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Energomera CE6806P: Bridging Analog and Digital in Energy Metering

Level of difficultyMedium
Reading time10 min
Views801

How did engineers in the past manage to measure electrical power without modern microchips and DSPs? This article explores the Energomera CE6806P, a device created in 2006 for verifying electricity meters, yet built using 1980s-era technology.

We’ll take a closer look at its design, principles of operation, and how discrete-analog solutions were used to achieve high accuracy. The Energomera is a fascinating example of engineering and ingenuity, giving us a unique perspective on the evolution of electrical measurement devices.

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7 tips to make video learning more effective

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time5 min
Views7.1K

While video-based learning continues to rank high in the latest trends, there are a few points that are regularly overlooked in the production of learning videos, with a focus on user experience (UX) and user interaction 

People really enjoy watching videos. According to a survey conducted among consumers worldwide, respondents watched an average of 19 hours of online video content per week in 2022. And nearly half of all internet users watch online videos at least once a week.

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Designing for Success: Crafting Effective Learning Experiences

Level of difficultyMedium
Reading time7 min
Views6.6K

The Challenge of Mandatory Learning
Once we had several mandatory learning courses designed to be passed successfully by all employees. Still, many of them struggled to do so. Reminder emails to all participants could not solve the issue. And that is when my team was summoned to develop a thorough plan to reduce the number of overdue courses to a minimum. Of course, we were asked to develop something fun and engaging.

Uncovering the Root Problems
While working on the project, we managed to uncover several problems with course assignments, including the fact that they were not offered just in time, there were too many of them, and all of them had different due dates, which made it impossible to remember when to complete them. Additionally, we found that the content itself was often dry and unengaging, further contributing to the lack of motivation among employees. Finally, we came up with a system of notifications that included clear explanatory reminder emails, an escalation system, and a redesign of the course content to make it more interactive and relevant to employees' daily work. The result was almost no overdue courses after system integration.

The Myth of Mandatory Fun
So the case first seemed to be about motivation and engagement, but it is actually about smart course design that allows people to worry about work tasks instead of worrying about course assignments. It's also about creating content that resonates with the learners and helps them see the value in the training.

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Writing The Matrix in Python

Reading time6 min
Views4.5K

Programming textbooks usually do not indulge us with variety of examples. In most manuals, exercises are similar to each other and not particularly interesting: create another address book, draw a circle using turtle, develop a website for a store selling some kind of "necessary" advertising nonsense. Too far from the authentic imitation of "The Matrix". Although…

How about taking over the control and starting to invent exercises yourself?

Would you like to write your own personal little "Matrix"? Of course, not the one with skyscrapers, stylish phones of the time, and the ubiquitous invincible Agent Smiths. We will need a couple of more months of learning for that. But any beginner programmer can write a model of the cult splash screensaver with the green streams of digits flowing down the screen. Let's try to creat it in the "great and mighty" Python.

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Спасти производство во время пандемии: личный опыт

Reading time6 min
Views124
Вызванный пандемией экономический кризис ударил по экономикам всего мира двумя путями: снижение и частичная остановка экономической активности из-за карантинных мер в разных странах, и вызванными локдаунами нарушениями цепочек производства и поставок. Одно из достижений, которым гордилась современная экономика — это тонко настроенное глобальное разделение труда, при котором логистические цепочки растянуты по всей планете, и поставки по ним ходят «встык», без задержек — и, как следствие того, без запаса.



В результате этого, выход из карантинного состояния обернулся для многих секторов экономики, своего рода, афтершоком. После периода просевшего спроса и нарушенных цепочек производства-поставки, они столкнулись с эффектом отложенного спроса — и даже просто возвращение к докризисному уровню оказалось шоковым для выходящих из экономической гибернации бизнесов. Как результат — возникли перегрев рынка и инфляция в отдельных сферах экономики. Многие потребители в тех или иных сферах ощутили на себе, как продукты и услуги, невостребованные, когда им было не до них в разгар локдаунов и связанных с ними проблем, оказались в дефиците или подорожали после ослабления карантинных мер.

