tyng

I don't know, work never leaves my mind even when I'm not working

Perhaps after two months I will think differently :D

I appreciate the thought, life is a matter of choices

It's not a permanent lockdown... just for a few weeks (so far)

Absolutely, I don't represent everyone. I'm sure there are people losing their income because they cannot go to work. The government - which has enforced the lockdown, should definitely do a better job in caring for the individuals who are the most affected, no doubt in that.

There are definitely lots of complains: the consequences on the economy, not able to travel, etc. On a personal level everyone is affected, but is the lockdown worth it? On a country level I think it's understandable. Shanghai is a city of 25m population and it has one of the best medical system in China, if COVID cannot be contained in Shanghai then it'll be a nightmare to spread to other cities, towns and villages, where basic medical care is still not readily available. Shanghai is also the economic and financial centre of China, locking it down definitely comes at a great cost to the country, so I don't think the government has made this decision lightly. If Omicron is really like a cold/flu then no it's not worth it, but do we know this for sure?

I don't have the big picture data but all the people I know (locals and expats) have been vaccinated. China and the Western world are taking different approaches to COVID, I don't believe in anything said from either side, there is simply not enough scientific and trustworthy data, only time will tell which approach is better.

Schools are closed, and for good reasons. If I'm the parent I wouldn't want my kids to get COVID. The gospel of online education may be coming true? Jokes aside, it's not as miserable as many people may think.

I work 12 hour days no matter where I am :D

I'm in the lockdown in Shanghai, feel free to ask me any questions. Things you read on the internet is mostly true (but may be exaggerated):

Life: Yes we can only buy food through WeChat groups to organise wholesale deliveries (2000 eggs, 200 cabbages minimum order) on hiked prices, but it's easier than you might think; No one has died from starvation (yet), but there had been a few cases of death due to not getting medical help in time; The city's resources are stretched - it's a city with 25m population.

Work: I'm still working 12 hour days online (we're a design & project management firm). I get to wake up 10 minutes before a morning meeting and be in my pajamas the whole day.

So on a personal level, life isn't that miserable. But it's definitely a very difficult time to the elderly and the ill.

Will I (or anyone in my shoes) leave China permanently because of this? I guess not, even though I have the means to do it. There are harder problems to solve in life than feeling terrified by a lockdown.

RIP, his book Delivering Happiness was such an inspiration early in my career

I have worked in many overseas development projects run by Chinese companies. It's not that the Chinese companies only want to hire their own workers, but the fact that the local workforce do not have the skill/equipment/capital to handle large scale development projects.

Some countries require by law that the Chinese developers have a minimum number of local workers. This mitigates the problem somewhat and hopefully over time the locals will develop the skills to run their own projects.

In the long run, infrastructure investment benefits local communities and opens up more opportunities for the local workforce. It's almost always better to have the infrastructure built than not, earlier than later, and foreign money is a good source of capital for it.

I like this idea for its simplicity, a commercial problem with negative externality to the public can generally be solved with taxation.

If a cartoon character is still in commercial use and being further developed, I'm not sure if it's good practice to turn it into public domain. I don't think there had been corporations/artists that have had the longevity of Disney, and the fact that Disney has continued to invest in and develop the characters over the years makes this somewhat of a special case (compared to other literature characters where the author stops developing them after they are published).

I'm no copyright lawyer nor do I know much about copyright laws, but one should recognise the positive effects of copyright protection, which encourages innovation and investment. Those incremental investments Disney has made should be acknowledged.

But of course, the danger in this argument is that in the future someone can just make tiny face-value 'investments' into their copyright to argue for an extension, that would be detrimental to the whole copyright vs innovation balance.

Good point. I'm not familiar with the American copyright law, but you're right, nowadays in most countries even if a piece of art is sold to another person, the artist still holds the copyright (the right to make copies) unless copyright transfer is specified in the contract.

But another way to look at this is, if the artwork is commissioned by the company for commercial purpose - much like if someone is commissioned to create a logo for a company - then the copyright is generally transferred to the company.

In the absence of a written contract, one can argue both ways, which I think is why the lawyers didn't think there was a strong case.

I work in the realm of public art projects and thus have collaborated with a lot of artists, mostly painters and sculpters. I must say the success of any piece of artwork - especially the ones created with the public in mind - is not the work of a single man or woman, but the result of the collaboration of a team of professionals - designers, marketers, financiers, metal bashers, crane operators, all the way down to the assistant who helped review the contracts.

So a deal is a deal, if one agrees to the terms of a deal (oral or written), it must be honoured, otherwise there will be no collaboration. Imagine the marketer who helped putting the project on every headline turns around to ask for an extra cut of the success? Not possible, but he/she can certainly charge a higher fee for the next project.

Nowadays artists are much more educated about the value of copyright and we as art consultants/project coordinators help intermediate how deals are structured, so the value of the artist's work is properly recognised and rewarded.

As others have commented, success builds upon success, one must be able to see the bigger picture to be successful in any career pursued.

There is I think a broader legal/philosophical question here:

Are we to judge the car's ability to avoid the pedestrian on human standards or AI/machine standards?

From the video, it looked like this could be a situation where a human driver cannot avoid the accident (due to poor light, not enough reaction time etc) but a machine should be able to avoid it with it having multiple cameras, IR sight, and much faster processing speed.

Greater power comes with greater responsibility?

What an ingenius way to combine two seemingly 'harmless' datasets to reveal powerful insights! I'm sure there are many other possible/potential ways to combine publicly available data, hmmm...

Funny thing is, I can't even visit blog.google from China

The same goes for washing machine:

https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing...

"What was the greatest invention of the industrial revolution? Hans Rosling makes the case for the washing machine. With newly designed graphics from Gapminder, Rosling shows us the magic that pops up when economic growth and electricity turn a boring wash day into an intellectual day of reading."

Since I swithced to Surface earlier this year I haven't looked back. True, Surface is not as good as Macbook but it does the job and is much lighter to carry around as a full laptop (iPad is not a full laptop). Now with Surface Studio coming out soon it's a real challenger to the iMac. The iPhone is the only remaining reason I want to stay within the Apple ecosystem.

Thanks for sharing! And good to know there're fellow programming learners out there sharing my pain/passion. This looks like what I was looking for. Will give it a go over the weekend!

Yes I've done a number of these challenges, agree it's really good and would recommend to others. However this is still quite mathematical/text-book like (in a challenging and fun way though).

This looks cool! Will give it a go over the weekend. Thanks for sharing!

This still seems more mathematical/text-book like than practical examples, reminds me of https://projecteuler.net/ which is fun to do. Thanks for sharing!

Problem is what I want to build is far more complex than what I can build right now, need to take baby steps ;)

Ever since completing the Codeacademy Python course, I've been looking for simple but practical python projects that can help me learn to apply my skills. But so far the projects I found have been either too difficult or too simple (textbook like). I wonder if there is a more structured project-based learning material out there? Any suggestions?

Beautiful but creepy

The idea of a P2P backup solution is interesting, more so if you can hook up strangers into a massive backup network.

Of course, the challenge is to make sure the peers are online when you need the files, and for this reason the network may need 5-10gb of storage for 1gb of data to duplicate the content across multiple users.

You the man!