wapz

Do you really think that someone passionate about work is indistinguishable from someone "faking it" after 40 years? I can't imagine doing what I would consider a mundane task for even 5 years straight at regular work hours. 20+ years and I think you would be able to distinguish someone who's doing it for the money and someone who's passionate about the task.

one of the most insanely hostile work environments in living memory

encouraged at all levels of the company

Do you have any sources for this? There have been a few blog posts and some independent investigations to my knowledge but nothing to suggest it is/was "one of the most insanely hostile work environments"--especially worldwide.

I really don't like how racism comes up so often in these situations when I think the closer term is probably familiarity or customs. A lot of bosses like to work with people that have a similar mindset and work ethic that they do. It makes sense that if you've been born and raised in country X and worked there for 15 years and become a boss you will probably prefer people with work ethics similar to your own. In Japan, as a foreigner working for a Japanese company, I can see how Japanese would much prefer to hire a Japanese over me (they don't outwardly complain about long, unpaid overtime, they do mundane tasks that aren't productive, they don't talk back when erroneously attacked). And I can see an American boss much preferring an American who's more likely to bring up points that they think are wrong. I apologize for the stereotyping but meant it as an example.

Yeah, even if you buy a prepaid sim and it doesn't work on your device the store probably won't refund you (unless it's "cracked" or something when you open it).

It's really unfortunate how that is the case in the US particularly. I moved to Japan and was shocked at how the service is in Japan compared to the states (particularly restaurants). All the employees work hard to please customers because that's what they're paid to do (and often less than the SF bay area where I'm from). Going back to the US I can feel waiters/waitresses trying to please me to get higher tips or just essentially pretend I don't exist if they think I won't tip well. This arose once when I was playing poker in a casino and only one of the 3 people who ordered drinks tipped. The lady never came back (45 minutes) after that and when the player asked in an agitated voice he was kicked out of the game.

they haven't figured out how to do well in moderating live chats with thousands of people

This is surely the case. Blizzard has tried various moderation techniques as you have mentioned and they don't seem to work. If I watch streams on twitch I don't look at chat ever (mobile/tablet).

Yeah I've made it a habit to never share or click any facebook stories anymore (anything that links to another site). If something interests me, I open up firefox with noscript and search for the site on google to find it. Not sure it's any better but I don't want FB to start spamming me with even more 'related' articles/sites.

At either of the airports you can buy a sim card to use in your phone for internet (and use google voice for outgoing calls). They are sold at convenient stores (only the tourist ones like at the airport) and the electronic shops (the temporary sim cards are only sold at the tourist ones). Haneda airport has a bic camera mini.

In Japan you can buy it at the convenient stores and the "mini" electronic store (haneda) at the airports. Switching sims, setting up the APNs, and the NO REFUND AFTER OPENED on the sticker make people buy it and jump on the bus or train to downtown tokyo (where you have 45mins ~ 1.5 hours to burn anyways).

I didn't read anything that implies the games could be shared or uploaded online so a profanity filter wouldn't be needed would it?

I also imagine there to be a touch-screen interface for placing objects on the screen (like unity or playcanvas) so naughty kids will be able to "draw" whatever their heart desires anyways.

Why are you tying customer service to quality of goods? If you don't like their quality of goods that is a fine reason to not buy from them, but I don't see anything in your argument disputing their customer service (the only part you quoted). If you receive a counterfeit item from Amazon (in my experience), they will 100% refund you the money instantly with almost no questions asked. They have also been refunding nexus 5x phones that die out of warranty (bootloop problem).

Their one and only goal for the last 23 years has been to increase revenue, no matter the cost.

How can that be remotely true? Amazon has spent millions on R&D for the future, not for the current.

you'll have normal merchandise commingled on shelves side-by-side with third party supplied garbage

I don't think this is fair or even reasonable to say. It's going to be in a B&M store. You can inspect the item. The FDA/whatever organization will be inspecting food on the shelves. As for reputation, Amazon has the best customer service (tied with companies like REI) in my opinion.

I mostly agree that I don't see any positives for the customers at this point, but I don't think it's going the way of 3rd party counterfeit goods.

I'm guessing most family members are most likely not going to ask the question on facebook instead of just call their loved ones or send a text or email. My personal line of thinking is (maybe check facebook if they're super active to see if they said they're ok). Send a text or email if I'm a little worried. Call if I'm very worried. After a text or call I wouldn't go back and push the ask button on FB.

