8 ms·

It's really quite ridiculous, because if you watch some of her videos where she's doing a build, it's obvious she's doing all the cutting, soldering, drilling,

It's really quite ridiculous, because if you watch some of her videos where she's doing a build, it's obvious she's doing all the cutting, soldering, drilling, etc But more then that, if you watch videos where she is being interviewed talking about being a Maker (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcnChnrHwXg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcnChnrHwXg) she talks just like a real hacker. She uses the exact terminology and process you'd expect, knowing you're not an expert in something, but just scraping a whole bunch of different other projects that other people contributed and made tutorials on, and tweaking them and combining them to make it your own. It's like this CEO didn't spend even 10 minutes watching her videos and just decided to believe a conspiracy theory.

throwaway8184 9y ago
I watched that video. I saw a young Chinese woman with limited English skills buying electrical parts in Shenzhen. Maybe I skipped the wrong parts? Then, I am asked to believe that the same person wrote this: https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/3d-printing-next-five-years-naomi-wu-aka-sexy-cyborg-108980/ https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/3d-printing-next-five-ye... What am I doing wrong here? Should I not be suspicious at all? Can you genuinely not imagine that anyone could suspect that the author of the second article might not be the person on the screen in the first video?
- danaliv 9y ago
  I didn't think her English was limited at all. Are you just hearing her accent?
  - cromwellian 9y ago
    Funny enough one of the big accusations against her being fake is that her English is “too good” for a native.
    - Avshalom 9y ago
      Wait part of the conspiracy included not being able to find a Chinese woman in China?
- YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
  If you're talking about the disparity in language skills spoken and written, that's not surprising, if you've worked with Chinese people. It's common to meet someone who is hard to understand when speaking but who can write very well indeed. I'm thinking specifically of Chinese fellow students I had in my Masters and my PhD.
  - protomyth 9y ago
    I wondered about that when I was in college. Had a fellow student who was from China and had pretty poor spoken skills, but I had to write something (I think it was a write-up of a circuit) with him (on an old Mac SE/30) and his written English was amazing. It was such a weird split and not that uncommon or confined to the Chinese as I later found out. I think it comes down to reading a lot and absorbing that formalism, but not really speaking that way because, well, spoken English is a different bird.
  - cromwellian 9y ago
    It goes the other way too. I can read and write Chinese far better than I can speak it or listen to it in real time. If I have time to think, I can get grammar mostly correctly but if I have to do it on my feet I make many mistakes with tones and grammar.
    - protomyth 9y ago
      I can read Dakotah ok, but I never could speak the language because I cannot really do the guttural without sounding idiotic. Had a boss who learned the language from her uncles, so she was teased by her aunts for "talking like a man". Reading is safer.
      - YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
        How so? That's interesting- how is speaking like a man or a woman different in Dakotah? Is it like in Japanese, where different first-person pronouns are used, or? (er, not trying to make some political comment on gender roles etc, just genuinely interested to hear from a speaker. I guess I can just google it :)
- runesoerensen 9y ago
  > What am I doing wrong here? For reasons I cannot fathom you're reiterating the same type of suspicion that started the whole controversy, and that this apology seeks to address. Then you feel a need to share that unsubstantiated and damaging conspiracy with other people. The apology include several reasons why this is wrong. > Should I not be suspicious at all? No, you shouldn't.
- cromwellian 9y ago
