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Fifteen-year-old Nigerian builds small scale construction machines [video]
- djtriptych 8y agoPretty amazing he got so far with such limited resources. Obviously a born engineer. Wish the video included some way to donate materials.
- segmondy 8y agoNo he didn't, this is common knowledge in Nigeria. Kids have been building such machines as toys for 30+ years. He learned it from other kids.
- hardlianotion 8y agoWe produced some pretty awesome wire cars back in the day, but they tended not to be powered. Mind you, I suppose getting the bits and pieces for that is easier these days. Kids ...
- mmsimanga 8y agoThe kid's machines are indeed impressive. We also used to spend hours building wire cars. We had a whole factory line. The younger lads did the straightening of the wires, some were good at using the smaller wire (often coloured wire or copper) to tie the pieces together. There were the designers who could bend the big piece of wire into the frame of the car you wanted. We then used empty polish tins for the wheels. Some of the cars had gears (none functional). It was pretty labour intensive but loads of fun. I realize now that this is why most of us had no low muscle tone or issues with our coordination. Your fingers needed to be nifty to make wire cars.
- djtriptych 8y agoNo he didn't what? Build these machines?
- segmondy 8y agoDidn't come up with the ideas, here's an example from 5 years ago in asia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kfhki3RkJv0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kfhki3RkJv0 First time I saw this was about 30+ years ago in Nigeria, and have seen plenty variations.
- whatever_dude 8y agoIf this is "5 years ago in Asia" why are they talking Portuguese?
- semi-extrinsic 8y agoComments on that video place it in Brazil, but your main point still stands.
- soneca 8y agoDefinitely Brazil
- draw_down 8y agoAnd a model 9/11! (Not a joke, he really made a model of a plane crashing into the WTC but I can't find the pic now)
- 0815test 8y agoIn other news, the cargo cult has now spawned the infrastructure cult. Build models of construction machines, and maybe someone will start developing real actual infrastructure within the country...
- hardlianotion 8y agoThe video includes subtitles, but the boy's diction is clear.
- miahi 8y agoNot everyone can hear.
- beenBoutIT 8y agoNot everyone has working speakers.
- vbuwivbiu 8y agomake the subtitles optional then
- asveikau 8y agoI really get irritated with this pattern: a lot of times, people will add subtitles due to a 100% understandable foreign accent. It feels like it's being disrespectful to the speakers. On the other hand in the age of "auto-play-with-mute" videos on social media, a lot of people just add subtitles to every type of online video. And as a sibling comment points out, there are hearing impaired people out there.
- ASalazarMX 8y ago> I really get irritated with this pattern: a lot of times, people will add subtitles due to a 100% understandable foreign accent. It feels like it's being disrespectful to the speakers. Hearing impaired people, non-English speakers, content indexing, machine learning, etc. There are many good reasons, don't make victims where there are none.
- asveikau 8y agoBy the same token, don't assume I am victimizing! At least read the 2nd paragraph where I am saying a similar thing to your rebuttal. HN is one of those places where I have seen the concept of "violent agreement" at work. "Wait wait! You still need to consider ... this thing you thought you already said."
- obviuosly 8y agoI dimly remember reading on Reddit that these machines were not the boy's invention.
- beenBoutIT 8y agoIf the machines came as kits sold in stores with prefabricated parts most kids his age either wouldn't be interested or wouldn't be able to build them.
- julianapostate 8y agothe point isnt that he's not exceptional, the point is he's not frontpage news exceptional.
- beenBoutIT 8y agoHopefully the extra attention gets him a ticket out of there and into a good college.
- iamleppert 8y agoEven if they are not his original creation he has talent and he deserves to be in an environment where he can be nurtured and grow. Sadly I fear that won’t happen for him but I wish him the best.
- harias 8y agoThis is the same in India too. Even if you have the resources, people are discouraged from anything that isn't academic.
- rishiloyola 8y agoYeah, the harsh truth.
- aaron695 8y agoHe not an inventor sure, cause he's a kid, nothing to see there. But he has commitment and looks like at least average intelligence. He'll do fine compared to everyone else around him. He'll work hard and send his kids to school. Worry about the kids who are really bright and who should go to uni who the world misses out on. Then worry about hard workers like this kid.
- saneshark 8y agoI hope someone at caterpillar is taking notice and offers a scholarship to Hope. This reminds me of the story of Srinivasa Ramanujuan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan Could you imagine a future where these massive machines are controlled by remote operators running green, all electric energy sources?
