Pull to refresh
669.69

IT Infrastructure *

Infocenters + databases + communication systems

Show first
Rating limit
Level of difficulty

Regulation of computing power, joint insurance of AI products, and protection of hybrid people

Reading time7 min
Views703

Issues of cooperation in the field of regulation of computing power, joint insurance of AI products, and determining the social status and protection of persons with a hybrid nervous system (hybrid people) 

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

In furtherance of the discussion on the topic of "Key technology policy issues will be grappling with in 2025", let me outline some mullings at the intersection of the theory and practice of computer science, law, and neuroethics.

«Our society and thus each individual has the possibility to (help) decide how the world, in which we want to live with artificial intelligence in the future, should look. Philosophy, law, and technology play a central role in the discourse that has to be conducted for this purpose» (from Fraunhofer IAIS’s report «Trustworty use of AI»).

 Essential idea of that proposals - drawing from the deep technical expertise of the computing community, to provide to policy leaders and stakeholders nonpartisan theses on policy gaps in the field of neuroethics, development and implementation of ML/AI tools. It is preferable that this regulation be a harmonious symbiosis of legal norms both at the state level and at the level of socially responsible professional communities.

The approach mentioned in paragraph 6.2 of The CEN-CENELEC Focus Group Report: Road Map on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and, in fact, focused on autonomous self-regulation of AI tools (systems) seems inappropriate to current risks and treats: “An alternative approach is that the system itself ensures that modifications of its functionality due to self-learning have no negative impact on assessment topics like safety or fairness”.  Further, in the same place, the potential ineffectiveness of the certification system for AI tools is actually recognized: “For artificial intelligence systems that learn as they are used, the problem is that the behavior of the system changes continuously and will require a new conformity assessment each time.”

Read more

CacheBrowser experiment: bypassing the Chinese firewall without a proxy by caching content

Level of difficultyMedium
Reading time7 min
Views962

Today, a significant portion of all content on the Internet is distributed with the use of CDNs (Content Delivery Networks). At the same time, there is no research on how various censors extend their influence on such networks. Scientists from the University of Massachusetts analyzed possible methods of blocking CDN content using the example of the practices of the Chinese authorities, and also developed a tool to bypass such blocks.

We (specialists from proxy service) have prepared an overview material with the main conclusions and results of this experiment (translate of this material).

Read more

Optimizing IT Services: The Case for Reducing 24/7 Operations in B2B Services

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time5 min
Views401

In the world of IT services, the idea that operations must run 24/7 is often taken for granted. However, for business-to-business (B2B) services, this assumption needs to be rethought. By reconsidering the need for around-the-clock processing services, companies can achieve significant benefits in efficiency, security, and sustainability.

Read more

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

Level of difficultyMedium
Reading time5 min
Views540

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:

Read more

Overview: Six ways to use residential proxies for solving corporate objectives

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time5 min
Views717

IP address masking may be required for various tasks – from accessing blocked content to bypassing anti-bot systems of search engines and other online resources. We found an interesting post about how this technology can be used to solve corporate objectives.

There are several options of implementing a proxy:

Read more

Million Dollar IT Sale…..Lost

Reading time2 min
Views1.1K

Lose Your Sale) How to lose an IT project sale. 

My name is Paul Karol and I work as a director in a Russian IT company that mostly sells their products into the American Market. What we will discuss today was so costly for that company that I want to share this knowledge so that it doesn't happen to other Russian IT companies. 

Case Study

Today I want to tell you about a sale that almost was. I was Consulting for this one company and they were involved in selling software to the United States. This one particular client was in contact with the sales manager for 2 months.

Now this sales manager was very good at their job and they had a lot of charisma on the phone and in the text messages. However they specifically did not know something that cost them a large contract. 

1. In Russia it's respectful not to talk about your personal life because you feel that you're wasting someone's time if you do not know them well. 

2. In the United States once you have been talking with somebody for a couple of months you would start to consider them sort of a friend. 

The Russian IT sales manager had not been in contact with this client for about a week and this was unusual. 

