Иномировой агент

I took only one picture that day, in the train. Arlanda express, which goes from Stockholm to Arlanda airport and back. Most of it looks fairly normal, but there is this one area...

That's all, folks!

On Wednesday I only had a plan for the evening, so, I wanted to walk around some more. Looks like pigeons are doing pretty good.


Soldiers, walking around the king's castle.


Followed by some more realistically-looking soldiers... except what's with their boots?


Walking around, I found myself at the zoo entrance. I did not expect that.


Holy family.


Somebody making a splash.


Oh, it's those guys.


Probably the nicest statue of a bear I've seen.


Live bears weren't so easy to photograph. Their place is gigantic.


Piglet and his family.


The wolf didn't mind being photographed.


Some wild goats, I guess.


I'm pretty sure that's a sloth, but I've never saw his face.


I've also bought a ticket to aquarium, and was again right to do so: apparently, they also keep monkeys there.


Sleeping lemurs.


Same lemurs, from above.


Meerkat, standing guard. Or rather sitting.


There are some more traditional animals in the aquarium too.


They don't move too much.


This guy seems mildly annoyed by all the attention.


I don't remember who those are.


A house rat has a miniature house build for her.


Looks like real love.


A tiny frog.


Some of the inhabitants love being photographed.


That meerkat guard was not alone. He was keeping others safe.


I went back to the lemurs, even though though there were some "STOP" signs on the way.


And noticed a lemur mom with a kid.


That's my best picture of the Colobus. I have no idea who those people were and how they've got inside.


That was pretty much it. The zoo is not big, and most of its territory is taken by some old Swedish houses, not animals. Naturally, I went back to bears.


That was taken from the distance, so, the quality is not great; but the bear balancing on the side of the hammock had to be photographed.


On my way back I spotted this guy.


And this one just ran past me, so, I couldn't make a decent photo. There was no barrier between us whatsoever.


I walked in the city a little more, and noticed that signs at the crossing are sometimes different: one is of a man, another of a woman.


Maybe I've spent too much time watching lemurs, but this looks to me like a winged monkey, not an eagle it's supposed to be.


Another street sign — apparently, for a horse.


It's a nice place.


So, my plan for the evening was to visit the science museum. Apparently, there is a police museum nearby.


But the science museum was kinda disappointing. The best part was the hands-on experience, where visitors can see the applications of various scientific principles. We have something like this here, and our version is better.


The other part just displays various inventions.


On my way back I walked through the area with lots of embassies of various countries. This, of course, is the nicest:


I'm not sure if it's a gargoyle or a bulldog, but it looks very serious.


And then I found what is, apparently, a pedestrian tunnel.


It's fairly long, and some parts of it look a bit strange.


To be continued...

So, recently I've spent a few days in Stockholm, as part of my vacation.

I arrived on Monday.


I've checked into my hotel, and was mildly surprised by an elevator door looking like it can withstand an atomic blast.


However, the inside is a pretty normal elevator.


After that I went for a walk. Apparently, the nearest street was pedestrian-only, guarded by kittens. Big kittens.


The street was fairly crowded.


I walked further, and stumbled into a street beggar, who, as I learned later, is some kind of a celebrity here.


I didn't know much about Stockholm. In particular, I had no idea there is so much water in and around it.


I've surprised myself by bying a new jacket there. Wasn't planning on it, but it somehow attracted my attention.


Despite not being very flat, the city swarms with cyclists.


Local wildlife was fairly indifferent.


I'm still not sure if that bus goes all the way to the capital of Bulgaria.


One rabbit is very surprised that the other went to sleep already.


Swedes are very law-abiding people.


A piece of modern art.


Nice taxi.


To be continued...

My dislike for code generation (macros, templates, preprocessors, etc.) was always more on the abstract side. My main argument was that while functions are defined in terms of what they do when they are executed, macros (or other similar things) are defined in terns of what code they generate. And for me the code is a tool, not an end goal. I don't want to think about code when I'm writing code. I want to think of what should be done.

