chiurox

I need to do this as well. I use most messengers out there and it serves a purpose to separate them into groups of different friends. The problem is that some of them still use the shitty fb messenger, and the inability to switch off 'last seen' makes them keep track of my online behavior. I have unpredictable, sporadic behavior and just don't log in to fb messenger for days sometimes, and that makes them think I had an accident or something. Is there a hack to disable 'Last Seen' on fb messenger?

This would not work in Brazil, at least currently, where our 3G/4G are laughable... But it's a good start. The machine learning applicability could be awesome. Maybe one day we can have a smartphone guiding the blind without the need for an actual human to be on the other side.

I took a linguistics class a couple of years ago. The cognitive advantages are so extensive because according to a school of thought (Chomsky and Pinker) language itself is part of our human nature, it's innate, and is a product of biological evolution of our human brain. Knowing and switching between different languages on the fly requires a lot cognitive focus but if practiced enough, it becomes second nature, even better if languages were learned while still very young. I grew up speaking three languages (Mandarin, Portuguese, and English) and I do see the cognitive benefits when I'm programming daily in 2-4 different languages (Scala, JS, Python, PHP for instance). I don't confuse language features from one language with the other while I see co-workers mess up from time to time.

How about WhatsApp's backend being extremely scalable because it was written in Erlang from the start? Or even Twitter that rewrote much of their backend in Scala to deal with scaling issues (I'm not saying that Rails isn't scalable, I don't want to start a war over this issue; the important thing is they saw a problem and solved it) while contributing many many open sourced libraries for our use?

Foursquare uses Scala extensively. LinkedIn is using Scala extensively for its new projects. The commercial and successful use cases for Scala are widespread at this point. For Haskell and OCaml it's going to take a while.

Even if their kids aren't left with much money, they will definitely leverage their parents' influence across so many areas and be able to do anything they want.

Soon we will start seeing news of young graduates committing crime to pay off their student loans. Heck, it would be interesting to see a movie with this plot line.

Maybe there could be a new kind of social network, one where in order to maintain your online friendship connections, you have to occasionally/physically get together with your friends and if it doesn't happen it means that the connection doesn't really mean anything so you gradually lose it. This would automatically accomplish what some people with hundreds of fb friends try to do by cleaning up their friend list by asking those who want to remain friends to reply.

Sensationalist title but there are some parts with which I agree to some extent. I've heard about Meteor over a year ago but never thought about a use case where I felt the need to use it. Last week, we had a last minute project that required some sort of webapp that could allow X number of users viewing a certain page on the browser and editing things off simultaneously with good enough conflict resolution. Of course, I could have done it with Rails on the backend, rolling out my own reactive system with Server Sent Events updating the client. But as curious as I am, I decided to checkout Meteor and it was perfect for my case. In less than an hour (with Meteor) I had everything working as expected. The app was for a big social event and all it mattered in the end is that it worked and impressed everyone involved. No one really cares what you build it with, as long as you deliver. In my opinion, Meteor is worth a shot if you're building a small scale reactive system.

If finding a Scala position in the US (I assume) is already this difficult, here in Brazil it's infinitely harder. I guess our startup is one of the very few that has a fairly large system in production running on Scala, Play, and Akka. It's next to impossible to find people with experience yet alone experience in production. The key is to find people genuinely interested in learning.

So going from "I don't read resumes" and "I don't care about your resume" to "I usually read resumes" seems a bit self-contradicting. Regardless, I agree with your point of view. When we were interviewing, we got a bunch of impressive resumes but in reality...

It's also partyland for employees who work at customs. They claim that they take the abandoned products and sell it in auction...

Yes, this happens a lot. This is also why the US opened a lot of new consulates in Brazil to keep up with the tourist visa demand.

This is not entirely true. Even if you factor in the plethora of taxes Brazilians businesses and customers are "enslaved" to pay, it still should not be this abusive. In Brazil, people consider imported products (specially Apple's stuff in the electronics category) to be something of super high status, so they are willing to pay for an Apple product in 12 installments with their credit cards, money they know they shouldn't spend. Suppliers and importers are extremely aware of this Brazilian mentality and exploit it to its maximum potential. This happens across all kinds of products: all types of electronics, clothing, cars, MacDonald's, you name it. I'm not even taking price-fixing (which happens in Brazil's car industry for example) into account. A new Honda Civic in Brazil costs around $35000 USD, while the minimum wage is around $320 USD/month. Talk about inequality...

Including the airfare and import tax, it's still cheaper.

I'm surprised no one mentioned the exorbitant prices of electronics in Brazil compared to the US. For example, the top of the line Macbook 15" retina in the Brazilian Apple store costs R$12599 which is around $6395USD, while the same in the US is $2799. A Brazil/Miami return flight is also around $1000 depending on the time of year. So theoretically it's cheaper for Brazilians to go to Miami, have a nice weeklong vacation, buy a Macbook Retina, iPhone, iPod, iPad, clothes, and much more, than buy a single Macbook here and still wait for shipping. The problem is the government/customs knows that and thus catches and taxes a lot of people who try to bring over $500USD worth of products. And for whoever mentions that the cost of living is cheaper in Brazil, the big cities like Sao Paulo is the same or worse than NYC if you factor in salary.

Shouldn't this problem be hugely mitigated by putting rubber or any non-slippery material on the shower floor?

Two years ago I had to make a similar decision compared to what the OP did. I was about halfway through a top US university degree as an international student but suddenly excrement hit the fan, in the financial sense. I was faced with the choice of finding work in my home country, or spending another year trying to get enrolled at a university in my country that is worth going to (there aren't that many around here). Out of a whim and despite my lack of real world experience in software development, I posted my resume around and got a temporary job. It led to a better job, which led to another better one and another better one.

While my classmates are graduating this semester, I got to do real world software development, most of the stuff had to be learned on the spot. I frankly don't know if the outcome should I have sticked with college would be better than the path I took, but my choice certainly has been worthwhile. In terms of theoretical foundations, I admit that I'm lacking some, but I constantly supplement it with reading (and this recent wave of online courses has been great!) and self-studying on the side, most of which I try to apply immediately at work. I hardly think enrolled college students get to do that and get feedback from real users (instead of professors/TAs).

On the other hand, most prize the concept of college-life, dorm-life etc, which is great. I did have the opportunity to experience some of that. The problem is when people think that getting into significant debt and the uncertainty of not being able to be employed upon graduation is worth more than doing something else just because society dictates everyone should go to college, then something is wrong.

I signed up for almost all of them too. It's hard to choose which ones to fully dive into. I guess since they'll probably offer them again and again, I'll take one/two at a time.

With so many online courses happening concurrently, how are you guys choosing which courses to actually do? I work full-time and I find it really hard to squeeze some free time.