jmsduran

I too am disappointed that the Google redirect workaround no longer works. I recently cancelled my WSJ membership as part of an effort to minimize my monthly expenses, so now I am effectively cut off from all their news stories.

IMO it's not a big deal though, as I've turned to Bloomberg for most of my market news. My health has also improved considering that I no longer subject myself to skimming through the WSJ comments section.

I would go into finance, maybe as a CFA or some sort of investment/financial analyst. If I could go back in time and restructure my career aspirations as a teenager, I would pursue a career as a medical doctor (possibly specializing in cardiology or clinical pathology).

I don't know if this is normal, but I feel burnt out after working 6 years in the tech industry. So much so, that in my spare time I occupy myself with hobbies completely unrelated to software engineering. I enjoy reading books about finance and medicine, and have also grown an appreciation for cinema/film-making.

My side projects have definitely suffered as a result, because often times I find myself preferring to read The Economist instead.

You are correct, it is not NLP. But I wouldn't downplay the potential of this javascript library.

I have hundreds of digital documents that need to be sorted and archived. I am able to extract a document's text via OCR, but now have to find a way to sort/file them based off certain keywords present within the document (date, time, place, etc).

I think Knwl.js will be a perfect fit for this. So far I have only spent a couple of minutes looking through the demo and GitHub repository, but it looks like with this library I will be able to write an extension that can help detect restaurants and stores I frequently visit (which will further help me sort all those pesky paper receipts).

I will definitely start playing around with Knwl.js once I get home. Good job!

It seems, especially for major corporations, that on-call/pager duty is quickly becoming the norm for software development teams. I do agree that pager duty is a symptom of a fundamental flaw within the system/architecture. I think it would be in a company's best interest to devote time in improving the reliability and stability of their infrastructure, instead of relying on the band-aid approach that pager duty seems to be.

Regarding #8 though, when you are pressured to resolve a complex issue within a short time window, it can absolutely induce a sense of panic for those who do not handle stress well. In my opinion, I believe the remedy for this would be to have two individuals designated as on-call at a time, assuming the team is large enough.

I have been living in Austin for roughly 4 years, but after checking the map it looks like my area may not get fiber for some years to come, as well as much of the greater Austin city limits, based off the progress I see from Google's initial Kansas rollout.

The one thing I hope that comes out of this, and the one thing I believe will benefit all Austin residents, would be the ability to negotiate for a lower monthly rate when their Internet/Cable contract renews sometime next year.

I hope that by April 2015 I have the leverage to call TWC and say: "Hey, Google fiber is offering Gigabit + TV for $130 a month, why can't my $155 monthly bill be lowered considering I pay for Internet + TV that is only 1/4 as fast?"

I took a look at the site for 5 minutes. If I had the day off, I wouldn't mind spending some time attempting to solve it.

I recently bought a Kindle Paperwhite, and also noticed how easy it was to tie the Kindle to an email account upon purchase, all without verification. This seems like something Amazon definitely needs to fix.

As a former IBM'er, I believe IBM has lost their edge as a competitive company, and is now in a state of dysfunction and damage control. Bluemix, Watson, Jazz SCM, in my opinion all these initiatives are too little and too late.

In their attempt to meet the now defunct 2015 road map, IBM has axed many talented and experienced employees. You can only layoff so many individuals before it starts negatively affecting your product and talent pool.

From what I hear on the inside, STG has been cut to the core after numerous rounds of layoffs and product/division sell-offs. SWG appears to be the next target, current rumors indicate that there may be another large layoff sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

That is incorrect. IBM sold parts of its hardware business, along with employees and IP rights, to Lenovo. Years ago, IBM also sold its ThinkPad brand to Lenovo. The two companies are not exactly related to one another.

This does not surprise me one bit, I'm pretty sure IBM holds a patent for this somehow.

It depends on who you ask. As a former IBM'er, I can attest that many of the employees I worked with turn to Cringely and the IBM Alliance [1] for IBM-related news and rumors.

