
How Taiwan’s Digital Minister solved a mask supply problem - baylearn
https://www.wired.com/story/how-taiwans-unlikely-digital-minister-hacked-the-pandemic/
======
wenc
Wow. 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)

------
ISL
Without 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
If really no companies were interested, maybe you would just have added new
POIs on OpenStreetMaps and everybody could build on it

~~~
fomine3
I'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
Certainly 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.

------
jariel
So, they have a 'Digital Minister' who's competent, which puts them way ahead
of a lot of places ...

------
neonate
[https://archive.is/eb54h](https://archive.is/eb54h)

------
luplex
I'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?

------
thelastname
Audrey Tang! I know it was her even before reading the article.

------
sn41
Great 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.

~~~
techer
I strongly recommend this translation of the I Ching
[https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/i-ching-book-of-
changes/id4381...](https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/i-ching-book-of-
changes/id438132417)

~~~
sn41
Thanks, I will try this out.

------
wizzwizz4
Good 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.

~~~
dang
Ok, 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
nit(to me, maybe not to them): Audrey requests the use of 3rd person pronouns.
Out of curiosity - how does that work in Chinese?

~~~
sowbug
Gendered 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.

~~~
graton
> Incidentally, this is why you'll sometimes hear a native Chinese speaker
> mistakenly use "he" or "him" instead of "she" or "her."

I know speakers of foreign languages with strong gendering (as in every
person/object has a gender in their language) and they will still confuse
she/he at times.