  That’s a video of her being interviewed near the end she talks about why you can call yourself a maker to the host who feels he is a passive observer even though he has tinkered. If you go to her channel, watch the build for her LED transparent bikini top for example. That can’t be faked by her husband, she demonstrates skills with the tools that many people on HN don’t even have. Is she an electrical engineer? No, she’s a tinkerer, but what’s wrong with that? A beautiful girl decides she wants to tinker, is into transhumanisn and body modification, uses her popularity to encourage other girls and women. Does it even matter if she has help? I mean the guys on Mystbusters have a production staff too as do many YouTubers have collaborators. Why do we only doubt Women’s ability or downplay it? Is it not real real because she’s attractive? Because an attractive woman couldn’t possibly be into hacking and making? What does an engineer “look like”? What does a hacker “look like”? Naomi already coded ruby under a male pseudonym for this very reason, to avoid gender discrimination.
  - throwaway8184 9y ago
    Sure. I mean, the language ability disparity is one of about ten implausible things in the original piece: http://archive.is/GE0he http://archive.is/GE0he Why doesn't anyone respond directly to this blogpost? You would think that, if the goal was to convince people to believe that Sexy Cyborg is completely authentic, maximum transparency would be the appropriate strategy. Instead what we see is maximum invective. It doesn't make your case more convincing, I think, that you maneuver sideways into "so what if it's true, it doesn't matter." Two orthogonal arguments are usually not better than one.
- jacobolus 9y ago
  For a Chinese person living in China, her English is very good (compare to the English of the merchants in the same video). There are very few e.g. Americans living in the US with similarly good Chinese.
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    Try visiting Salt Lake City. You’ll be very surprised.
    - jacobolus 9y ago
      Yes, people who are highly motivated and go through months of intensive language immersion training followed by several years of immersive missionary work in a foreign country – where their full-time job and religious obligation is literally talking to strangers all day long – tend to learn the language quite well. Why would I be surprised about that? What does that have to do with Wu? Presumably she never went through any similar experience, and her language skills have been largely driven by her own personal desire to communicate with foreigners rather than any structured program or religious duty. (I don’t know much about her, so maybe that’s wrong.)
      - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
        You made a weird unfounded comment and I replied. And no, none of it’s very related in both cases.
        jacobolus 9y ago
        Huh? Why is it a weird comment? The previous commenter said her English was bad. I think her English is quite impressively good! Kudos to her. It’s hard work to learn a foreign language to such proficiency. She has better English than many foreigners I know who have been living in the US for >5 years, and better than the foreign language skills of many Americans I know who have lived overseas for that long.
prodtorok 9y ago
what is a Maker?
- mmel 9y ago
  someone who makes things
- badrabbit 9y ago
  It's a made up term. Titles are suppose to be specific. I made a nice dinner yesterday myself. Guess I'm a maker too(no recipe used,original as well!) Since they are using "maker" to describe persons that are engineering electronics related work,why not just call themselves "electronics engineer"? Edit: seems I stepped on toes with my comment,I don't know how else to react to a term like "maker". Could have been less sarcastic but I'll eat up the downvotes and maintain what small amount of common sense I have.
  - mikeash 9y ago
    Every term is made up. That’s how language works.
    - badrabbit 9y ago
      When you describe what you do with a term (made up or not),that term should at the very least give your audience some idea of what you do. Everyone is a maker. The point of a language is to communicate information,not to obscure it. Would it be a proper use of language if a programmer called himself a "writer"? After all he is writing. "programmer" or "software developer" is used to distinguish what type of writing he/she works with for a living. Sorry if that offended you,but from my perspective,it just does not communicate the nature of their work efficiently.
      - mikeash 9y ago
        I’m not offended, I just thought that was a really silly criticism. Lack of specificity is a much better one.
