Chapter 18, Section 18: Flattening the World, the Love-Obsessed Man Embraces the Algorithm Girl...
Liang Siyu leaned back on the sofa, closed her eyes, slowly calmed her breathing, and silently considered what to do next.
Should we go see Evan again? Maybe he's just in a bad mood today?
However, his perfunctory tone was truly unpleasant.
If all else fails, he'll watch the video and analyze it himself, though that takes a lot of time and effort.
He wasn't afraid of trouble, but he was afraid that if he summarized things by himself, there would be inaccuracies.
Wait a minute, Professor Brooke's outburst today indirectly suggests that Raphael, who was one-on-one with him last time, didn't have any coordination problems—last year, it was Jess who coached him and Evan.
He could also seek guidance from his senior colleague, Jessie. However, first-year neurosurgery residents work nearly 80 hours a week, so it's best to watch videos and do your homework beforehand, and prepare questions in advance—it will only take up about an hour of her time at most.
He immediately stood up: "Ada, I'll have to postpone my bedtime until midnight for now. You don't need to wait for me, go and get some rest."
He added apologetically, "By the way, I'm afraid I won't be able to help with the MU project these next two weeks."
She pushed him into the study: "Alright, go ahead and do your work. I can handle it. You don't need to worry about it. We'll talk about everything after you're done."
He didn't say anything more and went into his study to watch surgical videos.
This time, he needed to carefully observe and record Brook's habitual operating area, rhythm, and movement trajectory under the microscope, and think about how he could coordinate with the surgeon's actions without interfering with the operation. This was much more difficult than simply recording the operation steps and key points.
He dragged the video, watching every action repeatedly. Three hours passed, and he had only watched a small part of it.
Xu Aida came in and brought him a cup of hot milk, intending to remind him that it was almost 12 o'clock and he should get ready to rest. He saw Xu Aida clicking on the video progress bar repeatedly.
"Do you need a clip playback feature?" she suddenly interrupted.
"Not only that, but we also need to slow down and compare." He rubbed his temples, put down the mouse, and turned to drink his milk—forget it, that's enough for tonight, don't let her worry too much.
"Tell me what you're doing, and I'll see if I can help." She could make him a handy little video player.
He remembered that she wrote scripts to cut action videos, so he briefly explained it to her.
She immediately summarized: "So you need a video segmentation and marking function, preferably creating clickable bookmarks, and then you can do A/B playback and slow-motion playback. If you can cut similar segments for comparison, that would be even better, right?"
He nodded and asked, "Wouldn't that be too much trouble?"
She leaned closer: "It's not difficult, a piece of cake. By the way, let me check the video clarity. Do you need contrast enhancement?"
He was taken aback: "This can be adjusted?"
She came over and looked at a few clips: "You can try using the automatic adjustment tool to see the effect first."
“This kind of replay tool is easy to make. We’ll make a small tool tomorrow morning. You can add bookmarks, and I’ll write a small plugin. It’ll only take half a day. Let’s solve the problem of repeatedly dragging the progress bar first.”
Liang Siyu's eyes crinkled into a smile as he kissed her. She took his hand and said, "Let's go to sleep."
The next day, Xu Aida, contrary to his usual behavior, got up early.
She prefers to work on development at night. Although she gradually adjusted her schedule to match his after they started dating, she still has some difficulty getting up in the morning.
Normally calm and rational female PhD students sometimes stay in bed and refuse to get up.
Liang Siyu thought she was super cute at this time, and before the preoperative adjustments, he would slowly coax her to get up.
Today, the rhythm light came on, the alarm clock rang, and as soon as he pressed it, she jumped up with a thud, rubbing her eyes as she went to brush her teeth.
He was surprised, but also felt a pang of heartache. If it weren't for him, she wouldn't have had to get up so early.
They sat side by side in the study.
Liang Siyu watched the video, pausing from time to time to record the timestamp and casually writing down a bookmark title that he could understand. Since he was going to watch the video anyway, making a mark was no effort.
Hsu Ai-ta originally planned to create a Chrome browser extension so that he could share the video playback tool with more people.
However, upon closer inspection, it turns out that current browsers still cannot read local videos, and there is a security sandbox that is difficult to bypass.
She slammed her hand on the keyboard, rolled her eyes, and had no choice but to switch to local development.
