You do realize the incident you point to happened 170 miles away, right? And wasn't Haitian? When people say "nobody is eating cats" in the context of the time, they meant Haitians in Springfield. They weren't ignoring half the facts. They were ignoring irrelevant facts.
I worked for 10 years in China with engineers. I'm one myself. This is what I learned:
Most go into it because they don't want to work with their hands. i.e. get dirty. It's not because they have any particular interest. It's for the money and social status. As such, ~80% of the ones I worked with were unimpressive. They do what they are told, nothing more, nothing less. Minimal problem solving skills. No curiosity. Your average US high school student would definitely know less engineering, but could do a better job without being micromanaged.
This isn't to say they were bad people. Some were friends. The system in China just tend to create a lot of these people. And if you are brute forcing a project and able to micromanage, it's a powerful resource.
The other ~10 percent were more typical of Western engineers. Loved technology, hands on, tinkered with stuff, curious, smart. And yeah, a bit nerdy. That said, the work culture still ties their hands. You're to stay in your lane. Don't question superiors. Do exactly as you are told. We had several meetings where it was explained that it is their job to call bullshit on me.
They liked that, but it didn't come naturally. There was one guy that was an absolute master at it. He was incredibly polite about it. So much so that when he started acting a certain way, I knew I'd effed up and just had to wait for him to politely tell me he must be wrong and could I please help him learn where he made a mistake. To this day, I still feel he was being sincere. Dude should teach classes in how to tell your boss he is wrong.
Anyway, just comparing engineering numbers in China and the US misses a lot of nuance.
How many of those million users are AI training programs?
Filing a patent does not require a lawyer. I am not a lawyer or patent agent and have written patents for my own inventions. But I'm not a typical inventor. I've worked with lawyers to review thousands of patents and have worked with them to write dozens, including doing the drawings and drafting claims.
But with that said, it's incredibly difficult and time consuming, so usually wise to use a lawyer. Which costs anywhere from $5000 to $20,000. So saving a couple hundred dollars in filing fees doesn't mean much.
Especially if you start dealing with responses, international filings, maintenance fees, etc. Then you better budget $10,000 to $250,000 or more.
As someone who has filed with large corporations, small, and micro, it's kinda hard to miss. It's a box you can check on the payment options.
You don't have to defend a patent against infringement to keep it. That may be sorta true for trademark, but is not true for patents. "Defend against infringement" isn't even a thing. A patent holder can chose to enforce or not enforce their rights as the patent holder as they see fit, They can enforce absolutely, selectively, or not at all. Immediately, or delayed.
That's where Weibull distributions come into play. It doesn't require a normal distribution in the data set. Like all statistics, it can benefit from more data. But it does a remarkable job of estimating failure rates from partial data.
When I travel internationally for work, immigration checks are just one of the many times I have to get out my passport. Depending on the country:
Hotel check in
Train tickets
Airline tickets
Museum entrance
Security checkpoints
Credit card verification
Car rental
Dealing with police
ID at hospitals
ID at companies I visit
And so on
By law, I have to carry it with me at all times in some countries.
Recent research has tended to show that the Abominable No-Man is being replaced by the Prohibitive Procrastinator. -- C.N. Parkinson
