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8 simple ways to improve UI/UX of any software product over time

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time4 min
Views621

Creation of a UX design for a software product is an ongoing process: it doesn’t stop after the product is released. In order for an app or a website to always remain comfortable to use while corresponding to the constantly changing trends, its UX design must be improved from time to time, and in some cases even rethinked and radically changed. An outdated, old-fashioned design with unimproved bugs will definitely spoil user experience and lead to loss of audience. Design improvements include not only bug fixing and “brushing up” the facade of a product, but also constant research and implementation of new ideas that can contribute to its growth. Let’s discuss a few simple steps that can improve the UX design of any product. 

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Total votes 3: ↑2 and ↓1+3
Comments0

What's wrong with the term «Artificial Intelligence»?

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time4 min
Views546


Recently, there has been a lot of talk about the success of artificial intelligence (AI), although this usually means another achievement in the field of generative neural networks.


And few people, speaking about AI, try to explain what they themselves understand by the term “artificial intelligence.” After all, it’s one thing to write about “AI problems,” and quite another to endow an ordinary computer algorithm with at least the rudiments of intelligence.


After all, the etymology of the established phrase “artificial intelligence” is not unambiguous and can take on different meanings depending on what meaning the author is trying to put into it.

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Total votes 2: ↑2 and ↓0+4
Comments0

Mechanical Quantum Computer

Reading time14 min
Views582

Quantum computers have gradually migrated from “natural” quantum objects like ions and quantum dots to “artificial” objects like transmons, where natural frequencies of LC circuit mimic energy levels. Coaxial cables attached to such circuits excite the system, read their state, and adjust their properties. They are still quantum objects and operate at low temperatures.


I wondered if a similar system can be built with large “classical” mechanical objects. Here I demonstrate 2 -qubit quantum computer built of coupled pendulums.


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Total votes 1: ↑1 and ↓0+1
Comments1

A new platform for FPGA seminars based on Gowin Tang Nano 9K: adding sound, graphics and microarchitecture labs

Reading time3 min
Views1.2K

Gowin has clear advantages over Xilinx in the educational FPGA board market: Gowin boards are several times less expensive, the synthesis speed is several times faster, and the EDA package is two orders of magnitude smaller: we are talking about 1G versus 100G disk space. Of course, Xilinx is still the king of high-end prototyping boards that cost $10K-100K, but for the students such boards are irrelevant; such boards are for ASIC design companies. A beginning EE student needs a board for less than $100, and Gowin not only fits the bill but also covers all the needs, specifically:

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Total votes 7: ↑6 and ↓1+7
Comments0

From Scratch to AI Chatbot: Using Python and Gemini API

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time3 min
Views1.4K

In this article, we are going to do something really cool: we will build a chatbot using Python and the Gemini API. This will be a web-based assistant and could be the beginning of your own AI project. It's beginner-friendly, and I will guide you through it step-by-step. By the end, you'll have your own AI assistant!

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Total votes 1: ↑1 and ↓0+1
Comments4

The Salmon Project: how to counter Internet censorship effectively using proxies with user trust levels

Level of difficultyMedium
Reading time5 min
Views479

Governments in many countries restrict citizens' access to information and services on the Internet in one way or another. Combating such censorship is an important and difficult task. Usually simple solutions cannot boast about high reliability or long-term efficiency. More complex methods of overcoming blocks have disadvantages in terms of usability, low performance, or they do not allow you to maintain the quality of Internet use at the proper level.

A group of American scientists from the University of Illinois has developed a new method of overcoming blocks, which is based on the use of proxy technology, as well as segmenting users by trust level to effectively identify agents working for censors. We present you with the main theses of this work.

Description of the approach

Scientists have developed the Salmon tool, a system of proxy servers operated by volunteers from countries without restrictions on Internet use. In order to protect these servers from blocking by censors, the system uses a special algorithm for assigning a level of trust to users.

The method involves exposing potential censor agents that pose as ordinary users in order to find out the IP address of the proxy server and block it. In addition, countering Sybil attacks is carried out through the requirements to provide a link to a valid social network account when registering in the system or to receive a recommendation from a user with a high level of trust.

How it works

It is assumed that the censor is a state–controlled body that has the ability to take control of any router within the country. It is also assumed that the task of the censor is to block access to certain resources, and not to identify users for further arrests. The system cannot prevent such a course of events in any way – the state has plenty of opportunities to find out what services citizens use. One of them is the use of honeypot servers to intercept communications.

It is also assumed that the state has significant resources, including human ones. The censor can solve tasks that require hundreds and thousands of full-time employees.

A few more basic theses:

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Total votes 1: ↑1 and ↓0+3
Comments0

How to create a LEGO animation without getting burned out?

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time4 min
Views669

Hello everyone, this is Denis Weber.

Today I’m going to talk about what happens if you combine LEGO and the iconic movie Terminator 2. I’ll show you how I created a real LEGO trailer and what came out of it. I like doing such large-scale projects and if you have any cool ideas, let me know in the comments.

If you prefer the video format, you can watch it here.

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Total votes 2: ↑2 and ↓0+2
Comments0

Utilizing Wearable Digital Health Technologies for Cardiovascular Monitoring

Level of difficultyMedium
Reading time17 min
Views414

Wearable Digital Health Technologies for Monitoring in Cardiovascular Medicine

This review article presents a three-part true-life clinical vignette that illustrates how digital health technology can aid providers caring for patients with cardiovascular disease. Specific information that would identify real patients has been removed or altered. Each vignette is followed by a discussion of how these methods were used in the care of the patient.

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Total votes 6: ↑3 and ↓3+2
Comments0

How to increase capacity of drive from 32 to 256 GB for Asus E200H laptop

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time5 min
Views1.1K

Hi Everyone.

