Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev.

I recently started reading a very captivating book by Ed Yong, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us (in Russian translation – Необъятный мир: Как животные ощущают скрытую от нас реальность). I want to summarize each chapter on Facebook to get a better grasp of the subject. Also, as a side effect, to entertain people, although I am doing this more for myself 🙂

I’ve just got hooked on a topic, and went online to dig up details. The topic is – why are there so few blue creatures? There are many red, yellow, brown ones, but few blue ones. It turns out, it’s even more interesting—there are practically no animals with blue pigment. But it’s curious that it’s not “none,” but “practically none”. Interestingly, the same nearly holds true for green.

Let’s start with what a pigment is. Pigments are substances that physically absorb certain wavelengths of light and reflect others, which determines their color. For example, a pigment absorbing red and green light will appear blue. But most likely all the blue you see on animals is not the result of blue pigment. It’s the result of a special physical structure of the surface. These structures are microscopically small and manipulate light through diffraction, interference, and scattering. As a result, the color appears bright and sometimes changes depending on the viewing angle. For example, peacock feathers do not contain blue pigment, but thanks to microscopic structures, they reflect blue light. Pigments work through chemical composition, while structural colors through the physical structure of the surface.

So, everything that comes to mind as blue—butterflies, peacocks, birds like blue jays, blue spiders, blue sharks—none of them have blue pigment. But there are interesting exceptions. For example, the butterfly obrina olivewing has a natural chemical blue pigment in its wings.

You might ask, what about blue eyes? The trick is that blue eyes don’t really exist. Generally, humans have several important pigments that mix to give new colors. For instance, the main pigment, melanin, determines the color of the eyes (and skin, and hair). It comes in two main types: eumelanin (which can be black or brown) and pheomelanin (which gives reddish-yellow hues). So, blue eyes are those without any melanin. The blue color of the eyes is formed by a combination of structural color and the absence of melanin pigment in the front part of the iris. Here, a phenomenon known as Rayleigh scattering also plays a role, which also accounts for the blue color of the sky. The light scatters in the tissues of the iris, with shorter waves of light (blue and green) scattering more than longer wavelengths (red and green). By the way, it participates in the green color of the eyes too. Humans and animals do not have green pigment. The green color in animals is often the result of a combination of yellow pigment and blue structural coloring. In other words, almost all natural life primarily consists of a combination of black/brown/reddish-yellow (melanin), red (hemoglobin), yellow-orange (carotenoids, bilirubin). That’s why earthy paints—sienna, umber, ochre—are often used in portraits. Speaking of carotenoids – flamingos are actually born gray, but because they eat small red crustaceans containing carotenoids, they acquire a pink color.

Speaking of beautiful butterflies. It turned out that butterflies actually barely see each other as we see them. I mean, they almost don’t see everything clearly. Unlike the human three-color retina (blue, green, and red cones; plus rods) and honeybees (ultraviolet, blue and green photoreceptors), the retina of butterflies usually has six or more classes of photoreceptors with different spectral sensitivities. I attached a picture from the book—how a flower with a butterfly on it map butterfly sees a reed bunting and a Eurasian blackbird. There are convincing reasons to believe that butterfly vision is almost non-existent. But what they do have is very, very specific and probably just one component of the olfactory picture of the world. So all this beauty on their wings—it’s not even for each other. It’s sort of a side effect. That is, evolution selected for large spots, but all sorts of small patterns just went along for the ride.

Oh, also about the perception of colors. I attached a picture of how the Himba people of African ethnicity perceive colors. They don’t immediately notice the blue square on the right side, because their language uses the same word for blue and green. But they have no trouble distinguishing the square encircled, because from childhood they are trained to discern this difference and they have two words designating them in their language.

Anyway, if you’re interested, I’ll keep writing stuff like this. It’s quite simple for me to do, and generally interesting to Google more about what I’ve read than the book goes into.

Today, Masha and Nadia became U.S. citizens! The ceremony could, of course, have been a bit more pompous. Some people have been striving for this day much longer than us; I wouldn’t be surprised if there are those who have waited for about twenty years, and whose journey included hardships and working for an exploitative company sponsoring their “green card.”

