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The New Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen
- Simon_ORourke 3y ago[flagged]
- Animats 3y agoIt's good to know that Naomi Wu is still allowed to communicate with the outside world, a little.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- user_7832 3y agoOut of the loop, what happened with her?
- toomuchtodo 3y agoHeavy hand of the CCP. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37154414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37154414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37154745 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37154745
- user_7832 3y agoThanks!
- toomuchtodo 3y agoHappy to help!
- kmeisthax 3y agoShe tried to enforce the GPL on a Chinese company and the mainland Chinese government threatened her with... something. Speculation is rampant. Naomi had a Uighur wife, and mainland China is both homophobic and currently doing ethnic cleansing of Uighurs in Xinjiang. In fact, her wife isn't even allowed to leave the country, so it's entirely possible that they said "shut up or we jail her". The way that authoritarianism[0] works is that there are two sets of laws. The real laws are secret and ever changing. Sometimes they will change for just one person. The published laws are the excuses and punishments they will use against you for violating the real laws you were never told. [0] In any form of liberalism, the real laws will always be a subset of the published laws. The government is free to not enforce a law they think is obsolete, but they cannot invent a new law without telling anyone and make up a punishment for it.
- user_7832 3y agoThanks for your comment! The part about enforcing the GPL is something I hadn’t heard till now. But still, that’s kinda odd isn’t it, a government being pissed off enough by an individual asking a company to follow GPL rules? (I’m disappointed nonetheless by the threatening part of course, but surprised yet by the rest.)
- lvl102 3y ago[flagged]
- chillingeffect 3y agoI'm hoping you either forgot a /s or have some hitherto unrevealed and amazing evidence for your claim. What is the basis of your claim? How hard is it to believe an attractive woman can be good and creative in DIY electronics? Most men don't even understand the basics of dressing well or being attractive when all the info is right at our fingertips. And it doesn't take enough time that we can't also practice engineering. Sigh... I'm not even one of those far lefties and that remark is...vestigial.
- ClumsyPilot 3y agoit's okay, sometimes i also wish i was an attractive woman working in tech. On other days I think again, and I don't. Most days i am not sure
- jancsika 3y agoIs there any niche of vendors somewhat equivalent to free software zealots in Shenzhen? E.g., "you can boot this little keychain thingy without blobs."
- carom 3y agoThere are another few bunnie blogs [1] on that. The concept is called gongkai. It means open in the sense of IP is shared freely. 1. https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297
- jancsika 3y agoHm, if that's the case then why don't Western open source hardware projects just send a bilingual tourist over to Shenzhen to muck around until they connect with someone who can give them the docs needed to bootstrap the relevant firmware/drivers for the boards?
- aleph_minus_one 3y agoMy guess: legal concerns. What is legal (or at least tolerated) in China with respect to gongkai is not necessarily legal in the Western world.
- jancsika 3y agoI'm just surprised there seems to be no bridge whatsoever between the two. Like the developer asks, "what's the address to set this bit?" and the tourist responds with whatever it is.
- DeathArrow 3y agoBecause that costs money.
- numpad0 3y agoWhy wouldn't they be able to ask in IRC/Discord/whatever still works in Hong Kong? Or, just have a Taiwanese hacker guy in the group?
- jonatron 3y agoThere's not a lot of info about the Shenzhen SEZ Visa on arrival, but I can say that if you use the Luohu/Lo Wu port, aim to get there as they open because they don't get through many before they stop for lunch.
- juujian 3y agoI got over half a dozen of those. Never remember there being much traffic anyways at the office where they issue those. Time period is ~2016--2019.
- jonatron 3y agoMy single data point is October 2023. I don't know if they're slower than they used to be.
- autocanopener 3y ago[flagged]
- Grimburger 3y agoThat article is paywalled, looking at the numbers I got this: > the first half of 2023 witnessed a total of 168 million inbound and outbound individuals passing through China’s immigration https://www.china-briefing.com/news/chinas-tourism-in-2023-outlook-trends-and-opportunities/ https://www.china-briefing.com/news/chinas-tourism-in-2023-o... Seems fairly decent.
- autocanopener 3y agoThat number is counted whenever citizens travel to/from Hong Kong and Macau. There are people making day trips to/from Hong Kong every day.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoI still don’t understand why HK is still considered a foreign destination in China.
