Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev.

It was ten years ago, but it’s all still relevant;)

After a long (very) break—a new article on Hybrismart about online shopping carts and their architecture. The article is for developers on SAP Commerce, but around 20-30% of the content is also applicable to other platforms. Well, for instance, to be able to say “ugh, everything is so bad in Hybris” or “cool, we should adopt some good ideas from Hybris”. In short, welcome to the blog.

An excellent channel on pronunciation. For some unknown reason, the creator has only 21K subscribers. The latest half-hour video on the sound /ɹ/ – used in “Rory rarely reads romantic poetry” — I struggled with it in Russian, sounding like Lenin 🙂 Thanks to lessons with @[100000066699061:2048:Elliot Teplitsky-Bauer], it’s now as it should be in my English (neither rolling nor trill). In Russian, I never bothered to correct it. Thus, the pronunciation of the vast majority of those who studied English at school is quite far from being correct, as the Phonetics Fanatic videos vividly demonstrate.

Some Americans really think that our Russian ‘R’ is quite close to ‘Ж’. To one such American on Quora, all the Russian speakers commented that he should clean his ears, as ‘Ж’ is nowhere near ‘Р’. This goes to show how differently people who grew up in different linguistic environments can perceive sounds. Google “Why is ‘R’ corresponding to Russian letter Р instead of Ж? I feel that the pronunciation of ‘ж’ is closer to ‘r’ in English.”

Slightly tweaked Yuki 🙂

As you may have noticed, I have always tried to learn various things throughout my life, and based on my accumulated experience, I want to share a simple conclusion: 1) you need to invest first and foremost in skills and abilities, and knowledge will follow 2) knowledge should be free, but acquiring skills, especially practical ones, is worth paying for.

The chess course by Kasparov on masterclass gave me almost nothing, although I still recommend it; it’s cool. The drawing course on Domestika also gave me almost nothing. About 200 hours of microbiology lectures couldn’t possibly give me nothing, but ask me about something complex from those lectures, and I can’t recount it. However, I could at least Google it and share the source. Reading history books left me with maybe 10% in memory after a year. At best, after reading a book, I know how to Google the topic, and quickly understand it when I find the answers. But all this does not stay in memory.

At the same time, music school—gave me something. Hundreds of hours of drawing—gave me something. Various experiments with electronics gave me something. English lessons—gave me something. When comparing the efficiency of investing an hour of my time, investing in skills is significantly more important and effective.

In Russia, education is historically built “from theory”. Partly because providing practical experience for hundreds of thousands of students is unrealistic. Therefore, not everyone reaches practical experience, or if they do, it is superficial. We learn languages by starting with grammar.

But almost any topic can be shifted from “acquiring knowledge” to “acquiring skills and abilities”. Yes, this would require somewhat more complex automation in the case of distance learning courses, but it would bring more benefits.

Online education should somehow move in this direction.

For example, today I am taking a course on GIT, which is a version control system. I know about 80-95% of it, but I’d like to improve on the remaining 10%, and I know the specific topics I need to brush up on. I could read the documentation, and even once read everything from ProGIT and understood it, but since I already have a subscription to educative, why not try there. The course there is excellently constructed—the terminal is integrated into the webpage and configured for the current topic. They also teach Python and Java. There are similar courses on Machine Learning.

But that’s only in programming and language learning. Almost everything else cannot be learned in this manner.

There are people who can create challenges for themselves and build skills independently. They have to go to thematic forums and ask for opinions of professionals for feedback, or form the right contacts to provide feedback.

There are few such people. Simply because to develop the skill of skill acquisition, they must have slightly missed out in life. If a child grows up in complete comfort, such a skill does not naturally develop. Because it’s not necessary. And later, in adulthood, developing this skill requires more effort, and many avoid such difficulties.

And so, I envision a network of educational centers, where each student has their own space, equipped with high-quality cameras, microphones, internet, computers, equipment, consumables, VR headsets. Students pay, of course, for renting such a center, as well as for the “teacher’s” time—or it is paid for by foundations or the state. In such a place, dawdling on your phone won’t be possible, as, through the camera system, the teacher can even see what’s in the phone’s messages. This same equipment can be rented and set up at home, if conditions allow. “Lessons” could be packaged in such a way that children would want, and even beg their parents to buy time there. Through such systems, you can teach embroidery and knitting, not to mention foreign languages and sciences.