They were worried. 

Then the text message came that said this. 

"I'm sorry Marina that I have not been in contact with you for some time. I took my family and kids to the Lakeside and we enjoyed some time by the beach." 

The Russian IT sales manager did not know how to think about this and they asked this question. 

" So, do you want to buy our product?" 

Read more

Managing AWS Auto Scaling Group Instance Refresh: The Harmony of Terraform and Ansible

Level of difficultyMedium
Reading time6 min
Views898

In the DevOps realm, where automation is crucial, the management of resources and updating processes in the cloud is vitally important. Many modern projects, particularly in AWS cloud environments, leverage Auto Scaling Groups (ASG). This mechanism aims to achieve three key objectives: balancing loads, increasing service reliability, and optimizing operational costs for efficiency and effectiveness.

Imagine working at a company where you deploy applications on Amazon's resources. To streamline this process and manage configurations more effectively, you use pre-built AMI images. These are crafted with tools like HashiCorp Packer, ensuring your applications launch swiftly and reliably. For the actual infrastructure deployment, you turn to Terraform. It's widely recognized as the standard in many major companies for managing cloud resources and using the IaC (Infrastructure as Code) approach.

As an IT engineer, you sometimes need to update instance versions to a newer AMI image, either for the latest security patches or to introduce new functionalities. The challenge lies in updating an active ASG without causing downtime. It's crucial to ensure the new AMI performs as reliably as the existing one, balancing the need for updates with system stability and uptime.

ASG's instance refresh is a crucial feature that allows for updating instances within a group while minimizing downtime, thereby maintaining high availability. However, ensuring the success of such updates, especially in large, complex systems, can be a challenge. Terraform resources, such as aws_autoscaling_group, can initiate this process but don't provide progress tracking. This limitation becomes apparent when other infrastructure components, such as certificate renewals or DNS updates, depend on the state and version of the instances. Monitoring the update process is essential to maintain an accurate infrastructure state after Terraform's execution.

To overcome this challenge, Ansible can be utilized...

Read more

After sale IT support for American and Western Companies

Reading time2 min
Views558

Title:

After sale IT support for American and Western Companies 

Let’s have a case study. 

A Russian IT company sells software to a western country like say America. And you are working as an application developer on the support side. 

One day, there is a problem with the program, and the program has stopped working. 

You must contact the company now to inform them that the program is off-line. 

THE NEXT STEP YOU TAKE IS VERY IMPORTANT. 

The way, the two cultures operate in a situation like this are very different and it will have everything to do with how easy your job goes for you.

…………

Russia : “we have a problem”

“What is wrong?”

“I don’t know”

“When can it be fixed?”

“I don’t know”

……………

USA: “i’m just giving you a real quick call to let you know that there is a problem with the program. 

I’ve already put my team on it and we will have it up and running shortly. 

I will let you know more by 3 o’clock today what is going on”

It’s not important how long you think it will take you, but I will always tell them a few hours from the time that you informed them of a problem.

I understand that you have no idea how deep the bug is and also whether it will affect any other systems.

But it is important to set a time window very close to when you inform them that you will bring them more information. 

This also works very well if you don’t know something that they ask you.

Question:

“What can we do to fix this problem?”

Answer: 

“I understand what you’re saying. I will look into it and get back to you in two hours.  By 1 PM today.”

in this case, it’s important that you: 

1. Take responsibility for yourself and your team.

   2. Communicate that you understand this responsibility.

   3. Gives strict timelines. (if it’s not possible, you can always say that there is a problem, but do it before the deadline.) 

    4. Use certain key language.

“ I understand you”

“ I understand what you were saying”

“ I wanted to inform you”

“ we are working on it right now”

Read more

A short guide to UX writing and its role in UX design

Level of difficultyMedium
Reading time5 min
Views973

UX writing is an essential part of UX design, which plays a huge role in providing qualitative user experience. The job of a UX writer is to compose texts for a digital product, which can be of two types: microcopy (labels, buttons, notifications and other small notes) and macrocopy (larger texts like written content on pages, instructions, information sheets). UX writing helps users easily navigate through the product, perform various tasks and get all the necessary information.