[1] http://www.endicottalliance.org/jobcutsreports.php

Living in Austin, I've been closely following news related to Google Fiber's rollout throughout the city. The two big providers here, TWC and AT&T, are still doing business as usual. TWC has promised increased speeds by summer 2014, but as a TWC customer myself I cannot help but view their announcement with a fair bit of skepticism [1].

Interestingly enough, Grande Communications has actually beat Google with regards to being the first company to actually start offering/installing fiber services within the city limits [2]. Granted, their fiber offerings are limited to a small subset of people living in downtown/west Austin, but it's progress nonetheless.

Google has been incredibly tight-lipped about their fiber rollout. To this day, there have not been any official announcements since their initial unveiling 1 year ago. But from small news pieces I can find online, it seems their service launch has been delayed to 'later this year' (compared to the summer 2014 date they originally gave) [3]. Last, performing a search of permits files by Google for fiber construction reveals that their initial rollout/offering will be exclusively to south Austin residents (south of Lake Austin) [4].

[1] http://www.pcworld.com/article/2099908/aha-time-warner-cable...

[2] http://mygrande.com/austin/1-gig-fiber-internet/

[3] https://gigaom.com/2014/04/08/google-delays-austin-fiber-lau...

[4] https://mapsengine.google.com/map/u/0/edit?mid=zKGIh6VixM7Q....

I do not personally believe so. Much of the fear and paranoia surrounding the Y2K never materialized. Most organizations and companies made sure any of their affected systems were patched/updated prior to the year 2000. Heartbleed represents a rather different scenario. One where a very serious, unpatched bug was out in the wild for at least 2 years. And nobody really has an idea to the degree to which this bug was used for exploits.

Comparing the two is like comparing apples to oranges, if you ask me.

I don't blame people choosing to work in other business areas rather than putting their efforts in fixing government, curing cancer, improving medicine, rebooting our space program, fixing education, etc.

Why? Because it's honestly very hard work, often with little recognition and less pay. People trying to innovate or 'disrupt' these fields are up against deep rooted political institutions, large corporations with millions to spend on lobbying efforts, and a broken legal/patent system that favors those who exploit its many loopholes.

That said, I have great respect for people who devote their time and effort for the greater good.

That's what I'm thinking too. Soon I plan to dispute my bill before the annual increase, or threaten to cancel and switch to AT&T.

I live in Austin and have Time Warner Cable, my bill is roughly $173.00 per month. This is includes Internet (30 Mbps down/5Mbps up) and basic cable (no premium channels).

For people living in Austin, I doubt we will see increased speeds or better price offerings from AT&T/TWC until the day Google Fiber is available to significant portions of the city's population.

Fascinating! Since childhood to this day, I use that same technique to ease myself into falling asleep. Personally, I see it as more relaxing than terrifying.

I applaud what DDG is doing. I've been using it as my default search engine for roughly 2 years. Yes, there are some areas for improvement, especially when it comes to complex technical queries. But for the majority of everyday things, DDG is excellent, and returns less advertisement bloat within its results than Google/Bing.

Plus ducks are my favorite animal, so launching DDG as I begin the work day is a joy!

Former IBM'er here. The reason IBM gives severance and extended benefits is not to look good, it's to prevent their employees from filing unlawful termination suits.

Second, there is a rumor in IBM that once an employee is marked as an RA (layoff), they are placed on an HR blacklist preventing them from finding another job internally. Departments that hire an employee placed on the RA blacklist are believed to have to layoff another employee to take their place.

Marvelous stuff! Having worked for years in the corporate trenches as a Software Engineer, your games once again reminded me how fun programming can be. I definitely will be taking a look at Phaser for hobby projects of my own.

Former IBM'er here. Power Systems are not as ubiquitous as you think. Their biggest customers are insurance/banking companies, but that consumer base has been gradually shrinking with organizations migrating to more affordable commodity clouds (Amazon, etc.) and services.

The Power Division within STG has been declining in revenue for at least 6 straight quarters, and employees within that division are first on the list whenever IBM wants to perform a layoff.

If you take the original idea of the search shown in the ad, and reformat it to look like a rather ordinary search query, you get this:

https://www.google.com/#q=biggest+candy+store+near+Austin%2C...

