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Affordable as a Bus, Comfortable as a Taxi: A Promising Type of Public Transport for Large and Medium-Sized Cities.Part2

Level of difficulty Medium
Reading time 56 min
Views 929
Algorithms *Mathematics *Transport The future is here Urbanism
Opinion
Translation

(Jean-Claude Mézières)

Translation provided by ChatGPT, link to the original article in Russian

Link to Part 1: «Preliminary Analysis» (ру / eng )
Link to Part 2: «Experiments on a Torus» (ру / eng )
Link to Part 3: «Practically Significant Solutions» (ру / eng )
Link to «Summary» (ру / eng )

Experiments on the Torus


This is the second part of a study dedicated to exploring new public transportation movement schemes. In the first part, we examined the simplest non-stop scheme and a single-transfer scheme based on it, which can be implemented in a grid city on a plane. In this part, our city model will be a grid city on a «flat» torus. Unlike a rectangle, a torus has no edge, and the positions of all points on it are absolutely equivalent. Due to the absence of an edge and (transitive) symmetry, calculations for a toroidal city are simpler, and numerical results are nearly identical to those for a rectangular city on a plane. These two conditions make a toroidal grid city an ideal testing ground for new passenger transportation movement schemes. In this article, we will explore two such schemes on the torus, and in the next one, we will return to the plane and adapt the results obtained here for use under the realistic conditions of a rectangular city.

The content of this study is not standalone and presupposes familiarity with the first part of the article. To understand Chapter 2, you will need a level of mathematics that corresponds roughly to the first two years of university; for everything else, high school level should suffice. It can be helpful to have a pencil and a piece of paper at hand while reading. If your browser displays formulas incorrectly, try refreshing the page a few times.
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Total votes 3: ↑3 and ↓0 +3
Comments 0

How did I increase the website performance score from 35 to 100 for both mobile and desktop?

Level of difficulty Easy
Reading time 5 min
Views 1.1K
High performance *Website development *JavaScript *Firebird/Interbase *ReactJS *
Sandbox

Not long ago, I started my personal blog. Instead of opting for the traditional route of using the popular WordPress CMS for blogs, I decided to embrace new technologies. My choice landed on Next.js and a NoSQL-type database.

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Total votes 1: ↑1 and ↓0 +1
Comments 0

Uniform gravity, can it exist?

Level of difficulty Medium
Reading time 3 min
Views 665
Popular science Physics
Analytics

Uniform gravity, can it exist?

1. The motion of a free particle-like cat

V. Komen, I. Tikhonenkov

Good morning! You've woke up. Having prepared coffee and toasts of bread you are drifting from a kitchen to a table before a large wall TV. The left hand keeps a small plate with toasts and the right one controls coffee level within your beloved mug. The life is plotted out for ten seconds to come. But Ervin is already worried that you, as usual, made conspiracy and decided not to share your breakfast with him. So the damned cat thrusts himself across you pass, hits your legs. By the next moment the plate, toasts and the mug are falling. And – yes! All those precious things reached a floor level by the same time. Physics...It's how it shows up, unexpected. And we used to identify ourselves as physicists. The unexpected thing is that we still do. It's whence our motivation originates. We cannot pass by any falling objects quietly.

15
Total votes 2: ↑2 and ↓0 +2
Comments 0

Affordable as a Bus, Comfortable as a Taxi: A Promising Type of Public Transport for Large and Medium-Sized Cities.Part1

Level of difficulty Medium
Reading time 40 min
Views 1.5K
Algorithms *Mathematics *Transport The future is here Urbanism
Opinion
Translation

(Jean-Claude Mézières)

Translation provided by ChatGPT, link to the original article in Russian

Link to Part 1: «Preliminary Analysis» (ру / eng )
Link to Part 2: «Experiments on a Torus» (ру / eng )
Link to Part 3: «Practically Significant Solutions» (ру / eng )
Link to «Summary» (ру / eng )

1. About this series of articles


1.1 Central result


If I haven't made a critical mistake, I have discovered an astonishing passenger transportation scheme with unique characteristics. Imagine this scenario: you are in a big city and need to get from point A to point B. All you need to do is walk to the nearest intersection and indicate the destination on your smartphone or a special terminal installed there. In a few minutes, a small but spacious bus will arrive for you. The bus is designed for easy entry without bending, and you can bring a stroller, bicycle, or even a cello inside. It provides comfortable seating where you can stretch your legs. This bus will take you to the nearest intersection to point B, and you will reach your destination without any transfers. The entire journey, including waiting at the stop, will take only 25-50% more time than if you were traveling by private car. Based on my estimation, in modern metropolises, this type of transportation will be widely adopted, and the cost of a trip on such buses will be similar to the fare of a regular city bus.

Surprisingly, the reasoning behind these findings is based on relatively simple mathematics, and perhaps even a talented high school student, under fortunate circumstances, could have guessed them on their own. The practical significance of the topic and the modest level of mathematical requirements prompted me to make an effort to write the article in such a way that the reader could follow the path of discoveries, learn some research techniques, and gain a successful example to explain to their children the purpose of mathematics and how it can be applied in everyday life.
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Total votes 9: ↑7 and ↓2 +5
Comments 6

Pixel image rotation

Level of difficulty Easy
Reading time 13 min
Views 900
C *Data Engineering *

Brief problem formulation

The program accepts as input the absolute path to the image in the bmp extension and the path where you save the result of the work. Then, it rotates the image by 90 degrees counterclockwise. Afterwards, the program saves the new image.

