Month: February 2025

Integrating ERP-Based Pricing into E-Commerce Catalogues | February 23 2025, 19:18

I wrote an article on Hybrismart on the topic “Customer-specific pricing”. How to create a good solution when your price calculation is in ERP, but you need to somehow show the actual price in the catalogue that takes into account their group or whatever else.

It’s quite in demand. There’s no adequate solution on the market, you have to do everything yourself, since client requirements vary. But it seems I managed to make it more or less universal. Sharing the details.

Despite the name block containing Hybris, the article is applicable to any online store or B2B system.

https://hybrismart.com/2025/02/23/customer-specific-pricing-and-availability-in-b2b-e-commerce/

Customer-Specific Pricing and Availability in B2B E-Commerce

Exploring the Rational and Historical Intricacies of Paper Sizes | February 23 2025, 14:57

Somehow I managed to miss this back in the day, but it turned out that the European paper sizes A0, A1, A2, A3, A4, … are not just arbitrary. Let’s start with the fact that A0 has an area of exactly 1 square meter. Well, with a slight error margin to avoid dealing with fractional millimeters. And the aspect ratio — 1:√2 is the only possible one that maintains itself when the paper is divided in half. Thus, there is a rationale behind paper formats in Europe.

But with our paper formats, there seems to be no sense. What we have are letter, legal, tabloid, all with different proportions, and the origin of the format goes back to tradition and is not well known.

I decided to dig into the topic and found a claim that “dimension originates from the days of manual papermaking and that the 11-inch length of the page is about a quarter of ‘the average maximum stretch of an experienced vatman’s arms’. However, the claim does not explain the proportions, but then there is the word vatman, which reminds one of Whatman sheets, remember those? But no, a vatman is a specialist who scooped up the liquid paper pulp from a vat using a mold (sieve) and formed the sheet. And the Whatman sheet comes from James Whatman, an English paper manufacturer of the 18th century, which was simplified to ‘vatman’. Interestingly, the term ‘vatman’ seems to exist only in Russian, derived from Whatman’s surname and his paper, Whatman paper.

And why do we call the formats in the U.S. legal and letter? This is quite interesting as well.

Interestingly, in the U.S., there were two different “standard” sizes initially: 8″ x 10.5″ and 8.5″ x 11″. Different committees independently adopted different standards: 8″ x 10.5″ for the government, and 8.5″ x 11″ for everyone else. When the committees discovered a few years later that they had different standards, they agreed to “disagree until the early 1980s when Reagan finally declared 8.5″ x 11” the officially approved standard size for paper.

The matter began in 1921, when the first Director of the Bureau of the Budget, with the President’s approval, formed an inter-agency advisory group called the “Permanent Conference on Printing,” which approved 8″ x 10½” as the standard format for government agency forms. This continued a practice established earlier by former President Hoover (who was then serving as Secretary of Commerce), defining 8″ x 10½” as the standard format for his department’s forms.

In the same year, the Committee on the Simplification of Paper Sizes, comprising representatives from the printing industry, was appointed to work with the Bureau of Standards as part of Hoover’s program to eliminate waste in industry. This committee defined basic sizes for different types of printed and writing paper. The “writing” size was set as a sheet of 17″ x 22″, while the “legal” size was 17″ x 28″. The now well-known Letter format emerged as a result of dividing these sheets in half (8½” x 11″ and 8½” x 14″).

Even when choosing 8½” x 11″, there wasn’t a special analysis conducted to verify that this size was optimal for commercial forms. The committee that developed these formats aimed solely to “reduce leftovers and waste during the trimming of sheets by reducing the range of paper sizes.”

Moreover, the legal size is still in full use as its name suggests, especially among lawyers, and folders and desk drawers are made to fit its size.

But if you look at a pack of paper in the U.S., you will see “20lb” on the pack. Actually, 20lb is the weight of a small dog, but it is also written that there are 500 pages. “Amazon Basics Multipurpose Copy Printer Paper, 20 Pound, White, 96 Brightness, 8.5 x 11 Inch, 1 Ream, 500 Sheets Total”

In the U.S., the “weight category” of paper indicates the total weight of one ream (500 sheets) of paper in its uncut (original) format. For office paper of the Bond class (often sold in Letter format), the base size is considered to be 17 x 22 inches. For example, a “20-pound” label means that 500 sheets of exactly 17 x 22 weigh 20 pounds. But if we take a pack of Letter format (8.5 x 11), which results from cutting 17 x 22 into four parts, its weight will be about 5 pounds.

In Europe, the weight category essentially refers to the weight of an A0 sheet in grams.

So, if you fold A0 in half, you get A1 with half a square meter area, if you fold A1, you get A2. That’s clear. But how many times can you actually fold a sheet of paper?

