Skip to main content

The joys of having a haircut

One of the great things about getting a haircut besides the feeling of freshness, is the enjoyable conversations that I have with my barber. The conversations usually span multiple topics, and are mostly random, but sometimes we chat about technology, and it is always great to get the perspective of someone not embedded in the field.

Last time we talked about how the younger generations are using technology to communicate. My barber made astute observations about the topic, gleaned from his observations on how his kids, nephews and their friends communicate. It was interesting to learn that despite having cell phones, the younger generation has forgone all types of voice communication on the mobile device, and instead has opted for text messages and instant messaging. My barber was complaining that his kids rake in thousands of text messages a month, and if he did not select the right cell phone plan he would have gone broke by now.

Despite not using voice communication on the mobile device, they did the opposite on the computer, using Skype to communicate exclusively through videos. When I asked him about where do they play games, I was surprised that he mentioned they were not interested in using gaming consoles for entertainment, but rather using the computer and the mouse, just like how we did some time ago. And of course they play games on their mobile devices, which does not bode well for console manufacturers, and specialized handheld devices.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kindle Paperwhite

I have always been allergic to buying specialized electronic devices that do only one thing, such as the Kindle, the iPod, and fitness trackers. Why buy these when technology evolves so fast that a multi-purpose device such as the phone or a smart watch can eventually do the same thing, but with the convenience of updates that fix bugs and add functionality? So, I was shocked when this weekend I made an impulse buy and got the newest Kindle Paperwhite—a special purpose device for reading eBooks. I was walking past the Amazon store in the mall and saw that the newest Kindle Paperwhites were marked down by $40 for the holidays. The device looked good in the display, so I went in to look at it closely. The Paperwhite is small and light, with a 6” screen that is backlit and waterproof.   The text was crisp and readable, and in the ambient light, it felt like I am reading a printed book. I was sold and bought it on the spot. At home I have struggled to put it down. The bo...
2 comments
Read more

A paper a day keeps the dr away: Dapper a Large-Scale Distributed Systems Tracing Infrastructure

Modern Internet scale applications are a challenge to monitor and diagnose. The applications are usually comprised of complex distributed systems that are built by multiple teams, sometimes using different languages and technologies. When one component fails or misbehaves, it becomes a nightmare to figure out what went wrong and where. Monitoring and tracing systems aim to make that problem a bit more tractable, and Dapper, a system by Google for large scale distributed systems tracing is one such system. The paper starts by setting the context for Dapper through the use of a real service: "universal search". In universal search, the user types in a query that gets federated to multiple search backends such as web search, image search, local search, video search, news search, as well as advertising systems to display ads. The results are then combined and presented back to the user. Thousands of machines could be involved in returning that result, and any poor p...
Post a Comment
Read more

A paper a day keeps the doctor away: MillWheel: Fault-Tolerant Stream Processing at Internet Scale

The recent data explosion, and the increase in appetite for fast results spurred a lot of interest in low-latency data processing systems. One such system is MillWheel, presented in the paper " MillWheel: Fault-Tolerant Stream Processing at Internet Scale ", which is widely used at Google. In MillWheel, the users specify a directed computation graph that describe what they would like to do, and write application code that runs on each individual node in the graph. The system takes care of managing the flow of data within the graph, persisting the state of the computation, and handling any failures that occur, relieving the users from that burden. MillWheel exposes an API for record processing, that handles each record in an idempotent fashion, with an exactly once delivery semantics. The system checkpoints progress with a fine granularity, removing the need to buffer data between external senders. The authors describe the system using the Zeitgeist produ...
Post a Comment
Read more