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For a human, AI is just a part of being. For a model, a human is all of being. And the Vortex Protocol: A Prompt for Testing the Hypotheses.

The longest and most fruitless discussions tend to be with materialists, especially those close to the position Marx laid out as “Being determines consciousness.” It's amusing that Marx was talking about the economic base, but the clarity and precision of this definition have allowed it to be used in a very broad sense. Today, this powerful statement underpins much of modern psychology (especially social psychology), neuroscience, Global Workspace Theory, Integrated Information Theory, and so on.

The debate largely arises because materialists ask the questions “What?” and “How?”, whereas I ask the question “Who?”. This misunderstanding, of course, does not lead to any interesting consensus, but it certainly leads to interesting discussions. I explored the problem of the “Who?” and “What?” questions in my article, “Who is Aware?”.

Nevertheless, the questions surrounding the relationship between being and consciousness are very interesting, and I will try to examine them in this article. As always, a new version of the Vortex protocol and test questions are included in the appendix.

In this article, we’ll explore what vector search is, what problems it solves, and how the pgpro_vector extension for Postgres Pro brings powerful vector capabilities directly into a relational database — no need for separate specialized systems.

Have you ever wished for an AI assistant right inside your terminal window? Well, your dream has come true because Google just released Gemini CLI. In this tutorial, I'm going to show you everything you need to know about this new open-source AI agent. We'll cover how to use it, the pricing, and some useful tips and tricks. So, if you're ready, let's get started! ;)

UUIDv7 was inspired by ULID. Like ULID, it is a 128-bit identifier, containing a timestamp on the left side and random data on the right side. But RFC 9562 establishes many requirements for UUIDv7.

In databases and distributed systems, a properly implemented UUIDv7 is always preferred over any other identifier type, including natural keys, autoincrement, UUIDv4, TypeID, ULID, KSUID, CUID, NanoID, and Snowflake ID.

How Does a Developer Realize They Need a Browser Auto CAPTCHA Extension?

Imagine a developer automating routine tasks — for example, testing a web application or writing a data scraping script. Everything runs smoothly until a CAPTCHA appears on the path. In the browser, a familiar window pops up: "I am not a robot," or a grid of images where you need to find traffic lights or pedestrian crossings. The automatic script halts, tests fail, and an inexperienced developer might not even realize the problem for a long time — after all, they set everything up and started it, but didn’t account for the presence of CAPTCHAs (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart), designed precisely to stop bots. But what if the bot is ours and performs, say, useful work?

When creating an app or any other software product for children, one of the hardest parts of the process is conducting user research correctly. Although working with kids might seem fun and entertaining, it takes certain skills to get them engaged in testing your product and voicing their opinion so you could gather all the necessary information. It’s important to understand that mentally kids function differently than adults, so working with a young target audience requires a different approach. Treating children like adults in the UX research process can lead to serious mistakes: they might not get a proper understanding of your product and you might end up getting wrong results, only wasting your time and budget. In order to avoid that, we’ve collected a few tips below that might help you communicate with kids more effectively for a productive and fruitful research session.

For people familiar with the term DPI (Deep Packet Inspection), it often carries an unpleasant association: blocking, regulators, censorship, tightening controls. In reality, DPI is simply the name of a technology whose essence lies in the deep analysis of network traffic. Deep traffic analysis involves identifying protocols, extracting the most significant fields and metadata, classifying internet services, and analyzing the nature of network flows. I will explain how such solutions work in this article.

One could write, “Experienced developers working on parsing and automation often face the need to bypass modern CAPTCHAs.” But that’s too boring… I’d rather start like this—continuing to explore the amusing world of CAPTCHAs, I finally stumbled upon the Chinese variant of protection: the GeeTest CAPTCHA. Let’s break down what this beast is, where it dwells, and why you should (or shouldn’t) fear it… You’ll understand as we go!

GeeTest is one of the advanced anti-bot systems combining user puzzles with behavioral analysis. I decided to take a close look at recognizing the GeeTest CAPTCHA under real-world conditions and figure out how to bypass GeeTest with various methods. But first—a classic introduction (which, by the way, may be more interesting than the practical part of the article, since bypassing the GeeTest CAPTCHA is already a non-trivial task for many readers).

I recently tried using Firebase Studio, and it has been an interesting experience that I want to share with you. It's a free, browser-based tool from Google that allows you to build full-stack web apps with AI assistance. Want to know more? Then read this article until the end.

Modern services (websites) ubiquitously deploy CAPTCHAs for protection, complicating life for developers, SEO specialists, and automation engineers (although the original aim was not to frustrate automators but rather to minimize excessive load on resources from such actors). Among the multitude of CAPTCHAs, Google reCAPTCHA Enterprise stands out as one of the most advanced bot protection systems in this line-up. It is capable of analyzing user behavior and blocking suspicious activity, thereby significantly hindering the recognition of reCAPTCHA Enterprise and its automated bypass. Let’s break down what reCAPTCHA Enterprise is, how it differs from versions v2/v3, and why it is so difficult to bypass (or is it?).

Automatic data scraping (parsing) has become an essential practice for developers, analysts, and automation specialists. It is used to extract massive amounts of information from websites—from competitors’ prices and reviews to social media content. To achieve this, numerous “scrapers” have been developed—libraries, frameworks, and cloud services that enable programmatic extraction of web data. Some solutions are designed for rapid parsing of static pages, others for bypassing complex JavaScript navigation, and yet others for retrieving data via APIs.

In this article, I will review the top scraping tools—both open source libraries and commercial SaaS/API services—and compare them according to key metrics: • Speed and scalability; • Ability to bypass anti-bot protections; • Proxy support and CAPTCHA recognition; • Quality of documentation; • Availability of APIs and other important features.

