Joseph Lui's Blog (15)

The motivation behind this blog was a question on how different online advertising partners identify you and coordinate their ad efforts in real time bidding ("RTB") for a slice of your attention when they show you an ad. This is meant to explain a technique called "UUID synching". However, that got me thinking I should frame the…

As an engineer, you often find solutions to problems, not the other way around. However, once in a blue moon, a solution comes along that appears so interesting and full of potential that you feel compelled to dream up applications for it. Such is the case with Thalmic Lab's Myo armband. The inventors…

I was twirling the thought of Chaum's Protocol in my head, its intricacies filling the gaps between my synapses. Impressed by its cryptographic properties, I could not at the same time escape a nagging sensation in another part of my brain: DigiCash.... is ... tooooo..... faaaar... ahead...  of…

Many of you have heard of Six Sigma as a methodology (primarily for large organizations) for quality and process improvement. One early success story was that of Motorola in the early 2000s, who attributed $17 billion in savings due to its application of Six Sigma across its business units. Since then…

versus

I decided to hit 2014 running, and whipped up another shootout experiment; this time…

VERSUS

Ok, ok admittedly it's not really a "shootout". We all already know SQL-based data sources are generally less performant and less scalable than their NoSQL counterparts, but they are also…

On various occasions in various settings I’ve been asked for my opinion on PHP as a web development platform. It is one of the most popular choices today, yet it is also one of the most criticized by experts. I personally have not touched the language for over a decade but it was once one of my favorite tools.

I remember doing professional web development during the first Internet boom in CGI scripts written with Perl. It was quite cryptic compared to the Java I was learning in school…

I love to travel, and over time I have had the good fortune to visit a couple of dozen countries around the world. One thing I noticed from country to country was a correlation between the wealth distribution among its populace and the overall stability of the nation. It seemed the happiest and most stable countries had a relatively strong middle class, while…

Recently, I have come across this infographic floating around the web that I believe deserves more attention. You can see the full version here. It illustrates the labor pool shortage we are experiencing in STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) related fields. Some key…

After my blog a couple of months ago about trading Microsoft, I couldn't help but wonder the same about Apple Inc. Once again, the same disclaimer applies: please do not consider this investment advice, just one commentary that may or may not be useful in your overall decision-making process.…

Recently I was asked if Microsoft constitutes a good investment today. Talk about a loaded question! First of all, please consider the commentary here as just a small piece of what you will consider when making your decision. Investments in general involve the much bigger picture of your risk tolerance, risk profile, financial goals, and existing assets. Having said…

connascence

= con (e.g. together) + nascence (e.g. birth or coming into existence)

= to come into existence together as well as to change together, to die together

= a useful concept for writing maintainable…

We use Heroku, a PaaS (Platform as a Service) vendor, quite often for hosting small and medium-sized web applications. It makes it drop-dead simple to install, deploy, maintain, and scale your projects on Amazon AWS's infrastructure. Being a fully managed service, they also take care of ongoing hardware and OS-level maintenance, and have engineers around-the-clock monitoring and responding to infrastructure emergencies. Furthermore, they…

Earlier this year I was conducting a training class on programming and found I needed to provide trainees with some models for evaluating the maturity of a  technological concept, device, or platform. One such model that stuck with me over the years is Gartner Research's Hype Curve Model. If you are not familiar with them, Gartner is a technology research firm composed of independent analysts based around the world. Their Hype Curve Model…