 All right, I'm one and a half meters from everyone, so. Really happy to be here. And thank you for the 108 questions, which I'm told that I need to answer in the short time frame of 27 minutes, so do the math. I'm not going to answer them all, of course. But you have already voted. And if you want to make additional votes, there's this QR code. And I'll strive to answer as much as possible within this limited time frame. So without further ado, 47 people, like by a large margin, the first question, is, quote, my sister came out as being gay and was not supported by her community. What was the device? Can you offer students who may be facing the same situation? Unquote. Well, that depends on how old your sister is. But anyway, when I was seven years old, I came out as being left-handed. And at a time, my dad and his mother, my grandma, wasn't so happy about it. They said that if I write chalkboards with my left hand, there would be chalk on my sleeve, as if that's a big thing and it's not, and so on. And so they convinced me to also practice right-handed writing. Later on, I would learn that that's because they were also more left-handed and were chided by their teachers as not normal and not fitting the norm. Fortunately, when I was eight years old, that's one year after what, there came personal computers. And then it turns out that if I type with both my hands, I type faster. And so it seems to be a problem. Nowadays, the stylus, the mouse, whatever input screen, touch screen, and so on, doesn't care the handedness of you. And it seems to be a problem. So it's the same with the societal configuration about sexual orientations and gender identity. It's just because the older people, they're still teachable. It's just neuroplasticity and all. It just takes them longer to learn compared to you guys, which learn very quickly. And so just have a little bit of patience and show them the right path and let them know that the social configuration has now changed, that it doesn't matter at all anymore, at least in Taiwan, of your sexual orientation when you want to start a family or things like that. And so just be patient and do not lose hope. The elderly are teachable. That's the words I want to share. OK, well, ready. So the 29 people would like to know, did my parents go against me? Wow, that's some really loud feedback. OK, right, positive feedback, I hope. Tanya and I would like to know, did my parents go against anyone? My decisions. Yeah, they voiced their concern when I drop out of middle school, which may not be the best advice to give you guys. But when I dropped out of middle school, was 14 years old, they said that it's actually against the law, which was true. And that my household will be fined, I think, NT $300 a day or something, if I keep refusing to go to school. So I'm like, OK, let me talk to the head of the school. And so they arranged for a meeting for me to talk with the principal, principal Duhui Ping of the Beijing Middle School. And then I showed the principal an email printout that might exchange with people in ARXIV, that's a Cornell University pre-print server, where the people write their journal articles. But before the peer review of the academic publications, they post it online for everybody to review. And I'll just randomly write emails to researchers who didn't know I was just 14 years old. And so we'll start doing research together. And so I just showed that to the principal, saying, you tell me that I need to finish my studies, get my PhD, and I can work as a post-doctorate or a research assistant to the professors that I admire. But now the professor has written back and we're already doing research together. So what's the point of go to the middle school anymore? And Principal Duhui Ping, after thinking for a minute or so, saying that, OK, so tomorrow you don't have to go to school anymore. And I will cover for you, meaning that she will fake the records. So my household will not get fined. Of course, afterwards, we'll have the Experimental Education Act and so on. So people younger than me can make this kind of work well as a studying, learning from home and so on without incurring penalties. But even though my parents was not totally happy with my decision, I think it's really to their credit that they arranged this discussion for me, or was the real decision-making which is the head of the school, instead of trying to play this intermediary role of trying to convince me on behalf of the head of school or convince the head of school on behalf of the agency to do their life defining real decisions that I made when I was just a middle school student. So that's pretty, pretty rad. So tell you one, people would like to know, how did I know that the coding I did at age eight was done correctly if I did not own a computer? That's a good question. So my coding for what counts as coding on the piece of paper is literally just print hollow world. And so I'm pretty sure if I write print hollow world with the right quotation marks, and then I'll just use a pencil to write hollow world and then draw a cursor. The cursor would not blink because that would take too much energy. But I'll just draw a cursor there and then waiting for the next line of input. And the next day, I will wake up and type on this paper keyboard CLS Enter and then take an eraser and erase all the pencil part of the screen. And so I really didn't write very sophisticated programs using this paper computer because after I keep doing this for about two or three weeks, my parents just gave up and bought me a real personal computer so that I can check the computer programs on a real computer. So I think it's more shows a kind of initiative in computational thinking of willing to learn how a programmer's mind works. Just working on this, I think it was introduction to Apple Basic or something alone. But of course, you need a real computer if you want to run very sophisticated programs. 