dheera 9y ago
Why would anyone question that she is a real person? If you like her content, watch it. If you don't, leave. What's wrong with being an anonymous creator?
- kennywinker 9y ago
  Because she doesn't fit your stereotype of what a maker looks like, and that challenge to your preconceptions can either be accepted or rejected. Some percentage of people will reject the challenge, and come to the conclusion that this person is not who they claim to be. In short: sexism. For further reading, see criticism of the "fake geek girl" meme.
  - travmatt 9y ago
    I remember reading a study that posited low status men tended toward misogyny when they felt threatened by the skill of women they were competing against, and this was the first thing that came to mind as I was reading over this whole saga.
    - kennywinker 9y ago
      That may be true, but: > the negative impact of my tweets was amplified by the fact that I, a white, Western, male CEO of a key company in the Maker community This guy was not low status by any definition.
      - bigiain 9y ago
        Just 'cause he's a CEO, doesn't mean he's not insecure and misogynistic...
      - travmatt 9y ago
        Most of the comments here reference the fact that her skill is self evident. He could easily have felt threatened by her technical skill, and the fact he couldn’t plainly see it as other commenters did adds credence to his own deficit of technical ability. The fact that he maintained a sustained slander campaign when he ostensibly had other priorities implies he felt that ‘exposing’ her became important to him, again a trait of insecure, low status individuals.
api 9y ago
> didn't spend even 10 minutes ... just decided to believe a conspiracy theory. Isn't this what the Internet is all about?
rsynnott 9y ago
A conspiracy theory from _reddit_, no less. Quite apart from anything else, this makes him come across as astonishingly gullible.
rebootthesystem 9y ago
The problem I have with this woman is that she actually demeans women. There is no way I would have my little girl watch her videos as a role model. The entire thing is plain stupid. I would have exactly the same reaction if we were talking about a guy going around town in tight fitting speedo's doing technology projects and interviews. Ridiculous. Stupid. Demeaning. I suspect that because she is a woman I am not allowed to object to her walking around nearly naked, nipples showing through nearly see-through clothing, nearly all of her ass out there to behold, etc. I, personally, find it disgusting and as far from role model behavior as one can get. I am not a prude by any measure. She does nothing for women other than to propose that to be accepted in technology you have to walk around showing your tits and ass in a ridiculous outfit that paints you as a sex toy and, yes, know your shit too. I find that repugnant. Just as I would for a man who might behave behaving similarly. Raise your hand if this is what you want to teach your little girls. Exactly.
- blinikotik 9y ago
  You're completely missing the point. Not everyone has to be a role model for your little kid. I don't want my kid to hear people swearing, but I'm not going to slander Linus Torvalds for doing so. I'm not stupid enough to believe that just because someone is crass they can't possibly be a good maker/developer/engineer/etc.
  - rebootthesystem 9y ago
    The part you guys are missing in my comment is that I said this is the problem "I" have with this woman. I am not trying to pass judgement for all of humanity here. If you are OK watching videos of a nearly naked woman playing with tech and think that's great for women and humanity, so be it. I happen to thing it's disgusting. All I can speak for is myself. I see this person as a clown who demeans every single female engineer I have every worked with or hired. She might as well be doing soft porn videos and make more money, she ain't too far from that. Because of that I can't respect what she is doing. Do we really want to portray women in tech this way? Really? At one end of the spectrum people are up in arms about politicians objectifying women (and worst) and meanwhile, on the tech side of things we are OK with a woman walking around with tits and ass hanging out there? Is the tech community OK with women being portrayed this way? I am not. Definitely not. If you defend her you are defending the objectification of women. Which is shameful. Sorry, this is disgusting to me.