Recently I got Asus E200H laptop, which I would like to use as a portable computer to work with a high-precision equipment.

Within the scope of the article we will perform the experiment about the upgrade of the default 32 GB eMMC capacitor to 256 GB and will test it.

Have a nice reading!

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Total votes 4: ↑4 and ↓0+6
Comments0

How to practice user empathy in UX design and make product more accessible

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time6 min
Views435

According to the Oxford Dictionary, empathy is “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another”. In UX, there is a special term “user empathy”. It refers to the ability of UX designers to fully understand what users need from a particular software product. Having user empathy and basing design solutions around users” comfort is one of the most true indicators of a designer”s professionalism. Without that, any product a designer works on has a high chance of turning out to be pointless. Apart from having empathy as a soft skill in general, there are several ways a designer can practice user empathy through different UX methods and techniques. In this article we would like to talk on how a UX designer can treat users with empathy and make the product more accessible for different groups of target audience.

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Total votes 2: ↑2 and ↓0+4
Comments0

VS Code Extensions You Need in 2024: My Top Picks

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time2 min
Views3.3K

Welcome to my latest article. If you haven't caught my previous ones, I highly recommend checking them out for some really useful content. Today, I'm excited to dive into something special: my top 10 favorite VS Code extensions. These tools are incredibly popular among developers globally, and I believe they're essential for anyone serious about coding.

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Total votes 3: ↑1 and ↓2+1
Comments4

Top 10 Google Sheets Features to Enhance Your Productivity

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time3 min
Views1.4K

It's been a while since my last appearance, but I'm excited to be back and to share something truly special with you. In this article, we'll explore my top 10 Google Sheets features that are guaranteed to boost your productivity, speed up your workflow, and make your data handling more efficient. So, without further ado, let's dive into these game-changing tools!

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Total votes 4: ↑4 and ↓0+5
Comments1

What is to see under the Black Sun of Giedi Prime?

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time6 min
Views1.4K

The director Denis Villeneuve and cinematographer Greig Fraser in their Dune: Part Two movie made a curious decision to film the scenes on the surface of the Giedi Prime planet in the infrared spectrum. It turned out to have interesting aesthetics and there are some interesting related physics to discuss and speculate about how realistic the look of it is.

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Total votes 5: ↑5 and ↓0+7
Comments0

VERBAL CALCULATION (VC) IN EVIDENCE-BASED DSS AND NLP

Level of difficultyMedium
Reading time14 min
Views335

S.B. Pshenichnikov

The article outlines a new mathematical apparatus for verbal calculations in NLP (natural language processing). Words are embedded not in a real vector space, but in an algebra of extremely sparse matrix units. Calculations become evidence-based and transparent. The example shows forks in calculations that go unnoticed when using traditional approaches, and the result may be unexpected.

 

The use of IT in Natural Language Processing (NLP) requires standardization of texts, for example, tokenization or lemmatization.

After this, you can try to use mathematics, since it is the highest form of standardization and turns the objects under study into ideal ones, for example, data tables into matrices of elements. Only in the language of matrices can one search for general patterns in data (numbers and texts).

If text is turned into numbers, then in NLP these are first natural numbers for numbering words, which are then embedded into real vectors is irreversible ed in a real vector space.

Perhaps we should not rush to do this but come up with a new type of numbers that is more suitable for NLP than numbers for studying physical phenomena. These are matrix hyperbinary numbers. Hyperbinary numbers are one of the types of hypercomplex numbers.

Hyperbinary numbers have their  own  arithmetic,  and  if  you get used to  it,  it  will  seem  more  familiar  and  simpler  than  Pythagorean arithmetic.

In Decision Support Systems (DSS), the texts are value judgments and a numbered verbal rating scale. Next (as in NLP), the numbers are turned into vectors of real numbers and used as sets of weighted arithmetic average coefficients.

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Total votes 3: ↑3 and ↓0+4
Comments0

Copy Trading: A Viable Earning Strategy or Just Another Broker Scam?

Reading time11 min
Views1.1K

Hello everyone!

A year ago, I became curious about whether it was possible to earn money in crypto by copying the trades of other traders. Instead of investing money right away, I decided to thoroughly explore this by writing a parser that monitored about 2,000 portfolios in real-time over the course of a year.

Initially, I parsed the Traderwagon site, which unfortunately shut down. I then switched to Binance's copy trading, which was just starting out at the time.

The number of portfolios available for investment on Binance is continually growing; currently, there are over 10,000. My script only parsed a portion of these to maintain about 2,000 consistent portfolios. This was necessary to track changes in traders' positions at least every 20 minutes with the server resources I had allocated for the project.

There are several peculiarities in how my parser operates. For example, when a trader hides their positions, my script also closes them since it can't monitor hidden trades. When a trader significantly adjusts their position, such as a complete turnaround, the script exits the trade. I chose to save time on developing a more complex follow-algorithm and planned to refine it later if the testing stage proved successful. I also limited the time a trader could stay in a deal to a few days and forcibly closed positions if this period was exceeded. I observed that staying in a trade longer slightly increased the average profit/loss, whereas reducing the time allowed for reinvesting the same funds into a greater number of traders and their deals.

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Total votes 2: ↑2 and ↓0+3
Comments0

Unveiling the Technological Odyssey: Evolution of Weather Forecasting

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time3 min
Views283

Weather forecasting has come a long way from the days of observing the sky and relying on folklore to predict upcoming conditions. Advancements in technology have revolutionized how we perceive, understand, and forecast weather patterns. From the early barometers to modern satellites and supercomputers, each innovation has significantly enhanced our ability to predict weather accurately. Let's take a journey through the evolution of weather forecasting technology and explore how it has transformed over the years.

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Total votes 2: ↑2 and ↓0+3
Comments0