15 people would like to know, would your parents support anything you do or you wanted to do, such as being transgender, quitting school at an early age, or going to the States? They don't necessarily support anything I do. When I decided to couch serve when I was in my early 20s to essentially just go around the world, going to, I think, 20 cities in a span of not even two years, and just visiting each and every researcher I met online and just stay at their home until they get fed up with me and have to recommend somebody else and pay my train ticket for me to go to the next researcher, I do this to imitate the great mathematician Par Adish, who did the same plan. And so my parents were worried because back in their time, people don't randomly go to strangers' homes and stay at strangers' homes. But they also understand that the online community is something that they have little experience of. And so they just ask me to be careful and to keep them posted, which is partly why I post a blog every day. If I don't post a blog for a consecutive number of days, they'll get worried and try to contact me through our representative offices all around the world, I'm sure. But that sort of thing never happens. The researchers who are very kind online are, turns out, to also be very kind in real life. And so they're also learning something, I guess, about trusting the online communities, the free software community in particular, and also trusting strangers. Again, as I said, elderly, there's room for education for them, and if you explain clearly, some day they learn. 15 people were like, was it hard to be the first transgender cabinet member? I don't know whether I'm the first. I'm the first openly transgender cabinet member. For what I know, everybody else may be transgender, just not open about it. But the first openly transgender cabinet member, I think just like any so-called pioneers, it breaks new ground. We get to exercise our HR department, the human resource department, when I filled in my registration form to become a public servant. On the gender field, I filled in Wu, which is none, I guess. And that's partly because next to that form is a party affiliation box, which I also filled in Wu. So I filled in this, and it turns out it really is an input field. It's not a selection one out of many, or a taking one box to the exclusion of other boxes. Turns out that you can just write your gender on the registration form as a HR in the cabinet. So many more people now know about this. And so I think it's always good to test the limits of any system and to turn anything that looks like a check box into a selection field, and anything that looks like a selection field into just filling in anything field. 13 people were like, what motivates me to return to time when we're working in the Silicon Valley at the age of 35 where I could earn some number an hour? Well, first of all, that's only if I keep that as Bitcoin. But I did not. When I signed the contracts with Apple, with Oxford University Press, we just take whatever the exchange rate of Bitcoin at that time as a minority rate. And because their ledger system could not handle Bitcoin, so they always paid me in either Pounce, Darlene, or in US dollars. So I never received Bitcoin. It's just a bill in Bitcoin at that exchange rate. So more as an advocacy than anything. But still, yeah, that's literally three times or more in terms of monthly salary compared to my salary as the additional minister. So why would I want to work with the government? Well, it's more fun. If I work only with Apple, for example, then I need to care about people who have bought Apple services and products. And it will not be a good idea for me to care about people who are not using Apple computers or Apple devices. But nowadays, working as a public servant, if people do not like, for example, the tax filing software and revert back to filing on paper, we can't do what the private sector always do is that if you don't like our service, you can take your business elsewhere. We can't say if you don't like the experience of filing your tax, you can fire a tax to some other government. Well, I guess you could literally immigrate. But that's a very difficult thing to suggest to your own citizens. So instead, we need to work with people who care the most about their digital service and complain the most about digital service and then co-create something. And people always feel, because we're a liberal democracy, that they have a lot of new ideas to try out with. And that's more engaged and more personally fulfilling than working in the private sector for me personally. And so for me, it's not just about the money or it's primarily not about the money. So people would like to know, what was the first thing I did after I dropped out? Did I regret dropping out? Not at all. As I mentioned, I dropped out with the blessing of the head of the middle school. And so she gave me the complete freedom to try out things. And it's always there if I want to go back. So I think that's the best deal is that you drop out not kind of forgoing the link that you have built. The solidarity you have built with the faculty and with your fellow classmates. But you're like a pioneer that can explore a new landscape. In my case, the first thing I did was to co-found a company, a software company, and then just start this life as an entrepreneur. But whatever I learned, I also can go back and share with the faculty and with my former classmates. So I don't regret it at all. I think it's a really good thing to have tried in the tender age of 14 or 15. So which leads to the next question. What motivated me to create a company at the age of 15? At that time, it was a publishing press and not founded by me. I'm just one of the authors that co-wrote a book about the book. It's called The Roads to Cyberspace about Highland Computers. And so the book was reasonably selling reasonably OK. But at that time, there was this very new technology called the World Wide Web and called the Secure HTTPS, the Secure Hypertext Transmission Protocol. And this new idea that you can actually get your credit card recognized online and buy some books. And so I was very eager to try out this new technology, new back then, and set up the first e-commerce site for the publishing press to sell essentially my own book. And that was pretty instructive and actually quite successful. And so then it led me to think about maybe we can publish not only books, but also computer software, such as search engines and so on. And so that motivated me to share whatever software code I was working on at that point and then turn that book publisher into also a software publisher. And then later on, just exclusively a software publisher and the internet community to build here for, for example, the C2C auction, like eBay and so on back then. So I guess it's just fun and a bunch of friends that all think it's fun to start a company. 