Tag: Tech

Exploring TestMySearch.com’s Virtual Shopper System | August 15 2025, 04:27

As part of the TestMySearch.com project, I am creating a “virtual shopper” system that simulates the behavior of a real user in an online store: it starts with an abstract goal (for example, “something bright and sexy for the gym”), turns it into a specific search query, performs the search on the site, and depending on the results, may either continue browsing or, with a certain probability, reformulate the query if the findings do not match the original goal; the system then evaluates the pages for their alignment with the initial idea, opens product cards, randomly changes parameters such as color or size, makes decisions about adding to the cart and placing an order, and may also leave the site, which allows generating many sessions similar to real ones overnight for testing search, filters, and recommendations even before live users arrive.

The system is fully automatic. That is, the browser in the video opens by itself, the search field appears by itself (i.e., independent of the site), the system itself concocts the text based on that very initial goal, then the facets and search results are displayed, which may also be in a form unpredictable to the system — but it still understands what is what, and makes decisions about whether to rephrase the query, select a facet or click on a search result. There is a certain probability that the virtual user will leave the site. If the query is reformulated, for example, this virtual user does not repeat queries that have already led to empty or irrelevant results, so within the session there is “memory”.

The 55 mph Speed Limit: Energy Crisis and State Autonomy in the U.S. | August 13 2025, 01:32

It turned out that the 55 mph speed limit in the USA was the result of the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act, which was adopted in response to the OPEC oil embargo, causing sharp price increases and oil supply disruptions. It was believed that by limiting speed, fuel consumption would be reduced. It worked, but a reduction of 2.2% was predicted, though the actual savings were only about 0.5–1%.

If a state did not comply, it would lose federal funding for the repair and construction of roads. In 1987–1988, Congress allowed states to raise the speed limit to 65 mph on certain rural interstates, and in 1995, the federal “national maximum” was abolished altogether and authority was returned to the states.

Before the national speed limit was introduced, Montana had no set speed limit. Instead, the law stated that a person should drive at a “safe and reasonable speed,” which was essentially determined by a police officer. There is a tale about a NASCAR driver who was stopped for driving about 120 miles per hour on Highway 2 and was not fined because for him 120 mph was considered “safe and reasonable.”

After the imposition of the 55 mph speed limit, Montana resisted as much as it could. The speed limit was a national law, but the consequences for its violation were determined by the states. Montana lowered the speeding fine to $5 and made sure the violation did not go on the driver’s record. It became common practice to put $5 bills over the sun visor and drive at any speed you liked.

There’s even a song from those times, “I Can’t Drive 55” (Sammy Hagar).

By the way, slightly off topic. My Tesla Model Y costs more in taxes (annual registration) than a gasoline car does because there is a special charge, introduced in 2020, to compensate for state revenue lost from the fuel tax — since electric vehicles do not refill with gasoline, and the state under-collects. The amount of this charge is fixed and equals 85% of the equivalent fuel tax a gasoline car driver would have paid given the same average distance and fuel consumption. As a result, electric vehicle owners pay about $128.14 a year (data for 2024–2025). Gasoline car owners pay significantly less. The last time I was stopped by the police in Washington for having an expiration of one and a half years, I had to park the car and urgently arrange payment – it was a few dozen dollars. After paying, I continued on, but with a fine of a couple hundred dollars.

The Art of Illusion in Pricing: Dishwasher Capsules and Subscription Models | August 09 2025, 13:06

An interesting marketing tactic: three different types of dishwasher capsules are sold at the same price: good Complete, premium, and premium plus. Identical packaging, identical prices, but of course, a different number of capsules. For example, platinum has 59 capsules, while the plus version has 47. It seems such odd numbers hardly register in the buyer’s mind, but not every buyer fundamentally thinks about whether it’s important for them to save money. However, if you compare the extreme versions, the platinum plus version is simply twice as expensive as the complete version.

Another interesting example – a subscription to LLM (Chatgpt, Gemini) for $200 a month. It would seem, what fool would pay a couple of hundred for something barely better than the basic for $20-30. But it’s a very sensible decision when you have a market of hundreds of millions of users: most of them are organizations. For an organization, $200 a month is not much different from $20 a month, both are negligible for the budget. Well, okay, even multiplying by hundreds and thousands of subscriptions, there are those who place themselves among slightly more premium clients at a small price for them.

