Welcome to the 24th meeting of the Public Petitions Committee in 2017. I remind members and others in the room to switch off phones and other devices to silent. This morning, we have apologies from Joanne Lamont, but no other apologies. I will move straight to agenda item 1, which is consideration of continued petitions. The first item on our agenda is consideration of continued petitions, and the first petition is PE1602 by Carol Sunnicks on ECGs and hard echo tests with anti-natal care. Our last consideration of this petition was in September last year when we agreed to defer further consideration pending publication of updated guidance on cardiac disease and pregnancy by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. In April of this year, the Royal College of Medicine advised that it had decided that there was no requirement to update its guidance on cardiac disease and pregnancy as nice as developing guidelines on intrapartum care for women with pre-existing medical conditions or obstetric complications and their babies. The Royal College indicated its hope that these guidelines will become the up-to-date reference for clinicians. In her submission, the petitioner highlights her view that the scope of the guidelines has been developed by nice centres on pre-existing conditions or obstetric complications. In a quote, there is nothing that looks at anti-natal care that includes really not the possibility of peripartum cardiomyopathy. She argues that the introduction of a blood test would allow for in-depth testing and treatment before a woman goes into labour by identifying any indicators of potential peripartum cardiomyopathy. The nice website includes project information and documents and indicates that it expects to consult on the draft guidance from 6 September to 18 October next year, with an expected publication date of 6 March 2019. I open it up to members. Do you have any comments or suggestions for further action? Brian Whittle is quite difficult for us to do anything with this until such times as nice guidelines come out. However, I think that it is perfectly possible for this committee to write to that when they are developing the guidelines. I am bringing the petition to their attention and the concern of the petitioner to their attention. I am not quite sure of what else we can do when they are developing the guidelines, apart from that. Michelle Ballanty. I agree that we should write to NICE and ask them to consider the inclusion of looking at how they manage people who do not have a pre-existing condition and recognising that it can occur during pregnancy. I think that we have to close the petition this time. Once the guidelines come out, if the petitioner still feels that it is missing, she can always come back. I agree with both of those actions. We need to wait until we see what the guidelines are, close the petition and take it from there. If the petitioner wants to come back, she can do that. However, I agree with Brian Whittle saying that please draw NICE's attention to the petition so that they can take that into consideration. I think that we have consensus around the table. I think that there is a lot of merit in writing to NICE, but to also close the petition on the basis that NICE is developing guidelines, which will be issued for consultation in 2018 with an anticipated publication date of March 2019. In doing so, we should also bring the petitioner's attention to the fact that there is a facility for people to register their interests in the development of the guidelines. If she is not satisfied with the conclusions that are reached by NICE, she is perfectly entitled to bring back a petition in the same or similar terms in the future. We agree to take that action to write to NICE but also to close the petition. If we can move on to petition PE1626, the regulation of bus services. This petition is by Pat Rafferty on behalf of Unite Scotland on the regulation of bus services. We will ask consider this petition in June when we agreed to ask the Scottish Government to provide an indicative timescale for its consultation on the proposed transport bill and to engage with the petitioners at an early stage of that consultation. The Scottish Government indicated that officials would meet with Unite to discuss the proposals for bus services prior to publication of the consultation and again following the publication. It advised that the consultation would be published in the autumn. The note by the clerk indicates that the consultation ran from 13 September until 5 December. It also identifies that the petitioners have not been in a position to provide a response to the Scottish Government's two most recent submissions but have indicated that they would be keen to proceed with the petition. Do members have any comments or suggestions for further action? I think that we should invite the petitioners to respond because I think that until we hear what they think, I'm not sure where we'll go at the moment. They have said that they are keen to provide a written response in the new year, so I think that we'll wait until they do that and then take it from there. Okay, thank you. It's agreed then and I would encourage the petitioners to submit their views at an early date and then we will look at it at a forthcoming meeting. Okay, thank you. Can we move on to petition P1629, MRI scans for ocular melanoma sufferers in Scotland? It's the petitions by Jennifer Lewis and at our previous consideration of this petition in June, we agreed to invite NICE and the Scottish Government to respond to the petitioners' argument that recent clinical trials have brought new evidence to light. NICE considered that it would not be appropriate to comment on any aspect of the petition as it hasn't produced guidance on the use of MRI scans for ocular melanoma sufferers. The Scottish Government considered that there's not sufficient evidence to enact a change in surveillance protocols for people with ocular melanoma. We also invited the Scottish Government to respond to the petitioners' view that guidelines are interpreted flexibly by centres elsewhere in the UK in that they will provide MRI scans if requested. The Scottish Government presented its understanding that MRI scans are offered in a limited capacity. The petitioner considers that the number of hospitals that offer MRI scans upon referral or request represents more than a limited capacity, in her words, and notes that others will also provide MRI if the circumstances and concerns with regard to metastasis are explained to them. She contends that this is not provided to patients in Scotland even when they explain the situation. The Scottish Government provided further information in relation to the formation of a UK-wide group that will share expertise and develop UK-wide guidance and recommendations to ensure a consistent approach to screening and surveillance. The petitioner and Occumail UK queried the benefit of such a group. Occumail UK considers that this work had already been completed by the guideline development group, which produced guidelines approved but not published by NICE in 2013. Occumail UK stated its concern that, as the new UK-wide group is yet to be formed, could considerably delay any advances in care for patients in Scotland. From late October, there have been further submissions that set out concerns about what are referred to as negative developments with regard to the provision of scanning services in Scotland. The concerns are that patients are now required to attend their ultrasound appointments locally rather than at the specialist centre at Gartnavel. In our submission of 25 October, the petitioner identifies three aspects of the role of the national services division, which he feels are not being met as a consequence of this new approach to the provision of scanning services. Do members have any comments or suggestions for further action? Michelle Brown has a negative response, and there are still no answers. I note that the group that was set up in August was in the early stages. Almost four months on, we are no clearer as to what has happened, if anything. We were told that we would be kept updated with respect to that, so we need to find out what is happening with that. We also need to let the rights of the Scottish Government and let them know of the petitioner's further concerns and ask as many questions as we can. I do not feel that there has been any progression in this petition at all. Michelle Brown? It is a really frustrating one when you look at it, because it just feels like it has been played ping-pong with. Yes, I think that we do need to ask more questions, but I feel a very slight reluctance to write again to get another letter back. I wonder whether there is the option to take some evidence around this and have an actual conversation about whether that is feasible, because it just feels like we are knocking it back and forth and just not getting an answer, and then having to write again. I have got to say that I am sure that frustration. The evidence that we took at the time was quite compelling. I thought that it was very well thought out and quite compelling, because I am quite frustrated by the responses that we have got from the petition. I do feel that we have got to stay on this. I think that our only option is to write again, probably in stronger terms, because I do feel that we are getting a batted back, pushed to the side. I thought that the evidence that they gave was quite compelling. I do not mean from the petition. I mean from the minister and from the chief medical officer. I think that we need to be talking to them about why they are basically ignoring this. Is there a case for speaking to the CMO on this? I am not getting a sense of why that petition has been pushed to the side. I am not really getting that feeling from the Government response. There is certainly nothing to stop us writing directly to the CMO to see what her view is, but it was a guard to taking evidence. I think that there is an issue with regard to the workload that the committee already has. I am advised by the clerks that we may not be able to take evidence until possibly the end of March at the earliest. I think that we need to move us forward. In the meantime, I think that we should be writing to the Scottish Government and separately to the CMO, as Brian Whittle suggested. If we are writing to the Government and to the CMO, could we be saying that if we cannot resolve this quickly by written communication, then we will be requiring them to come in front of us and maybe that will encourage them to address the questions, because they know that they would have to come here otherwise. I think that there is a hell of a merit in that suggestion. We can include that in any correspondence. I am conscious of these petitions. The time is of the essence. This is not a petition that can drag on for years from a petitioner's point of view. This is a life and death petition. I think that we should suggest that we have not been particularly enamoured with the responses from the Government at this stage. There is merit in all these suggestions. Within the letter to the Scottish Government, we should seek an update on the establishment of the UK-wide group and the development of guidance and recommendations on surveillance whether the group will include medical oncologists and whether it is aware of the guideline development group. We should also seek its position on recent peer-reviewed evidence and seek its response to the more recent concerns expressed by the petitioner and others in terms of where patients should attend for surveillance. I agree. If we can move on to petition P1632, concessionary transport for carers, by Amanda MacDonald. At our previous consideration of this petition in June, we agreed to ask the Scottish Government what the estimated cost of introducing concessionary public transport for carers would be. The committee also agreed to ask COSLA what consideration local authorities had given to the forthcoming duty under the Carers Scotland Act 2016 to provide support to carers who meet locally-agreed eligibility criteria and whether that includes any plans to introduce concessionary transport for carers. The information is outlined in detail in the papers. COSLA's written submission stated that the proposed concessionary travel scheme would not be affordable or represent the most effective way to invest public services resources. The petitioner suggested that if concessionary transport was considered too expensive to be rolled out through the national concessionary transport scheme, then a national flat rate for carers on public transport could perhaps be considered instead. Do members have any comments or suggestions for further action on the petition? I have a lot of sympathy for the petition. As