Recently, however, I realized there might be a good argument on the practical side. And, what's funny, it's pretty much the same argument as the one against dynamic typing. So, here it is.

Let's say, I have a certain structure. I mean, structure like in C: a collection of seemingly unrelated data of different types. For (a textbook) example: structure describing a student in the college database: it contains the student's ID number (integer), his name (string), his age (integer), the courses he's taking (array of course IDs) etc. At some point, while developing/maintaining the system, I decide I no longer need one of those parameters — say, age.

Now, in a statically-typed language I would normally remove this field from the structure. Then I would compile the program, and, if it compiles, I just know that this field was not used anywhere. If it was used, the compiler would show me an error message, from which I (assuming I have some experience) would be able to deduce where exactly this field is used. Then I would either remove this part (it could be insignificant, or circular: for example, when a new record is created, copying all the data from the old one, including age — sure, it uses this field, but it doesn't have to), or conclude that I was wrong and some more thinking is required.

In a dynamically-typed language it's very different. True story: I've asked our front-end devs once to switch IDs used in the system from integers to strings (because sometimes they don't fit into Javascript' numeric type). They agreed that it should be done. It was half a year ago. It's not done yet. In fact, it's such a daunting task, that they can't allocate enough resources to do it without bringing everything else to a halt.

And then we have our code generation stuff. And suddenly the problem is here again. For example, if there is something like val MyStructureFormat = Json.format[MyStructure], then, after I remove some field from MyStructure, it would just regenerate the JSON reader and writer. Without telling me. And now I've lost control over it. My program compiles — but it's output have been altered in such a way that some other program might have troubles working with it. And I have no clue it could happen at all.

Now, this does not apply to macros only. In fact, there are lots of other things that make code unrefactorable. Implicits in Scala, class instances and derivations in Haskell. The latter is partially mitigated by several factors:

1) Standard Show and Read classes are strongly recommended to be used for debugging only.
2) Functor class (which is derivable with a certain Haskell extension) can have only ONE instance, at least if we want it to conform to the laws; so, at least automatically generated `map` function is probably the same we would write by hand.
3) Eq has more than one implementation, but usually only a single sensible one.
4) Not exporting constructors is usually advised, so at least automatic derivation based on the structure's internals is limited to a single file.

Still, it's a problem. It's not why I dislike code generation — at least not the main reason — but it might be why you do.

Что-то меня пробило.

Который раз вижу, во всяких околоиммигрантских блогах, такую историю. Какой-нибудь крымчанин чрезвычайно радуется тому, что, дескать, крымнаш и всё такое, и что ему дали паспорт эрэфии. Затем выясняется, что некие привилегии он получал всё-таки как обладатель украинского паспорта. В конце рассказчик задаёт риторический вопрос «что ж ты, такой патриот расеюшки, пользуешься документами ненавистной тебе країни?»

А я читаю всё это — и в упор не понимаю: а в чём, собственно, проблема? Нет, этих ватников во многом можно упрекнуть; но тут-то в чём дело? Паспорт — это всего-навсего бумажка. Если, допустим, в совковое время у меня был бы в одном кармане билет на трамвай, а в другом — талон на полкило гречки, то в магазине я предъявил бы всё-таки талон на гречку. Даже несмотря на то, что этот талон мне выдали в профсоюзе, в котором кто ни работает — все христопродавцы. Просто потому, что из магазина я хочу уйти с пачкой гречки, а не со следом пыльного сапога на брюках.

И то же самое относится к паспортам. Есть бумажка, которая даёт определённые привилегии — пользуйся. Другой вопрос, если есть две бумажки, дающие одинаковые привилегии. Скажем, паспорт эрэфии и паспорт Украины оба позволяют въехать в какую-нибудь третью страну без визы. Тут да — выходят на первый план другие соображения. Хочу, дескать, чтобы меня считали русским — показываю русский паспорт. Всё понятно. Но если годится только одна бумажка — почему ею не воспользоваться? Если она, опять-таки, есть.