The maximum number of times a non-compressible material can be folded has been calculated. With each fold, a part of the paper “loses” for the next potential fold. The function of folding paper in half in one direction is:

L=πt/6(2ⁿ+4)(2ⁿ-1)

where L is the minimum paper length (or other material),

t is the thickness of the material,

n is the number of possible folds.

The length L and thickness t must be expressed in the same units.

The thickness W is calculated as πt2^(3(n-1)/2).

This formula was derived by Britney Gallivan, a high school student from California, in December 2001. In January 2002, she and her helpers spent eight hours folding a roll of toilet paper about 4000 feet long (approximately 1200 meters) twelve times in the same direction, thus debunking the old myth that paper cannot be folded more than eight times.

Sources mention that she started in school with gold foil (I wrote about such foil recently), and, starting with a square sheet the size of a hand, after many hours of perseverance and practice, using rulers, soft brushes, and tweezers, she managed to fold her gold foil twelve times. But apparently, that wasn’t spectacular enough, and she found toilet paper over a kilometer long somewhere in 2002 and made a show for the Guinness record.

Britney didn’t stop there and wrote a book. Though it was only 48 pages. How about that, Britney?

Musk’s Perspective on Trump’s Presidency and Climate Policy | February 22 2025, 23:07

…On Trump’s first day as president, Musk went to the White House to be part of a roundtable of top CEOs, and he returned two weeks later for a similar session. He concluded that Trump as president was no different than he was as a candidate. The buffoonery was not just an act. “Trump might be one of the world’s best bullshitters ever,” he says. “Like my dad. Bullshitting can sometimes baffle the brain. If you just think of Trump as sort of a con-man performance, then his behavior sort of makes sense.” When the president pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Accord, an international agreement to fight climate change, Musk resigned from the presidential councils.

Exploring Ojibwe: Language, Cultural Heritage, and Translation Challenges | February 22 2025, 20:55

Interestingly, in the Toronto art museum, all labels are available not only in English and French but also in Ojibwe, also known as Anishinaabemowin (ᐊᓂᔑᓈᐯᒧᐎᓐ); in the USA, the language is called Chippewa. The ethnonyms “Chippewa” and “Ojibwe” originate from the same word with different pronunciations, meaning “puckered”. It is the language of one of the largest Native American peoples in North America, roughly equal in number to the Cree, and second only to the Cherokee and Navajo. However, only about 10,000 people speak it in the USA and about 48,000 in Canada.

Chipmunk, wigwam, totem – these are borrowings from this language. And as for geographical names – there are loads. Illinois, Mississippi, Ottawa, Michigan.

Did you know that half (25) of the names of American states are named in honor of Native Americans? I found this very surprising at the time.

I inserted into the image another example of original, not adapted for the English alphabet, writing. These are the circles and stars, triangles. This is the Evans syllabic system. I don’t know how one can remember it: it consisted of only nine symbols, each of which could be written in four different orientations to represent different combinations of consonant and vowel. This allowed for a complete recording of the Ojibwe language. However, Evans’ superiors disapproved of his invention and prohibited its use. Later, he adapted his system for writing in Cree. Today, it is still found among some Ojibwe communities in Canada, but its use is limited. It is more common in Cree. In the USA, Ojibwe speakers mostly prefer Latin writing.

ChatGPT recognizes the language, but is unable to translate anything at all. There are also no online translators, and online dictionaries are very poor. Interestingly, the language has enough words to describe modern concepts.

I tried to translate Native expressions, which, according to the author’s intention, were supposed to mean “Europe” and “dilemma”, but nothing similar resulted. Then I compared how different LLMs translate a piece about the historical period of 1910–1930 when “Europe was shaken by war and its consequences”. Each system produces its own version of the text: some talk about the war on the Great Lakes, some about “the great bay” or spiritual practices, somewhere it’s even about protecting the Indian population (I fed them a text about artists). In the end, “war” is somewhat uniformly recognized (apparently, there are fifty words for war there), but the overall meaning varies significantly.

Travel Troubles and Unexpected Stays: A Tale of Two Airports | February 22 2025, 16:46

In the end, I managed a bingo of two airports where planes had recently crashed. One incident occurred just the day before my planned arrival in Toronto, which, of course, led to my flight being canceled. I found out at the airport. No problem, I worked from there, then returned home, luckily only a 20-minute drive away. I flew out the next day.