we all know, the monetary value of the job that carers do, and I have had the opportunity a couple of times before going on to a series of events with carers. One of the big issues is their ability to interact with others and travel being one of the main issues. I have a lot of sympathy for the petition and I do not quite understand because I do not think that the cost implications are that high. I am surprised at the response, but I would certainly like to continue to ask that the Scottish Government views on the petitioner's suggestion of the introduction of a national flat rate for carers at the very least. I have sympathy with it, absolutely. In some respects, the issue of travel is not just about carers—I know that the petition is—but we are debating this in so many forums and in so many ways about travel and concessionary travel. It is a problem across the board. It is a problem in rurality, where children cannot access activities. It is a problem for carers. It is a problem for older people. It is a problem in the sense that we are losing a lot of our public transport as well, because, as the vast majority of people use cars now, particularly in rural areas, there is no accessibility. Obviously, the earlier petition is about changing the bus transport system as well. Much as I have huge sympathy, I am just not sure that we could do anything with this at the moment. I suppose that the situation with local government, which is the point of subsidisation for transport, is that, if anything, they are reducing the amount of subsidy that they give at the moment, and I cannot see that they are going to be able to add to it. I understand where COSLA is coming from. It is not that they would not want to support it or that it is not even that it is not the right thing to do. It is just that, at this present stage, I just do not think that they are going to be able to. The flat rate is an interesting one, because certainly when I was a child, there was a flat rate of travel on the bus for young people and a flat rate, and everybody just paid the same.  I actually do not know when or why it was changed, but I think that what would be interesting is that the petition that we are working on at the front-end perhaps needs to go through and see where that ends up, and then I think that the whole business of transport probably needs to be visited. I am just not sure that we can deliver one particular aspect. COSLA are clearly and understandably coming at this from a budgetary point of view and the restraints on them, and I can understand that. However, I do think that it would be worthwhile asking the Scottish Government for its views on the introduction of a flat rate and whether it would consider that that would be acceptable, because I do not think that we have gone down that road before. I think that that would be probably the last chance saloon for it, to be quite honest. I do not think that the free travel that the petitioner is asking for is realistic, but I have sympathy with it. However, I think that the flat rate that we could ask about. Yes, okay, thanks. Clearly, there are cost implications, as has been highlighted by COSLA, but I think that this committee would be failing in our duty if we did not explore the issue of a flat rate. While there is an argument to close the petition, I think that we should explore the issue of a flat rate further. I think that that is agreed by everyone around the table. That is the next course of action, agreed on PE1632. Okay, if we can move on to PE1638 by Sean Clarkin on local housing allowance, brackets, bedroom, tax 2, closed brackets. At our previous consideration of the petition in June, we agreed to write to the Scottish Government and the Department for Work and Pensions. The UK Government has since dropped its plans to introduce local housing allowance rates to the local rented sector, and the petitioner has informed the clerks that, on that basis, he wishes to withdraw the petition. Taking that on board, are we content to close the petition or do members have any comments or further suggestions? Okay, we agreed to close that petition and kind of thank the petitioner for the action that he took and bringing the issue to the attention of the committee. If we can move on to petition PE1653, Active Travel Infrastructure, by McKellan Jackson on behalf of Gorebridge Community Trust. At our last consideration of this petition in June, we agreed to write to the Scottish Government, Sustrans, Scottish Environment Link and WWF Scotland. The Scottish Government's written submission makes reference to a wide range of plans in place to support Active Travel and Cycling in Scotland, including a new trunk road, walking and cycling strategy, which was due to be published in September. However, members may wish to note that the clerks were unable to source the strategy on the Transport Scotland website at the time of preparing the note for this petition. Submissions received from Sustrans and the petitioner raised concerns that the Scottish Government's target of 10 per cent of all journeys being taken by bike by 2020 is unlikely to be met, unless a fundamental change is made to the way that that infrastructure projects are designed. Suggestions made in the written submissions received to improve the chances of this target being met include increased funding, amending the current approach to the appraisal of transport projects and establishing a legal framework for active travel infrastructure projects. Do members have any comments or suggestions on further action? The submission by the Scottish Government says that trunk road cycling initiative aims to ensure that all major road projects are given care for consideration to suitable version for all road users, as she will be aware. I am quite involved in the A77 upgrade in the Mabel bypass, and one of the questions that I asked the minister was whether there would be provision made for active travel to which there is not. That particular submission by the Scottish Government is contradictory, so I would like to explore that further. I feel quite strongly that the petition is certainly going along the right lines. If we have any infrastructure projects and we want to future proof them, and we want to do 10 per cent of journeys by bike, we have to do that. We have to start joining up thinking. I would certainly like to question that from the Scottish Government, and I also noted that we did not manage to find that on the website. I would certainly like to inquire where that is. Anyone else? I think that we should write back to them and say just what is your position on the legal framework? I think that the committee has agreed to proceed on that basis. I know that the issue of the 10 per cent target has been raised quite a bit in the chamber, and I have discussed it privately or officially with the Pettle for Scotland and other bodies. As Stuart Stevenson said in a committee meeting the other day, it is always good to set a target high, because there is always a chance that you can reach it, rather than setting a target—a mediocre target—and not reaching it. There is a lot of merit in writing to the Government to seek further clarification on that. If we can move on to petition PE1658 by Wendy Stevenson on compensation for those who suffered neurological disability following administration of the placerex vaccine between 1988 and 1992. At our first consideration of the petition in June, we heard evidence from the petitioner, and we agreed to seek the views of the Scottish Government and, in light of the historical nature of the issues raised in the petition, to seek the views and further background contextual information from the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency and the Commission on Human Medicine. Submissions from the Scottish Government and the petitioner are included in the papers that you have received from the clerk. The Scottish Government notes the historical context and states that it has no plans to set up a scheme, as suggested by the petition, on the basis that the issues raised in the petition, including safety of medicines, the policy on compensation for vaccines damages, and administration of the vaccine damages payment scheme, and the policy for payments under that scheme are all reserved to the UK Parliament. The Scottish Government suggests that the committee may wish to contact the department for work and pensions as a body responsible for administration of the vaccine damages payment scheme. Now, the petitioner expresses her understanding that any payment under the vaccine damages payment scheme is not the same as compensation and that, by referring to the scheme as compensation, the Scottish Government is causing confusion. She considers that, in its submission, the Scottish Government acknowledges the damage caused by the Urabi—I think that's the correct pronunciation—containing placerics vaccine. She refers to examples of other injuries and disabilities that predate devolution, including hepatitis C, selidimide and exposure to asbestos. She considers that those have been acknowledged and compensated, noting in particular the damages asbestos-related conditions Scotland Act 2009. The petitioner considers that it is entirely unacceptable, in her words, for the Scottish Government to not set up a scheme for ex-Gracia payments, as called for in her petition, given the damage caused by the vaccine in this particular instance. Do the members have any comments? We didn't get anything back from the MHRE or the Commission on Human Medicines. They didn't respond to our request for further information, so I think that we should ask them again if they would respond. Most certainly, I will write to the DWP, as the Scottish Government suggests, and see where we go from there. I wonder how we close this look from the petitioner who is suggesting that. I don't know the answer to it, but I'm suggesting that the Scottish Government is being disingenuous of causing confusion around the idea of compensation. I'm not quite sure how we close that, because I'm not sure whether that's correct or not. How do we do that? I mean, you've heard of that, that we've been advised, but have we taken legal advice on that? No, we could certainly seek it. I mean, I think that it might be worth seeking it. The Government argue that it's a reserved matter. That would appear to be a fact, but they're also saying that by using the word compensation it's misleading, so we need to explore that one. Yeah, I think that we need to put that back to the Scottish Government and ask them to respond to the comments by the petitioner. Yeah, I think so. Can I have a back and close that look? Yeah, okay. Well, that action is agreed, and we'll also write to the DWP and chase up the MHRA and the commission on human medicines for our response. Agreed? Agreed. Thank you. Okay, if we can move on to petition P1662 by Janey Cringing and Lorraine Murray on improved treatment for patients with Lyme disease and associated tick-borne diseases. We first considered this petition in September when we heard evidence from the petitioners and agreed to seek the views of a range of stakeholders. The submissions received are supportive of the petition and discuss a range of issues around testing for treatment of and education about Lyme disease. We have our wealth of information, which members have had the opportunity to read, which I'll try to summarise as briefly as possible. In relation to testing, the Scottish Government advises that the testing laboratory at Rigmore leases with experts at Public Health England to ensure access to the most robust and scientifically justified testing regime available. However, the Scottish Government recognises that there are gaps in the effectiveness of the tests and notes that the NICE guidelines, which are expected to include consideration of the effectiveness of testing, are currently in development and will be considered by the Lyme Boreliosis subgroup once published. That is expected to be in April 2018. The Royal College of General Practitioners in Scotland is represented on the group developing the NICE guidelines and adds that it is taking forward work with the University of Leicester on a new research method of blood tests. Lyme disease UK and Lyme disease action refer to uncertainty and complexity and patients being caught in the middle due to the current limitations of NHS blood tests. Lyme disease UK considers that testing should be extended and suggests upgrading the testing laboratory at Rigmore to a reference laboratory and extending its remit to cover all tick-borne infections. The Scottish Government notes that this is under consideration. All of the submissions acknowledge the need for greater awareness and education among both the public and professionals. The Scottish