Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, Twitter has ordered all of its staff around the world to work from home as of last week. According to AFP, Apple has also encouraged employees to work from home, and Google has restricted visits to its US offices, while Facebook closed some offices for “deep cleaning” after an employee was diagnosed with the coronavirus.
As the demand for remote working continues to rise, the Financial Times’ Techdesk worked from home on Feb. 28 in an experiment to see whether this would work. The good news, the newspaper says, is that much of the technology supporting remote working, like videoconferencing services and chat apps, is finally mature and reliable.
The bad news, however, is that you still need to learn how to use those tools properly, such as how to light yourself or hide laundry in the background in a video call, and not to schedule calls with the Tokyo office at midnight Tokyo time. After all, etiquette is just as important as technology.
Photo: CNA
照片︰中央社
(Eddy Chang, Taipei Times)
為因應武漢肺炎爆發，推特下令全球所有員工自上週起須「在家工作」。據法新社報導，蘋果也鼓勵旗下員工在家工作，谷歌並開始限制外人造訪美國辦公室。在某員工確診感染新冠病毒後，臉書則關閉部分辦公室進行徹底消毒。
隨著「遠端工作」的需求持續上升，《金融時報》科技組二月二十八日全組居家工作，以實驗這種工作方式是否可行。據該報指出好消息是︰許多用來支撐遠端工作的科技，例如視訊會議服務和聊天應用程式…等，現在終於成熟且可靠。
不過壞消息是︰你仍需學習該如何適當使用那些工具，像是如何幫自己打光、如何在視訊電話時把背景裡的髒衣服藏起來、如何避免在當地半夜時間和東京辦公室通話——畢竟工作禮儀跟科技一樣重要！
（台北時報張聖恩〉
A: Taiwan legalized same-sex marriage on May 24, 2019, so this week marks the seventh anniversary of that milestone. By the end of 2024, a total of 32,126 LGBT couples had tied the knot. B: How many of them got married to foreign partners? A: In 2024, there were 504 cross-border same-sex marriages. By the end of that year, there were 130 cross-strait same-sex marriages between Taiwanese and Chinese — accounting for only about 0.4 percent of the total. B: I’ve heard that a seven-year marriage brings the “seven-year itch.” I bet some couples regret their decisions now. A:
A: While Taiwan is celebrating the 7th anniversary of legalizing same-sex marriage, a poll shows that the support rate for same-sex marriage rose sharply from 37.4 percent seven years ago to 69.9 percent last year. B: Actually, I’m a bit curious about the size of Taiwan’s LGBT population. A: I’m not sure. But if we take a Gallup poll in the US as an example, 9.3 percent of American adults identified as LGBT in 2024. B: Wow, is it because the Americans are relatively open? In many other countries, the figures hover around 5 percent. A: Based on this,
Taiwan Travelogue, the novel by Taiwanese author Yang Shuang-zi and translated into English by Lin King, won the prestigious International Booker Prize in London on May 19. It marks the first time a Taiwanese literary work has received the International Booker Prize, setting a historic milestone both for Taiwanese literature and for the award itself. Prior to this achievement, Taiwan had only once appeared on the Booker radar, when Taiwanese author Wu Ming-yi was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2018 with The Stolen Bicycle. The International Booker Prize honors works of fiction translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland.
As climate change and urbanization push city temperatures higher, walking outdoors is becoming increasingly uncomfortable in many parts of the world, especially when prolonged time spent in sunlight is involved. As a result, outdoor lovers are now seeking cooler, shaded walking routes. However, most mainstream map apps still do not __1__ shaded footpaths. Enter routing.osm.ch — a Swiss web-based route planner that introduces a novel solution to this problem. Its “Vampire mode,” named after the legendary creatures’ fear of being __2__ natural light, was developed by a Swiss research team led by Professor Stefan Keller. The platform combines open data from
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