
Fifteen-year-old Nigerian builds small scale construction machines [video] - nanna
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-africa-48141248/fifteen-year-old-nigerian-builds-small-scale-construction-machines
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iamleppert
Even 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.

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harias
This is the same in India too. Even if you have the resources, people are
discouraged from anything that isn't academic.

~~~
rishiloyola
Yeah, the harsh truth.

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djtriptych
Pretty amazing he got so far with such limited resources. Obviously a born
engineer.

Wish the video included some way to donate materials.

~~~
segmondy
No 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
We 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
The 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.

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bayareanative
Used 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.

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cc_stoic
Nigerian 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)

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hardlianotion
The video includes subtitles, but the boy's diction is clear.

~~~
asveikau
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.

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
> 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
By 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."

~~~
scbrg
Pro tip: If you don't want to come off as negative, don't start your post with
the words "I get really irritated" ;) I'm still confused about what you really
meant, since your first and second paragraphs really were at odds with each
other.

As a non native, but still fluent English speaker I always use subtitles when
I can. It just helps to fill in the odd word I miss due to local noise or
unexpected pronunciation (English has a _lot_ of dialects!).

FWIW, I tend to do this for content in my native language as well. Turns out
~ten million people is enough to produce a lot of incomprehensible dialects as
well...

~~~
asveikau
Maybe next time I will say I get "positively irritated".

The thing is, two statements can be seemingly at odds in sentiment and also
simultaneously true. The "aggressive subtitles for foreign accent" phenomenon
is real. I wanted to acknowledge I had seen the same in other places. It is
irritating when it happens. It is disrespectful where it occurs. But the
second paragraph establishes that it is _not always the reason_. I did not
think it was here.

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2muchcoffeeman
I have been in the same room with other people, listening to a person speak in
English with a heavy accent from wherever, and I will be the only person who
understood what was said.

“What did they about X, I couldn’t understand the accent?”

I have also seen native English speakers, turn on subs on English movies, with
the volume at a perfectly normal level to understand things.

The only thing going on is that people really like their subtitles.

~~~
asveikau
Sometimes there will be a movie or TV program where nobody is subbed, except
the one person with a completely understandable foreign accent. That is a
phenomenon I have seen. Usually in media for an American audience, from what
I've seen. (A lot of Americans have trouble even with native speakers from the
UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, etc. We as a nation seem to have very
little patience or habituation for accents.)

It's the broadcast equivalent of your first scenario.

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TaylorAlexander
I 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.

~~~
free652
How? I'd love to see an actual example. Everyone is stealing IPs, enforcement
is pretty hard.

~~~
TaylorAlexander
You’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.

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obviuosly
I dimly remember reading on Reddit that these machines were not the boy's
invention.

~~~
beenBoutIT
If 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
the point isnt that he's not exceptional, the point is he's not frontpage news
exceptional.

~~~
beenBoutIT
Hopefully the extra attention gets him a ticket out of there and into a good
college.

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lurquer
A 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!"

~~~
apo
The boy himself says: "When people see me on the street operating my excavator
and tipper, they are usually surprised." I don't imagine he's flying to
Beverly Hills to demo his projects and then flying back to Nigeria, but I
guess that's a possibility.

The environment the boy was filmed in suggests that he doesn't have a lot to
work with. Maybe that's BBC going for the sensationalist angle, but I doubt it
given that the article was originally produced for _BBC News Pidgin_ :

[https://www.bbc.com/pidgin/tori-48130271](https://www.bbc.com/pidgin/tori-48130271)

The initiative to actually implement his designs with limited resources is the
hallmark of a hacker, and he belongs on the front page of this site.

His young age makes it that much more interesting. I have worked with 15 year-
olds before and let me tell you that there's a _wide_ spectrum of abilities.
In particular, the ability to reduce plans into an implementable format
quantitatively (i.e., measuring and cutting accurately) is extremely rare even
in the US.

Very few wealthy US students could do what this boy has done.

~~~
lurquer
Using syringes for hydraulics has been around forever. I remember instructions
for making a 'hydraulic' backhoe in a Cub Scout booklet nearly 40 years ago.

Go to youtube and search for 'syringe hydraulic.'

I'm not knocking the kid, but the adulation over his accomplishment -- copying
a DIY project off YouTube most likely -- is absurd.

~~~
apo
And I have patiently explained to multiple teens in great detail how to turn a
simple design into a drawing and that into a 3D artifact. 95% of them can't do
it.

If this kid figured it all out from YouTube, he's still way ahead of the rest
of his peers around the world.

The point for me isn't the syringes. It's the initiative and determination it
takes to start with the idea and actually finish it, particularly among this
age group.

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draw_down
And 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)

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saneshark
I 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
Funny 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
Maybe 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
the 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).

~~~
jacobush
Yeah, gotta nip that counterculture in the bud.

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serf
his teacher was trying to do him a favor.

he literally said something like 'that's nice but it looks like a bomb. don't
show anyone else.' \-- it doesn't seem to me to be unsupportive, just worried.
I don't think a teacher would say something like that in confidence with a
student unless that student had a certain rapport with the teacher.

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0815test
In 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...