Exploring the Intrigue of 657 New Words in the Russian Orthographic Dictionary | August 08 2025, 18:46

657 new words were added to the RAN orthographic dictionary — for instance, “smoothie,” “TikToker,” “powerbank,” and “SVO.” I decided to check out their complete list. Let’s head to the Akademos website and type “2025” in the search.

(Putin’s advisor wrote that “SVO” is correct, but anglicisms are unnecessary. In my opinion, anglicisms are perfectly fine, but with everything else — they truly break the Russian language. Check it out)

Noble-metallic, Bodrich-style and Radimich-style, Byzantinizing, suitable-for-vine-growing, humanizing, icy-frosty, two-strap, Dregovichanka, jacaranda, children-foreign-phoned, “Devo: Virgin Mary Devo” (that’s an entry in the dictionary), fear-of-women, back-of-the-chair, koin, literature-centricity, petty-little-thing (is it describing a woman or a coin?), over-door-woman, Nibelung-esque, nonillion (I guess needed for fining Google), deaeration, Palaiologos and Pantalone, varicolored, petrosphere, to preexist, family-preservation, strongly-fleeing and moderately-fleeing, scrambled.

Interestingly, there is an entry “firmly promised,” written with a space inside.

And there is Sloboda Ukraine there.

There’s offline-messenger! and proxy-list. And torrent-client.

In 2025 “FIFA (International Federation of Association Football)” and “Dictionary of Modern Russian Literary Language” were added to the orthographic dictionary. There’s separately, “Doomsday: Doomsday plane”

There’s taphophilia — a fascination with cemeteries.

And there is philosemitism. As I understand it, it’s the same as Judophilia — manifestations of interest, respect for the Jewish people, their historical significance, and a positive appraisal of the influence of Judaism in history. Where do they even get such words?

Added to the dictionary were west-northwest-er (apparently, a direction slightly west of northwest) and west-southwest-er.

There’s late-developing and later-developing.

If you go on a diet, know that there’s a word for de-fatting. And then there’s a chance that you’ll become an ectomorph — also a word in this dictionary.

There are also drone and pilot-borehole.

Yet among the new words of 2025 there’s “coup d’état”.

Unexpected Repair Success at a Premium Bike Shop | August 07 2025, 02:41

Today, I had a little odyssey trying to find a place to tune up my bike. It’s a few years old, tired, and in need of attention. I visited three shops, each told me it would take at least a week or two and would cost about 200 dollars. Everyone said there were thirty people ahead of me. Eventually, I took a chance and went to the last shop which I initially thought was too premium and expensive to consider at all: their main inventory includes triathlon Cervelo and Factor bikes with five-digit price tags. But here’s the surprise: they took the bike right away, told me to wait for a call today, and if anything serious—a decision from me would be required. In the evening, they called and told me it was all done, and the cost… just 32 dollars! I’m very glad that I did not have to overpay or wait for weeks.

This goes to show that sometimes, to achieve something, you just need to act contrary to standard patterns of behavior.

Unlocking Smartwatches with Unique Heart Rhythms: A Missed Opportunity? | August 06 2025, 16:43

Why has no one made it so that smartwatches only unlock on the wrist of their owner, reading their unique heartbeat or other biometric data? This is in addition to having the owner’s phone nearby.

Officially, you can’t disable this in the settings of an Apple Watch — Apple intentionally made it such that when you put on the watch for the first time each day, it always requires a code, even if the iPhone is nearby. This is due to security policy: the watch may end up on someone else’s wrist, and the phone may just be nearby.

Moreover, every person has unique heart rhythm patterns, which include, for example, slight variations in the intervals between heartbeats, characteristics of the heart signal shape, and how the heart responds to different stresses. These microscopic differences create a unique picture” of heart rhythm that is difficult to fake or replicate. Watches have quite a lot of time, after being worn and before they are needed unlocked, to collect, process, and decide whether to unlock or not.

Navigating Code Generation with AI: Essential Skills for Programmers | August 04 2025, 14:28

I am currently using Gemini extensively for code generation, and I see a skill that programmers need to have to be successful in this field. It’s the ability to quickly read and understand someone else’s code, as well as explain why AI generation needs to be redone and how. For the former, you simply need to know the language very well and read “from the sheet,” because there will be little time to ponder. For the latter, you need to know patterns well and understand where they apply and where they do not. AI will still mess up using patterns inappropriately for a long time.