The process involves a five-year residency period known as a “Green Card.” It is obtained either through a lottery or through company sponsorship — the latter is my case. The duration to obtain the “green card” can range from one and a half years (my case) to forever. Those coming from India, the Philippines, China, Mexico might wait 10 years, and during this time, they must work for the sponsoring company. If they quit, finding a new sponsor is definitely more difficult than just finding a job. After five years with the “green card,” you can apply for citizenship. It’s “can,” not “must.” The Green Card can be renewed indefinitely. One downside is that you’re still a guest, and if the state has a reason to ask you to leave, mechanisms exist to do that. True, such reasons include, for example, serious violations of the law. But who knows, in general, people without citizenship but with residency status are somewhat vulnerable.

With citizenship, the whole world opens up, as the American passport opens doors to many countries (about 180).

There is a view that taxation becomes more stringent upon obtaining citizenship — if you work, say, in Brazil, you have to pay taxes in both Brazil and the U.S. That’s actually the case even without citizenship. If you hold a green card, yes, you must pay taxes in the U.S. even if you do not live there. However, if you’re abroad for more than six months a year with a green card, that may be enough for it to be taken away. So, the main difference is that with a green card, in the event of a violation of tax law, you can weigh the benefits and, if needed, wave goodbye to America from, say, Brazil, without paying anything on those earned hundred million. True, afterwards, getting a visa might be difficult, but when you’ve made a hundred million there, maybe you wouldn’t need it anymore. With citizenship, this won’t work. The same Brazil, upon request from the U.S., will find and deport you. And they will take and split those hundred million.

Yes, some also asked about the documents — citizens and permanent residents don’t really differ in their “everyday life” documents. Roughly speaking, the hotel has no idea whether you are a citizen or just some guy who came on a visa and works here. Also, unless specifically asked, you wouldn’t know the status of someone on your team. (Well, apart from the fact that it’s improper to ask such questions, it’s also unclear why one would need to know.)

Congrats to Nadia and Masha, Lisa’s turn is coming up soon too 😉

Well, America! We are no longer just guests with you! Eight years from H1B to citizenship. Hey, America! We are no longer guests here! Eight years from H1B to a passport.

8 years in one place! That’s crazy, I used to start looking for something new after just 2-3 years. But it’s because at EPAM it feels like you’re changing jobs (=projects) every few years or even more often, only the badge remains the same. Maybe the title gets upgraded, too.

Ultimately, over these eight years, I essentially worked with the world’s biggest niche e-commerce businesses. These are worldwide businesses with millions of products and massive traffic, usually brands that everyone knows. Probably, there are about three that are the largest, plus many smaller ones that are well-known in their field.

In essence, each project is like a separate job. There’s a distinct team, only partially consisting of EPAM colleagues, its own technologies, its own know-how. Typically, I am involved in two roles on such projects — Solution Architect and Senior Java Developer / Team Lead. I’ve largely moved away from management, retaining only the part that falls under Team Lead.

Formally, my current title is Chief Software Engineer L2. I transitioned into this from Solution Architect because over time I realized that I was slightly uncomfortable in the SA crowd: too much about diagrams and not enough hands-on. You occasionally meet SAs who barely understand what’s under the hood, or understand it in theory only (though sometimes well). But the position itself doesn’t really decide much. It can’t be completely ignored because it somewhat ties to the salary, but in general, what I do matters to me more than what I am called.

Essentially, I am now drawing the same diagrams and discussing the same solutions, but in between, I dive into tons of Java Spring code (including or not including SAP Commerce Platform) and periodically contribute to it. Every now and then, I have to puzzle over various borderline things between programming, networking, and server administration in a cluster.

Our company just turned 30 years old. It’s nice to see that things are going very well, and even known problems have been survived without major losses. The company has fully recovered, moved everyone who needed to be (and could be, and wanted to) to safe places. Work continues.

In general, thank you #EPAM

If you tell Siri “Set an alarm, 4:20pm,” she will set the alarm for 8 PM because she wants you to say “Set an alarm FOR 4:20pm.” Meanwhile, “Set up an alarm, 4:50pm” and similar commands she understands perfectly.

Yesterday, the ducks on the pond had a massive fight, it was very spectacular, very loud, feathers and splashes everywhere, but I didn’t film it. And today I came across a sad fox. Either she is ill, or she overate mice for the New Year.

A very good review of bad oil paintings by ART OBSTREL. Let’s go to calibrate our eyes. Generally, Nikolay Ryndin is really cool, he has a lot to say on the topic.

Here’s more (probably the last) about Elon Musk based on the biography by Isaacson I’ve read. In my head, like “books similar to this one,” an intracerebral recommendation system pulled out two from the archives – Endurance by Alfred Lansing (Russian translation “Leadership in the Ice”) and “The Russian Management Model” by Prokhorov.