throwaway8184 9y ago

I watched that video. I saw a young Chinese woman with limited English skills buying electrical parts in Shenzhen. Maybe I skipped the wrong parts? Then, I am asked to believe that the same person wrote this: https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/3d-printing-next-five-years-naomi-wu-aka-sexy-cyborg-108980/ https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/3d-printing-next-five-ye... What am I doing wrong here? Should I not be suspicious at all? Can you genuinely not imagine that anyone could suspect that the author of the second article might not be the person on the screen in the first video?

danaliv 9y ago
I didn't think her English was limited at all. Are you just hearing her accent?
- cromwellian 9y ago
  Funny enough one of the big accusations against her being fake is that her English is “too good” for a native.
  - Avshalom 9y ago
    Wait part of the conspiracy included not being able to find a Chinese woman in China?
YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
If you're talking about the disparity in language skills spoken and written, that's not surprising, if you've worked with Chinese people. It's common to meet someone who is hard to understand when speaking but who can write very well indeed. I'm thinking specifically of Chinese fellow students I had in my Masters and my PhD.
- protomyth 9y ago
  I wondered about that when I was in college. Had a fellow student who was from China and had pretty poor spoken skills, but I had to write something (I think it was a write-up of a circuit) with him (on an old Mac SE/30) and his written English was amazing. It was such a weird split and not that uncommon or confined to the Chinese as I later found out. I think it comes down to reading a lot and absorbing that formalism, but not really speaking that way because, well, spoken English is a different bird.
- cromwellian 9y ago
  It goes the other way too. I can read and write Chinese far better than I can speak it or listen to it in real time. If I have time to think, I can get grammar mostly correctly but if I have to do it on my feet I make many mistakes with tones and grammar.
  - protomyth 9y ago
    I can read Dakotah ok, but I never could speak the language because I cannot really do the guttural without sounding idiotic. Had a boss who learned the language from her uncles, so she was teased by her aunts for "talking like a man". Reading is safer.
    - YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
      How so? That's interesting- how is speaking like a man or a woman different in Dakotah? Is it like in Japanese, where different first-person pronouns are used, or? (er, not trying to make some political comment on gender roles etc, just genuinely interested to hear from a speaker. I guess I can just google it :)
runesoerensen 9y ago
> What am I doing wrong here? For reasons I cannot fathom you're reiterating the same type of suspicion that started the whole controversy, and that this apology seeks to address. Then you feel a need to share that unsubstantiated and damaging conspiracy with other people. The apology include several reasons why this is wrong. > Should I not be suspicious at all? No, you shouldn't.
cromwellian 9y ago
That’s a video of her being interviewed near the end she talks about why you can call yourself a maker to the host who feels he is a passive observer even though he has tinkered. If you go to her channel, watch the build for her LED transparent bikini top for example. That can’t be faked by her husband, she demonstrates skills with the tools that many people on HN don’t even have. Is she an electrical engineer? No, she’s a tinkerer, but what’s wrong with that? A beautiful girl decides she wants to tinker, is into transhumanisn and body modification, uses her popularity to encourage other girls and women. Does it even matter if she has help? I mean the guys on Mystbusters have a production staff too as do many YouTubers have collaborators. Why do we only doubt Women’s ability or downplay it? Is it not real real because she’s attractive? Because an attractive woman couldn’t possibly be into hacking and making? What does an engineer “look like”? What does a hacker “look like”? Naomi already coded ruby under a male pseudonym for this very reason, to avoid gender discrimination.
- throwaway8184 9y ago
  Sure. I mean, the language ability disparity is one of about ten implausible things in the original piece: http://archive.is/GE0he http://archive.is/GE0he Why doesn't anyone respond directly to this blogpost? You would think that, if the goal was to convince people to believe that Sexy Cyborg is completely authentic, maximum transparency would be the appropriate strategy. Instead what we see is maximum invective. It doesn't make your case more convincing, I think, that you maneuver sideways into "so what if it's true, it doesn't matter." Two orthogonal arguments are usually not better than one.
jacobolus 9y ago
For a Chinese person living in China, her English is very good (compare to the English of the merchants in the same video). There are very few e.g. Americans living in the US with similarly good Chinese.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  Try visiting Salt Lake City. You’ll be very surprised.
  - jacobolus 9y ago
    Yes, people who are highly motivated and go through months of intensive language immersion training followed by several years of immersive missionary work in a foreign country – where their full-time job and religious obligation is literally talking to strangers all day long – tend to learn the language quite well. Why would I be surprised about that? What does that have to do with Wu? Presumably she never went through any similar experience, and her language skills have been largely driven by her own personal desire to communicate with foreigners rather than any structured program or religious duty. (I don’t know much about her, so maybe that’s wrong.)
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      You made a weird unfounded comment and I replied. And no, none of it’s very related in both cases.
      - jacobolus 9y ago
        Huh? Why is it a weird comment? The previous commenter said her English was bad. I think her English is quite impressively good! Kudos to her. It’s hard work to learn a foreign language to such proficiency. She has better English than many foreigners I know who have been living in the US for >5 years, and better than the foreign language skills of many Americans I know who have lived overseas for that long.

prodtorok 9y ago

what is a Maker?

mmel 9y ago
someone who makes things
badrabbit 9y ago
It's a made up term. Titles are suppose to be specific. I made a nice dinner yesterday myself. Guess I'm a maker too(no recipe used,original as well!) Since they are using "maker" to describe persons that are engineering electronics related work,why not just call themselves "electronics engineer"? Edit: seems I stepped on toes with my comment,I don't know how else to react to a term like "maker". Could have been less sarcastic but I'll eat up the downvotes and maintain what small amount of common sense I have.
- mikeash 9y ago
  Every term is made up. That’s how language works.
  - badrabbit 9y ago
    When you describe what you do with a term (made up or not),that term should at the very least give your audience some idea of what you do. Everyone is a maker. The point of a language is to communicate information,not to obscure it. Would it be a proper use of language if a programmer called himself a "writer"? After all he is writing. "programmer" or "software developer" is used to distinguish what type of writing he/she works with for a living. Sorry if that offended you,but from my perspective,it just does not communicate the nature of their work efficiently.
    - mikeash 9y ago
      I’m not offended, I just thought that was a really silly criticism. Lack of specificity is a much better one.