All that is needed is to design such a room, select and standardize the equipment and software, wisely place cameras, create a marketplace for services, and develop a system for revenue sharing between authors and the service.

Who knows, maybe Facebook’s efforts in their Meta-universes will be a good kickstart.

How did it go again, “Hello, boss! Can I work from home today? My cat climbed on my lap and is purring. – Well, if that’s the case, then yes, of course!”. It’s different with our Yuki. Several times a day he approaches with one of his toys, places them next to me, and looks alternately at the toy and at me. And if I ignore him for too long (which is very hard), he places it on my desk. And it all repeats. Until I throw it. Then the heels flash. And half a minute later, again. Eyes, toy, sitting, waiting. Don’t rush, owner, I’ll wait, but persistently.

If he’s sitting looking out the window, and you approach to pet him, he’s like – oh, owner, you have some time. No need to waste it on idle chatter. I’ll bring the toy now. And he runs to another floor for it. Brings it. Well then, see point one

For the New Year, Santa brought a “smart speaker with a monitor” Facebook Portal.

Every time we go to our friends in New York, we sneak a peek at something of theirs. The time before last, we brought back the idea of a bicycle, last time—the idea of a robot vacuum, and this time—a little screen for the kitchen that can handle news, music, and calls.

Since there is not much information about Facebook Go online, I decided to drop it here. Maybe it will be useful to someone. The device was bought to listen to and watch news in the kitchen. We haven’t had a TV for many years, and using laptops in the kitchen isn’t really convenient. And out of all the talking assistants, the Facebook “Go” seemed most appealing.

Interesting features include:

* A movable wide-angle camera (125°), which follows your face or faces. For example, when you move closer or walk left-right, the camera turns with internal servomotors, so the face is almost always in the frame without wide-angle distortions. This is the coolest feature.

* portable

* very decent sound (5W + woofer 20W)

* good microphones

* photo-gallery for idle-mode (photo frame mode) — directly from Instagram and Facebook. A tap on the photos shows comments from Instagram

* calls to Messenger and WhatsApp in one click or one “say” (Call Rauf).

* supports Alexa. But there is also its own Hey Portal

* integration with Spotify and Pandora. I have a premium account on Spotify, works great.

* supports YouTube

* excellent screen with almost 180° viewing angle

* can call from the mobile app to the portal, but oddly, you can’t call from the portal to your own messenger.

Downsides:

* The app store exists but only has a couple dozen apps. For example, there are no messenger apps at all

* Supports multiple accounts, but switching them has to be done manually (with two taps), but the browser, for example, is shared across all accounts. In the end, if you switch from Nadya’s to my account, YouTube in the browser will still be logged in under Nadya. And Spotify is tied to all accounts (but this is not a problem).

* All searches in Spotify/Pandora are voice-only. You can’t type a band name, only speak it. Some you can hardly pronounce

* sadly, there’s no app for YouTube. Sadly, different accounts for YouTube are not supported

* oddly, there’s no app even for FB and Instagram. They could have been really cool. But anyway, you can still watch FB stories and posts, even scroll through them with voice (useless stuff)

* oddly, you can’t call from the portal to your own messenger or to the Portal app on mobile. In other words, to call Nadya from home, I need to change my profile to mine before calling (and then switch it back)

* no “auto pick-up” (drop-in) for calls from certain numbers. That would have been very convenient. Especially for elderly people. And to entertain a dog.

* does not support Netflix. Hard to explain why. Both FB and Netflix would benefit from it.

* the cradle is not very convenient. Put it slightly at the wrong angle – it doesn’t charge (and that needs to be noticed)

* if you’re watching YouTube on your phone, and then you want to continue watching on Portal, it’s not easy to do. You need to go into History on YouTube, and press on the last video. And if you watched from a different account on your phone, then it’s really unclear how to do it.

* no water protection at all. Kind of so-so for a kitchen, really

A very interesting video about how games are made – the complete process, with very good visualization. I regret that while working at Mail.ru, I never made it to the floor where games were developed. I’m not a gamer at all (haven’t played for about 20 years), but creating worlds is definitely my thing 🙂 I won’t make it into game design, but watching professionals do it is a pleasure.

Good, lots of new and interesting things