Let’s start with Prokhorov. Generally, his book is quite controversial. The main idea is that the organization/system/people in Russia have always existed (due to historical, political, climatic, and various other conditions) in only two extreme states—stable and unstable. Stable—everything is fine, stagnation, everyone evenly goes to work and gets paid. Unstable—red alert, aortic rupture, working 70 hours a day, seizing enemy crossings and outposts with a nail in the fist. And then half the book covers the justification and symptomatology. In particular, an excess of resources makes their more efficient use meaningless. Then why spend effort on analyzing management, improving business processes, quality systems, if there are internal reserves hidden, and external ones (for example, through administrative pressure)? Conclusion: artificially limit the available resources. Need more people for the operation—reduce it. Need more disks, memory, or processing power—reduce the size. Need more time to resolve issues in meetings—limit the time for meetings and the number of participants. This engages the brains and leads to faster progress. It is possible that the path to such progress is paved with maimed fates, burnt-out employees, and periodic mistakes, but here comes the effect of “a seesaw” and “all-in” bets—you need it so that 1) there was an excess of resources 2) at least once in the beginning you were incredibly lucky with all-in, and now you can risk more than others, losing only part at worst when others in the same situation would lose everything.

Why controversial—if one can somehow (with a star*) agree that Prokhorov’s theory somehow explains Russia and the USSR from ancient times to the end of the 20th century, it just doesn’t fit at all into the 21st century. At least the first 23 years of the 21st century don’t fit into it at all. Something broke in the 21st century.

The second book that comes to mind, “Endurance” (translated as “Leadership in the Ice”) tells about the legendary expedition of Ernest Shackleton (1914-1916) to Antarctica. Essentially, Shackleton overestimated his efforts, went all-in, but for a number of reasons, the plan of this heroic expedition failed at an early stage, as the ship carrying the team was crushed by ice and sank. After that, it was only about survival.

By the way, one can draw a parallel between the British conquest of Antarctica and the American conquest of space. In the history of conquering the South Pole, a key moment was the competition between Roald Amundsen’s expedition from Norway and Robert Scott from Great Britain. Amundsen reached the South Pole first (with a month’s difference) in 1911, beating Scott, which was perceived as a national defeat for Britain. Shackleton’s expedition was largely financed with the goal of regaining former glory. In the moon exploration, a similar role was played by the race between the USA and the USSR during the Cold War, during which the USA, though the first to successfully land a man on the Moon in 1969 during the Apollo 11 mission, failed to secure dominance—truthfully, for the USSR the Moon became uninteresting as soon as they lost the lead. But the USA didn’t secure it either—no one has flown to the Moon since then. And now, Elon Musk has regained the leadership for the Americans. Russia is now way behind. However, China has grown, and India is catching up.

Shackleton recruited for his “startup” using such advertising: “Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger; safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success.” He needed four qualities from people: optimism, patience, imagination, and courage.

In the end, he received 5,000 responses (including three women), from which he eventually selected a necessary crew of 27 people, dividing them into three piles labeled “Mad,” “Hopeless,” and “Possible.”

(Although it must be noted that there are very well-founded and scientific doubts that this legend about the advertisement and 5,000 responses is a fabricated tale. But I am sure that there’s a lot of similar stuff about Musk as well.)

Musk fired people from Twitter based on how well they knew their subject matter (“excellence”), then sifted them through a sieve of “trustworthiness” and further through the third sieve of persistence and perseverance (“drive”). In the end, he kept 25%.

If Shackleton had just died in the ice with his team, he would have been remembered as an idiot. But since he pulled his entire team out alive, without a single corpse, they don’t call his attempt to cross Antarctica idiotic (although if you look at what risks were ignored…). Musk has been more fortunate with such an approach so far. And each time he’s lucky, he not only gains more credit for future experiments, but also better risk management mechanisms.

But all of them, “The Russian Management Model” by Prokhorov, Musk, and Shackleton, are about the same thing. In cases when people start looking for solutions in extreme conditions, far from comfort, the solutions often emerge faster and better.

Overall, I finished reading Elon Musk’s biography just before the chimes.🎉🎇🧨

An interesting story is described in Musk’s biography. There are many tales there, but this one delighted me because it’s not about cars and rockets, but about servers, which is closer to me.

Just a couple of days before Christmas, the admins rush in saying, “one of our hosts started doubting whether Twitter would survive and reconsidered the moving conditions.” Twitter cost this host more than $100 million a year, and it was decided to move the servers to Portland, where Musk had better terms and a lower price. Apparently, the host initially agreed to give some preferential rates during the moving period, and then retracted it, fearing that the company would collapse sooner.