Сюда же — вопрос об отказе от гражданства. Я вот, например, не собираюсь отказываться от гражданства эрэфии, когда (если) получу какое-либо иное. Просто потому что это куча хлопот ради эфемерного результата, который всё равно могут отменить, если захотят, не спрашивая моего мнения и даже не ставя меня в известность. Но опять же, есть куча любителей задавать риторические вопросы — «а если придут русские солдаты, ты так и пойдёшь в лагерь/под расстрел, или всё-таки снизойдёшь до того, чтобы показать им свой старый паспорт?»

Во-первых, не придут. Они уже пытались пробиться через Украину, причём в то время, когда на Украине в целом и в украинской армии в частности был полнейший бардак, по собственным признаниям украинцев. Результаты не впечатляют.

Во-вторых, да, показал бы. И не вижу в этом вообще ничего плохого. Опять-таки: если есть бумажка, которая даёт определённые привилегии — почему не воспользоваться? Но нет: если ты не готов умереть во имя своей новой родины (при этом, заметим, не принеся никакой пользы ни себе, ни другим, ни даже этой самой родине) — значит, ты, типа, унтерменш и вообще национал-предатель, во.

Откуда это идиотское придыхательное отношение к паспортам и гражданствам? Это всего лишь бюрократические бумажки, обладание которыми может иногда помочь.

Да, я в курсе, что обладание гражданством эрэфии может и помешать тоже; но только если оказаться на её территории. И тут как в анекдоте — «ну, этого я не допущу».

Hey, Google! I know you're reading this. So, here is the thing I wanted to tell you.

Stop. Protecting. Me.

Yes, you've read right. Just stop. I'm sick of not being able to fetch my email from an airport wifi. I'm sick of your "suspicious connection attempts" and so on. Can you just assume that EVERY time somebody logs in with my password IT'S ME!

No, I'm NOT going to use 2-step verification. I do use web interface as well as a client app. Entering those digital passwords is VERY annoying. Just no.

Yes, I understand your concern. But it's MY mail, and what matters is what I am concerned about.

No, there is NO additional risk. If somebody stole my password, he can just use web interface.

Anyway. Stop. Do not argue; just bloody STOP.

Related question (Google, you can stop reading now; yes, I know you won't): what other email services one can use? Requirements:
1) web interface
2) ability to use with a desktop and mobile Apple Mail (regular IMAP/POP3 should work)
3) negligible downtime
4) non-paranoid security
5) no relation to Russia

So, I did finally watch the “Blade Runner”. Not the new one. The original, by Ridley Scott. Well, not original original; I watched the thing called “director's cut”. There are, apparently, five different versions of that movie — which is the first sign that something is off.

I didn't like it. I consider this time mostly wasted. Now I'll try to tell why.

Spoiler alert: I'm not going to shy away from revealing everything that happened in the movie. Not a lot did, but still.

So, about the most important elements, as usual. Story — and characters.

Story starts with the main protagonist, Rick Deckard, played by Harrison Ford, being pulled out of retirement. Apparently, there is a big threat — several androids (called “replicants” in the movie) are on Earth, and that's... bad? The movie establishes the rules before it even starts, in a “galaxy far away”-style. Yes, it simply gives us a couple of screens of text to read. This text informs us that androids are considered a VERY BAD THING, for some reason.

We are told by the police chief that Deckard is the best “blade runner”, which is, as the same text informed us, a slang term for “android killer”. We are also told that the main android — Batty — is the best of it's kind, better than any human, a “prodigal son” of some kind. We are told — by himself — that he saw things that humans can't even believe. And here is a thing: NONE of those things are in any way substantiated by what is shown on screen.