Government, Scottish Natural Heritage and the Royal College of General Practitioners highlight a range of work being taken forward, including the development of professional resources such as podcasts and webinars and appropriate information resources on websites, including Health Protection Scotland. The Royal College provides information about its e-learning course, which has registered more than 2,000 users since its launch in September 2014. The Royal College notes that it is difficult to measure the percentage of Scottish GPs who have completed the training as the course is not restricted to a GP or Scottish only audience. The petitioners indicate that they are encouraged by the general agreement among the responses that more needs to be done to tackle Lyme disease. They do, however, express a disappointment with the draft NICE guidelines, which they consider to be very narrow in scope. The petitioners welcome support for the suggestion of a specialist treatment centre and the argument for pilot specialist clinics. They also strongly support the elevation of the testing laboratory status to reference laboratory. The petitioners summarise the response with suggested actions, which they indicate that they would like to see taken forward within the Scottish national plan for tick-borne infections, similar to that developed in France. The petitioners also draw our attention to the French national plan. That was a brief summary. Do members have any comments or suggestions for further action? Before we move to members, I welcome Alexander Burnett, who has joined us. He has had a significant interest in this issue for some time. I will ask him to come in later once we have had some contributions from the members. It is quite interesting that the NICE itself is suggesting that there is currently insufficient quality of evidence, so there is a recognition here that more has to be done. Given that the guidelines that were expected to be published in April 2018, I would suggest that we would defer further consideration until that point. Given that there is a recognition that the current system is not robust enough to see how they are going to tackle that. I agree. Given that it is a matter of months until we get the new guidelines from NICE, I am not sure that it would be productive for us to do anything until that, because we can consider where we go after we see those guidelines. Have we flagged NICE's concerns? We did flag it, so we are aware of it. Obviously, we have got to see what they do. The draft was not great, but hopefully, they might have revisited it. That is why I wanted to ensure that we have flagged to them. We will have to see what they publish. I am concerned that if they do not broaden them a wee bit, the fact that this is pretty awful. Can I ask Alexander Burnett to come in at this point? Thank you very much, convener, and I thank the petitioners for continuing to bring you this very important subject to the committee. I think that it is very disappointing that we are having to wait until April to see something that we are expecting to not be satisfactory. This is a subject that has been through Parliament over 10 years ago. It was the first time that we found records of cross-party groups or events happening to highlight it. Clearly, since then, nothing significant progress has been made. The evidence shows that, in the four years, only 3 per cent of GPs have taken up the courses available. The disease becomes ever more prevalent, and the risks to very important groups of people who we are encouraging to use and go into the countryside are increasing all the time from children on school groups and Duke of Edinburgh schemes, the increase in walkers. I am sure that I do not need to go on at length about that, but we are encouraging people to go out into the countryside and go back to urban areas where the disease is not being recognised. Still, very little seems to be done about it. I understand that four months might not seem a long time to wait for what is the next stage, but if we are already expecting that next stage to not be satisfactory, I think that it is going to seem an awfully long time to the petitioners and the others who have been campaigning with them. I would be disappointed if that is the only course of action. I am afraid that I do not know what else was in the remit of a petition's committee, but the petitioners have put forward proposals and suggested actions for a Scottish national plan for tick board infections. I wonder if the committee could push that in any way. I do not know how that comes about, but it is by requesting the Government to bring forward plans for such a plan. I will ask the minister to make some good points. At the very least, we show that it is within our remit to be able to write to NICE with the concerns around the draft proposals to say that we do not feel that they are tackling enough or a broader scope of the issue. That must be powerful within our remit to be able to do that. I totally take on board what Alexander is saying about having to wait for NICE. Until we see what NICE writes, we cannot demand a change. It is sort of a catch-22, is not it really? The guidelines can write to NICE and say that you should be looking at this and you should be doing this and that the draft is not satisfactory. We need to see that, but we cannot make demands of the Government. We can highlight them. I think that we already have highlighted that that needs to be reviewed, but they are going to say that automatically we will see what NICE says. We are going to go around in circles until NICE publish. Only once NICE have published, and indeed, if, as you suspect, it is not going to be satisfactory, we can say that this is not satisfactory and that we need to do something different. I largely agree with that. The Government will not do anything until April in that sense, but there is some merit in writing to NICE again to say that the draft does not seem satisfactory. Could you take that into consideration before final publication? I do not see that that is going to be possibly worthwhile, but I do not think that clearly nothing concrete will happen until April. I think that it is worth flagging up. We probably did, but it is worth saying again that we have had this meeting and there are significant concerns about the guidelines. Perhaps they could take that into consideration because it is not finalised yet. If we pre-empt a nice publication by suggesting that the draft publication does not meet what we were hoping, they will at least know that this is not going to go away. At some point, they will have to revisit it, so maybe by pre-empting it with a letter to NICE, that is the very least. Alexander Stewart, I think that the delay until the NICE report is disappointing is that it is understandable and everyone will understand the committee's position on that. Is there anything that can be done about pushing for the Scottish national plan in those actions? Again, it might be an idea to wait for the NICE guidelines to come out before that is pursued, would you agree? I do not think that the Government will commit to that until we have seen the NICE guidelines. We are in a catch-22 situation at the moment. We really have to wait until April until the NICE guidelines come out. However, I would share the petitioners' disappointment and members' disappointment with the narriness of the current NICE guidelines. There is certainly a need to write to NICE just to make sure that our views are on the radar in advance of April 2018. If we are anticipating that we are not going to get what we want from NICE, is it worth scheduling a meeting evidence for very, very close to when, soon after they come out, so that we ring fence the time so that we can address it very quickly and maybe potentially save the date for people that we might want to take evidence from, so that there is not then another delay when NICE comes out and then we have to schedule in down the line? At least that way, we are not letting it drag out any longer than it has to. I do think that it is really frustrating. None of us want to have to wait until April, but I think that there is just a pragmatic realism in that. However, if we could constatina the process, a wee bit, by planning ahead. We can ask the clerks to take note of that and they can come back to a future meeting with a proposal for ring fencing sometime for that evidence session, but I agree with you 100 per cent. That has been dragging on for too long, and it needs to be sorted to coin a phrase. Are there any other comments on this at the moment? If we are going to plan ahead, it might be worth even asking the petitioners who they think we should be taking evidence from, obviously not only themselves but other individuals that they would particularly feel would be relevant. I think that the clerks will take that on board, as a matter of course. We are agreed with that course of action, and I thank the petitioners for their response to this very serious issue that I have been following for a number of years myself. I look forward to progress on it in the near future. If we can move on to petition PE1664, it is a continued petition on greater protection for mountain hares by Harry Highton on behalf of one kind. At our last consideration of this petition in September, we agreed to write to the Scottish Government, SNH, the Scottish Land and the States and James Hatton Institute and the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust. Members will note that some of the submissions received made reference to the fact that SNH recently conducted a review of existing evidence on mountain hare populations. The findings concluded that evidence of a national decline in mountain hares is not conclusive, but North East Scotland data shows a dramatic decline in numbers since 2003. As there is no evidence of a long-term decline overall, the Scottish Government does not support a nationwide moratorium on mountain hare culls. However, the petitioners have the view that, given the lack of evidence available, the unregulated and unmonitored killing of mountain hares should not be allowed to continue. SNH intends to address the status of hares on North East Grousemore Moors through the new principles of moorland management guidance on sustainable hare management, which has currently been drafted by the Moorland Forum. However, the petitioner raised concerns that there has been no consultation outside of the forum membership or transparency as to how the guidance is being developed. The Scottish Government also intends to set up an independently led group to examine how to ensure Grousemore management is sustainable and compliant with the law and the control of mountain hares will be considered as part of this review. Do members have any comments or suggestions for further action? I think that the obvious one, convener, is the fact that the concerns raised by the petitioner around their inability to participate in any kind of guidance. Perhaps one of the obvious things for me would be to ask the Scottish Government how they can allow contributions from the public on that guidance. We are agreed to ask the Scottish Government what opportunity there may be for members of the public to contribute to the development of the principles of moorland management guidance and for more information about the scope of the independent group on Grousemore management in relation to the control of mountain hares. That is agreed. If we can move on to petition PE1681 on adult consensual incestuous relationships and marriage. This is in similar terms to two previous petitions lodged by the same petitioner. The most recent petition was considered by us at our meeting on 15 September 2016. At that meeting, we agreed to close the petition on the basis that the Scottish Law Commission undertook a report on this issue as recently as 2007 and concluded that the majority of you at the time favoured retaining the offence and the current definition. Do members have any comments? I went to close the petition. We are agreed to close the petition under rule 15.7 of standing orders on the basis that the Scottish Law Commission undertook a report on this issue as recently as 2007 and concluded that the majority of you at the time favoured retaining the offence and the current definition. The petition is closed. We have come to the end of consideration of petitions in public, although we have one further petition at PE1458 to discuss in private. In closing this meeting, I would like to wish everyone a merry Christmas and a happy new year. I can also take this opportunity to thank the clerks and all those who have worked behind the scenes to support the committee's work over the past year. Their assistance is greatly appreciated and I hereby close the public part of this meeting.