10 people were like, what did my parent think about me when I left school? Well, I think they want me to continue my education. So one of the things they suggested me is that I can just randomly go to the nearby university. In my case, that would be the National Genji University and attend the classes that they attended. Because you see, both my parents were graduates from the Genji University. And so they have a list of professors that they like. And some of the professors are no longer around. Some of the professors are still around. And so they just suggested that I can just maybe go to those professors classes and that I did. And so in a sense, I just worked with the professors in a kind of peer-to-peer fashion. Some of the professors really like me. So I set up weekly office hours where I can just go to their research room and talk for one hour for probably anything and everything. And most of them didn't quite care that there's one extra student in their class. Because I'm very pro-social, I guess. I always engage in real discussions. And I don't really want a diploma out of them. So they don't have to spend time grading me and things like that. So it's like extra quality for no extra effort. It's a pretty good deal. And so they are all okay with me just attending their undergrad and later on graduate level classes. So that's what my parents think. It's just don't stop by education. And I think that's a really good topic that I can bring up with my students, my parents too, who are my students. That's in my mind anyway, to teach them about their professors' later thinking. So 10 people are like, you know, what do you think supported me the most when I decided to be transgender and drop out of school? Certainly the internet community. Because even if you feel like you're a minority, like just one in a thousand or something, that's still like 20K people in Taiwan alone, that's just things like you, right? So with the right hashtags, with the, well, we didn't have hashtag back then, but with the right use net groups, you can find people who think similarly, who consider themselves kind of your kin, or your tribe or your kinfolk and things like that. And so then you won't feel alone anymore. And so I think what's the best about the internet communities, both back then and nowadays, is that people do not have to meet face to face in order to form this kind of support groups. And with this kind of support group, one no longer feels that one is in the minority, but rather is just one representative out of this internet community projected to the so-called real world. And I still think that my work in the cabinet is a projection from the free software community and also internet governance community into day-to-day politics. I'm still thinking myself as more of an ambassador than a minister. So, did you eat animals while I am in the forest? This is like out of Jungle Book or something. I wasn't in the forest and I didn't take my kind of survival classes. So I'm not sure what this question is about. But I do eat animals. So I'm almost completely vegetarian, but I do eat oysters because they're carbon neutral or carbon capturing and they don't suffer. But that's quite besides the point, but I don't think there's any oysters in the forest. So maybe I'll eat some mushrooms instead. Okay, fine. So eight people would like to know, how do you hack legally? How can hacking save lives? So a cyber security hacker that hacks legally is called a white hat hacker or nowadays also called a ethical hacker. So in the same way that you would recruit people to, when you do public construction, for example, building a really long tunnel, we hire professional, I'm not even sure what was the word for that, professional people that can start a fire and burn things. Arsonist sounds wrong because those would be the black hats. So professional fire testers that just try to burn the tunnel and test the firefighting capabilities to automate the triggers and things like that. In the same way, what we call penetration testing or pen testing is that before we deploy any digital service, we will hire white hat hackers to try to attack the system and to find the vulnerabilities and tell us how to think like a attacker and what do what we call purple teaming, which is the attacking team, the red team, working with the defense team, the blue team. This is not tenant, which use the same color code. But anyway, so when the red team and the blue team can work together to improve the system's resilience, that's legal cyber security hacking and you can derive a lot of fun and get paid really well as a white hat hacker, especially nowadays in Taiwan, because we make sure there's a lot of budgets and you also get recognized by ministers and the president and so on as national heroes, all this to make sure that you do not fall to the dark side, which always have more cookies. Okay, so I think the last one, question. I know you don't really comment about politics, don't I? However, I would like to ask a question. What will be the best time for Taiwan to declare her independence? Well, certainly in the neolithic age, that's a standard answer from me, because you see before the neolithic age, there was a time when the climate was a little bit warm and Taiwan straight just floated out. So it used to be a land bridge across the Pescador, the Punghua Islands and so on, but when the temperature turned warmer, the sea level rose around the neolithic age and then this land bridge dissipated and that's when Taiwan gained independence from the Eurasian Plate and after that the Eurasian Plate wasn't so still about it so we continue to have a lot of earthquakes when the Eurasian Plate still pushes with the Philippine Sea Plate and that's why we have earthquake all the time and most of our buildings built like a boat with a boat shaped underneath level that can be more resilient against earthquakes but also because of that, Taiwan raises two and a half centimeters on the top of Taiwan that's the Savia or Pantogunung or Yushan or Jade Mountain, many different names depending on the culture and so that's why we can keep rising and toward the sky and see the ideological as well as the geological tensions in a way that is more skyward, that's more upwing. So instead of left wing or right wing, we will see always from a more upwing point of view and the best time to declare is the neolithic age but of course we don't think there's any declarations back from the neolithic age but you can do so now, you can retroactively say Taiwan has been an independent island since the neolithic age. So that's pretty much it and thank you for the great questions. Sorry that I left 95 unanswered but I imagine that it will be a good agenda for your continued discussion and I will read them all too. Thank you. Minister Tang on behalf of KS, we are so happy that you have come today and take time with us. Middle school, thank you for your thoughtful questions and your upvotes and as you walk away from the auditorium I want to encourage you to think about what you heard and think of more questions to share with each other and your teachers in the time ahead. Mr. Payne, where would we like for them to go?