Month: April 2024

April 05 2024, 00:12

Currently watching the third episode on Netflix, 3 BODY PROBLEM, and something feels familiar!

Here’s my post from 2010 and a clip from the episode, as they say, attached. About 20 years ago, during my time working at RBC SOFT, my colleagues and I would invent all sorts of cringe during lunch breaks to distract from the routine;-) I got carried away with the idea of a “slave computer” capable of calculating differential equations.

(I deliberately recorded it with SMS from my phone and a Russian track to prevent FB from automatically deleting it with its algorithms)

April 02 2024, 20:51

Oh what an interesting piece of news. Remember how I once raved about the Amazon Fresh store, where you just walk in, grab a pie from the shelf, and walk out, and then you get a bill for the pie? “Just walk out.” The store itself is festooned with hundreds of cameras, which track every movement of the shoppers’ hands and make sure that no item leaves the store without being paid for. It looked amazing, and I shopped there a couple of times using this magical method. We all tried to outsmart the AI, but the bastard caught everything.

Today, news is circulating that Amazon is ultimately removing this feature from all Fresh stores in the USA. Why? It’s reported that the magic was performed by a crowd of 1000 operators from India. They stared at every customer and carefully filled the virtual cart.

I thought it was an April Fool’s joke, but the news came out on the second and various serious publications have printed it. We’ll see.

Moreover, such a store type generally requires at most a couple of cashiers and a few self-service terminals, and to pay off all these cameras and 1000 operators, even from India, you need more stores, and with more stores, the crowd of operators grows, because you need roughly one per customer. Because of which, Amazon faced a lawsuit in New York State for violating a law on collecting biometric information without warning.

We await revelations that ChatGPT is actually a secret city in India not found on any map.

For the source, Google “Amazon Just Walk Out”.

April 02 2024, 14:27

Target pleasantly surprised with a simple approach to the “item has no barcode for some reason” problem. They just ring it up as unidentified for $0.99. Well, for pasta at least (whose price is clearly much higher, perhaps five times as much). However, the Toyota RAV4 was unpleasantly surprising due to the confusion about what to do if you accidently hit the key with your knee at an intersection and the car turns off. Turning the key to Drive is not an option – it doesn’t work. Coming to a complete stop isn’t great either, because the traffic light is already over. Eventually, the option is to perform an arpeggio consisting of five actions 1) turn on the hazard lights, 2) come to a full stop 3) then park, 4) then start the car, then drive 5) turn off the hazard lights.

April 02 2024, 11:32

(ENG below) Another interesting artist, Patrick Lee. His works once again hint at the idea that photography will never replace the brush and paint. Notice how the artist often chooses very complex compositions, originally, as they say, in a bad light, but turns it into something incredible. I love that. I also understand that I’m increasingly fond of works done with a palette knife, but I’ve never tried it myself.

#artrauflikes

Another interesting artist is Patrick Lee. His works once again hint at the idea that photography will never replace the brush and paint. Notice how the artist often chooses very complex compositions, originally, as they say, in a bad light, but turns it into something incredible. I love that. I also understand that I’m increasingly fond of works done with a palette knife, but I’ve never tried it myself.

#artrauflikes

April 01 2024, 23:25

Remember Belyaev? The Head of Professor Dowell, Ariel, Amphibian Man? I was surprised to read about his life today. And he was born at an unfortunate time, living on the edge. “Born, suffered, and died” — that’s his brief biography. It seems to me that if there is any spiritual bond in Russia, it is suffering.

Very briefly: His brother and sister died — Nina from sarcoma, Vasily drowned as a student. Young Alexander was involved in music, dreamed of the sky. He jumped off the roof of a shed, having tied brooms to his arms: he survived. Then he jumped with an umbrella: he survived. Then he made a parachute from a sheet and hurt his back, gradually developing tuberculosis of the spine, causing leg paralysis. Then he fell from a tree and had lifelong vision problems. Soon after, his mother dies of starvation. The story “The Head of Professor Dowell” (later turned into the novel “Resurrected from the Dead,” which, after Belyaev’s death, was renamed “The Head…”) was written by Belyaev based on personal experience: while paralyzed in Yalta, he imagined himself as a living head, devoid of a body. Upon returning, the writer became seriously ill. In 1931, his six-year-old daughter Lyuda died of meningitis. A few days later, his older daughter Sveta became seriously ill with rickets. Alexander faced World War II in Leningrad, the siege and famine began. On January 6, 1942, paralyzed Alexander died of starvation in Nazi-occupied Pushkin. Three years later, his wife and daughter were deported to Siberia. They spent 11 years in exile. The writer is buried in a mass grave, the location unknown.