, and Naomi's is more geared toward entertainment. I think there's a place for both.

Re: Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers

#76

Post by [deleted] »

wanderingjew wrote: post #39
timaz wrote: post #21

I can't believe how far the electrical engineer ghostwriter has taken this online persona. If anyone's ever been to the hacker meetups in ShenZhen when "Naomi Wu" first started making these videos, you'd see someone lurking in the corner. It's getting kind of ridiculous where this guy gets Patreon every month now.. [0]: http://sexycyborgisaliar.blogspot.com/2017/05/naomi-sexy-cyb...

Just so everyone is aware, the argument that blog post makes is extremely tenuous at best, and blatant disinformation at its worst. The argument is, basically, 'someone on reddit was doing stuff in China, then stopped a few years ago. A few years ago, Naomi Wu a.k.a SexyCyborg started using reddit.' Here's that same argument again: Isaac Asimov wrote a lot of stuff, then he stopped. Around the same time he stopped, I…

[deleted]

Re: Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers

#77

Post by novembermike »

fiblye wrote: post #51
wanderingjew wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just so everyone is aware, the argument that blog post makes is extremely tenuous at best, and blatant disinformation at its worst. The argument is, basically, 'someone on reddit was doing stuff in China, then stopped a few years ago. A few years ago, Naomi Wu a.k.a SexyCyborg started using reddit.' Here's that same argument again: Isaac Asimov wrote a lot of stuff, then he stopped. Around the same time he stopped, I…

Christ, none of the issue is with women using tools. It's everything but that. The blog post's focus is clearly that someone as apparently young and busy as this isn't merely a jack of all trades, but a master. Gender isn't what is making people stop and think here. >I'm just going to tell you, OP, and everyone who agrees with you right now: fuck off. This kind of debate shutdown is better suited to Facebook politica…

How is she a master? She looks like an amateur hobbyist, the main positive she has is that she looks fairly active and she's actually building stuff. Looking at her youtube I saw 3d printed bikini cups, what looked like her putting together some shelves and a skirt with lights under it. That's not masterful, but it does take a little dedication and maybe some nights or weekends.

Re: Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers

#78

Post by forkLding »

adventured wrote: post #66
forkLding wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats more her style, not doing it for attracting attention, more because shes interested in modifying her body EDIT: not sure where the downvote came from, you can read about it from her own pastebin

> Thats more her style, not doing it for attracting attention, more because shes interested in modifying her body You're probably getting downvoted for that premise. It's blatantly obvious she's using it to drive views on YouTube (and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that). Even her name is intentionally pointed toward that: SexyCyborg; she's telling you right there what she's doing. It would be just as obvious…

Then I dont mind haha, theres more clickbaity stuff happening on my fb feeds everyday, at least she got the breasts done before the internet fame and not the other way around from how I remember it.

Re: Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers

#79

Post by ummmm »

rawnlq wrote: post #68

Another interesting cultural bit from the same author on chinese collaboration: > You know how overseas Chinese students in America all copy each others work to get answers? This workflow scale. How we work when older too. So if I have a question I open up QQ and have a few hundred friends. We all help each other with whatever. Many are engineers or work in factories here in Shenzhen. Most of the electronics in the w…

> She

The author is actually a guy

Re: Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers

#80

Post by jdietrich »

lambda wrote: post #14
bllguo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's reductionist to the point of absurdity. WeChat does far more than WhatsApp. I'd say it certainly started off aping others, but WeChat has now grown into a substantially more innovative platform.

What does WeChat do that isn't handled by other, separate apps? For instance, I don't really see a need to have the same app do chat and payment (in fact, I'd prefer if they didn't). What about WeChat is particularly innovative, other than just bundling a lot of different functionality into one big app?

WeChat is deeply integrated, the UI is excellent, it's fast and responsive even on low-end handsets. It's a 40MB APK that could well be the only app you need. WeChat is incredibly feature-dense, but it's also slick, efficient and highly usable. I don't like the monolithic app model, but WeChat have implemented it extraordinarily well.

Tencent are a phenomenal company that deserve far more respect in the west. The Chinese market may be distinctive, but WeChat's dominance of the Chinese market has come through innovation, clever design and good engineering.

Post reply on HN