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Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers

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

#121

Post by SexyCyborg »

vacri wrote: post #120
timaz wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing inexplicable about a woman using tools. The main thing I take issue with is someone literally parading a girl around in less-than-underwear for their own profit. Low profile in their home country.. like showing your face and naughty bits on camera and attending conventions? Like I said, this really makes no sense when you add things up. Tools are cheap in China for the Westerner, but not for the avera…

I don't understand your problem with someone having a mentor. I've been a sysadmin for approaching a decade now and I have a mentor, and no-one's ever called me a fraud at any stage. So what if she has help from someone more skilled than her? She clearly does at least some of the work herself, from her time-lapse videos. Why is it that women in tech aren't allowed to have intermediate technical skills without copping…

>She clearly does at least some of the work herself, from her time-lapse videos.

I do ALL of my builds myself and keep cameras running from beginning to end to prove it. What other technical help I get is always disclosed in the presentation and build log.

There is no proof I can offer that will be accepted and he harder I work, the more evidence I offer, the more I study and try, the angrier they get. Now this shit- I write a reasonable article and they jump in to try and discredit builds that are not even relevant to the discussion.

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

#122

Post by taway_1212 »

anovikov wrote: post #112
aleyan wrote: post #87

> Even now, engineers are not held in anywhere near the same regard in China as they are in the West. I have to respectfully disagree with the author on the esteem of engineers in China versus the West. I am not Chinese, nor an expert on their culture, but I do live in the West so I understand half of the equation. Current President of China, Xi Jinping was educated as a chemical engineer[1]. His predecessor Hu Jinta…

This is because China is not a democracy. In a democracy, someone who speaks well is likely to win - and lawyers by definition must be able to speak very well. In China there is a merit-based system which as every merit-based system, has a lot of flaws - so someone able to work through the top of it must be a real hacker. Engineers win hands down over lawyers.

What? Communist party power dynamics are similar to ones in a gang - i.e. you have someone from the party who managed to seize power and lots of other top party members silently forming cliques and waiting for you to slip, so that they can deliver the blow. The country's people are only chips in the game, if that (often, rulers are toppled not over their policy but over some bullshit doctrinal dispute).

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

#123

Post by bambax »

On the subject of manufacturing in China, everyone seems to be saying the same thing, namely that you get exactly what you ask for, without any input or suggestion from the manufacturer, even in the presence of obvious flaws in your original design.

This hasn't been my experience. I manufacture small metal objects in China, that are not very complex (no electronics, etc.) but I get good inputs from manufacturers. For the packaging for example, we designed cases and envelopes with a manufacturer, and they came up with several ideas that we tested on prototypes -- some good, some bad, but the point is, they did have ideas and they did offer them for consideration.

More importantly, it differs from manufacturer to manufacturer. Some factories will produce garbage and then try to explain to you that there is no other way (after the fact); other factories correct mistakes before they even show you the result, because they understand what you want and they iterate autonomously, in order to get there.

What is true is that manufacturing is sloooow. The total duration quoted at the beginning of a project should be at least doubled. But this is probably not Chinese-specific.

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

#124

Post by digi_owl »

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…

> "The grammar and formatting are well beyond a lot of even native English speakers" -- Yes, because we edit her posts (top link to this submission and [0]). Additionally, Naomi has said she has a team (maybe of expats?) that edit her work for grammar and idioms. Also, if you follow her twitter, she's really locked in on Internet culture, which would give her a leg up on the memes and idioms.

I can echo this. Over the years i have been taken as being American because of how i write. But back in school my english grades sucked.

It was only after got online and thus had to regularly practice that my writing picked up. But if i have to try to speak the language, i will butcher it in a myriad of ways.

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

#125

Post by chippy »

dis-sys wrote: post #100

> Even now, engineers are not held in anywhere near the same regard in China as they are in the West. what a joke. Three Chinese Presidents in a row all had engineering background, yet this is still not enough? President Jiang Zemin was an engineer for decades. President Hu Jintao was an engineer for almost a decade. President Xi Jinping majored in chemical engineering from Tsinghua. Then you look at property prices…

Reworded: Even now, presidents are held with the same regard in China as they are in the West.

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

#126

Post by new299 »

exikyut wrote: post #64

Avoiding the sentiment of the other comments here (which are not completely confusing, but nonetheless a little over my head), I have a practical question: How does one relate to and incentivize the Chinese people, then? Where are good places to start learning more? Context/example: I'm tentatively interested in approaching China from a "hobbyist with a tiny bit of money" standpoint. I want to do limited runs (3 to 4…

I spent a reasonably significant amount of time figuring out the Psion series 5 LCD and Keyboard interface. I built my own controller for the keyboard, and interfaced the display to a Gumstix. That was many years ago...