dheera 9y ago

Why would anyone question that she is a real person? If you like her content, watch it. If you don't, leave. What's wrong with being an anonymous creator?

kennywinker 9y ago
Because she doesn't fit your stereotype of what a maker looks like, and that challenge to your preconceptions can either be accepted or rejected. Some percentage of people will reject the challenge, and come to the conclusion that this person is not who they claim to be. In short: sexism. For further reading, see criticism of the "fake geek girl" meme.
- travmatt 9y ago
  I remember reading a study that posited low status men tended toward misogyny when they felt threatened by the skill of women they were competing against, and this was the first thing that came to mind as I was reading over this whole saga.
  - kennywinker 9y ago
    That may be true, but: > the negative impact of my tweets was amplified by the fact that I, a white, Western, male CEO of a key company in the Maker community This guy was not low status by any definition.
    - bigiain 9y ago
      Just 'cause he's a CEO, doesn't mean he's not insecure and misogynistic...
    - travmatt 9y ago
      Most of the comments here reference the fact that her skill is self evident. He could easily have felt threatened by her technical skill, and the fact he couldn’t plainly see it as other commenters did adds credence to his own deficit of technical ability. The fact that he maintained a sustained slander campaign when he ostensibly had other priorities implies he felt that ‘exposing’ her became important to him, again a trait of insecure, low status individuals.

api 9y ago

> didn't spend even 10 minutes ... just decided to believe a conspiracy theory. Isn't this what the Internet is all about?

rsynnott 9y ago

A conspiracy theory from _reddit_, no less. Quite apart from anything else, this makes him come across as astonishingly gullible.

rebootthesystem 9y ago

The problem I have with this woman is that she actually demeans women. There is no way I would have my little girl watch her videos as a role model. The entire thing is plain stupid. I would have exactly the same reaction if we were talking about a guy going around town in tight fitting speedo's doing technology projects and interviews. Ridiculous. Stupid. Demeaning. I suspect that because she is a woman I am not allowed to object to her walking around nearly naked, nipples showing through nearly see-through clothing, nearly all of her ass out there to behold, etc. I, personally, find it disgusting and as far from role model behavior as one can get. I am not a prude by any measure. She does nothing for women other than to propose that to be accepted in technology you have to walk around showing your tits and ass in a ridiculous outfit that paints you as a sex toy and, yes, know your shit too. I find that repugnant. Just as I would for a man who might behave behaving similarly. Raise your hand if this is what you want to teach your little girls. Exactly.

blinikotik 9y ago
You're completely missing the point. Not everyone has to be a role model for your little kid. I don't want my kid to hear people swearing, but I'm not going to slander Linus Torvalds for doing so. I'm not stupid enough to believe that just because someone is crass they can't possibly be a good maker/developer/engineer/etc.
- rebootthesystem 9y ago
  The part you guys are missing in my comment is that I said this is the problem "I" have with this woman. I am not trying to pass judgement for all of humanity here. If you are OK watching videos of a nearly naked woman playing with tech and think that's great for women and humanity, so be it. I happen to thing it's disgusting. All I can speak for is myself. I see this person as a clown who demeans every single female engineer I have every worked with or hired. She might as well be doing soft porn videos and make more money, she ain't too far from that. Because of that I can't respect what she is doing. Do we really want to portray women in tech this way? Really? At one end of the spectrum people are up in arms about politicians objectifying women (and worst) and meanwhile, on the tech side of things we are OK with a woman walking around with tits and ass hanging out there? Is the tech community OK with women being portrayed this way? I am not. Definitely not. If you defend her you are defending the objectification of women. Which is shameful. Sorry, this is disgusting to me.