“We need six to nine months to move. The servers are in prod, handling traffic, everything needs to be switched over intelligently.” Musk: “Guys, you have 90 days for this. If you can’t handle it, don’t bother coming back to work.”

The admins try to explain that it’s not that simple. There are various densities of racks, electrical consumption, the place needs to be rebuilt for the servers.

Musk listened and listened, then interrupted with, “guys, you’re blowing my mind. You remember that emoji? This is exactly what’s happening. Don’t bother me with all this nonsense, just take the servers and move them to the new place.”

The admins continue to talk about the difficulties. “So, can someone go to the server room and send some photos from there?”. Mind you, this was just before Christmas, they say it’ll take a week for photos. “No, I need them tomorrow. I built those damn data centers myself, and I can tell whether or not more can be fitted in. So I ask you, have you ever been there? If you haven’t, there’s nothing to discuss.”

“All you need to do is load these damn servers onto a truck, and bring them from Sacramento to Portland. If that takes more than 30 days, it’ll definitely blow my mind. So.. Get a carrier, it takes a week to move the servers and another week to connect them. Two weeks in total. That’s how it should look. Just grab a U-Haul and go.”

The next day, December 23rd, almost on Christmas Eve, Musk with his family – wife Grimes, two-year-old son named X, two engineer brothers who were also involved in the Twitter story, suddenly decide en route to Austin over Las Vegas to move the servers right now.

The pilot turns around, Musk looks for a rental car, they find a Toyota Corolla. The child back, the rest cram in as best they can. It’s unclear if anyone is in the data center for Christmas.

There was one engineer from Twitter there, Alex-Uzbek. The data center was ultra-modern, with retina scanners and all that. Twitter’s server room looked like 5200 racks each the size of a refrigerator. “Okay, looks like they should manage it.” Okay, should manage, you think, 6200 tons of metal.

“Actually, a special contractor is needed to lift the floor – for that, special suction cups are required. Then another contractor is needed to disconnect the right cables under the floor and not disconnect the wrong ones.”

Musk pulls out a Swiss army knife and through the ventilation crawls into the space under the floor. Disconnects the servers. Done!

The next day, on Christmas Eve, there’s a buzz in San Francisco. Ross Norden hops into an Apple store and buys all the AirTags in stock for $2000, so they can track the servers en route. Then to Home Depot, where he spends another $2500 on various tools and cutting equipment. Steve Davis finds trucks, some from Boring Company, some random ones.

Fortunately, the racks are on wheels, so the team successfully loads four out of 5200 in the first hours. Everyone’s sweating, but at least it’s clear that the entire network can be loaded in days, not months, if more people and machines are connected.

The rest of the data center staff watch this and are flabbergasted.

If not to say more.

In the meantime, the management of NTT, the data center owner, learns about what’s happening and they’re flabbergasted too. And they order to end the chaos.

It turns out that the data center floors were built for a specific load and it’s not advisable to carry several heavy racks without special equipment. The entire load exceeds the permissible load fivefold.

To which Musk replies, they’re actually on wheels, so the load is distributed on four points, and we almost fit.

NTT realizes they’ve just lost $100 million in revenue for the next year.

NTT staff do everything possible to complicate their work and make them postpone it at least until after the holidays. One lady there was tailing them and being a pain. “She was the most unbearable character I’ve had to work with. But I can understand her – because of us she misses Christmas”

Moving carriers, usually recommended by NTT, often charge something like $200 an hour. James Mask found a company on Yelp, Extra Care Movers, for twenty bucks. The owner lived on the street, then had a child, and decided to start earning somehow. He didn’t have a bank account, and James paid him five-figure sums in cash. The workers didn’t have documents, so getting them into the data center was a separate problem. “I pay an extra dollar tip for each additional server.”

Interestingly, there’s a regulation that personal data must be deleted from servers before moving. By the time they learned about it, the servers had already been loaded. There was a risk that if one of the servers arrived wrong, the reputational losses would be monstrous. James sent someone to Home Depot to buy barn door locks and sent an Excel sheet with codes to Portland.

Moving 700 racks took three days. The previous data center record was thirty a month. The rest were moved in January.

“Looking back, it can be said that the closure in Sacramento was a mistake,” Musk told Isaacson. “I was told we had redundancy between our data centers. But I wasn’t told we had 70,000 hard-coded links to Sacramento. And because of that, things are still broken.”