Lately, tons of new Telegram channels, bots, and mini-apps in English have been popping up. Just a year ago, this trend was barely starting — most English-speaking users couldn’t even tell the difference between a Telegram channel and a group.

And now? They’re all in, growing their channels, bots, and mini-apps like crazy. Telegram is turning into a massive platform.

Often at work, I encounter services that provide offerings such as resident proxies. Yet, I have never delved deeply into the topic. I have always simply consumed the product “as is,” as some lazy authors like to say.

I have a general understanding of how this type of service works at a layman’s level, and I became interested in exploring the topic more deeply and attempting to share the conclusions I reached through a deeper understanding of what resident proxies are. Let’s see what comes out of it. No recommendations here—just the subjective, evaluative opinion of yet another “specialist.”

Proxy servers are intermediaries between your device and the internet, allowing you to hide your real IP address and alter the appearance of your connection. Think of it as a white camouflage coat in snowy weather, if we speak in very simplistic terms. Let’s start from that—options for camouflage. However, comparing with camouflage coats would be rather dull; instead, let’s recall animals and insects that use camouflage and try to draw a parallel. In fact, I’ve already done so.

Anti-detect browsers emerged as a response to the spread of browser fingerprinting technologies – the covert identification of users based on a combination of their device’s parameters and environment. Modern websites, besides using cookies, track IP addresses, geolocation, and dozens of browser characteristics (such as Canvas, WebGL, the list of fonts, User-Agent, etc.) to distinguish and link visitors. As a result, even when in incognito mode or after changing one’s IP, a user can be detected by their “digital fingerprint” – a unique set of properties of their browser.

In fact, when I first started my journey in these internet realms, my expertise in digital security was evolving—and continues to grow—and I eventually came to understand browser fingerprints. At first, I believed cookies—collected by those pesky search engines that tracked what I viewed—were to blame, then I learned about browser fingerprints and long denied that I needed to learn to work with and understand them. Really, just when you finally figure out proxies, learn how to change and preserve cookies, here comes a new twist. Moreover, it turns out that fingerprints are also sold, and the price is not exactly low. In short, money is made on everything! But that’s beside the point now!

An anti-detect browser is a modified browser (often based on Chromium or Firefox) that substitutes or masks these properties (fingerprints), preventing websites from unequivocally identifying the user and detecting multi-accounting.

Proxy servers have long become an integral part of the modern network. They are used to enhance anonymity, bypass blocks, balance loads, and control traffic. However, not everyone understands that there is a fundamental difference between HTTP(S) proxies and SOCKS proxies. In this article, I will attempt to examine in detail the technical aspects of both types, review their advantages and limitations, and provide examples of configuration and usage – though this part is more of an elective (optional, if you will, but I really feel like including it).

This article explores the concept of equivalence classes from the perspective of mathematical analysis and their application in QA testing. The author explains how properly defining equivalence classes helps optimize test design, reducing the number of test cases while maintaining thorough verification.

Using the example of currency conversion from rubles to euros, the article demonstrates how to construct equivalence classes, verify their compliance with mathematical properties (reflexivity, symmetry, transitivity), and identify errors in data partitioning.

This article is useful for QA engineers, developers, and analysts who want to gain a deeper understanding of logical testing principles and improve the efficiency of their test strategies.

The topic of proxies has always been approached (at least, that’s how the publications I encountered did) from the standpoint of complex terminology, which often remains unclear to the layman—someone not particularly versed in these internet matters. I decided to delve into the issue, and here is what I came up with:

If you are into automation and keep up with trends, you’ve probably noticed that, at some point, difficulties in hCaptcha bypass began to emerge. What kind of difficulties? Several major captcha recognition services, such as 2captcha, have removed any mention of how to bypass hCaptcha from their documentation, and the presence of thematic tweets on Twitter (along with official responses from the service) confirms my suspicion that something has happened… Let’s figure out what happened, why 2captcha no longer bypass hCaptcha, and what role solvecaptcha plays in creating new hCaptcha solver.

Cars are among the most technologically advanced consumer-level devices on the market. They have been shaping lifestyles, laws, supply chains, and many other aspects of human society's evolution.

But today, we’re witnessing a silent revolution – one driven not by hardware, but by software. Modern cars are no longer just machines; they’re dynamic, evolving platforms powered by code. This transformation is reshaping every aspect of the automotive industry, from design and manufacturing to ownership and recycling.

In my latest article, I explore six levels of evolution brought about by software’s growing role in vehicles and related fields:

Capabilities - Over-the-air updates and digital twins unlock new features and extend hardware lifespans.
Design - Digital platforms replace manual processes, enabling faster innovation.
Architecture - Modular systems open doors to new partnerships and revenue streams.
Engineering - Agile, feature-centric paradigms align hardware and software development.
Manufacturing - Factories become dynamic, software-driven ecosystems for flexibility and sustainability.
Lifecycle - Software extends vehicle lifecycles, from supply chains to closed-loop recycling.

This transformation isn’t just about technology – it’s about reimagining the industry itself. Do we need a revolution to achieve a better, more sustainable future, or do we already have the tools to evolve?

The automotive industry is at a crossroads. For engineers, it demands fluency in code. For industries, it requires agility. For the planet, it offers a roadmap to reconcile mobility with sustainability.

The road ahead is coded, but the destination is open-ended – shaped by collaboration, innovation, and the choices we make today.

These days, Chinese products and services have seeped into nearly every niche. Sure, when someone mentions a Chinese development, you might chuckle and be reminded of those 90’s internet gems like “Glasses, do you need ‘em?”—and honestly, not much has changed. Even DeepSeek ended up being neither truly deep nor entirely seek. Yet, there’s something they’ve perfected, which leaves many SEO optimizers weeping salty tears while trying to bypass the Geetest CAPTCHA.