Firstly, Apologies people, I meant to post this video last week, but due to all the things to cover your bloody harvest and mayhem on Twitch, I totally forgot about it. Now from this video going live, you literally have 24 hours to make the most out of this I believe. How's it going guys? My name's DP Jen, I'd like to thank you for stopping by and checking out my video. If you do enjoy it leaving a like, it really helps out and subscribe if you want to see more boardlines. Also guys, every week I give away copies of this game to win one for yourself or a friend. Simply subscribe and make sure you have notifications turned on, drop a like on this video and leave a comment down below. The point of this video is to get this great SMG, but at the same time taking advantage of mayhem on Twitch with the increased anointed loot drops. This weapon as far as I know only drops from tipping moxies in Sanctuary, so if by the end of this video, this weapon interests you, you know where to get it. So on this crit, I know comes in a rare variant as well as epic. It's a Maliwan SMG, also which hosts my favourite SMGs in the game, mainly the Nebula and the Cutsman, but this is definitely another great addition to that. Now this weapon only comes with shark elemental damage, with 44 in its standard clip and doing decent damage as well as high accuracy. For 150% critical hit damage, you do for sure feel. Now compared to other SMGs like the Cutsman, it obviously won't have the same kind of damage output, but it makes for a much better weapon to use at this close range, against those mobs of enemies that are all up in your face. So close to mid range is perfect for this weapon. Now the Salif repart from where is literally the only thing I don't really like about this thing, as it has a chance upon reloading it to drop the weapon. Now you do hear a certain chime sound, but even so, it can get seriously annoying running around trying to find this thing if you aint realised it's dropped. Now the reason upon making this video is the fact, for a few more hours you can get much better chance of getting this thing anointed, and some of the added benefits of certain anointed versions are great and a great match for this SMG, and like I said, you have a limited time to get these anointed people, so make the most of it while you can. This could be one you use quite frequently, or just one for the collection or a later date. Now these anointed weapons and increased versions of them dropping can for every item in the game, so don't forget if there's a certain weapon you want, your best bet is to farm it now while you still have the time. But yes people, apologies for the late upload, I didn't tend to upload this sooner, so get tipping moxie if this weapon is of interest to you. I was getting one literally every about 20 tips of a thousand dollars or so, and she also drops another weapon too which is a rare, which isn't that great. This crit though is definitely worthy of your cash, the 150 plus critical hit damage really is unique, especially to SMGs, so this is definitely one you should really consider. So the crit, the shock elemental SMG, slippery when wet, you have a few more hours to get anointed versions of it and you get it via tipping moxie within sanctuary. On that note guys, we have come to the end of the video, if you guys enjoyed it leaving a like really helps out, if you're new around here and want to see more Borderlands videos be sure to subscribe and if you never want to miss a video I upload I can turn notifications on by hitting that bell button. But guys thanks as always for stopping by, hopefully you enjoyed the video and hopefully I will see you on that next one.


Okay, yeah. Just quick introduction. My name is Daisuke. I'm an AI entrepreneur in Tokyo. I'm running the Hakkazon community for the Python machine learning with 8,000 members. This time we are working on a book about how AI can beat COVID-19. Three members from University of Tokyo. They are medical entrepreneurs, researchers, so we will be publishing the book in February, and then this interview will be the special contents in this book. Thank you very much. Okay, sounds good to me. Yeah, okay. And then I think I'm allowed to record this interview according to Zack-san. Yes, of course. We will have the shared recording on the Skype side, and just for your benefit, once you start a local recording, I will also do a local recording, so it's higher quality for you afterwards, and I'll send it to you also on Skype. Okay, thank you very much. I'm going to start recording. Okay, thank you very much. Okay. This is now recorded. Let me just double check. Yes, this is recorded. Okay, I plan to do this interview for 40-45 minutes. Is it good for you? Yes, of course, and usually we will publish the video if you're okay with it to our YouTube channel, but if you think a transcript is preferred, we can also do a transcript instead of the video to publish. Wow, fantastic. Thank you very much. Okay, let's start. So our book title is How Can AI Beat Coronavirus? And then thank you very much for your time. So this time, as a preparation, I talked with as many Taiwanese as possible, and then these voices from them reflect a strong point of your strategy. An example of my Taiwanese friends, background engineer, female entrepreneur, ex-Google manufacturer, Gov Zero members. Okay, so I prepared nine questions. First question is, as of October 2020, many Japanese companies are suffering from bad economy after pandemic. My strategy is preparing as a pessimist and act as an optimist. So what is your advice or encouragement for Japanese business people and the citizens?  Okay, there is a saying, I often quote from Leona Cohen, and I quote, there is a crack in everything, and that's how the light gets in. The idea is that on a common issue like COVID, it both of course separates people because of social distancing and so on, but it also connects people like never before. Like previously before the coronavirus pandemic, we will probably not be having this conversation. And this book probably will not be published because that idea around AI before the coronavirus is definitely not specializing in the humanitarian part of AI. People think about transhumanism and people spend a lot of time on vanity projects. I say this without judgment, but by making people look like better than other people and so on. And nowadays these aesthetics are no longer the norm. We don't see people showing off Instagram or on social media anymore because we understand that there are much more pressing issues to be solved and we need to direct our energy to it. And so I think the main idea is here about the common good. If we have the common good in mind, then it makes it easier for us to find the common projects that we can all contribute on. But if we think more individualistically, like raising my status above other people and so on, that will be detrimental in the time of coronavirus. Okay. Well, this is a wonderful insight. Do you mean more, I guess, a company with social mission has an opportunity to go to business and then this non-social company should shift to the social direction in this pandemic? Well, in the pandemic, for example, we see that many companies are forced to adopt teleworking. But teleworking is not just a neutral technology. It also connects people more intimately. It allows people to spend more time with the people they care in their locality and also makes for a more diverse and inclusive workforce. If of course you have broadband as human rights, otherwise it excludes people also. So any new COVID strategies has this light side of people who previously were unable to accept a more socially flexible arrangement like telework are often forced to accept it. But even after the pandemic goes away, like in Taiwan, it's been five months with no local cases. Still, we use telework whenever appropriate because people have already have a good experience with teleworking as compared to maybe 10 or 15 years ago when teleworking was not very practical and the connection quality doesn't work at all. But nowadays, you can see and hear me just fine. I can hear you just fine. And this makes teleworking a modern reality. So it doesn't have to be social purpose, but we do have to evaluate the social or more pro-social consequences of the ways that we have changed in working together. And organizational changes are also a kind of technology, right? Teleworking is a social innovation. Okay, great. I check to several your keynote speech and then several times you are mentioning about being robust is important in the society and business. So in COVID-19, all the businesses need to be more robust. For example, some of the restaurant owners open in the kitchen in the 10th floor of the building and then using the sales channel only over each. Yes. This kind of small expense business is a more robust than big expense business. So what do you think about this kind of being more robust? Yeah, definitely. If you anticipated this need and already worked this way, of course, you're robust. But even if you do not anticipate and take a hit when the new coronavirus came, then if you can very quickly innovate and pivot to a way that works with the new situation, then you're maybe not as robust as others, but you're resilient. And I think resilience is a shared value too, especially around like island countries such as Japan and Taiwan, because we understand there are some like disasters like earthquake or typhoon that simply cannot be managed. Management doesn't work as a term against such natural disaster, but we can be resilient in the sense of not only minimizing the damage, but also goes around the post tsunami, the post earthquake situations as a whole society. So while robust is more about a single individual or organization, I think resilience is part of the culture, it's the entire society. These two work very closely together. Yes. Yeah, this is very valuable insight and advice. Thank you very much. My second question about myself, I and my wife got COVID-19 and were in the hospital for three weeks in April. That was a huge setback for us. But now, strangely, we feel somehow sank through for COVID, because I'm a self startup founder. COVID made me much stronger, bolder and smarter person. So for example, in biology, virus is somehow necessary for creatures, evolutions. So in my opinion, how can we leverage COVID as an opportunity to become person or stronger person or better society or stronger society? Yeah. First of all, congratulations on your recovery. And also, I think COVID shows that it is actually possible to live in a way that is sustainable in many places where there's a lot of air pollution, a lot of water pollution and so on. Because of COVID, people have seen a clear sky for the first time. People have seen the clean water