- ofrzeta 3y agoI have a hard time imagining how you can get into business with people in Huaqiangbei without speaking Mandarin even with that guide in hand but without an interpreter. But maybe it can work out with pointing and writing down arabic numbers?
- terminous 3y agoReal time voice translation is getting really good. Standard text translation is pretty much perfect for technical details, but just may miss idioms. You just have your smartphones out, type your message, and show the translation to the other person. They read it and start typing on their phone, then show it to you. I got through China pretty painlessly this way, and it is so normal for many, especially the young. I went to one restaurant where they got the younger waiter when they saw me walk in, who I thought would speak English. She just knew the phone text translation ritual, but was an expert in that. But for millennia, people have gone to far away lands where they don't speak the language, and somehow managed to build trade routes without even having a dictionary or calculator. It is not that hard to work out a pidgin. Tons of things you can do with pointing and gesturing. Marco Polo would have killed to even have Google Translate circa 2010. I'll also assert with no evidence that it is generally harder for an English speaking engineer to successfully communicate a technical idea into business speak for English speaking VC investors than it is for an English speaking engineer to communicate a request to buy a specific part to a Mandarin speaking engineer.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago> I'll also assert with no evidence that it is generally harder for an English speaking engineer to successfully communicate a technical idea into business speak for English speaking VC investors than it is for an English speaking engineer to communicate a request to buy a specific part to a Mandarin speaking engineer sounds like a fun challange, probably true
- Saigonautica 3y agoI've never done this in China, but I've done it in Vietnam (before I learned more of the language) and in Japan. It is surprising how much you can communicate by drawing circuit diagrams, sketches of oscilloscope traces, and equations! It works quite well! However one problem I encountered was that many (maybe most) vendors were not engineers and had no understanding of the parts sold. They just knew the name of the parts they had in stock, and how much they could sell them for, and that's it. Often they weren't even being paid -- it's a family business and they were just the niece or nephew that got roped in to vaguely watching the store while playing games on their phone. This was much more of an issue in Vietnam (Nhat Tao market) than in Tokyo (Tokyo Radio tower). In the latter there appeared to be quite a few retired engineers who were quite enthusiastic to meet someone who was looking for something specific. It was pretty neat, and I occasionally encountered someone with a wealth of knowledge!
- zeroCalories 3y agoI don't plan on ever doing business in China, much less purchasing electronics, but the book looks very interesting from the index. Might buy a copy.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoI bought the first one to send a copy to the Internet Archive for long term physical archival. Going to do the same with this release.
- autocanopener 3y ago[flagged]
- eunos 3y agoFDI began to shift from made in China for global export to made in China for the Chinese market and nowadays local Chinese companies outcompete these companies. Witness how global automotive companies (especially Japanese) got trounced hard because they don't have EV offerings
- autocanopener 3y agoNo, foreign FDI shifted from China to south east asia factories. There's a reason xi Jing ping was begging to share on a 'common dream' when he visited Vietnam this month. Sure, foreign companies are losing in Chinese auto markets. That's to be expected with Chinese government support of local EV companies, as well as nationalistic fervor. The Chinese auto market is a small one compared to US however. And it's shrinking with China's economic collapse.
- redandblack 3y agoYou are talking about the same - you are focusing on large multi-national who have political pressures from their home country regimes. This is about local talent which has grown over 30/40+ years and are impervious to all this nonsense. Just think them about them like Silicon Valley - insiders know how to take a tech idea to a product, including financing. Not sure about financing, but a insider in Shenzhen, especially on you side, can get your product done/
- narag 3y agoI love the cover. Nice mix.
- lifeisstillgood 3y ago>>> Since ... 2016, the population of Shenzhen has grown by over 2 million people, the metro system has added over one hundred kilometers of track, and dozens of new stations have been opened. The city’s taxi and bus fleets were converted from gas to electric. The entirety of Huaqiangbei Road - the center of the electronic market district - has been torn up and replaced with a pedestrian boulevard. Holy crap. As a Brit we have recently spent 100 billion and twice that time to fail to build a railway between two cities, London still runs almost all petrol bus and taxis and ... As we have (hopefully) an election coming soon and might see some change I would be interested in why the UK - who about 150 years ago woukd have growth stats very similar to that - has got well, meh. The usual suspects for such terrible performance are - much lower starting point. It's easier to setup mobile phone masts than replace the POTS. - too much regulation (from safety to public consultations that allow NIMBYism to slow things down) - we are not growing - if the number of people buying mobile phones in year X is twice the number of people who already have a phone, then you can see a different market than if everyone keeps their phone for one extra year. Does something else play out for cities, streets and factories? - just money coming in. The UK is having serious lack of growth and presumably shenzen is not. Or is it, that "ooomph" ? a level of belief that tomorrow will be better?