I've also done some prototyping in Shenzhen. CNC and 3D printed parts are cheap. If you've modeled it, everything apart from the membrane itself should be straightforward (and cheap in small quantities, The membrane itself is likely more problematic. But you can make FPCBs, flexible circuit boards. In small quantities and at relatively low cost. Because the membrane is quite large I'd guess maybe 500USD? Getting domes in it probably is harder. I wonder if you can deform Polymide in some kind of jig. Alternatively could add a thin, 3d printed spacer perhaps?

If you really wanted to do it properly, I don't think that would be massively expensive either. Having a prototype might help. There are a bunch of companies that /do/ agree to do small runs. And I know many people how have done this. Often you end up having to visit the factory a bunch to push them to do what you want, and have occasional failures. But it's often still far easier than it might be elsewhere.

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

#127

Post by drited »

anovikov wrote: post #112
aleyan wrote: post #87

> Even now, engineers are not held in anywhere near the same regard in China as they are in the West. I have to respectfully disagree with the author on the esteem of engineers in China versus the West. I am not Chinese, nor an expert on their culture, but I do live in the West so I understand half of the equation. Current President of China, Xi Jinping was educated as a chemical engineer[1]. His predecessor Hu Jinta…

This is because China is not a democracy. In a democracy, someone who speaks well is likely to win - and lawyers by definition must be able to speak very well. In China there is a merit-based system which as every merit-based system, has a lot of flaws - so someone able to work through the top of it must be a real hacker. Engineers win hands down over lawyers.

Couldn't it just reflect the base rates? I wonder if the explanation could be found from making a comparison of the statistics from when the respective presidents entered university on how many people in upwardly mobile families studied to become engineers / lawyers in China vs Western countries. I suspect in China 20 to 30 years ago engineering was seen as the route to success because of booming manufacturing industry whereas in the US service industry has been taking over for decades. I don't know the statistics for China 20 or 30 years ago but I hire from top graduate schools in India today which is like China around year 2000 in many respects. Most of the students I see studied engineering at undergraduate level.

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

#128

Post by ivanhoe »

taway_1212 wrote: post #122
anovikov wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is because China is not a democracy. In a democracy, someone who speaks well is likely to win - and lawyers by definition must be able to speak very well. In China there is a merit-based system which as every merit-based system, has a lot of flaws - so someone able to work through the top of it must be a real hacker. Engineers win hands down over lawyers.

What? Communist party power dynamics are similar to ones in a gang - i.e. you have someone from the party who managed to seize power and lots of other top party members silently forming cliques and waiting for you to slip, so that they can deliver the blow. The country's people are only chips in the game, if that (often, rulers are toppled not over their policy but over some bullshit doctrinal dispute).

isn't that how any political party works?

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

#129

Post by 0x0 »

owebmaster wrote: post #8
ajross wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely it's not true everywhere. Most of us have known plenty of Chinese engineers who are unafraid to report bugs and suggest solutions. But in the broad sense you mean: yeah, kinda. Chinese companies (in the PRC in particular of course, but also outfits the stem from Hong Kong and Taiwan) tend not to be particularly innovative. It's a lagging market, filled with well-implemented but fundamentally cloned products fi…

> but there are no chinese Googles or Samsungs There is no american or european WeChat.

To be honest I am surprised WeChat is even allowed in the iOS app store with its all-in-one multi app experience, since app experiences of that type are explicitly called out as disallowed in the app store guidelines section 2.5.8 - https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/

(Actually, I'm not that surprised, they're probably too big to fail and Apple really wants to sell iOS devices in China)

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

#130

Post by ivanhoe »

aleyan wrote: post #87

> Even now, engineers are not held in anywhere near the same regard in China as they are in the West. I have to respectfully disagree with the author on the esteem of engineers in China versus the West. I am not Chinese, nor an expert on their culture, but I do live in the West so I understand half of the equation. Current President of China, Xi Jinping was educated as a chemical engineer[1]. His predecessor Hu Jinta…

They were not elected for being engineers, but because of their careers in the party (just as Angela Merkel wasn't elected because of her PhD, politics don't work like that). Article, at least as I understood it, is about the respect that society gives to an ordinary engineer. Is it considered prestigious to be engineer by common people or they view it as just a little better than being a technician or factory worker. I'm not very familiar with China, but I live in an ex-communist country and this resonates with me a lot. Here, back in time of socialism, your mom wouldn't impress any of her friends with your engineering diploma, but for instance if you were a doctor that was a big deal, you were a respected member of society. Have no idea why, I guess it has to do something with the whole "working class" idea of communism that insists on all workers being treated as equal.
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