Year: 2016

Bloomberg app reported on Usain Bolt’s 100m Gold Medal while related Articles recognised the word “Gold” and offered related Articles on Gold.

Not really a problem, but it only shows the real value of analysing data correctly. Understanding the context rather than recognising specific words.

 

Spent 10 minutes “playing” this game, and  I can conclude I don’t need to play more of it.

Not surprising, it is the #1 downloaded game in Japan, with related applications in #2 and #3 .

A few more things I realised:

1. Cannot be played in the Train during commute, so loss of important playing time
2. Big Data and location based information is amazing.  Around my neighbourhood and even on a top of a mountain I could find reference points with photos.
   As I guess nobody entered the information manually, I can just assume it was generated automatically.
3. Created some buzz for Ingress, which I am not playing as well

7 Japanese were killed in a terrorist attack, but to my surprise , none of my Japanese Facebook friends have posted on the subject.

When there is terror attach in Europe, Israel or US, my FB feed is flooded with news, reports, analysis on the same subject. This, thankfully, forces me to take a FB Diet and avoid it a while.

But in the past two days, there is no mention in my FB feed on the Dhaka attack, the Japanese victims. No sad comments, angry statuses, none.

As I definitely can’t analyse this difference, I will just assume my Japanese FB friends would rather not discuss these things “in public”.

In my previous post Fibre Channel is Dying, I mentioned rumours of Qlogic looking for a buyer, and they finally did.

It was just announced that Cavium is acquiring Qlogic , for $1B.
This is inline with my guess that a Silicon switch vendor will make the move to provide an Ethernet end to End solution.
Not surprisingly, Qlogic stock went up (to match the acquisition value) while Cavium went down.

Will be interesting to see how Cavium integrates Qlogic and what will be the focus.

 

A website I used to host in Godaddy has gone.

I was properly notified, was told I needed to purchase a plan and migrate the website.

But I don’t like it.

The website had no content, but just a placeholder. Yet now Godaddy force me to purchase a plan to host this page. Migration is scary, what will happen to DNS entries for mail. Hosted by Google, they also want to charge me money for a service I received free.

So the economy of “Free” is becoming “free until we decide differently”. I own websites which gladly pay for hosting, but I definitely do not want to pay to host an empty page. Godaddy could at least offer me free migration to a minimal plan.

Latest issue of the Economist features a discussion on State stipends  , but what caught my eye is a table of Gini Coefficients and changes from 1985 to 2013.

Not surprising, inequality is the trend. If Sweden was more equal 30 years ago (around 0.2), it is now 0.28. Better than OECD average, but definitely a decline.

Notice that the trend is uniform as well as the OECD average. Japan, which was considered a rather “equal” country, is NOT. And even a bit worse than the average.

Digging into additional (old) OECD numbers , show the same trends, with Israel being even worse than Japan, and not much better than the US.

Is there something I can do about this ? Probably not, but let me think some more.

 

I often wonder on the Kindness of Strangers and how I can reward them back. Basically, I cannot. Strangers will stay strangers, un-rewarded.

A few days ago my blood pressure dropped while taking the train and strangers assisted me , took care of me and expressed real concern.
A few minutes later, I felt better, thanked whoever I could and walked away.

I will probably never meet these people, and even if I did I doubt if I will recognise them nor if they approach me.

Thank you strangers

Not dead yet, and still playing a major role in Enterprise storage, but yes, definitely declining.

You can doubt Ethernet marketing pitch  , but you can’t ignore the fact that Emulex was sold to Avago  and Qlogic is considering the same strategy .

I would assume Avago (Broadcom) will not buy Qlogic, so the question who will ?  Which company has an interest in Qlogic products ? As FC is not that interesting as a long term strategy, it will be about Ethernet NIC technology.
My guess is that one of the Ethernet switch Vendors will be interested to expand their presence from Switching only, to the NIC cards and End to End solution.
As server OEMs do not want to lock-in with one technology supplier, I would assume an Ethernet switch vendor will try to expand their solutions.
Cisco already have servers , will they consider locking-in with Qlogic?

 

While reading Nikkei Business , I encountered a university graduates job hunting survey done by Disco .

My takes from the survey:

1. Japanese university graduates prefer to work for non-manufacturing companies
2. They show very little interest in society, but focus more on themselves

The following list shows the ranking of companies as perceived by the university graduates. While #1 is Mitsubishi Tokyo UFJ bank, actually, the top 5 are banks and insurance companies, 6 and 7 are ANA and JAL (respectively) while the first manufacturing company is Suntory at #8.  List continues with more financial companies, trade companies with Toyota at #9, Kirin at #14, Shiseido #17.

I personally find it troubling that Japanese young graduates prefer to work for financial and insurance companies which do not create nor manufacture. Moreover, most of these companies only active in Japan.

Looking at other aspects of the survey, when asked “what is the purpose of work”, the students preferred “just to live” over “pursue a dream”, “for myself” rather than “for society”.

76% do not consider changing jobs, only 27% expressed interest working outside Japan. 42% have no interest in personal success.

What can I do about it?

My mother is not a sophisticated user, she clicks and allows strange applications and websites to use her account, resulting in spamming her friends and Family (ME!).

Each time it happens, I try to block or mark the spammer, so I will not be disturbed again, but this is an impossible battler as my mother keeps finding new spammers.

Solution is very simple, Facebook should be in charge and better categorise spammers, or is it that Hebrew is not a high priority for them.

Facebook, please!

(As I can’t unfriend my mother)