for the first time, because those structural issues around the environment were simply neglected. And especially for younger people, maybe for their entire life, they have seen the water and the air and the environment as a kind of damaged vision. But with the COVID comes the opportunity to see the natural habitat again as lively as it is. And you can't unsee it, you can't go back. Once people understand that it is actually possible through teleworking and through actually Uber Eats, as you mentioned, it is possible to reduce our overall footprint on the environment, live much more sustainably. And I think that is also a much needed way for the society to feel better even after COVID and recover in a resilient and sustainable fashion. Yes, thank you very much. Next question is from my Taiwanese female startup founder. She said you're representing Taiwanese multiple freedom as an icon, which is great. Japan is a single ethnic country over thousands and thousands of years. This kind of pain, attention to the detailed culture created Toyota's very efficient car manufacturing system as a system, which was great. But sometimes this lack of diversity brought Japan from growth or innovations. So under pandemic and global business competition, diversity is very, very important. So how can Japan implement the essence of diversity into our single ethnic country? What is the right balance between a single way of thinking or diversity? And then how can we learn from Taiwan regarding diversity? Yeah, I think diversity is not just about ethnic though. In Taiwan, of course, our ethnic composition is fairly uniform, but our cultural composition is very diverse, right? Even for people who identify as ethnic Han, there are the Taiwanese Holok language, Taiwanese Hakka language with at least six different sub languages, and also of course Mandarin, but also spoken in different ways. So that's at least three different languages. And out to that, the National Languages Act recognizes the indigenous languages and also the sign language as the national language. So in our live streamed Central Epidemic Command Center press conferences, you actually see people sign a lot and learn about sign language vocabularies and so on. So first of all, I don't think it's only because I'm ethnically belonging to some group of people, it would prevent me from learning new cultures and new languages, just like maybe you work in AI. So your native language is probably Python, but it doesn't stop you from learning, say JavaScript or Rust or Go or some other languages. The more languages you learn, the more transcultural you become, you will be able to see the same problem from the objective oriented fashion, from a functional fashion, from a declarative fashion and so on. And that makes you a better programmer, definitely, than if you only know one language. And so I think this transcultural attitude is more important than ethnic diversity. Ethnic diversity and inclusion is of course very good, but without this transcultural idea of intersectionality, it is simply just one dimension of a multi-dimensional human being. And so I think intersectionality is more important than ethnic diversity. Okay, that's great. Thank you very much. My next question is according to my Taiwanese friends, you never showed anger or you are always calm. I mean, mindfulness is being calm mindset is very important under the pandemic, especially social media was chaos in this time. And which kind of three mindsets should we have to be the part like you? Yeah, first of all, I turn off all the notifications. I always work in the do not disturb mode. So I will not, for example, my phone will not go bing when we are having this conversation. And this is important to be distraction free. And the second thing is I limit my social media or indeed checking my inbox only once per half an hour. So I focus for 25 minutes, and then I check social media or email for five minutes. It's called a Pomodoro method that also helps a lot. And certainly, I think it's important to have sufficient amount of sleep every night. I sleep on average eight hours every night. If you have sufficient amount of sleep, then most of the short term memory you gather the previous day will be written into long term memory. But if you have a very short amount of sleep, then that's writing to the long term memory is not yet done. And so you will live the other day with a lot of thoughts from the previous day still in mind. And that interferes is kind of an internal distraction. And so having sufficient sleep also very important. Okay. Similarly, I used to work in Italy. So they are very optimistic about the way of thinking. And then recently, some of the celebrities committed suicide in Japan, and the suicide rate was like 15% increase last month in Japan. So people are like getting pressure from the pandemic about the economy. So well, similarly, but how can we maintain this optimistic mindset that in the pandemic? Well, I mean, it doesn't have to be optimistic. If you feel depressed, that is also a good time to reflect to do some long term thinking to make sure that you don't miss some threads that could be missed when you're much more active, right? So it's like the time and tide. If you feel pessimistic, it's good for long term strategizing. If you feel optimistic, it's good for actions. The trick is to make sure that the cycles are in a balanced fashion like in and young within the space of a day or at most a few days. If you spend half a year being optimistic, half a year being pessimistic, that's much more bipolar. But if you can limit that interval to at least a few days or a single day, like maybe do some like strategizing when you're going to sleep and list the actions you can take when you wake up, that's of course the best rhythm. So getting a kind of internal tempo going on, I think it's very important, a tempo, the speed of going more active and more reactive that will tend to balance one another. Okay, thank you very much. And then a little bit back into the previous question, but we are Japanese single ethnic country and paying attention to the details. This is really strengths. But at the same time, we overthink sometimes. So we have many overthinkers. Overthinkers has to become pessimists sometimes. Or how can we overcome this overthinking culture? Yeah, I think that's where the Lerner Cohen quote, I just quoted why it's so important.  And so a little bit of imperfection in open source, we say, and I quote, release early and release often, unquote, meaning that even if you only have an idea, even if it's very much imperfect, as long as you say so upfront, and instead of pretending like this is completed work, you can just say, oh, this is a stub, like in Wikipedia, this is just a stub that people can grow upon. That's an invitation for other people to co-create. And so I think the importance of release early release often really balances the perfectionism in overthinking. If you think a little and then publish, and then think a little and then publish, you can meet much more diverse set of people than if you think to 100% and then publish. That really makes sense. Thank you very much. My next question is in your interview with Andrew Reynolds, which happened in May 2020. You were mentioning about warm power versus sharp power. Also hashtag Taiwan can help. This is a very important concept in the 21st century. So the world should shift from competition to collaboration. So is warm power coming from Taiwanese culture, or since actually Taiwanese people are very, very warm to me? So how did you accelerate it with the power of the internet? Yeah, I think of course the Taiwanese people are very much like pro-social, and the pro-socialness is amplified through the internet by making sure that people work out loud. There's actually a book about it and working out loud meaning that just sharing what I'm working on like this interview is not just for the two of us or for reader of the book. Actually, we're going to publish either as a video or as a transcript everything we have said. And so basically dedicating it to the commons. And by commons, we mean that people can take it and like the rap, band, those monos in Japan, they maybe take whatever we have said and sample it into music. And that's fine too. And so the point here is that if you work out loud, you can meet people who take the kind of work that you do and in the direction that you did not anticipate. And that builds social relationships much more easily than if everybody have to sign a contract and pre-agree on whatever deliverable there are. Of course, there's a role of contracts in the financial sense, in the business sense, but a social contract in which that people agree to give more into the commons than we take from the commons is also very important. And that's the underlying idea of Taiwan can help in that we are much more willing to help than we take from the international community. That's great. Thank you very much. So in your perspective, what's our biggest impact of Taiwan can help? Which kind of things happened? Yeah, for example, there's a website called Taiwan Can Help That Us and that asks who can help Taiwan, Taiwan can help. And the great thing about this website is that it's not run by the government. There's zero government funding in it. It's just YouTubers, people who crowdfund and crowdsource the entire content. And this morning, I actually went to the massive online open course, the HaHao channel, which you can see in Taiwan Can Help That Us. If you scroll down a little bit, where they recorded from our vice president at the time, Dr. Chen Jianren, the crash course on COVID-19, because he literally is not just a vice president at the time, but actually wrote the textbook on epidemiology. And so this idea of people pulling in useful resources, sharing it with the international community, with the English dubbing and subtitle, and so on, signifies the idea that Taiwan Can Help is not just a government thing, but rather everybody in Taiwan can dedicate, for example, a few masks for the international humanitarian aid. You can also see that in Taiwan Can Help That Us. So it shows the diversity and the cross-sectoral participation. Okay, great. And then a little sub-question from that answer is I personally think, because I'm doing an AI project, this time in a pandemic, including infodemic, some people are looking at the science thinking, like thinking of a scientist, and got panicked from the false information or biased information in social media or a television or newspaper or something else in the towns. So science thinking is becoming more important now, especially for things like pandemic. What do you think about it, and how can we improve this science? Yeah, definitely. I think the scientific method is something that people can practice. It