off topic: this anti facebook stance by some people here on HN is getting ridiculous.. sad this is a comment here that apparently gets upvotes. I would say that if you do not care about Kolibri os just don't comment..
Let's be realistic.. let's say you are a c++ programmer and want to learn some modern JS framework. I bet you it will literally take less than a week of concentrated study work for you to become better than 80-90% of people working with it. You can get a book on the subject, there's great tutorials, heck, just reading the reference will get you far.
This is true for a lot of stuff on youtube, coursera etc. I believe. It's for people who don't want to get to the destination faster, by reading a few books and doing the exercises in them.
Genetics is one thing, but Japan definitely did allow foreign culture into their mix. Just look at the movie "The Last Samurai" to see what I mean. I wonder if it's possible to put out a number for that.
As for my Country, as Europeans we are heavily influenced by Americans, who we completely seem to accept as our cultural leaders. How do the Japanese feel about them though?
Not sure if it applies to engineers, but there's a difference in the job description between defining and implementing. Sometimes someone knows some theory, does some math and is done. And his or her result is passed to another person that implements it. Sometimes it's the same person doing both, but probably less often. Sometimes the implementer grows and starts putting down some ground rules (becomes an architect) or the other way round (for example there because might be more jobs for implementers).
Perhaps another distinction is between trying something and see if it works, and knowing it will work (or won't work) before it's implemented. Then the difference is between knowing from experience and knowing from having studied the theory (and having worked through the proofs).
Bit flips can happen, but regardless if they can get repaired by ECC code or not, the OS is notified, iirc. It will signal a corruption to the process that is mapped to the faulty address. I suppose that if the memory contains code, the process is killed (if ECC correction failed).
The US salary situation is clearly superior. I wish I had somehow made my way into the US after getting my MsC in CS. But some choices led me elsewhere. Anyway, if I did, I'd probably be retired by now.
FWIW: As a dev I've made both contact with Apple and with Google reps and it was like day and night. Apple actually offers support and tries to resolve my problems while Google feels like getting some bureaucracy done at a public office or worse. (Speaking of European bureaucracy, YMMV.)