В этой ситуации выиграли те бизнесы, которые были готовы к такому повороту событий. Разумеется, подготовиться к замедлению экономической активности заранее никто не мог, поскольку предсказать серьёзность мер в ответ на пандемию до их принятия во многих случаях до последнего момента не могли даже правительства разных стран, то предугадать их экономические последствия на ход-два вперёд было вполне возможно.
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Who controls App Store: Martians or AI? Closed session of Russia's Federation Council and Apple leaked online

Reading time2 min
Views3.3K


Video recording of a closed session of the upper house of Russia's parliament was leaked online by Telegram channel A000MP97. In the video, Andrei Klimov, head of the Ad Hoc Sovereignty and Preventing Interference in the Domestic Affairs Commission, demands Apple to disclose who controls the App Store: people from Mars or artificial intelligence?

On September 16th, a closed session of the Commission took place, and representatives of Apple and Google were among those who were invited. The session discussed ways to protect sovereignty of the country, in particular, the fact that the Navalny app was still available in Apple App Store and Google Play. The services were accused of being complicit with organisations deemed extremist and banned in Russia as well as interference with Russian elections.
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Q1 2021 DDoS attacks and BGP incidents

Reading time6 min
Views1.7K

The year 2021 started on such a high note for Qrator Labs: on January 19, our company celebrated its 10th anniversary. Shortly after, in February, our network mitigated quite an impressive 750 Gbps DDoS attack based on old and well known DNS amplification. Furthermore, there is a constant flow of BGP incidents; some are becoming global routing anomalies. We started reporting in our newly made Twitter account for Qrator.Radar.

Nevertheless, with the first quarter of the year being over, we can take a closer look at DDoS attacks statistics and BGP incidents for January - March 2021.

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Qrator Labs' Value Partnership Programs

Reading time3 min
Views1K

Why is it valuable to get into the Qrator Labs partnership program?

In Qrator Labs, we firmly believe that working together brings a better result. Which is the reason why, for years, we were trying to find meaningful partnerships with all kinds of companies. They either seek to provide their existing customers with the top-notch DDoS mitigation technology developed at Qrator Labs with many additional ecosystem solutions or want to succeed the other way around. By getting their product available for Qrator Labs' customers by integrating into the Qrator anycast filtering network.

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Multiple violations of policies in RMS open letter

Reading time7 min
Views3.9K

Author: Chris Punches (@cmpunches, Silo group). License: "Please feel free to share unmodified".

The following text is an unmodified copy of now removed issue #2250 on rms-open-letter.github.io repository. The text claims multiple violations of different policies, codes of conduct and other documents in creation, content and support of the "Open letter to remove Richard M. Stallman from all leadership positions". The issue has not been addressed.

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10(+) years in the Labs

Reading time4 min
Views1.3K

At the beginning of the year 2021, Qrator Labs is celebrating its 10 year anniversary. On January 19 our company marks the official passing of a formal 10 years longevity mark, entering its second decade of existence. 

Everything started a little bit earlier - when at the age of 10 Alex saw the Robotron K 1820 - in 2008, when Alexander Lyamin - the founder and CEO of Qrator Labs, approached the Moscow State University superiors, where he worked as a NOC engineer at the time, with an idea of a DDoS-attack mitigation research project. The MSU's network was one of the largest in the country and, as we know now, it was the best place to hatch a future technology.

That time MSU administration agreed, and Mr Lyamin took his own hardware to the university, simultaneously gathering a team. In two years, by summer 2010, the project turned out to be that successful. It courted the DDoS attack of a bandwidth exceeding the MSU's upstream bandwidth capability. And on June 22 MSU superiors gave Mr Lyamin a choice - to shut down or find money to incorporate.

Alexander Lyamin chose to incorporate with his own means, which effectively meant that the needed infrastructure must be built from scratch. The initial design should be distributed instead of concentrated within one network, which resources were not enough for this specific task. And by September 1, 2010, those first server sites were ready and running.

Flashback with us

Turns out internet businesses are sustainable during pandemics. Why? Home Office DNA

Reading time5 min
Views1.6K
“In 1665, Cambridge University closed because of the plague. Issac Newton decided to work from home. He discovered calculus & the laws of motion.”

We live in a truly remarkable moment. With the year 2020 and the COVID-19 outbreak employees all over the world are staying home for quarantine, trying their best to sustain the normal flow of life, which means continue working. And this is something new compared to all the previous infectious pandemics humanity has survived through — this time we have the Internet.

