I went to one Android dev meetup in China and some of the local engineers seemed frustrated, because GFW occasionally blocks Github.com or developers.google.com ...
Some PhD openings may not even be advertised, so politely asking (i.e. no generic spamming) existing students or faculty members is the only way to find out.
TLDR: I found a difference between these two senses of academic achievement when looking back at oneself's work:
1. (Idealized) "I/we did a great job solving that important problem."
2. (Current Academia?) "Phew! I/we finally scored another paper at [top venue]." ("And I can now graduate / get a tenure / [something academic career related].")
This is a nice write up. The only thing I found a bit distressing is the "sense of academic achievement" or how one would call it. In my idealized world (à la Hamming's You and Your Research), a great scholar would feel great from doing great science and having a real impact:
* An applied scientist would feel great from solving someone's important problem -- i.e. saving lives, increasing revenue and/or decreasing costs at the end of the day.
* A theoretician would feel great from solving a recognized important problem.
On one hand, the author writes enthusiastically about her side-projects / internships / hobbies. On the other hand, almost all academic remarks end with:
"Our paper got rejected / accepted at [top venue]. We felt sad / relieved."
Without any further remarks about that work -- i.e. it's all "publish or perish" no matter what.
In that way, it sounds as if one was doing research for the sake of producing papers rather than solving important problems / contributing to our civilization by increasing its stock of knowledge. Perhaps that is the sad state of the current academia.