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How Taiwan’s Digital Minister solved a mask supply problem
- ISL 6y agoWithout the donation of Maps credits from Google, findthemasks.com couldn't have happened exactly as it did. I can't imagine what our bill would have been otherwise. Donations from a number of companies were (and remain) essential to leveraging the skilled volunteer workforce into something awesome.
- rvnx 6y agoIf really no companies were interested, maybe you would just have added new POIs on OpenStreetMaps and everybody could build on it
- fomine3 6y agoI'm not in Taiwan but Japan (not metropolis), here OSM is not enough detailed and not updated well. Is it different in other countries?
- glaucon 6y agoCertainly from my experience in the cities of New Zealand its as good as Google maps and in some respects superior. I just assumed it would be like that in Taiwan and so when I read about the Google bill I was thinking "shame they didn't use OSM". Certainly if I were to make a similar project for where I live I would use OSM for it.
- baylearn 6y agoThey could have used OSM if Google charged standard rates for maps
- redis_mlc 6y agoThe sibling replies mentioning Openstreetmap are correct. When displaying placemarkers, like this, you don't need Google Maps. Also, for showing maps on a high-volume homepage like this, you can use caching, robots.txt and old-school HTML image maps.
- wizzwizz4 6y agoGood article, but why are the titles always clickbait? She doesn't seem that “unlikely” to me, and she didn't hack the pandemic – the hacking was to do with mitigation efforts, and not the actual virus or disease.
- baylearn 6y agoAgree, I would have preferred a better title too. And knowing her reputation in the hacker community, it is anything but unlikely to me that something like this has happened.
- dang 6y agoOk, we've made her not be unlikely and have replaced the baity general bit with the neutral specific bit (opening paragraphs ftw), above.
- oh_sigh 6y agonit(to me, maybe not to them): Audrey requests the use of 3rd person pronouns. Out of curiosity - how does that work in Chinese?
- mxwsn 6y agohttps://www.slate.com/human-interest/2013/12/mandarin-chinese-a-gender-neutral-pronoun-meaning-he-she-or-it-gains-traction-in-china.amp https://www.slate.com/human-interest/2013/12/mandarin-chines...
- sowbug 6y agoGendered pronouns don't exist in spoken Chinese. Some such as 她, 它, and 牠 do exist in written Chinese, but they are neologisms, arising only relatively recently (nineteenth century). They're all pronounced the same (tā in pinyin). Prior to then, the word 他 (also tā) would be used to represent he/him/she/her/it. I have heard that in modern times, some actually use the pinyin tā in a sentence consisting otherwise only of Chinese characters to represent the truly gender-neutral pronoun. However, I've never seen that myself; I've seen only 他. Incidentally, this is why you'll sometimes hear a native Chinese speaker mistakenly use "he" or "him" instead of "she" or "her." It's a distinction they don't make in their native spoken language, so it doesn't come naturally to them.
- neonate 6y agohttps://archive.is/eb54h https://archive.is/eb54h
- wenc 6y agoWow. I remember when Audrey Tang (formerly Autrijus Tang) -- now Digital Minister in Taiwan -- was an active figure in the Perl community. She started a bunch of Perl projects and even wrote one of the first Perl 6 interpreters (Pugs) in Haskell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audrey_Tang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audrey_Tang
- sn41 6y agoGreat article. A tangential benefit: I learned about Taoist breathing practices, and Pol.is. I also see that the global media is very reluctant to discuss Vietnam's success in handling Covid. I wonder why.
- peteretep 6y ago> I also see that the global media is very reluctant to discuss Vietnam's success in handling Covid. Do you have data to confirm that? I disagree with your assessment, and have seen Vietnam frequently mentioned
- techer 6y agoI strongly recommend this translation of the I Ching https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/i-ching-book-of-changes/id438132417 https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/i-ching-book-of-changes/id4381...
- sn41 6y agoThanks, I will try this out.
- thelastname 6y agoAudrey Tang! I know it was her even before reading the article.
- jariel 6y agoSo, they have a 'Digital Minister' who's competent, which puts them way ahead of a lot of places ...
- luplex 6y agoI'd like to breathe that tech-democratic air for a while. Does anyone know of a graduate program, or a different way in which I could (go to Taiwan and) meet the right people?