Last month when I was writing the MU algorithm, the difference wasn't obvious, but now I really feel like my development environment has been downgraded from a Tesla to a beat-up tricycle.
Hearing the sound of typing, Liang Siyu turned to look at her: "Ada, is it troublesome? If it is, then don't bother, I can take my time looking at it."
She suppressed her urge to complain: "Don't worry, it'll be fine this afternoon, it's just that the interface is a bit basic."
Yes, the current interface aesthetics also displeased her; they were so outdated that it was speechless.
However, she quickly set up the environment, called the open-source video processing framework, and connected to the video player's API. Sure enough, she finished before lunch.
She copied it to him: "Import the document with your time stamps and let's take a look."
Soon a list of bookmarks appeared, which he could click to jump to, play repeatedly, slow down, and even choose whether to increase the contrast, making it easier to operate.
He kissed her cheek: "Ada, thank you so much." She was always so thoughtful and kind.
He spent the entire weekend in his study.
She broke with her usual routine and went in several times to bring him tea, hoping he would get up and rest for a while.
But he would always just give her a quick kiss and then continue watching the video.
On Monday evening, when they returned home, Liang Siyu acted mysteriously and pushed her to the study. When she looked inside, she was surprised to find that it had been completely changed.
There's a new height-adjustable desk with main and secondary monitors, a Herman Miller ergonomic chair, and a pink keyboard and mouse.
He put his arm around her shoulder, his eyes shining as he begged for praise: "Support! Are you happy?" He had secretly come back during lunch today to assemble it.
She paused for a second, closed her eyes, and knew it. After all that talking about the hotel reservation that time, the problem hadn't been completely solved, and now he was starting to act on his own again.
Two weeks ago, she mentioned, "Maybe I should move back home," and he vehemently opposed it at the time. I never expected there to be more to this story. He's trying to keep her here indefinitely by doing this.
She didn't speak. Suddenly, he remembered something, and his palms became slightly sweaty: "Ada, did I... make a mistake again?"
Seeing the cautious look in his eyes, she couldn't bring herself to be harsh: "No, it's just... a little unexpected. Actually, it's alright, it would have been better if the keyboard wasn't pink."
She tried hard to control her tone, afraid of hurting him. A pink keyboard? Did he think she was only 7 years old? No, as a "second-generation Apple product owner," she had only loved Apple's aluminum silver since she was 7.
Moreover, what will his trustee think when they see these bills? It's practically proof that he's love-struck!
Forget it, forget it. Let's deal with this later.
He's been having a rough time lately; Evan's hoarding of his secrets, Brooke's criticism, and the hardship of practicing alone have all weighed heavily on his shoulders.
At this moment, she didn't want to add another burden to him.
But Liang Siyu wasn't oblivious. He took a deep breath and lowered his voice: "If you're unhappy, just say so. There's no need to pretend."
Before she could explain anything further, he had already turned around and gone back to his bedroom with his head down.
She hurriedly chased after him: "Ned, listen to me, I just don't want you to be sad."
“I understand.” He didn’t look at her, but stared at the chandelier on the ceiling. “I’ve been meddling again, arranging things you don’t want. You don’t like it at all, and you’re just putting up with me, right?”
He even suddenly felt that he probably had no idea how to take care of people, and maybe she didn't need him at all.
Her project is progressing smoothly lately, and she doesn't need him at all; she can handle everything herself.
As for him, he was deeply mired in training for monkey brain surgery.
Even though she helped him create a video playback tool, his self-study efficiency was still extremely low.
Brooke's movements are all different, hundreds and thousands of them. It's simply a pipe dream for him to discover the patterns on his own.
He could only summarize the requirements based on the parts of the video where Brooke gave verbal instructions.
To make matters worse, Jessie is completely unavailable this week, so they can only arrange to meet next Tuesday.
This means that this Friday's one-on-one match with Brook will be another lonely battle.
She leaned down and touched his face: "Ned, let's talk..."
He covered his eyes with his hand, indicating that he didn't want to listen; such an opening sounded ominous.
She sighed: "Then, don't you think about why I don't want to make you sad?"
She cleared her throat, her voice becoming even softer and gentler. She rarely said such things, and was a little embarrassed.