- wannacboatmovie 3y agoThe West has safety regulations that are followed. If a building collapses or a train crashes in China, they just brick over it and build a new one.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kqr2 3y agoThere used to be some hacker tours of Shenzhen via Dangerous Prototypes and Noise Bridge. Any other recent or current ones?
- fatih-erikli 3y ago[flagged]
- tomcam 3y agoWhy do you care whether other people travel? And what other parts of their lives do you plan to advise them on?
- fatih-erikli 3y agoI don't mind. People can go wherever they want. These are opinions. My opinion is traveling is overrated. Not only me though, world health organization thinks the same.
- autocanopener 3y ago[flagged]
- Beijinger 3y ago"Pay $5000 for a normal airline seat" Dude, Corona is over. Tickets have never been cheaper. China is an amazing place.
- autocanopener 3y ago[flagged]
- dang 3y agoWe've banned this account because single-purpose accounts aren't allowed here, and neither is using HN primarily for nationalistic, political, or ideological battle. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- 3y ago
- brcmthrowaway 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- TheLegace 3y agoI own this book. It was invaluable navigating Shenzhen electronics markets. In Shenzhen it is easy to find any electronic part you need and has an extensive recycling ecosystem. You can find parts on the street which find it's way upstream and end up in completed phones. Those phones are then resold. That was my goal when I was there to build an iPhone in my hotel room by buying every individual part. And except for the thumbprint(because it needs to be reflashed) everything worked perfectly. I even named it my non-Sweatshop iPhone.
- conception 3y agoThat sounds like an amazing vlog/blog article. Any chance you made one?
- starkparker 3y agoNot OP, but: https://www.strangeparts.com/how-i-made-my-own-iphone-in-china/ https://www.strangeparts.com/how-i-made-my-own-iphone-in-chi... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14100989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14100989 EDIT: Noticed that's Naomi Wu with the top comment on that HN discussion.
- elkos 3y agoIt's been a while since last time I've seen her, is she okay?
- mensetmanusman 3y agoHow much cheaper was it?
- smashed 3y agoIt doesn't have to be about saving money.
- cortesoft 3y ago> I even named it my non-Sweatshop iPhone Are the conditions at the parts factories any better than at the final assembly factory?
- Giorgi 3y ago[flagged]
- jacquesm 3y agoNote this not so veiled warning in the text: "The other reason there won’t be an electronic edition is that unlike bunnie, I’m a Chinese national. My offering an app or download specifically for English-speaking hardware engineers to install on their phones would be… iffy. If at some point "I" do offer you such a thing, I’d suggest you not use it." Especially the "I" bit.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- user_named 3y ago[flagged]
- dharmab 3y agoPDF is a really popular attack vector. Best will be for someone to submit a copy of the print book the the internet archive.
- zoom6628 3y agoPlaced my order out of respect for Bunnie and Naomi. Legends for different reasons but for any real hardware hacker they are worthy of due respect for their work, their communicating of it, and their sharing.
- short_throw 3y agoBunnie's "Hacking the Xbox" is still one of my favorite books ever. First read it as a teenager, it was my intro to bootloaders, encryption, copyright law, and so much more.
- c_o_n_v_e_x 3y agoIs it safe for Americans to go to Shenzen/China these days?
- user_named 3y ago[flagged]
- c_o_n_v_e_x 3y agoI’m going by active travel advisories from US department of state.
- pringk02 3y agoFascinating. Really surprised to see they have it as "reconsider travel". Reading the explanation it makes some amount of sense. I can't say that the issues they state don't happen, it's just they are so rare I never really considered them in day to day life there as a foreigner and still after decades don't know anyone who has been affected by them outside of very publicised cases. I'd say for the vast majority of people not directly involved in tense parts of international relations its very safe. You have much more to worry about if you are a Chinese national resident in the US, which is what most of the warnings seem to allude to.
- dang 3y agoYikes - you can't post like this here, and we have to ban accounts that do, so please don't do it again. Edit: you've been breaking the site guidelines so badly and so frequently that I think we have to ban the account. I've done that now. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.