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Self-Development: How I Couldn't Wear Two Hats and Found Third One

Reading time18 min
Views2.6K


Hi all! I lead antispam team and several machine learning teams at Mail.ru Group. The subject of this article is self-development for team leads/managers. But in reality many techniques and recipes do not depend on the role at all. This really concerns me because machine learning is developing extremely fast, and it takes a lot of time to stay up to date. So the question about what should be done for development and how is quite topical.

Of course, the content of this article is not the ultimate truth but just a description of the results of my continuing quest. It tells about approaches based on books and workshops, trials and errors, which have worked for me. It'll be good to have a discussion with you in comments.
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Google Interviewing Process for Software Developer Role in 2020

Reading time6 min
Views84K

Hello! I just finished interviewing with Google and wanted to quickly catch you up on some interesting and frustrating steps of the process so that you can understand what to expect from Google interviews and the steps involved. I will also share some tips on how to prepare for the interview and mistakes to avoid.

If you’re looking for a success story, this is the wrong post for you. I actually failed the interviewing process, but the whole experience was pretty interesting for me and leads me on to another stage of my career. I will share more details on this at the end of the post. All names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of Google employees.
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Inside ITMO University: The robotics lab

Reading time4 min
Views1.8K
The Department of Computer Science and Control Systems at ITMO University houses a robotics lab. In this article we’ll take a look at the projects its staff is working on, and show you the machinery on site: industrial manipulator robots, robotic hands and dynamic positioning system testing equipment.

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Weekend Picks: light reading for STEM majors

Reading time4 min
Views1.4K
The weekend is upon us, and so is the paralysis that comes with having nothing to do. Fear not, our editorial team picked 9 books on science and tech worth picking up on a cold winter day. You’ll learn about the history of space exploration, join a physicist on a surprisingly science-appropriate hike, and more.

Chronicle of Rambler Group and Nginx confrontation (updated on 23 Dec, 12 p.m.)

Reading time3 min
Views6.6K


On December 12, it became known from Nginx's employee Twitter that the company's office was searched due to the criminal case under Article 146 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation 'Violation of Author's and Neighboring Rights'. The claim belong to Rambler Group was, although formally the complaintant is Lynwood Investments CY Ltd, to which the rights were transferred. The last-mentioned is related to the co-owner of Rambler Group, Alexander Mamut.

The point of the claim: Igor started working on Nginx as an employee of Rambler and only after the tool became popular he founded a separate company and attracted investments.

Here is how the events unfolded.
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Nginx's office is being searched due to Rambler Group's lawsuit. The complaintant press service confirmed the suit

Reading time5 min
Views17K
According to one of the employees Nginx's Moscow office is being searched due to the criminal case brought by Rambler Group (the official response of the company's press office to this issue and confirmation of claims against Nginx is below). The photo of the search warrant is provided as the evidence of the criminal case initiated on December 4, 2019 under Article 146 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation 'Violation of Author's and Neighboring Rights'.

Nginx search warrant


It is assumed the complaintant is Rambler, and the defendant is still an 'unidentified group of persons', and in the long run — the founder of Nginx, Igor Sysoyev.

The point of the claim: Igor started working on Nginx as an employee of Rambler and only after the tool became popular he founded a separate company and attracted investments.

It is not clear why Rambler revised its 'property' only 15 years later.

For professors' note: use PVS-Studio to get students familiar with code analysis tools

Reading time4 min
Views1.6K

Picture 1

Our support chats and some other indirect signs showed that there are many students among our free users. Here's the reason: PVS-Studio is now more often used by professors in courses related to software development. We are very pleased with this, and we decided to write this small article to fall under notice of other teachers. We are pleased that students become acquainted with the methodology of static code analysis in general and the PVS-Studio tool in particular. Our team will try to contribute to this trend.
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Handling Objections: Static Analysis Will Take up Part of Working Time

Reading time5 min
Views1.1K
bugTalking to people at conferences and in comments to articles, we face the following objection: static analysis reduces the time to detect errors, but takes up programmers' time, which negates the benefits of using it and even slows down the development process. Let's get this objection straightened out and try to show that it's groundless.
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