Tag: SAP

Celebrating a Milestone: Rauf Aliyev’s Programming Qualification from 1994 | March 21 2026, 13:54

Mom sent it. This was given to me when I graduated from school. The education was quite good back then, at least. Part of the science classes were conducted at the institute.

NFC Smart Lock Review: Battery Woes and Unexpected Vendor Response | March 13 2026, 18:49

At the beginning of the year, I bought an NFC smart lock for the front door for 170 bucks. Recently, I wrote a review on Amazon stating that the batteries lasted only a month and a half, and if it continues like this, I will end up paying almost the same amount annually. The manufacturer has responded saying they will refund the money. They didn’t ask to remove the review, and I don’t even know if that’s possible.

Gravitational Mastery: Semikhatov’s Cinematic Triumph | March 09 2026, 14:56

Semikhatov’s movie about gravity turned out to be really cool. Of course, it’s quite popular, but understandably so – they didn’t want to scare off the audience. It’s very cool and professionally made.

I have Semikhatov’s book on my shelf (“Everything That Moves”). It’s also popular, but it’s a bit more serious in its presentation, at times with formulas and loaded with illustrations. Later, my opinion of him slightly soured due to his specific way of conducting podcasts, constantly interrupting guests and answering his own questions in a way that outshines the guest demonstratively. But in the movie, he looks absolutely great. I recommend it.

The link is in the first comment.

Navigating the Tricky Path of Online Donations: A User Experience Dilemma | February 20 2026, 19:02

Here we have the ultimate tricksters. If you accidentally choose an answer for “would you like to donate?”, getting to “oh, I don’t want to yet” takes about 10 minutes and is fraught with the risk of losing your seats. Because 1) there is no option for ‘don’t want to’ 2) any selection ranges from $5 to $9.60 3) refreshing the page results in an error, forcing you to reselect seats and try not to hit those radio buttons again. And by the way, these were the last two seats in the auditorium. They weren’t available yesterday, but showed up today.

Navigating the Future: Embracing Earth’s Magnetic Field as a GPS Alternative | January 10 2026, 17:41

I learned today that there is and is actively used a technology for navigation using the Earth’s magnetic field. It is used as a replacement or an extension of GPS.

For example, there is the Scandinavian ferry Express 5 of Bornholmslinjen, which insures against GPS problems (which do happen) by using MagNav navigation. Unlike GPS, the Earth’s magnetic field cannot be jammed or spoofed—it simply exists. The ferry follows the same route, and generally, navigation could even be achieved through household fishing sonars.

But there are a few startups that use this technology for indoor navigation, where GPS signals cannot reach. It’s claimed that the navigation accuracy is within 1 meter. That’s more interesting.

GiPStech, Oriient, Mapsted.

The basis of this technology is a process called magnetic fingerprinting. Engineers or mapping robots walk through a building with a smartphone, recording unique distortions of the magnetic field at every point. These distortions are created by the steel frame of the building, rebar in the walls, and large electrical equipment. A database is formed where each coordinate (x, y, z) corresponds to its unique magnetic field vector (intensity, inclination, deviation).

The collected data is uploaded to the cloud platform of the provider company. There, they undergo noise cleaning and are “stitched” together with the digital floor plan. When a user walks through a shopping center, their smartphone reads data from the built-in magnetometer in real-time. Special software (SDK) compares the current readings with those stored in the database. For accuracy to be within 1–2 meters, the system relies not only on magnets. It uses sensor fusion—combining data from the magnetic field with inertial sensors (accelerometer counts steps, gyroscope determines turns) and sometimes Wi-Fi/Bluetooth signals for rough localization.

This technology is certainly being actively implemented for drones. The main technical difficulty there is dealing with their own interference and considering that the magnetic field changes, requiring constant map updates. Electrics, engines create strong magnetic fields, which “drown out” the natural background of the Earth. However, various filtering algorithms (including neural networks) are used, which in real-time “subtract” motor interference from the overall sensor readings. From what I understand, at high altitudes (kilometers), the magnetic field is more “smooth”, therefore the accuracy is lower (about 1–5 km). But if several drones fly together and exchange signals, overall they can provide very good accuracy each. Additionally, a group of drones can measure the gradient (rate of change) of the magnetic field in space, tying location not to absolute values, but to relative ones. Essentially, using a group of drones turns the navigation system from a set of individual receivers into a distributed phased array antenna, capable of filtering global interferences and working with much weaker useful signals. Considering that small drones capable of staying airborne for long periods can be released into the air by the hundreds (and cost pennies), this is a quite promising area for military.

There’s an interesting startup, Zerokey. They release QUANTUM RTLS 2.0. This device provides spatial accuracy to 1.5mm. It’s used in production, for example. Their video shows a “watch” on a worker’s hand that monitors the correctness of assembling something on a table. Here, the principle is ultrasonic, and it’s understandable that these “watches” are paired with stationary sensors and further multilateration.

Misadventures in AWS: Misusing aws-nuke for Configuration Exports | December 12 2025, 16:29

Just for laughs. I asked Gemini how to export the entire AWS configuration for local analysis, and they recommended using the aws-nuke command for permanently deleting everything, but if you add a dry-run flag, you’ll get the configuration… and someone actually follows such advice 🙂 and then we wonder

Living Without Autopilot: A Surprising Reunion with My Tesla’s Upgraded Skills | December 09 2025, 19:30

Lived several months without autopilot in the car, now I turned it on, and during this time the car has learned not only to drive to a location across the city and through backroads, but also to find parking at the destination and park itself. But when I told it to come home, specifically pointing it to where it gets fed (charger), it stopped in front of the neighbor’s house. Makes you think;) but overall, very cool, Tesla

Smart Car Seat Selection: How My Tesla Knows the Driver | November 03 2025, 14:29

Incidentally, in my Tesla, there’s a very clever system for identifying the driver. If I enter the car first but sit in the passenger seat, placing my phone immediately in the central console for charging, and then Nadia enters second but sits in the driver’s seat and also places her phone there, her profile is selected automatically because she’s the driver, even though both phones are on charge under the central console.

So, there are two possibilities: either there is an antenna which can precisely detect that a phone has crossed the driver’s door rather than entering the car in any other way, or there is a camera focused on the driver. In any case, it’s very reassuring that it “just works”.