Read more

Your Name: Why it’s Important in American Sales and Marketing

Reading time2 min
Views910

This is one of the most important articles I’ve written. 

In this article, I’m going to dive deep into one of the largest differences between Russia and America pertaining to sales and marketing. 

1. You must use your name. 

2. You must have a personal approach. 

3. You must show that you are involved. 

4. You must show that you care about the needs and desires of the client. 

Recently, I was faced with an interesting problem. I was asked to call clients without making it personal. 

So let’s go back to when I was in America, living and working as a sales person. The company I work for, was very large, and had multiple branches around the Washington DC area. They had offices in three states. 

They put me through a sales training course. 

The biggest “take away” from the course….. 

You’re not selling the product/ 

you’re selling yourself. 

It's important to use your charisma and your genuine caring for the customer to win them over. Once they understand that you're actually trying to help them, then they will seriously consider the item you are telling them about. 

I also want to say, very clearly, that it's not a prideful approach. It should be a professional approach. You're responsible to tell the customer/ the client all the benefits of the item and how this item will help their business.

Everything above pertains to sales in America. So if you are approaching America as a sales manager this is how you should craft your approach. 

Now I've spoken to my colleague,

Kristina Pashnina and we have agreed upon some stark differences to the Russian sales climate. Here she will begin to tell you how the Russians see sales. 

Read more

Building an IT website, aimed at America and the West

Reading time3 min
Views952

My last article stirred up some definite comments and even questions about different things in business. I’m going to keep giving you as much information as I can so that you can continue to do business as IT professionals outside of Russia with other countries. 

How do you design a website that will be viewed in the west and appreciated by the people there?

What are the most important elements

for, America and other western markets?

Read more

Marketing your Mindset

Reading time2 min
Views667

Information shared below is exactly how I work with my IT professionals who are going to be participating in pre-sales to America. I tell them exactly this, and it helps prepare them to successfully sell the the United States companies.

As developers and IT companies, we must sell our software.

What can give you an edge in this very competitive market place?

Please, if you would allow me to let me explain why this is important and how this can make your company more successful. There’s a certain type of thinking that is conducive to working as a software developer. This is a very practical mindset, but it goes beyond that. If you have the mindset of direct thinking.

Here are examples:

I see the target a target and I don’t see obstacles

Вижу цель, не вижу препятствий

This is an example of the practical mindset, how is approaches the problem of development. It makes people who have this mindset, the best developers in the world.

Example of mindset:

Problem……………… find a solution………… No problem.

Notice how this looks exactly like a line of code?

This is well-known around the world in places where you would like to sell your software, the United States, Germany, Belgium, and the Middle East.

Countries where people have this mindset have the best developers.

now let’s talk about your competition:

Americans: during the center process, “find a solution” Americans are overly concerned about responsibility. This slows them down in the decision making process.

Read more

The key to Sales Conversion of an American CEO or CFO

Reading time1 min
Views735

i’m writing this series articles to spearhead the new marketing campaign for into the American market. I will be covering a wide range of topics that will allow us to position the company in the proper way so that is excepted as a provider of High-quality software in America.


The key to converting an American CEO or CFO is the trigger point for the American business culture. The trigger point for America is responsibility.   This means in business you must be responsible. You also look for business partners that are responsible.  


But let’s take this into the newest more powerful view that we need to have now.  

The scene from the point of you of the CFO sitting at the head of the financial controls of a large hospital conglomerate. Put yourself in the mind of the CFO. What are they concerned about?  


As an American CFO they will be very concerned about whether they are being responsible in their job and responsible to the hospital, staff, shareholders, patients and the management above them. 


And this is how we get our foot in the door in this American niche market. If we present ourselves as offering something that “May” give an answer to specific problems that they know that they have, they must give us a chance to present a Presale. The reason is because they are responsible, and if there is a solution as an American Director you must explore that solution.


It would be irresponsible to not explore a potential solution.



