Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation • Hacker News Board

Re: Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

#131

Post by thr0waway1239 » Sat, Apr 08, 2017, 4:16 AM UTC

aub3bhat wrote: post #120

chaostheory wrote: post #9

> The common perception that China is incapable of innovation needs re-examining. No one is saying Chinese people can't innovate. The real question is whether Chinese people can innovate while inside China. (I wonder what percentage of current captains of industry in China studied abroad?) Why? Because innovation is essentially disrupting and rebelling against the status quo. ie breaking rules, disobedience, oppositi…

Good lord, this is a ridiculous comment, its truly shameful that its most upvoted. Before you call out Chinese government on Great Firewall, What about Patent Trolls? Or the upcoming Physical wall south of the border? Painting an entire culture with a broad brush is stupid. >> The real question is whether Chinese people can innovate while inside China. To decisively refute your argument. The current leading company i…

The amount of money that Chinese people send abroad to buy overpriced assets (housing in Vancouver, as an example) tells me that they don't trust their rule of law. I don't know if innovation can thrive in such an environment, but let us see. Maybe the rule of law is no better in other countries today.

>> To decisively refute your argument. The current leading company in Drones, is DJI The company was founded in 2006 by Frank Wang (Wāng Tāo, 汪滔). Who did not study Abroad.

If you can make that claim about a majority of such companies then you can say it decisively refutes the argument. You have given one example, which could either be a trend or an exception. But here is a question - how easy do you think it is to confirm if it is a trend or an exception? What does that say about the flow of information? If you were an entrepreneur trying to use this information to your advantage, how much confidence will you have in your assessment?

>> Before you call out Chinese government on Great Firewall, What about Patent Trolls?

Why can't both be wrong?

Re: Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

#132

Post by Canada » Sat, Apr 08, 2017, 4:25 AM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #130

Canada wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything is censored. You have to tunnel pretty much everything. Massive packet loss is par for the course. You can't have a routable address. You can't just fire up a VM in minutes, you can't even have a VM without a registered company with a license to run a web server. Things we take for granted like attaching a 2mb file to an email or a simple Google search can take several minutes to accomplish.

Reddit, hackernews, quora aren't censored.

Correct. It's not everything, but it's a lot, and a lot of things that aren't censored load subresoures from things that are, so they're half broken without a VPN anyway.

And really.. having to wait 6 minutes just to attach an invoice to an email is infuriating, more so when it fails and you have to try again.

And don't even get me started on all the time wasted switching between various VPN endpoints and protocols to find the one that sucks the least in that moment.

Re: Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

#133

Post by b6 » Sat, Apr 08, 2017, 4:37 AM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #130

Canada wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything is censored. You have to tunnel pretty much everything. Massive packet loss is par for the course. You can't have a routable address. You can't just fire up a VM in minutes, you can't even have a VM without a registered company with a license to run a web server. Things we take for granted like attaching a 2mb file to an email or a simple Google search can take several minutes to accomplish.

Reddit, hackernews, quora aren't censored.

This may or may not be true in some places in China at the moment you posted, who knows. But the internet in China is comprehensively sabotaged.

Re: Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

#134

Post by Animats » Sat, Apr 08, 2017, 4:46 AM UTC

joshvm wrote: post #97

Animats wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's one for $1799 intended for prototypes.[1] It's clever; it uses more vision processing and less tooling than other pick and place machines. Parts only have to be close to the right place; the vision systems do the fine adjustments. Unfortunately, few people seem to have one working. There are two hacker spaces that got one, and there's even an unboxing video, but didn't get it assembled and working. I could us…

Use a hand held vacuum tool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdGSFc7VjBE

I have this cheap one.[1] It doesn't work. The "squeeze the rubber bladder to get vacuum" approach doesn't provide enough suction. Ones with a powered air pump might work, but cost much more.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CCHFWL0

Re: Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

#135

Post by snambi » Sat, Apr 08, 2017, 5:07 AM UTC

chaostheory wrote: post #9

> The common perception that China is incapable of innovation needs re-examining. No one is saying Chinese people can't innovate. The real question is whether Chinese people can innovate while inside China. (I wonder what percentage of current captains of industry in China studied abroad?) Why? Because innovation is essentially disrupting and rebelling against the status quo. ie breaking rules, disobedience, oppositi…

Who are the entrepreneurs in the valley, breaking the rules? btw, which company breaks the rules, except uber?

Who says breaking rules are considered innovation?