is not just an abstract idea that you just learn about in school and then throw away. It's something that you can just keep doing. The idea is simply to learn about a basic prior or basic facts, and that's what the government can help. For example, with the vice president recording crash courses about coronavirus or the central epidemic command center holding live press conferences every 2 p.m. during the pandemic and answer all the questions from the journalist, and that gives the basic observations. But now, based on observations, part of science thinking is you can form your own hypothesis, and through induction and through experiments, you can deduce new ideas and propose it for the community to evaluate, to replicate, basically. For example, there was a person named Slai Quan Yu who tried to use the rice cookers and to disinfect the musk, and you can actually see the rice cooker right there. Basically, Slai tried to put the medical musks in such traditional rice cookers, which unlike the newer IH cookers, they don't have a ventilation hole, and so that makes the heating model very predictable. It will very quickly heat up to 110 Celsius and then very quickly cool down. And because of that, in the few seconds where it reaches more than 100 Celsius, it kills off the virus but doesn't destroy the material of the medical musk. And so he basically outlined the procedure of doing so and then share it with the community. Now, because the medical musk are theoretically one-time use, of course, the Taiwan Food and Drug Administration is quite skeptical of this idea that you can somehow reuse it, but then the TFDA did their own experiments, and much to their credit, they invited Mr. Lai to the daily press conference to teach the evidence of the hypothesis while the Minister Chen Shizhong actually cooked a medical musk in a rice cooker in front of all the people watching the livestream. So this is just one simple example, but it shows that science is something that we all participate and we can all replicate. It's not that just for a handful of scientists, everybody can be a citizen scientist. And when it comes to reusing musk, these experiments are being replicated around the world. And nowadays, we see from peer-reviewed journals that this even works for N95 musks. That's a great story. And then similarly, my question is, this time people got confused between fact and opinions. And then main Japanese people believe that news is a fact, but news can be biased because of the sponsor, because of the own of the newspaper company. So as a scientist, scientists tend to think to believe in the fact supported by the evidence. So this kind of thinking is important, I think, but what do you think about it? Well, I mean, even if there's no bias in the people running the news organization, the source that they collect those ideas from may be biased. And even if they use the most rigorous methods like data science, still if you have the wrong expectation of the data, then you may collect the data, but then accumulate data bias without realizing it. So there really is no escaping of bias. And what people can do is like listing an ingredient in the food label to list exactly what are the sources. Like in the journalism, if they use a research paper, it helps, of course, to include the DOI number so people can fact check themselves. And if we're doing data science, it also helps to list the data sets that we actually draw our conclusions from. So our peers may evaluate independently. So I don't think any single individual can be free of bias. But what we can do is to list our sources so that other people may benefit from independent verification. That's the beauty of that scientific method, it grows with the community. Yeah, that's a great way to do it. Yeah, thank you very much. My next question is your collaboration with Seattle Company, Paul dot IS. Paul's police is very innovative. And then it is like a real time visualization of the democracy. And since we learn the machine learning hackathon community here in Tokyo, we are very interested in your insights. So what did you find by data analysis in people's opinion discussion? And then that will be lead us to the next generation politics system. And then we should do the same here in Japan, I think. Yeah, we use police from everything to, you know, do with the open mountaineering, that's the hiking to the opening of the oceans, that's like sea sports and so on. And to diplomatic conversations like with the de facto US Embassy, the AIT on the digital dialogues, and pretty much everything, right? There's even a website, polis.gov.tw that is our locally hosted instance. So it's very much ingrained into our institution already. And the best thing I found about polis is that it's AI in the 20th century. It's not AI in the 21st century, whether with deep learning and so on, because it's actually much harder to explain the results if you use 21st century AI. If it's just 20th century AI in polis, it's mostly principal component analysis, mostly K means clustering. These are ideas that even for a primary schooler, if you take some time to explain it through the concepts, they can verify it themselves. But if you used any of those cutting edge like transformer models of deep learning, explaining it is actually very, very difficult. And so I think it helps to build data competence, that is to say, as self confidence in producing and analyzing data, instead of just consuming the results of a data analysis, it's like media competence is the ability to produce media versus media literacy, which is just about viewing or reading media. It's important to start small, to start with well understood techniques like the 20th century AI, and then build confidence in all the participants' ability to not only replicate the results, but also do their independent analysis. And then maybe you can add some more like deep learning as a assistance, for example, smart categorization and so on. But these are nice to have. The core functionality, I think, must be very accountable, that's to say, easy to explain, and also value aligned, meaning that it serves the best interests of the person using it. Okay, thank you very much. The counter question about that comment is, I think the beauty of the power of the machine learning is finding counter-intuitive fact. So did you find any counter-intuitive fact in your own opinion? Yeah, definitely. Yeah, the main Polish insight, which is surprising to pretty much everyone participating, is that actually people agree mostly with each other's points, most of the time on most of the issues. And it's very counter-intuitive because people may be used to the more anti-social social media, which wastes people time just going through the ideologically charged controversial issues. But in each social topic, these controversial ideologies are maybe just a few points. If you just say, okay, we agree to disagree, but then there's much more that we agree. For example, when UberX came to Taiwan, everybody agreed on the insurance, taxation, the fairness, principal registration and so on. And while, of course, people may differ on what constitutes a sharing economy, some people think, you know, you're not even carpooling, that's not sharing economy. But some people think, oh, it's sharing economy if there is a platform that does matchmaking of the idle hours of cars and so on. If you'll get caught up in those ideologies, of course, the society goes nowhere. But counter-intuitively, Polish shows that we actually agree on those rough consensus on those common values after all. So why don't we just regulate those? And then we can talk about those abstract concepts that are controversial later. Okay, so do you think eventually optimization of the policies can be done based on the data science? Definitely. I think data science offers a very rare but important glimpse, which is much more holistic to the entire society. A lot of the difficulty that we have when talking about like climate change, this information crisis, COVID, whatever, is that because the problem space and solution space is so large, it's very difficult to hold them in one's mind. So one would oversimplify. And once people oversimplify, but in different ways, it creates ideological differences, even though their value may be the same. And so data science can give a holistic like dimensional reduction, right? It shows a interactive portrait of the actual problem space without oversimplifying two or only one or two dimensions. So do you have any other example of the fact you found in the police and then made it made it as a policy? Yeah, definitely. So for example, when we did the consultation with the AIT, the de facto US Embassy on promoting people to people ties in like across the world, there's a very controversial statement that says, and I quote, Taiwan should make English and additional working language even France have done the same, unquote. And it was very controversial. People don't like it, but there's also people who really like it. But the statement was the most consensus is that we need to prepare our education environment so that in due time, people will feel comfortable speaking native English. And so basically, it's the same statement, but set in the future, like for people who are in kindergarten, we need to prepare so that 10 years, 15 years down the line, they feel comfortable thinking English. And now everybody agrees with that. And so I think this is important to realize that if you set far enough to the future, if you are patient enough, something that looks like a very controversial topic may actually get everybody's support. And of course, we develop our bilingual nation strategy based on that insight. Do you think eventually data science can pick the weak voice in the society? If we decide to do so, of course. Okay, thank you. My next question is according to Gov. Zero Teen, your co-fact is the one of the most active repository in the GitHub. And in this platform, people can crowdsource the fact check the rumors. It can be done in 60 minutes as an average. And then this could stop infodemic under COVID-19. And then how did you come up with this idea? And then how can we expand this open source plus crowdsourcing idea for other use cases and eventually the other countries? Yeah, the co-facts team have already spread, for example, to the Jurong Gong University where we had a workshop. And if you remove the S and go just to co-fact.org, it actually goes to the Thai version in Thailand of the co-facts repository. And so it has already seen a lot of adoption around the world and especially in Thailand, which is very nice. But I cannot speak on behalf of the co-founder, Johnson Liang, who really goes by the nickname Mr. ORC. It's actually the main mastermind behind this chatbot and also the main contributor for the first version