Let's talk about Deckard for a moment. There are several ways in which a cop can be better than others, overall or in some specific area. He could be — and that's the least interesting option — a martial arts expert, or a terrific marksman. He could be very logical, easily spotting tiny nuances in witnesses' stories or evidence. He could be very compassionate, able to connect with victims and get more information from them than they thought possible themselves. He could be very intuitive, jumping to conclusions no one of his collegues could even dream of. He could be very good at reflection, getting under criminal's skin. He could have a lot of determination, following the smallest threads to the end and refusing to admit defeat. What is Deckard?

That's right; we don't know anything about him in the beginning, and we don't know much more after the end. We are just told that “he is the best”. Well, we learn that he is not great when it comes to fighting. But that's it. He even comes off as somewhat stupid — he is shown the pictures of the androids, and, when he sees one of them pretending to be a mannequin, he comes closer and practically peeks into her eyes, instead of drawing his gun and shooting her. Well, he shares that stupidity with the rest of the police, I'll give him that: they make a suspect go through the test that is supposed to make androids reveal themselves — despite that suspect looking exactly like the photograph of the android they have.

Only once do we see Deckard following a lead — well, actually, two leads, but he follows them in the same direction. And, frankly, that's what we would expect from any cop or a PI — he finds something that clearly doesn't belong, wonders what it is, and then follows where it takes him.

Speaking of which — what is Deckard? It appears that he is a cop. He does use some priviliges of one, for example, parking where normal people aren't allowed to. But when he needs to know what some strange piece of evidence is, he goes to a shady store, hoping that the owner would know. A cop would likely turn it to the lab, to some guy in a white coat.

Turning to the androids, we are told that they are very dangerous, but what do we actually see? All androids, in turn, attack Deckard. They do not do anything worse than a regular criminal on a run would do to a pursuing cop. Hell, there is nothing worse than a COP would do to a threatening criminal. We also see the android leader, played by Rutger Hauer, murdering two people; first — a certifiable douchebag against whom this android holds a completely justifiable grudge, and second — a creepy guy who is, unfortunately to him, a witness of the first murder. Now, is that bad? Certainly. Is it so bad that you need the best of the best, the elite “blade runner”, to track down this murderer? Not really.

By the way, who calls the elite police squad “blade runners”? If anything, it gives an impression of someone so reckless that he will fall any second now. Oh well.

The point is, we don't see anything that confirms what we were told. We are just supposed to believe without any proof that Deckard is the best cop, that Hauer's character is the “prodigal son”, that he has “seen thing” that nobody would believe, that androids are extremely bad news... but it's all just words.

There is another substory, almost unconnected to the main one, of Deckard relationship with a female android, Rachael. Here is how one of the main scenes goes:

Woman opens the door to leave.
Big man slams his fist into the door, forcing it to close.
Woman steps back and keeps going backwards until her back is against the wall.
Big man approaches her, blocking every way for her to escape.
He says “Say ‘kiss me’”.
She does.
He does.
He says “Say ‘I want you’”.
She does it, unconvincingly.
He says “Say it like you mean it”.
She says it again, doing a somewhat better job.
Ridley Scott's voiceover says “He is not raping her, he is forcing her to acknowledge her feelings for him”.

Sorry, that last bit was my imagination.

And then there is the final confrontation between Deckard and the big bad. During which the big bad strips to his underwear, somehow gets a bird in his hand, and then drops dead, because androids come with an expiration date. Really? You guys spent nearly two hours trying to build the tension — not quite successfully — and than the bad guy just dies on his own?

I've seen a lot of praise for the questions this movie asks. Copying verbatim from another, very positive, review: “Who are we? What makes us human? What does AI mean for our identity?”

Weirdly, the review I copied this from calls it “story”. It's not a story. It's a questionnaire. That nobody bothered to go through.