Not using ad-block, you can see some of the ads OP is referring to.

As a former IBM'er, I can't help but view this announcement with a fair bit of skepticism.

The IBM I used to know had a tendency to tightly couple all of their products and offerings, to the point of making it uncompetitive/unattractive in the market. This makes sense when you consider that IBM has been going through 6 straight quarters of declining revenue, and their Systems & Technology Group being unable to turn a profit despite thousands of employee layoffs. Assuming this announcement is no different, I expect this new offering to be proprietary, SAAS-like, and rife with restrictions limiting application development to an IBM-approved stack (Rational, Jazz, DB2, etc).

I have no doubt that Watson is an excellent piece of technology, but I believe IBM's executive and CEO leadership will mess this up by treating this offering the same way as their consulting and hardware services.

Sorry, meant to imply half-way through my 20's.

Very inspiring article. Being 24, almost half-way to 30, these past few months I've been thinking to myself "what have I really accomplished outside of work and school"? I think this is due partly to the high expectations I set for myself, but I also believe part of it is due to the current tech culture, where it's easy for those new to the field to misinterpret that if they aren't moving as fast as everyone else, they must be doing something wrong.

I'm coming to understand that everyone is unique, one's career/life progress is no better than another's. Thanks for the refreshing perspective OP.

I have never heard of bacteriophages before. Doing some light research, I found their protein/body structures to look almost machine-like. Very fascinating stuff.

From Wikipedia's Bacteriophage page: "Medical trials were carried out, but a basic lack of understanding of phages made these invalid".

I seriously hope alternatives like bacteriophages are being revisited and reconsidered within the medical community, as it's obvious that conventional antibiotics are increasingly becoming less effective each year.

I believe that whether one behaves as an introvert or extrovert depends entirely on context. I've seen so-called 'social butterflies' hide in a corner and pretend to be occupied with their phone when put in an uncomfortable social situation. Inversely, I've seen rather quiet individuals take charge and demonstrate remarkable leadership & interpersonal skills when put in a situation where there was no obvious leader.

As a developer who also programs as a hobby, I dislike having to manually download, install, and configure each framework/platform I want to experiment with. With cloud IDEs like Cloud9, everything is already configured for me and just works.

For my side projects I find this workflow particularly awesome: pull project from GitHub, program in a C9 workspace, and push to Heroku when ready. My development environment is not limited to a physical workstation, and no time is wasted hassling over configuration issues.

Former IBM'er here. I worked in Power Software Development within STG, and was laid off alongside 3,300 other US employees this past June. After first quarter results became public, employee morale within STG pretty much sank. Contractors were cut first, then a number of benefits were either reduced or postponed till the end of the year. It became pretty obvious that some drastic cuts were about to happen (now known internally as Project Mercury), but I made the decision not to jump ship, hoping that my performance as a solid contributor would see me through.

On June 12 I was laid off anyway, and while I was saddened to leave, part of me was relieved to be moving on. Based off my first-hand knowledge, I can attest that IBM is a huge company, and as such it's very easy to get lost in the day-to-day grind and have your skills as a Software Engineer stagnate. The company did not value employee creativity like I thought it would, and internally teams are constantly absorbed in office/management politics, to the point it ends up taking a negative toll on developer productivity. There were many occasions where I wanted to move fast and resolve customer issues or system bugs, but was slowed by the enormous overhead/red tape involved in making even a simple change.

So if I could give one piece of advice to CEO Ginni Rometty it would be this: Transform IBM into an organization that can move fast to benefit the customer. I believe many of the struggles IBM is currently facing stem from an organization structure that is slow and inefficient, part of which is due to low employee morale (it's a little hard to focus on your work when you're constantly fearing cuts/layoffs).

Fortunately for me I got back up on my feet pretty quickly, and landed a better paying job that values employee creativity. I still keep up with IBM news through the IBM Alliance, and feel for a number of IBM friends and former STG colleagues who are most likely affected by this furlough.

I wonder if livestock producers still feed Arsenic to livestock meant for organic products? It would be a shame if they do this by exploiting the technicality that Arsenic is entered through the feed in "organic form".