of the co-facts. Of course, now it's a very large team. So I would encourage you to maybe ask Johnson. I mean, here is his GitHub repository and his contact details. And maybe he can share the full story because I'm just a promoter of co-facts. But I'm not part of the team that started co-facts. Okay, I will definitely do so. Yeah, thank you very much. My next question is a little technical. You are known as a programming wizard and then my Taiwanese engineer who's actually working for the GitLab Taiwan and says you can write 200 lines of code and can build amazing performance applications. So what are the top three key points when writing effective codes? Well, first of all, it helps to write it with the community. If I write just the bare bones without design, graphics, favorite icons, and so on, but I do it in the open. And I say, I know this looks ugly, but send me pull requests, then everybody can contribute. And that's really the main key point is to work out loud instead of working in isolation. The second thing also helps that you identify the project's social good in the very beginning. So even before you write the first line of code, think about your read me, think about your tagline, think about your project name and hashtag, and how to communicate the social good of your project to any random stranger so that they will be motivated to contribute to the code base. And third, always instead of asking people to sign a lot of constant forms and so on before contributing, just give them the capability to contribute. That's radical trust. And it's always easy nowadays that you can revert their changes. If it turns out their changes doesn't make sense. But asking for permission is much more difficult than asking for forgiveness, right? If people can't just go and change and say, oh, sorry, forgive me. I got it wrong. I made a typo or whatever. It's no big deal. But if everybody has to ask your permission, then you become the bottleneck for the project. And so by relieving yourself of the bottleneck, you can delegate away even the delegation to other people. That's great. Thank you. And then your way of using radical trust is really interesting. What's the main difference between radical trust and trust? Yeah, radical trust means that we give the right to commit. For example, when I was working on nowadays called Raku, but back in the time, the perks implementation, I give commit bits just to say the right to push into the shared repository, not only to people working on Perl and Haskell, but also Guido van Roosen, the creator of Python. Why not? And even when someone, you know, flames writes some toxic language about Perl on any of the forums, we often just reply saying, hey, here is a commit bit. You can contribute and make it better. Even evolved so that when there was a committer who was just giving birth to one of their child, we immediately gave the child a commit bit too, even though they're just newborn. And so basically, it's like Wikipedia, right? Anyone with an IP address can change our code. And we can figure out the forgiveness later if they've made some bad changes. Okay, great. Similarly, lots of people in Japan, and maybe globally, wants to become an engineer, IT engineer, this time because of the maybe bad economy, IT engineer can be highly paid and then can work remotely regardless of the place. So do you have any message to encourage this kind of newbie or wannabe engineers? Yeah, I think in Taiwan, we don't call it software engineering. We call it program design. And it's the same thing. But it conveys a different idea. When you call it engineering, you think of someone who interacts mostly with machines. But if you call it a designer, that's someone who mostly interacts with other people. And so of course, a real programming work involves working with people and working with machines, of course. And whatever code you write must be readable by machines, but also readable by humans. And so there's two sides of this job. I'm not saying that there's only one side. But since you're talking about software engineers, I would like to encourage them to not forget about the design part, computational thinking, scientific thinking is great. But also design thinking, learn about how to explore the various different values that people have, how to define a common value out of the diversity, how to develop according to various different prototypes concurrently, and how to deliver the final work and also allow other people to deliver their version of their work. And that's design thinking. Okay, thank you very much. So how can typical, because for example, one of the typical backend or machine engineer do not learn designing, then how can they learn designing without being a designer? Yeah, I mean, design thinking is not about being a professional designer. This is not working through this iterative process to how to understand your fellow human beings and how to define those challenges and redefine problems and create innovative solutions. And if you can learn programming by going to, I don't know, stack exchange or whatever forum that people are having a such a conversation, I'm sure that you can also browse, for example, the interaction design foundations description about design thinking and find the references and join the communities. I mean, design thinking always starts with a idea. And this idea is often just part of your life, right? You can see something that you want to see done better. And then it reaches you. And then you can reach to other people asking whether there are some other issues that you also want to solve in that vein. And that is the basis of interaction design. And that will then teach a different lens of problem solving. So if you're interested, I just pasted the interaction design.org beginners guide, you don't have to follow all the lessons. But that outline shows what's the learning path about design thinking. And you can start from a user experience perspective, from a user interface perspective, from an perspective, a user researcher perspective, there's many, many different entry points into the learning path of design thinking. Yeah, okay. Thank you very much. And I'm also a big fan of design thinking. But my biggest learning today is what we are saying is design thinking, except UI UX design exists. In case of machine learning, in case of backend, everything can be designed. Yeah, that's definitely the case. Mechanism design, market design, service design, everything can apply the design thinking to. Okay, thank you very much. My very last question is everyone places your achievement mask supply application and its data visualization. So technically speaking, public API and the open data are essential to build it. So in your ICFP keynote, you said someone from Korea contacted you, but they couldn't make it, they couldn't build the same application in Korea. So we do not have a pharmacy open data API either. So how can other countries, for example, government or big company proceed this open data movements? For example, pass waiting big company to provide more public API for allocating the budget to support civic tech hackathon. Yeah, first of all, I was referring to early February, where we did API for Taiwanese pharmacies. And at the time, of course, the Korean people do not yet have the open API. But what's amazing is that Fijian Kyung from Thailand City, part of the Gov Zero Slack channel, shared the API that he had with the people in Korea. And so for example, the Seoul city quickly, well, not that quickly, but eventually around March, set up such a API and followed by other cities as well. And so I think it's just a few weeks time, I think by mid-March, they do have a mask availability map going in their mask rationing system. And I also met the developers over video conference. Some of them are just like 15 years old. So it's excellent. And so what happens, I think at that time, is that the Korean government were seeing that there is a need, but they do not have an example. And what the civic technologies can show is that once you use the API, then instead of coding anything from scratch, the map that Fijian Kyung made in Thailand City can immediately work also as a map for the Seoul city, even though Fijian Kyung doesn't speak Korean, but he speaks JavaScript. That's the important thing, right? And so I think that enabled a real collaboration. In Japan, there is a very similar story about the code for Japan. People who work with the Tokyo Metropolitan government to work on the stop COVID dashboard. And again, because they work out in the open, the government also helped on the internationalization and localization, and I personally also have translating it. So as long as it's open, it's on GitHub, I think there's no boundaries. It's not just people in Korea or people in Taiwan or people in Japan. Everybody who speaks JavaScript can co-design the API and the government basically accepts whatever work is there. And then basically it's like a reverse procurement where the government only have to guarantee the stability of the API, but doesn't have to do anything else. Okay. Did you get any request from other countries regarding the mask application? Yeah, definitely, definitely. And many people are seeing it not as something that they can just copy, but rather a model like the Taiwan model where they can engage the civil society, the social sector, who do not previously understand that they can also make government digital services. For example, on the stop COVID dashboard in Tokyo, I think all what the Tokyo people do in the metropolitan government is basically giving them a domain name that is a government. But the actual link is still to GitHub. And the GitHub is the main place where people do the poor requests and so on. And that means that it's made in the world. It's just given a Tokyo metropolitan domain name. And then of course it's forked into many other cities as well. Okay, great. Thank you very much. That's all for my questions. And then thank you very much for answering. Yeah, sure. Would you prefer we publish the video or would you prefer if we publish the transcript? Yeah, could you publish the video? Okay, of course. Transcription. Yeah. Okay. Okay. That's awesome. So I'll just publish the video on YouTube then. Okay. I'll central the link. Okay. And then my last request is, may I take a picture? Of course, of course, you can take several pictures. Just for a moment. Okay. One, two, three, smile please. One, two, three, smile. Okay. Thank you very much. That's it. Thank you very much. Excellent. And then we will publish a book. And then we will promote the book because this time publisher is an IPO company, public company called Shoeisha, so they have a selling power. Okay. Okay. Take care. Live long and prosperous. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.


