Some weeks ago someone posted a very useful interactive demo of a bloom filter (implemented in js) that you might want to play with after reading this article:
https://www.jasondavies.com/bloomfilter/
I guess this announcement from VW got fast-tracked now that China is about to announce a ban on gas-powered vehicles
China, in turn probably wants to go forward with that not for environmental reasons, but because they have a near monopoly on the world's supply of rare earths (which the electric vehicle's batteries require)
Oh by the way. I think I had 2 players and you had one because you could have hit your other one since the beginning.
After you hit one of mine, it was disabled and I was just with one playable Player left.
Software engineer here living in Japan for about the same time as the author, and with almost the same work experience.
This article totally nails it.
I have bookmarked this so that every time a non-Japanese comes to me looking for advice related to moving and working in Japan (which I should mention, does not happen as often as it used to) I can just send them straight to this article.
Yes, quite open for -skilled- workers and even more open to students. I emphasize the "skilled" part because trust me, you don't want to come all the way here to engage in low-skilled labor.
Highly skilled work is already too life-consuming enough.
However I don't know how the construction sector would be, it is the equivalent of the American military industry (i.e. that's where they will throw ridiculous amounts of money whenever they want to "stimulate the economy") and with the LDP winning the elections yesterday the pouring of concrete all over Japan will go back to usual.
If it is skilled work, I recall any undergraduate degree overseas plus a job offer are the main requirements you need to get a work visa. Yes, no need to wait for a space to open as is the case with the H1 visa in the US.
And I think this year the process got even easier.
To get a contract, well, if you can speak Japanese then you are halfway there. If you can't, I can suggest:
1. The companies that seem to be hungry for IT/software engineers (judging from the amount of spam I get from recruiters), may take your from whenever you are, and where probably Japanese language skills are not important are: GREE, Rakuten, Amazon Japan. I think you can apply to those through their websites.
2. Message me so I give you a list of recruiting companies that seem to specialize in foreigners in Japan.
3. Some people recommend checking out www.gaijinpot.com from time to time.
Immigration "would be" the best solution but we are talking about Japan in here. Not an "immigrant friendly" country like Canada, Australia or the US.
Simply put... Japan is "allergic" to foreigners.
Surprisingly the process to get a work/student visa in Japan is much more easier than in Australia or the US (I've applied to one or another in all these countries and it's such a breeze to do in Japan).
Despite that, immigration remains low.
For the foreigners here, last time I checked it was basically composed of about 80% of foreigners from China, 15% from Korea and the remaining 5% from the rest of the world.
I suppose the difficulty of the language and geographic location has something to do.
Racism as known in the West is rare, but the truth is, Japan has consistently failed to assimilate any foreign population and it is really difficult to explain how it is like. I guess it's definitely more like a Canadian "cultural mosaic" more than an American "melting pot". But the cultural mosaic has some sense of equilibrium. For the case of Japan it would look more like "patching the kimono with pieces of fabrics of different patterns".
The thing is, under the hood, legally speaking, Japan is very open and welcoming to foreigners, but it fails to keep them in or assimilate them.
Precisely. I see no point in teaching them in anything but English. They're children, if they don't know it, they will learn fast. In fact, teaching them in any other language would be a step backwards.
I am not a native English speaker myself. I am Mexican. Yes, native Spanish speaker which is supposedly one of the top 3 most widely spoken languages on Earth and I must confess that most of the time I don't see the point in reading any content in Spanish anymore (except for some literature - in other words, yes, you probably want to read Shakespeare in English and Cervantes in Spanish, etc)
Foreign news, science, technology in Spanish? all that content is nothing but translations (sometimes bad ones) from the original English source. I see how something could get posted on HN one day and only after many days (usually weeks) it would finally appear in the "Technology News" section of the most "cutting edge" newspapers and media in Latin America or Spain.
I live here in Japan and most scientific papers and research from major universities (like Kyoto or Tokyo University) is also published in English.
I think it's cute to try to keep one's traditions and culture alive but at the end of the day being able to communicate efficiently with each other and do stuff like hacking Android is what keeps the world spinning.
Anything else in your way is just extra overhead.
Well I guess I might as well just order a new 512 with element14 (I wish I knew about those guys).
Mine didn't ship at all with RS Components (+4 months waiting) then I complain on twitter to @RSComponents, 3 hours later I get an email from RS saying that my order just shipped... This is last SATURDAY! - so no 512 version :(
A couple hours later I get a reply from RS to my tweet saying: "Our records show that yours shipped LAST FRIDAY".
And now I still have to wait 21 more days until it arrives. Maybe if I order right now from element14, it may arrive earlier?!
Great way to make the prices clear. 15% more for Japan, I think it's time to move my things back to US East (Virginia) and make some savings.
It had some pricing on S3 but I think it would be nice to also have the prices for RDS. A medium-sized one of those things costs as much as a medium EC2 instance (yes I learned that the hard way).
I second that. I would like to see what that TED talk has to say about keeping humans employed in something for as long as possible.
I want to think software engineering/programming would be one of the last jobs to be replaced by machines. It would last until the "singularity" is reached which is when computers would be able to program themselves (re-writing and improving their own code exponentially).
The email that did get me to start using Flightfox was another one sent to you a few days later after you had signed up, looked around, but didn't end-up launching any contest.
In that email Flightfox said they noticed that I didn't launch any contest and gave me a coupon that covered 50% of any contest just to try it out.
So that's how I started using their service.
On the other hand I also learned there are other things to take into consideration when launching a contest. The most important one, knowing you have to buy the ticket as soon as possible. My contest was a tricky one (involving a toddler, timing international connections in the US, etc) so after 3 days there was only one decent result, and it was gone by the time I wanted to purchase it :(
So I guess that was the reason why the longest duration of the contests is of just 3 days. Which reminds me, I still need to go back there and do it all again.