Do you have examples of key guys getting poached in the Japanese market? From my experience here most people tend to stay a long time or move on their own will (not as often as US IMO though)

I work for a Japanese company. Even if something is illegal in Japan it still happens. One particular thing is unpaid overtime. Most employees are hourly and they can be "forced" to work overtime for 50+ hours/week (all the time) without overtime pay. If they bring it up they will get "relocated" or just get harassed the entire time they're there until they quit. If they bring it to the government work agency (hello work) the company will deny the hours and say it was all voluntary. I have been told this personally by hello work. Also, I only have experience in one Japanese company so surely this does not occur at all companies.

Wow, I was a manager at a swimming pool and the "HR" told us when we get calls from prospective employers we can only tell them the dates of employments and the job position. We couldn't rave about how good the employees were but we were allowed to write letters of recommendation. I always thought it was in law (california) which is why they told us that.

The SurfaceBook should be thought of as a laptop and not a tablet imo. I have the surface pro and it a terrible tablet. Well, it's good if you are an artist and doing sketches/artwork but not for the casual programmer. I've used tablet mode under 10 times (I have a nexus 7 which is much better as a tablet) and was unimpressed every time.

Your story reminds me of when I ordered a $200 video card from Staples ship to store. I went to the cashier and told them they should have a video card I ordered. They asked for my name and gave it to me (inside the shipping box so they didn't even know the contents). It's not as bad as getting your phone number stolen but it opened my eyes how easy it would be to "steal" a package.

I used to use penhold because I thought it was cool and my serves were good. Then I learned from a competitive player (~1600 rating in whatever US rating system they had iirc; not too high), switched to shakehand and never looked back!

I'm a unity developer (50% games, 50% 3d desktop programs)

Unfortunately if there is a "default" whitelist, it will become a "whoever pays $x money gets on the defaulted list." (I'm not referring to only Apple but if Chrome, Firefox, etc come out with the feature).

I've studied Japanese for a long time (and work in Japanese only now) and if you want to work on pronunciation I learned to "shadow" in my Japanese class. You watch any tv show and you repeat exactly what they say right after to get the intonation down. It's weird at first but it's super effective due to the difficulty of Japanese's hidden intonations.

One other thing we learned was to talk real loud with either a high or low pitch as it helps you learn very quickly the proper pitches. I heard news casters in either Japanese or American news casters do this.

I don't think there are too many products that you can make money from buying. The few I can think of are things like bee hives (paid to remove it and paid for the bees), dirt/sand in abundance areas (I'm not sure they sell it), and other natural resources. Most of them you're getting paid for removal and not buying though.

I personally do not think auto-pilot will help with congestion at all unless they are used as carpool vehicles to pick up and drop off people on route. Once you have auto-pilot, you have another group of the population that don't drive now that will start using auto pilots. I'm mostly referring to old people who don't drive but there are many others who don't drive due to limitations.

Can I ask what type of skills you recommend for upwork? I've done a lot of mobile and now I'm working in Unity and when I looked through Upwork I didn't see many opportunities.

Are you referring to the new company when looking at a potential employee's past experience? Couldn't you just ask them why they were terminated? I don't think Uber is going to fire actual scapegoats that weren't related. That would surely leave them up to even more legal trouble.

I don't disagree with you but I'm not sure all your questions are reasonable/respectful. Here are a few examples from my situation.

The AC in Japan has two settings--one is cool and one is "dry" for dehumidify. The cool setting does not dry the air (or if so, ever so slightly). We have high humidity so 26 degrees can feel hot indoors.

There are some seats in the office that are close enough to have the sunlight hit the desk. I'm not in one of those seats but can imagine it feels very hot.

Our office is "set" to 25 but at my desk it is often over 28 degrees (all the towers are on the tables and the AC is far from my location). I consider myself in fairly good shape but sweat quite a lot when it's over 28 degrees with a PC tower blowing hot air at me.

I just googled WMDs Iraq and NYT and was surprised to see an article in 2014 about 'confirming' WMDs in Iraq [1]. I never read this story before and don't know how widespread it was (I'm not a huge news junky but generally watch news several times/week and read online occasionally).

There was a study published in 2005 showing that a huge majority of americans (and australians/germans) did not believe WMDs were found in Iraq[2]. I do wonder how the numbers changed after the 2014 article by the NYT.

[1]https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middlee...

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destr...

And then again, your media all saw proofs of WMD in Iraq

I'm an American and maybe completely out of the loop but I never saw any news report that WMD was discovered in Iraq. I'm guessing it may have been circulated online but the news I watched never reported it from my memory.

Foreign teachers often have a lot of leeway, particularly if they teach English. I taught English at first and all the Japanese were super friendly and kind (and I didn't work any overtime). If it's a Japanese teacher's example then I haven't seen the same. The preschool I taught at from 2-7pm had all the teacher's there at 7pm still. Everyday. School got out at 2pm.

I'm now working in a Japanese programming company (where no one speaks English) and the environment is completely different.