Re: Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

#136

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sat, Apr 08, 2017, 5:24 AM UTC

b6 wrote: post #133

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit, hackernews, quora aren't censored.

This may or may not be true in some places in China at the moment you posted, who knows. But the internet in China is comprehensively sabotaged.

Oh, after living in china I know. Weird thing is, when I arrived in 2007 almost nothing was blocked. But after the 2008 olympics, they decided they didn't need to pretend to be open anymore. What's even weirder is that when I lived in china previously in 2002, CNN was blocked and nytimes wasn't. Now it's the other way around.

Re: Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

#137

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sat, Apr 08, 2017, 5:26 AM UTC

Canada wrote: post #132

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit, hackernews, quora aren't censored.

Correct. It's not everything, but it's a lot, and a lot of things that aren't censored load subresoures from things that are, so they're half broken without a VPN anyway. And really.. having to wait 6 minutes just to attach an invoice to an email is infuriating, more so when it fails and you have to try again. And don't even get me started on all the time wasted switching between various VPN endpoints and protocols t…

I never bothered with vpns and just accepted that I could only use those sites at work on our corporate internet. Weird, I worked at MS and would use Bing at home, but I would use google at work because it was the only place I could use it (well, after it was blocked).

And actually, youku isn't that bad for video once figure out how to navigate it. Xiami for streaming music was also very effective. Still annoying, but I dealt.

Re: Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

#138

Post by sharun » Sat, Apr 08, 2017, 5:26 AM UTC

Hexcles wrote: post #105

chaostheory wrote: post #9

> The common perception that China is incapable of innovation needs re-examining. No one is saying Chinese people can't innovate. The real question is whether Chinese people can innovate while inside China. (I wonder what percentage of current captains of industry in China studied abroad?) Why? Because innovation is essentially disrupting and rebelling against the status quo. ie breaking rules, disobedience, oppositi…

As a fellow Chinese who's been living in the West for a few years, I feel obligated to speak out against this: Although I hold strong dissent against Chinese government in many aspects (in particular censorship, e.g. GFW), although I agree the traditional norm of Chinese culture and society does not commend rebellions, your argument is a slippery slope at its best. Essentially, you are exaggerating from both ends: a.…

As an Indian all I can say is don't even bother addressing western delusions about themselves. Time will be the judge on the quality of innovation a culture built on celebrity worship, instant gratification and mindless consumption can produce.

Re: Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

#139

Post by lacampbell » Sat, Apr 08, 2017, 5:36 AM UTC

aub3bhat wrote: post #120

chaostheory wrote: post #9

> The common perception that China is incapable of innovation needs re-examining. No one is saying Chinese people can't innovate. The real question is whether Chinese people can innovate while inside China. (I wonder what percentage of current captains of industry in China studied abroad?) Why? Because innovation is essentially disrupting and rebelling against the status quo. ie breaking rules, disobedience, oppositi…

Good lord, this is a ridiculous comment, its truly shameful that its most upvoted. Before you call out Chinese government on Great Firewall, What about Patent Trolls? Or the upcoming Physical wall south of the border? Painting an entire culture with a broad brush is stupid. >> The real question is whether Chinese people can innovate while inside China. To decisively refute your argument. The current leading company i…

Also they brought the most populous country in the world from extreme poverty to a near superpower status

Doesn't that kind of prove his point? The worlds most populous country isn't even a super power. It under-performs.

BTW, a less hyperbolic rendition might be "china went from a low-income country to a middle income country", as that's all that happened. It was nothing particularly remarkable, the same thing happened in many Asian countries.

Re: Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

#140

Post by nojvek » Sat, Apr 08, 2017, 5:59 AM UTC

candiodari wrote: post #122

enraged_camel wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>US has high levels of corruption at the top, it's just better hidden and less accessible to most people. It is hidden... in broad daylight. For example, what is lobbying, if not legalized corruption?

You know, there is justification for lobbying, and to some extent I would even say it is a strength of our society rather than a weakness. Lobbying informs decision makers, in a non-neutral manner, about what they regulate from the perspective of people actually subject to the regulation produced. That is a very valuable thing if you compare it to the alternative. In societies where this is absent it leads to incredi…

Like intuit lobbying for not making tax simple? Like Microsoft lobbying that US govt use their cloud? Or the big military suppliers lobbying to increase military budget? Or health insurance companies and big pharmacy lobbying hard so Americans would rather commit suicide than get proper healthcare?

The system has been effectively well gamed by the big cos and politicians.