Moreover, a person will still need to understand “as a whole” 90% of the code generated by AI, and also manage to find time to comprehend each generated line of code. If you relax and miss it, the system may produce even working, but very poorly maintainable code. For instance, there is an unwritten rule that individual files should not contain so much code, and if it grows, you need to refactor, breaking one large into two or three. Sometimes this requires rewriting logic, but this rewriting is always aimed at one task – to simplify maintenance. And AI, while rewriting, also “improves” the code at the same time. And this is quite difficult to prohibit.

In addition, the very concept of LLM implies the limitation of the contextual window. Which gets filled with code very quickly. To create an illusion for the user that everything is working even with a large volume of code, LLMs are able to do preliminary processing, extracting only relevant pieces for processing and setting aside irrelevant ones, so that the relevant ones fit into the actual contextual window. But this process is very unreliable, and once it works, and the second time it turns out that something important was set aside, and as a result, the system did not see the whole picture and generated code, which includes a function very similar to the function set aside, and now we have two almost identical ones.

Besides, currently logic is distributed between the DB and the code. That is, data often controls the code. And data in LLMs simply often do not fit. There is too much of it. In the end, without programmers, current LLM architectures cannot cope. But the requirements for programmers’ qualifications will only increase with LLMs, not decrease. So yes, juniors should be worried, but leads not so much 🙂

Aluminum: From Precious Metal to Everyday Marvel | August 03 2025, 01:09

The USA imports aluminum mainly from Canada because aluminum leaves Canada and arrives in the USA. And from Europe, it would be alumin𝒊um!

Also, sapphires and rubies are essentially rusty aluminum, where in the process the new material becomes much harder than the original. In interaction with oxygen, different varieties of the mineral corundum are formed, which chemically is crystalline aluminum oxide (formula Al₂O₃). And bulletproof glass is essentially transparent rusty aluminum, aluminum oxide, but with aluminum nitride.

Also, aluminum was the most valuable metal on Earth until the 20th century. When Napoleon III entertained guests, they ate with golden spoons, while he used an aluminum one. And the “cap” of our Washington Monument is made of aluminum for that very reason.

Alaska Airlines Omits Boeing Branding from Safety Cards: A Strategic Move? | July 31 2025, 13:18

When I flew to Seattle and back on Alaska Airlines, I noticed that the Safety Card in the seat made no mention of the plane being a Boeing (left picture mine, second one from online). Not even in fine print. Only the model was specified — in my case, a 737 MAX, incidentally the same model from which a door detached mid-flight on an Alaska plane. So, from the inside of the plane, it’s impossible to tell whether it’s a Boeing, an Airbus, or a McDonnell Douglas, unless you know that 737 is only made by Boeing.

My first thought was, of course, what else could Alaska do to salvage its reputation, except to remove the word Boeing wherever possible.

But it turns out this has been the case before. One of the Alaska flight attendants mentioned that it’s been like this for about 8 years, at least. Another flight attendant confirmed that this is the case with all planes.

It seems that they simply don’t want to promote another company for free, and Boeing certainly doesn’t want to pay all the airlines for such advertising, meanwhile charging them for every little thing. And they cannot oblige them either. An interesting case indeed.

DIY Wireless Reaction Game: Building Interactive Button-Based Activities | July 28 2025, 22:26

Who knows their way around electronics? Any recommendations?

I want to make a thing some weekend. A big bulbous button. It lights up – you smash it. The app records the time from when it lights up to when it’s smashed. There might be several buttons and they could be scattered – on walls or the floor. WIRELESS. They might light up randomly – this is controlled by the app (phone or computer). Metrics like average reaction time are calculated on the fly for different understandings of the word ‘average’. For instance, you could place buttons on the ground a few meters apart and invent a moving game for the kids. Or attach them to a wall and smash them with a ball. Basically, it’s a technical question.

How would you do it – dumb buttons on an nRF24L01+ chip or smart buttons on an esp32 microcontroller?

In the first case, every such module listens to the radio: as soon as a command with its ID arrives from the central node, it turns on the light. After the button is pressed, it sends back a “pressed” message. The timer is on the side of the central node. Each button has an Arduino Pro Mini + nRF24L01+, but there will also be a central hub with either nRF24L01+ and Arduino Uno, Mega or ESP32, which collects the data and is connected to the computer (Bluetooth or WiFi).

In the second case, the buttons are connected via Bluetooth (BLE) or WiFi. The brains of the button is the ESP32, which needs to be programmed through a programmer.

Cost-wise, both approaches are roughly the same minus the cost of arcade buttons and 3D printing, somewhere around $10-15 per button.