Month: February 2020

Two thoughts:

1. If children in their early years are better at reconstructing language grammar on the fly than adults, is it possible to come up with a different task that their brain could solve better than an adult’s brain, if its formulation would mimic language?

2. Is it possible to devise a practical task (not a CAPTCHA) that, when broken down into many elementary components, could be solved more effectively by a group of specially trained/prepared people than by a modern computer?

Published the second part on the topic of load testing – about Tsung. This tool allows you to ramp up tens of thousands of virtual users from a single machine, many times more than JMeter. And it’s very functional as well. I discuss what it can do and how to prepare it. Tsung belongs to the category of good software, well-known in narrow circles, and with a pretty high entry threshold.

Large companies should have long ago started opening online stores where one can buy everything from branded cups and polos to branded backpacks with delivery to offices worldwide. Embroidery or printing can be easily ordered as an ondemand service in almost any developed country in the world. For the buyer, these should be free of charge, and the products should be discounted, which the company personally awards to employees for achievements or years of service or newcomers (up to 100%). For sellers and service providers – another sales channel, for companies – loyalty and free advertising outside the office, for employees – a feeling that they are valued and loved. Such a concept can be devised as a startup and sold to a dozen large companies as a ready-to-go service.

Published an article about Jmeter on hybrismart. It’s an old and reliable tool for load testing that can also be used for automating functional testing. It seems to have a GUI, but without knowing some specific commands, it’s impossible to implement the necessary scenarios for an online store (like logging in once, adding various items to the cart, proceeding to checkout). The article describes how to do all this.

This should especially be useful for those curious and close to ecommerce.

Finished an excellent book on molecular and evolutionary biology. I took notes on the first half as I read, then got absorbed and stopped. Link to the notes:

All six hundred or so pages are dedicated to four major themes – “The Chemistry of Life,” “The Mechanism of Life,” “The Tree of Life,” and “The History of Life.”

The initial chapters (400 pages) provide an introduction to organic chemistry, bioenergetics, and cell biology, but to me, they were the most interesting. The authors whom the writer considers the most intriguing – cover systematics; thankfully, they are not overly extensive, as reading them might be somewhat challenging if you’re not a fan. Reading in detail about the classifications of Rhizaria, Chromalveolata, Plantae, Opisthokonta, and Amoebozoa is tedious and arguably not very beneficial for a non-specialist.

But it’s very enlightening indeed, I recommend it. I had a C in chemistry in high school, but I was into it a year before starting chemistry lessons, only for my teacher to quash my interest. I’ve always been interested in biology, but it almost instantly evaporated. To be honest, I don’t have high hopes that much from this book will stay with me long-term (unless you work in this field or keep reinforcing your neurons with new information), but many previously disjointed facts have now come together for me, and I hope, will remain so.

Here’s another analogy. Whenever I encounter any website or software, I exactly know how to build it “from scratch”. Well, I wouldn’t do it well myself with my own hands, but rather look for programmers; yet, it’s comforting to realize there are no large grey areas in my understanding of how it should be structured or function. In biology, almost everything was covered by such “grey spots” for me. I simply didn’t understand how it worked. I knew about cell structure, genetic code, mitochondria, ATP, gene expression, but never pieced it all together into a coherent picture. Now, though, there’s this silly (and false) sensation that you understand something. It needs practice to explain these in simple terms because the book provided a million important little things that are always hard to explain the first time around, and now I don’t want to skip explaining them.

The biggest revelation was about the mechanism of life. Previously, I simply didn’t get it, and it was easy and straightforward. Like that short film about a flight attendant explaining how an airplane flies. We’re all complex biobots that can be dissected into cells, which can also be examined to verify that each cell is no less complex of a biobot, and further broken down into molecules; or alternatively, consider people as a eusocial structure where the biobot is our human anthill. Plenty of room for imagination here.

The main thing is that when you do figure it all out, it doesn’t lessen the questions but significantly increases them.

https://evolutionfund.ru/project/1/book/22/ot-atomov-k-drevu-vvedenie-v-sovremennuyu-nauku-o-zhizni

Published an article on hybrismart about JGroups. It’s a library for organizing group interaction among various Java processes. In Hybris, it’s used for cache invalidation messages and various other minor things. There’s little information available and few understand it well. I did everything possible to make my article the best resource on the topic. Welcome #hybris #jgroups

Looked for a place to have some coffee here…

Interesting presentation. The point is that flights to China and flights from China are interconnected: a plane cannot depart without having arrived. Secondly, a multitude of airlines (18 or so) have not been flying to or from China for quite some time, so the demand, especially for flights to Russia, where dozens of others are available for transferring anywhere, should not decrease but increase significantly.

It looks like very dirty weather here. It has been raining for a whole week

Two observations from the ground 🙂 About sleep and sports:

1. The first thing we encountered is that in the USA, for some reason, they do not sell a set of sheet+duvet cover+pillowcases.

Here a duvet cover (duvet cover) is usually sold separately, or with two pillowcases (Duvet set). A fitted sheet is purchased separately. There is also a Sheet set, where only sheets and two pillowcases are included.

Here, beds are typically made with two sheets, and they cover themselves with a duvet or comforter, with a duvet cover on top. There’s a difference between a duvet and a comforter, which can be quite confusing. Generally, a comforter is a soft decorative blanket, under which they often use a sheet (rather than a duvet cover, as we do). This roughly corresponds to our flannel or thin wool blanket without a duvet cover. It does not go into a duvet cover because it serves a decorative purpose. Additionally, there’s a mattress pad – an item that sits between the mattress and the sheet. The aforementioned fitted sheet is sewn like a box, covering the mattress, it is smoothly stretched over the top, adjusted vertically along the sides of the mattress and tucked under, where it is held by an elastic band gathered at the edge.

2. In the USA, in many states, including our Virginia, the game of “dodgeball” is banned. More accurately, they do not know what our version of dodgeball is, but the closest equivalent – dodgeball – is banned in schools. It is said to foster aggression and associated feelings. Yet, for adults, there are dodgeball competitions (for example, between Canada and the USA

).