Author: Rauf Aliev

Three things that surprised me in Stuttgart (the rest are pleasing):

– there is neither Uber, Lyft, nor anything similar. Taxis are called by phone and you wait. The hotel has a box with a button for quick calling. I waited 25 minutes for such a taxi on Saturday morning.

– many places do not accept cards. Taxis are ready to accept a card only with a minimum charge of 20 euros. In the restaurant Shani shabu, they told me they only accept local cards, and today I had to leave Café am Hospitalplatz without paying for my cappuccino because these friends do not accept cards. Now I ask right away.

– Wi-Fi in Germany about eight years ago was very poor – it required a SIM card and SMS everywhere, which is not an option for a tourist without roaming. Now it’s no longer like that, but it’s just worse than many other places. I have stayed in two hotels here already. Both had issues. In the more prestigious one, Maritim, Wi-Fi is only for clients. Right now, I am sitting here as just a guest, using paid Wi-Fi because there is no free option. So, the one for clients is also strange – one and a half megabits per second.

I plan to rent a bicycle next. There is not a single bicycle rental spot in the entire city, except for those city ones with hourly rates. The only virtual rental point delivers the bike to the hotel for twenty euros or for free to the station. No insurance. Who these guys are – unclear, but the local tourist info recommends it. I’ll try it.

Saw a 1930s typewriter for the blind in an antique shop. It prints in Braille. Nowadays, you can buy modern versions, costing between 57,000 and 300,000 rubles (terrible).

Here it is – love is in the bin.

Banksy is a true artist

[x] Stuttgart Art Museums

The first thing to do before taking off on an eight-hour flight is to (while the internet is still available) check the Kinopoisk rating for the movies in the media library and compile the playlist wisely. If you don’t do this, later you end up watching whatever is available

On the way to Warsaw and Frankfurt

Published another research on hybrismart – integration of Contentstack and SAP Commerce Cloud (hybris). Contentstack is a headless CMS, meaning it’s a content management system where everything is open via API, both content management and its delivery to the user. Historically, content management in SAP Commerce Cloud was quite constrained for years, and although the situation has improved now, the topic of external CMS is very relevant, with Contentstack frequently appearing in various tenders and discussions.

Good

Excellent article about feminatives. Interestingly, with the wave of promoting feminatives by feminists, why does no one raise the question about masculatives for manicurists and pedicurists, maids and cooks, launderers and fortune tellers, caregivers, typists, nannies, seamstresses, matchmakers, embroiderers, and ballerinas.

Today, I was challenged with a very cool task (below), I found a solution, will you find one? They say there are multiple solutions, but I can’t see any others besides my own.

So, there is an 8×8 board scattered with stones randomly. Each cell can contain as many stones as it fits, from zero to whatever number fits. The host thinks of a cell. He calls it to character A. Character A, let’s call him Vasya, decides to either remove or add exactly one stone to any cell of his choice or to do nothing. Then he leaves. Next, a second character comes in, let’s call him Petya, looks at the board, thinks, and names the secret cell. Of course, Petya and Vasya had pre-arranged a strategy on what Vasya needs to do so that Petya can guess the cell correctly. The question is – what is this strategy?

UPDATE: Solution:

Essentially, two functions need to be written, encode (cell, origboard), which returns newboard and decode (newboard), which returns cell. The difference between newboard and origboard is one set bit.

static long encode(long board, int cell) {

int change = getHash(board) ^ cell;

return board ^ (1L << change);

}

static int decode(long board) {

return getHash(board);

}

static private int getHash(long board) {

int hash = 0;

for (int i = 0; i < 64; i++) {

if ((board & 0x1) != 0) {

hash ^= i;

}

board >>>= 1;

}

return hash;

}

Finished watching the first season and started the second. A good series, very much in King’s style. For the first time, after binge-watching the last three episodes, I was left with an aftertaste similar to finishing a book – full of details, some of which neatly converge while others create more questions than answers. However, there are no completely inexplicable inconsistencies, although it does blow your mind at times.

The series is not an adaptation, but an original work “on a King theme with King’s involvement.” Fans will find a lot of Easter eggs, while I simply enjoyed the cinematography and the unique script.

I recommend it, good cinema. Still watching the second season, it’s a whole different ball game