But the return trip was more interesting. First, the flight was rescheduled countless times, then they loaded us into the plane, then unloaded us again and told us to come back tomorrow for a second attempt. Amusingly, the border guard’s question about the purpose of your visit to Canada sounded quite ironic upon exiting. No one knows where to wait for the luggage, and what’s even supposed to be on the display board from where I flew? From Toronto to Toronto? But they say not to worry, they’ll collect unclaimed baggage overnight, and it will fly with me tomorrow. Midnight approaches, no Uber can be caught for all the money in the world, the hotel shuttle has been promised every ten minutes for the last hour but finally arrives, and the three of us, including a couple celebrating their 26th wedding anniversary, occupy the last two seats. On the bus, I joke that all that’s left is to find out that the hotel is fully booked. No way, my fellow travelers tell me, you reserved it in front of us (the airline gave a voucher). I pull out my phone, and instead of a ‘thank you for your reservation’, there’s a message saying no rooms are available at Comfort Inn. Well, the hotel was “better than any motel. I try to find the next hotel on the airline’s website in the hotel lobby; there are three options, of which two are about 70 km away, and one is listed but has no availability. While I was calling, another option popped up, Marriot Residence Inn, and that worked out. Nice rooms, two-bedroom suites with a full kitchen, but with a terrible breakfast in the morning. Luckily, the airline’s voucher covered a good lunch at a restaurant the next day.

The next day, the flight was at the same time, and here comes another delay message. Well, this time it was minor, and our Mitsubishi made it to Reagan Airport quite comfortably. They didn’t lose the luggage;)

Exploring Paths to a Third Presidential Term in the USA | February 21 2025, 20:46

How to run for a third term in the USA? A puzzle for the constitutional court.

1) stop being no person,

2) become a non-elected president

3) serve a term in another place, where there are no silly restrictions

Which path is easier?

#22 “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.

Toronto Airport: A Fairy Tale Experience with a Transit Twist | February 20 2025, 21:33

What a cool international airport in Toronto! Just like a fairy tale. It has now taken first place for me, pushing Dubai’s airport out. The only downside is that there’s no subway to the Toronto airport. Only buses and taxis.

Chaos or Strategy: Unpacking Political Information Overload | February 20 2025, 10:40

Andrey has an interesting thought in his post. As if Trump and his team deliberately overload the information field, creating chaos and a “fog of war” to weaken resistance and break the existing order. I would like to think so too. But, on the other hand, don’t you think there’s an alternative?

Remember “Hanlon’s Razor — “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Your (and my) brain tries to impose some system on the observed chaos and come up with a logical explanation, based on the assumption that “normal people don’t behave like this, there definitely must be a plan and strategy.

But then the question is like in that Slepakov song about Gazprom — “What the %&ya if it’s not?.

There is still an alternative option. It’s called: “A monkey with a grenade trying to type a brilliant sonnet on a typewriter with a serious demeanor. And remembering the multiplication theorem of probabilities, it tries many times and often.

Theoretically, if you were to break into the homes of major politicians and start turning everything upside down, a random discovery of a bucket of drugs or something bigger would justify all the chaos in the eyes of the public — by the principle of “the victors are not judged. And by series like “Breaking Bad”, we know what to do if you’ve made a mess: make an even bigger mess. It might not work, say after turning over the fiftieth house, still no bucket. But most likely it will work if you act fast and on a large scale. True, the collateral damage might be too great, but the masses can’t calculate. They remember the victories.

Maybe it’s hard to understand us because Elon and Trump know how to go all-in, while we play it safe?

I don’t know which of these scenarios we are living in, because I can imagine a few years later there will be a media discussion post-factum about both the first scenario (a wise strategist outplayed everyone and built) and the second plan (Cock-up before conspiracy). Just pointing out “Occam’s Razor.”

Unique Characteristics and Historical Insights of the French Language | February 19 2025, 04:50

Amusing. It turns out that ù in French exists solely for one single word où (where). Also interesting, the accent mark ^ over a letter, like in û, effectively represents a shortened form of S. For example, forêt, hôpital – these essentially mean forest, hospital, where the s has flown away both in written and spoken language, into the heavens. Likewise, croûton (from croûte) fundamentally comes from the word crust. Similarly, île/isle, hôtel/hostel, bête/beste (beast), côte/coste (coast). Even château — it’s essentially related to castel/castle. The same applies to the beginning of words: école/school, épice/species. And yet, French almost lacks words containing the letter w (but the letter exists!)

Furthermore, it’s intriguing that French and Italian have a lexical similarity of 89%—which means that 89% of the words in these languages are very similar to each other. Hence, it is considered that if the lexical similarity exceeds 85%, they are not languages but dialects 🙂

Also remembering now, in the 18th century, at least in 1789, 50% of the French did not speak French. Predominantly, they spoke in languages of the “langue d’oïl” group and in Occitan dialects. France would need the development of schools to spread the French language. Also interesting, more people speak French in Africa than in France itself.