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)
The powerful permanent magnets used in some EVs do require rare earth elements (e.g. neodymium), but many EV motors don't require permanent magnets at all.
E.g. Tesla uses an induction motor (no permanent magnet required); whereas the Nissan Leaf does use permanent magnets (assuming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vehicle#Electric_moto... is correct).
This is true in general for humans, the best way to start a design discussion is, "I propose that we do X to solve Y!" rather than, what are some solutions to problem Y? People are much better at correcting than creating from a blank page.
I think you both might underestimate just how formidable the desert can be, just a few kilometers away from the nearest road/track/goat-path .. having lived in deserts all my life, the mere presence of a track on a map doesn't mean much. Get out there under you own wind, and you might have a different compulsion towards criticism of the 'accuracy' of the story ..
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.
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.
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.
Is it just me or is the topcoder website confusing? I've never really managed to find what I want to whenever I go there (pretty much the exact opposite experience to the submitted site which drops you immediately into coding)
Yes they use competition, but its not about that, its the context and how it's used that's important. It's a fundamentally different approach, just wait for our next step...