Then it’s a simple case to actually give value in the presale meeting and convince them that we can deliver some thing that will benefit their business and profits.

Read more

Dealing with sanctions and the other difficult question

Reading time3 min
Views1.1K

In our last article we covered the anatomy of a presale meeting gone wrong. In that article we posed some questions for everyone to think about. What exactly does an American company wanting to hire a Russian custom software development company, feel about this Russian company? What are they afraid of? What are their concerns?

In the end we came up with five concerns.

1. Is the company a fly by night company, is the company a one-day company?

2. Will they be professional in supporting or developing the software that they've sold to us?

3. Will they have proper data security?

And now the two new ones that are because of the mess the world is in now...

4. Will they be able to complete the project on time? This includes proper internet access an infrastructure to support IT.

5. Where is your team located? Are you still located in Russia?

Now we're going to look at the last 2, number four and five.
However let's look at number 5 first.

Many IT companies today if they want to work with the United States or even Europe they must not have their developers located inside of Russia. Matter of fact it goes so far that if a developer is located in Russia and they're using a VPN and somehow the VPN is breached the credentials are canceled for that developer to work on the project.

It's for this reason that Russian IT companies are opening offices around the world. Let's look at Armenia as an example.

Wait a minute I have to go back for a second...... We must discuss how countries look to America Canada and Western Europe. I basically give them a score based on questions that are brought up in the mind of the American company or European company.

Read more

Blinking into Morse code

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time10 min
Views2.1K

Explaining main algorithm.

For a while I’ve been thinking of writing a scientific article. I wanted it to have certain utility.

Morse code is binary: it takes only two values – either dot (short) or hyphen (long). I figured out that short (s) can stand for two-eye blinking whilst long (l) can indicate left-eye blinking. Another question emerged: how to understand when does one-symbol recording stop?

Empty space between two symbols can be presented by right-eye blinking – r. If I input singly symbol of short (dot) and long (hyphen), I will blink my right eye once to indicate the space between two symbols.

To separate independent words, one has to blink her right eye twice and get rr.

Hence, I have collected an ordered set of symbols – r, l, s, - that can be converted into a full-fledged text. Once I accomplish the transformation, I get an answer.

Read more

Q4 2022 DDoS Attacks and BGP Incidents

Reading time7 min
Views1.8K

Now that 2022 has come to an end, we would like to share the DDoS attack mitigation and BGP incident statistics for the fourth quarter of the year, which overall saw unprecedented levels of DDoS attack activity across all business sectors.

In 2022, DDoS attacks increased by 73.09% compared to 2021. 

Let's take a closer look at the Q4 2022 data.

Read more

Understanding the Differences Between Kafka and RabbitMQ: in Simple Terms

Reading time7 min
Views4.9K

Software message brokers became the standard for creating complex systems. However not all IT specialists understand how these instruments work. Pavel Malygin, Lead System Analyst at Innotech, dives into the topic of message brokers and explains how they are used.

Read more

Methodology for calculating results of a task set: taking into account its level of difficulty

Reading time3 min
Views2.4K

In the world of academic knowledge evaluation, objective calculation of large data presents a serious problem. Can a student studying in an Advanced Maths class and getting B-marks be evaluated equally with another student, getting B-marks in a General Maths class? Can we create a system that would take into account the level of difficulty those students face?

This article will describe a system of independent evaluation we have been using for school olympics in five subjects (Mathematics, English Language, Russian Language, Tatar Language, Social Science) for students grades 1 to 11. In each academic year we organise six qualification tournaments, with about 15,000 students from different regions of Russia. Then we select the top ten participants in each subject and each grade for their future participation in the final (seventh) tournament, where only the best of the best are chosen. It means that 550 participants compete in the final tournament, which is about 5.5% of all participants in the academic year. 

It is obvious that those multiple tournaments cannot be absolutely homogenous, and inevitably the levels of difficulty for each set of tasks vary. Therefore, it is critical for us to take into consideration those variations of difficulty and calculate the results in the most objective manner.

Read more

Authors' contribution