Look, I'm OK with asking questions. But if you want my interest, try to do some research. Explore those questions. It's fine if the research is inconclusive. But it should be. Make an effort. You can't just ask a question and then ignore it. I can do the same with ease: “What if you boss is a vampire feeding on your frustration when your work gets too hard?” That might be a valid concern.

At some point Rachael asks Deckard if he has taken the test himself — that is, if he is certain he is human. Which might have been a good opportunity to explore. If only Deckard didn't choose exactly this moment to take a quick nap. No, really; he passed out for about five minutes, and the question — quite an interesting one — was completely forgotten after that.

I've seen statements that “Blade Runner” is simply the best sci-fi movie ever. But I struggle to understand how is it possible for anyone to even like it. In total, it's a bland, unimaginative story with stick figures instead of characters and dialogs from a teenager written fanfic.

У нас тут завтра... то есть, уже сегодня, намечается некая движуха, которая в русском языке называется «гей-парад».

По такому случаю в нашей конторе кинули клич, и несколько волонтёров, общим числом четыре, включая вашего покорного слугу, часа полтора занимались тем, за что их в эрэфии посадили бы. А именно, ввинчивали цветные лампочки в люстры на потолке и заклеивали окна тонкой бумагой. Только те, правда, которые выходят на главную улицу. Охраннику же было дано задание проследить, чтобы в тёмное время суток все люстры были бы включены.

Получилось... о-о-о, смотрите сами:


С другого ракурса:


По-моему, здорово смотрится.

Сначала небходимое вступление. У меня лично практически нет сомнений в том, кто организовал взрывы в СПб. Ну, то есть, не конкретный Сурков-Володин-етц, но где работали организаторы — понятно. Не бывает таких совпадений, чтобы первый за несколько лет массовый протест — и через неделю первый за несколько лет теракт.

Но почему-то куча народу упирает на эту идиотскую историю с двумя взрывами. Как это выглядело отсюда:
— Приходит сообщение о двух взрывах, на Техноложке и на Сенной.
— Затем появляется уточнение: взрыв один, в поезде, ехавшем с Сенной на Технологический.
— Затем ещё одно: взрыв произошёл, когда поезд уже был на Технологическом.
— И, наконец, сообщают, что на Восстания найдена ещё одна бомба, не сработавшая по тем или иным причинам (показания расходятся).

Неужели кому-то не очевидно, что между несуществующей бомбой на Сенной и реальной, но не сработавшей, бомбой на Восстания нет прямой связи? То есть, понятно, что теракт один, но чего кричать «как они знали о второй бомбе до того, как её обнаружили?» Это же совершенно очевидно, что те, кто сообщали — НЕ ЗНАЛИ!

Сначала местным условным пожарным позвонила какая-нибудь условная дежурная по станции, и, в истерике (абсолютно естественной), стала кричать, что в поезде с Сенной на Технологический взорвалась бомба. Пожарные не всё поняли (что тоже абсолютно естественно), и, на всякий случай, выехали и туда, и туда. От случившегося рядом журналиста обе группы отмахнулись — не до тебя, бомба тут взорвалась. Журналист схватил телефон и сообщил в редакцию — выехали две группы, на Техноложку и на Сенную, обе говорят, что из-за взрыва бомбы. Редакция тут же тиснула статью, что на Техноложке и на Сенной взорвались две бомбы.

Всё это время бомба на Восстания лежала себе спокойненько, и о ней знали те, кому по службе полагается, и больше никто. Затем так или иначе, но её обнаружили. Всё. То, что сначала сообщали о двух взрывах — идиотское совпадение и совершенно нормальная в подобных обстоятельствах путаница. Такие совпадения как раз бывают, и часто.

То ли avmalgin-а хакнули, то ли он головой поехал.



Не помню, чтобы он раньше а) переходил на личности и б) выпячивал национальность собеседника. Вишенкой на торте, конечно, то, что он ещё и национальность определил неправильно.