- qazpot 8y agoFunny this reminds me of Ahmed Mohamed Clock Incident, where the kid exploits his popularity to get internship at twitter, google and a trip to nasa and white house. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Mohamed_clock_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Mohamed_clock_incident
- lultimouomo 8y agoMaybe I'm reading too much into your comment, but I really dislike the implication of the words "exploits his popularity". This is a 14yo which was gratuitously accused of being a terrorist by his teachers - the very people that we as a society tell kids to trust and look up to. He was handcuffed and arrested, he went through a detention intake process, mugshot and all. The word exploit really does not sound right.
- bigodbiel 8y agothe kid assembled a "suitcase bomb" prop and kept showing it off to his friends during class. His teacher told him to stop, he didn't and kept being disruptive. Obviously calling the cops on his bad behaviour is overkill, but the he is no wunderkind as portrayed by the media (and even the WH).
- lultimouomo 8y agoFor the record, this is the thing we are talking about: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5e/Ahmed_Mohamed_Clock_by_Irving_PD.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5e/Ahmed_Mohamed...
- TaylorAlexander 8y agoI feel like this is exactly the kind of person our intellectual property system keeps intellectually impoverished. Does anyone else feel like intellectual property is digital imperialism? I wish people all over the world could share in the knowledge we keep locked up in most of the business world.
- pizza 8y agoEspecially since a lot of early industrial nations basically gave no fucks about intellectual property rights enforcement but are now making developing countries play by a stricter set of rules.
- free652 8y agoHow? I'd love to see an actual example. Everyone is stealing IPs, enforcement is pretty hard.
- TaylorAlexander 8y agoYou’re asking how intellectual property law keeps information from spreading? I feel like that is self evident. But also I forget if it was the world bank or the IMF but the US and other wealthy nations have made it a requirement that countries adopt our intellectual property laws if they want to receive benefits from the (IMF or World Bank, I forget). So we enforce intellectual property law here which prevents lower cost clones from being made and also prevents industry from investing more in reverse engineering. The monopoly on ideas raises costs compared to a market with clones, and poorer communities and countries suffer with IP versus an alternative world with more abundant cheap clones. Some would say the innovation would not have occurred without IP law in the first place, which obviously in some cases is true (certain business models require the monopoly on ideas to exist). However I think it’s absurd to suggest that there would be no incentive to innovate in a world with no IP law, and the damage done by IP law is too great to ignore. As someone who believes we have a moral responsibility to help people less privileged than us, I see it as grotesque that we lock up information that could help feed hungry people all over the world.
- lurquer 8y agoA 15-year old makes model trucks. Neither shocking nor surprising... unless white audiences have a low opinion of the intellect of Africans/Blacks. Go to Nigeria. The place is full of construction, engineers, inventors, mechanics, etc. This video -- to a Nigerian -- would receive this response: "Big fucking deal... if the kid was really smart he'd be using motors and gears by now." The response of a white liberal, on the other hand: "Oh how precious... I didn't know that those people even knew how to write! Someone should give him a scholarship!"
- c0vfefe 8y agoI'd upvote the video even if it was an American kid, it's cool. The fact that it's from an impoverished country makes it cooler.
- jklinger410 8y agoIt's called soft bigotry by low expectations.
- hi5eyes 8y agoi love when whitey tells me about my own culture/community and then I (a poc) somehow get excluded from the conversation because the worst thing you can tell a white person is their opinion doesn't matter
- marmada 8y agoThe kid uses "wood and condemned laptop batteries to construct a moving excavator and a dump truck." That's pretty impressive to me, and something worth talking about. I am not sure why you assumed this is a post by a "white liberal" that automatically assumes a low opinion of Nigerians. To me, this is a post about something interesting that someone has done, and is made more interesting by the fact that they live in an impoverished part of the world (I watched a video on them, it's pretty clear they aren't rich).
- _ph_ 8y agoI wouldn't have predjudices about the intellect of an African kid, but I would assume that a random kid might not have as much access to resources as e.g. an American kid might have. Looking at the video, it looks quite as if fancy technology is replaced with a lot of practical creativity, like building a hydrolics system based on syringes.
- cc_stoic 8y agoNigerian here. What this kid is doing is pretty impressive especially when you consider the dismal state of public school education in Nigeria (private school isn't so bad)
- bayareanative 8y agoUsed laptop batteries deemed "dead" are usually only bad in one or two cells. A SoCal guy named Jehu Garcia went through charging and discharging thousands of used laptop battery cells individually to recover 18650's to build custom packs for a DIY EV VW bus. Btw, it reminds me of the Joule Thief circuit (often used in solar outdoor lights), that can recover and fully-discharge a battery over a much larger range than most consumer devices.
- jamewatson 8y agoThat's engineering talent