Hi everyone, Joe for jazby's casebreaks.com coming at you with 2022-23 Bowman University Chrome basketball four-box random letter break number 56. We've done 56 of these Time flies by when you're having fun There's all the letters right there and we're giving away some spots as well. So let's do that Let's grab these names here and let's roll it and randomize it top four. We'll get extra spots. All right Steve Locke Thank you for hanging out man. I'll see you tomorrow. No, I won't see you tomorrow It's my weekend. I'll see you maybe Sunday Or you'll see Jason tomorrow three and a four seven times top four after seven one two three four five six and Seventh and final time Jason Benjamin and Nathan and Zach extra spots going your way. Congrats Now the rest of you don't worry still got a chance at the the big the big letters Alright now let's gather all of these names and let's do the randomizer for the letters Let's roll it and randomize it three and a one four times One two three and a one fourth and final time Correct. Yeah, no Rex. I don't think of all the I've pretty pretty broad imagination But I don't think I've ever imagined saying I'm not wearing a label holster I have asked people though what what they would think if my entire hand was a water bottle instead of a hand if People would still be friends with me The results were mixed three and a one four times for the letters one two three and a one four times C down to B All right, Nathan with C and a Craig with no Nathan J F EG and P Nathan LH Zach WZ Jason T Zach D Donald M Zach with V Zach with R as well Jason with K Ben s Zach B Let's alphabetize by a letter. I don't think there's gonna be any trades But I do have the boxes right here and what I'm gonna do is I'm going to Roll the die One two three will do the left side and four five six will do the right side And it's four one two three four Five six. This is coming up in the next video. It's already sold out The next four box break will be from a fresh case No one's trading right not even a whisper of a trade no one in the chat's trading at all You can see the chat above my head. It's just print and rip So that list is going to remain the same there it is officially printed out. Thanks everyone for getting in Thanks, everyone for spending a bit of your Thursday with me. I appreciate that your Thursday my Friday Whatever day it is It's a good day for group breaks Thanks for hopping on the big hit express Going on a monster safari Will we find a monster in here? We'll see we got gold cup action on in the background Haiti and Mexico are playing each other scoreless In the 43rd minute, which is a bit of a surprise to me Although I don't know anything That's a good chance. I don't know anything of Haitian football. So Well, maybe they're a more tough defensive mind. I suppose smaller countries would do that Park the bus a little bit play some tight defense And try to pip a goal Towards the end Finally good to we were doing so many of these breaks before the draft. It's finally good to see a Lot of these breaks happen after the draft now just start Seeing these players on their professional teams And seeing how they can contribute Who's gonna be the next? You're gonna be the next star Or stars plural Want to see right plural Stars plural all card ship. Good luck. There's we're sear Bolton. I Don't think was drafted. I think we saw him in the previous break.  That's Kamari lands 40 out 44 out of 50 and that's gonna go to the letter K Jason K with K Kamari line might still be in it might be something to look out for next year and we've got a big kahuna insert JJ Starling That'll be for Nathan in the letter J Kailin Clark and Victor. All right, there's Jalen hood Shafina who's on my Lakers. All right next box Tyler what's going on? I'm doing well. Thank you for asking. I don't know Rex. I think the Lakers GM has said that Has said that they want to keep the core team together Which means re-signing Rui Hachimura and Austin Reeves Think they're gonna try to get Bruce Brown, Jr from Denver You think they'll figure things out. I mean, I think they have right? They made those big moves at the trading deadline And they had a they finished the season after those big trades they finished the season 18 with an 18 and 6 record And got to the Western Conference finals, which I think at the beginning of this season was It's definitely Didn't seem like it was gonna be in the pictures in the cards So as long as they bring everyone back and maybe have them build some chemistry try to work together throughout a course of entire season and provided guys like LeBron and ADC healthy then Could make another deep run into the playoffs Maybe some of those young Some the young draft picks from last year Have a full professional season under their belt. Maybe make another step forward this year This year's draft takes their ahead of schedule. That should help greatly Stuff to play the games, but I think should be okay. I think they'll be all right Julian Phillips was drafted Julian Phillips was Drafted in the second round 35th pick overall so early second round to the Celtics So that'll be for Nathan and the letter J. There's Judah mince blue Also for letter J Nathan 148 out of 199 J. J. Starling was he drafted by the Bulls? I know Wikipedia says Boston Celtics from Portland via Atlanta LA Clippers Detroit and Cleveland Oh and traded to Chicago via Washington That's a complicated one. How do who keeps track of all of them Jordan Walsh and Brandon Slater Judah mince could be like a candy. Yeah, no Slater not drafted, but that'll go to Zach and the letter B Maybe find a different Brandon out of here somewhere as well Trace Walker and we had a Derek Lively. He was drafted 54 out of 99 drafted 12th overall By okc traded to Dallas so he's going to Dallas Zach with the letter D. All right another box This mission possible movie looks pretty good My favorite movie of all time. That's a tough one Favorite movie of all time We were talking about heat last night, but I don't know if that's my best heat is like top five In the car is it that's not Godfather movies one and two. They're up there Dark nights out of not a bad choice. I do like Christopher Nolan pictures. I don't know Godfather one and two Are definitely up there good fellas It's definitely up there That's a tough one You like that changes for me frequently, you know There's a Colin Chandler It'll go to the letter C. That's for Nathan. Here's a Brandon Miller moment first for Zach Yeah, I I did a rewatch of that not too long ago gladiator really good Is it gonna be a top five? For me. No, I do enjoy that movie a lot. It's Katelyn Clark JJ Starling To 50 Inceptions to top five for you sections pretty darn good But I don't know if inception would even be the top five Christopher Nolan movie for me though your Seth Trimble To 39 I enjoyed it, but is that a top five Nolan movie? Not to me like let's say let's say we count the Batman Movie as one. There's L. J. Crier 187 out of 199. That's for Nathan letter L To 199 Yeah, if I collect the Batman in one Batman Prestige for sure momento interstellar tenant Yeah, like tenant better than better than Better than but inception is right there. It's not bad. I Enjoy watching it. I love all the Christopher Nolan movies Following his first one is actually pretty decent, too. And who knows Oppenheimer's coming out at the what? soon But who knows where Oppenheimer will land after I see that Saving private run. That's a good. That's a good top five That would make my top five War pictures Would it make top five all-time? I would that would that would I'm not sure I do enjoy that movie though. I See that in I don't know if I saw that in theaters or not Jeremy stand by me your favorite in the top five top me to the top. It's a good one the whoa I think the title of the Stephen King short story that it was That where is what I don't think it was called stand by me I think the short story was The body maybe That's a good collection of short stories. I think that same short story Collection I think also yielded Maybe Shawshank Redemption came out of there. Was it the body? That's what Jan is saying I think it's the body that same short story collection also yielded Shawshank Redemption and Maybe apt pupil Your favorite is back to the future. You'd love the entire you prefer the third huh, I Thought the third was It wasn't bad. I think the third is was usually regarded as the worst one big fan of Arrival with Amy Adams and and Hawkeye and the guy who's also Hawkeye and in Mission Impossible and Got almost died recently His name is Someone's gonna tell me there's Zion Cruz mini diamonds to 150 Zack with the letter Z There's Malik Renault 35 out of 50 Hear me out. I loved and still love revenge of the Sith I'm not with you on that There's Jackson Kohler But I'll hear you out Ben says Top Gun Maverick and let's get a scoot Top Gun Maverick was pretty good. I've watched that multiple times. I think I think I bought it a Digital copy as soon as it was available. I watched that pretty frequently Tom Cruise to me is an odd character in real life as As a human being but as as a as a movie maker He's pretty incredible. One of my favorite movies and this might make the top five a few good men Might make the top five for me a few good men probably when I thought I was gonna be Donald is letter M It's the Malik Renault probably when I thought I was gonna be a a judge advocate general I'm Joe for jasby's case breaks jasby's jasby's case breaks calm. I'll see you next time for the next one. Bye. Bye