"Ned, I care about you, and I want to make you happy."
He trembled slightly, then quickly stood up and hugged her.
He knew he wasn't in a good state, but his mood kept declining and his self-doubt deepened, and he couldn't stop it.
Only this direct confirmation made him feel a little better.
She hugged him back tightly, as if trying to tell him how much she cared.
Tuesday was training day. The task was to locate and mark the bone window and perform periosteal separation.
They first practiced bone window localization using 3D models, then practiced periosteum dissection on pig brains, used electrocoagulation forceps to stop bleeding, and used suction devices to treat effusion and bone fragments.
After the practice session ended, Liang Siyu swallowed her anger and tried to ask Evan for help again.
The other person still smiled and said, "Ned, you've learned a lot on your own. I have nothing more to teach you. Just pay attention to the angle of the instrument, the rhythm of withdrawal, and don't block the surgical field."
Don't block the spell field. That was Brook's biggest complaint last time. "You're blocking the spell field again."
He caught Evan's mocking look, and the smell of disinfectant, which he had grown accustomed to, suddenly made him want to vomit.
Before today's session began, he still held onto a sliver of hope. Perhaps it wasn't intentional targeting him last time; Eben had originally planned to focus again on Brook's surgical habits and teamwork techniques.
But now, everything was clear, and he had to put away his unrealistic naiveté. When he got home in the evening, he threw down his schoolbag and went into the bathroom.
Xu Aida got off work a little later than usual today.
In the afternoon, Cohen casually mentioned while drinking coffee, "Evan and Raphael had lunch together yesterday."
Xu Aida was trembling with anger. Evan was blatantly giving Ned the cold shoulder. If Ned was truly disheartened because of this, it wasn't because he wasn't good enough, but because the system itself was flawed.
She has to do something, she absolutely has to do something.
She told herself that this wasn't just for Ned, but for anyone who might face injustice.
Even if it's a battle destined to be lost, she should stand with him and let him know that he's not alone.
She didn't understand the old ways of medical school, and she was too lazy to try to figure out the minds of those rats. However, she had her own methods.
The world should be flat, and if it's not flat enough, she'll flatten it herself.
If Evan refused to share her surgeon's habits, she would figure them out herself—as long as there was enough data, the algorithm could see through everything.
They have videos of Professor Brooke's monkey brain surgery. By simply tracking the movement of the instruments under the microscope and calculating the trajectory, angle, and position distribution, she can understand him better than he does himself.
It's just a motion tracking algorithm, right? Who are you looking down on? Professor Xu has worked her way up to 2024, and when it comes to algorithms, she won't lose.
She pressed Enter forcefully, opened the OpenCV website, and looked at the release history. Her heart sank – what? 3.0 is still a beta version? The stable version is still 2.4? What kind of Stone Age is this!
She quickly scanned the technology list: image enhancement, feature point detection, optical flow calculation... okay, that's barely enough.
Without GPU acceleration, there's nothing to do—we can only have Ned manually annotate the most important segments to reduce computation.
Oh? Python bindings are still unstable? Good heavens, do we have to go back to ancient C++? This is terrible!
She rolled her eyes. Well, it was time to have another love-hate relationship with the annoying pointer.
The conditions are what they are now, so let's just make do. It's not like we haven't written before!
She slammed her laptop shut, walked out the door, like a flame poised to burst forth.
As she passed by the postdoctoral office area, she wrinkled her nose and sneered inwardly: Just wait and see, she'll see who he can put on airs with next.
Back in her apartment, she climbed the stairs and sighed. Ned must be having a terrible day, having to endure two hours of training from that despicable Evan, knowing it was pointless, which must be disgusting.
How could she comfort him? She had never been very good at this kind of thing.
She opened the door and froze. Liang Siyu was actually cooking in the kitchen. She clutched the paper bag in her hand helplessly, not knowing what was going on.
He turned around, a slight smile on his face: "Pasta with tomato meat sauce, is that alright?"
His gaze shifted downwards, landing on the hamburger bag, and he asked in confusion, "Are you working overtime?"
Good heavens, he was in a much better mood than she expected.
"No!" she laughed heartily. "It's us who have to work overtime."
She emphasized "we".
"But let's eat first. Cook a lot, I want a big plate." She was now full of fighting spirit.
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