The program is executed on C.

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Total votes 7: ↑5 and ↓2 +3
Comments 0

How we built a Cyber Immune product using an open source library: stages, pitfalls, solutions

Reading time 11 min
Views 375
«Лаборатория Касперского» corporate blog Information Security *Open source *Programming *
Translation
Do you remember how, even before the pandemic set in, companies were striving to provide secure perimeter access for their telecommuters? Especially if super sensitive data was involved such as accounting information or corporate documents. The solutions were complex, bulky and expensive. Can you imagine just how critical it has become now?!

image

My name is Sergey Yakovlev, and I'm the head of the Kaspersky Thin Client project based on our proprietary operating system, KasperskyOS. A thin client is one of the main components of a virtual desktop infrastructure, which is a remote desktop access system. In this article, I will use such a client as an example of how you can build a secure (yet commercially viable!) product. I will cover the stages, the stumbling blocks, the problems and solutions. Let's go!
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Total votes 1: ↑1 and ↓0 +1
Comments 0

PostgreSQL 16: Part 5 or CommitFest 2023-03

Level of difficulty Medium
Reading time 28 min
Views 586
Postgres Professional corporate blog PostgreSQL *SQL *
Digest
Translation

The end of the March Commitfest concludes the acceptance of patches for PostgreSQL 16. Let’s take a look at some exciting new updates it introduced.

I hope that this review together with the previous articles in the series (2022-072022-092022-112023-01) will give you a coherent idea of the new features of PostgreSQL 16.

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Total votes 10: ↑10 and ↓0 +10
Comments 0

«Promising Public Transportation for Large and Medium-Sized Cities» — the main idea in a brief summary

Level of difficulty Easy
Reading time 9 min
Views 1.1K
Algorithms *Mathematics *Transport The future is here Urbanism
Opinion
Translation

(source)

Translation provided by ChatGPT, link to the original article.

I recently published a series of articles titled 'As Cheap as a Bus, as Convenient as a Taxi...':

Link to Part 1: «Preliminary Analysis» (ру / eng )
Link to Part 2: «Experiments on a Torus» (ру / eng )
Link to Part 3: «Practically Significant Solutions» (ру / eng )

dedicated to making public transportation in large cities completely seamless, without the need for transfers. In the last article of the series, I extensively described a microbus movement scheme that allows them to operate almost like taxis while accommodating 5-10 passengers at once. Such a transportation system would enable city residents to travel from any intersection to another without any transfers, comparable in time to a personal car journey, and at a cost similar to a regular city bus ticket. However, the feedback from readers indicated that I chose an extremely ineffective way to convey the information, resulting in a failure to effectively communicate the essence of the matter.

I must admit that the previous three articles were written in a way that allowed readers to apply the acquired knowledge in practice or continue the research I started on their own. Unfortunately, my desire to 'teach' resulted in nearly 100 pages of complex mathematical text, which is clearly excessive for readers who simply wanted to familiarize themselves with the idea. Here, I will attempt to rectify this mistake and briefly, yet simply, explain the bus taxi technology.
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Total votes 6: ↑6 and ↓0 +6
Comments 0

Blinking into Morse code

Level of difficulty Easy
Reading time 10 min
Views 771
Python *IT Infrastructure *Data Engineering *
Sandbox

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.

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Total votes 6: ↑6 and ↓0 +6
Comments 2

Feature Engineering: Techniques and Best Practices for Data Scientists

Reading time 8 min
Views 905
Big Data *Data Engineering *
Tutorial

The most important stage in the data science process is feature engineering, which entails turning raw data into useful features that might enhance the performance of machine learning models. It calls for creativity, data-driven thinking, and domain expertise. Data scientists can improve the prediction capability of their models and find hidden patterns in the data by choosing, combining, and inventing relevant features. Handling missing data, scaling features, encoding categorical variables, constructing interaction terms, and other procedures are examples of feature engineering techniques. The best practises involve investigating the data, testing and improving features iteratively, and applying domain knowledge to draw out important information. The accuracy and effectiveness of machine learning models are significantly influenced by effective feature engineering.

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Rating 0
Comments 0

Technical Game Design. Configs, balance and content in the example of PC strategy

Level of difficulty Medium
Reading time 13 min
Views 667
Game development *Unity3D *Game testing *Unreal Engine *Game design *
Case
Translation

One of the common tasks that both beginners and experienced game designers face is describing a large amount of content to pass its parameters to the engine. This is not an easy task, given that it is very difficult to find materials on the technical aspects of game design. Well, let’s figure out how to transfer data to the engine.

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Total votes 2: ↑2 and ↓0 +2
Comments 1

Monitoring CPU/RAM/disk metrics with OpenTelemetry and Uptrace

Level of difficulty Easy
Reading time 4 min
Views 1.8K
Open source *
Tutorial

OpenTeleletry Collector is an open source data collection pipeline that allows you to monitor CPU, RAM, disk, network metrics, and many more.

Collector itself does not include built-in storage or analysis capabilities, but you can export the data to Uptrace and ClickHouse, using them as a replacement for Grafana and Prometheus.

When compared to Prometheus, ClickHouse can offer small on-disk data size and better query performance when analyzing millions of timeseries.

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Total votes 6: ↑6 and ↓0 +6
Comments 4

The Power of Email Marketing: Engaging Customers for Business Growth

Level of difficulty Medium
Reading time 3 min
Views 398
CRM systems *Freelance Internet marketing *Email-marketing *
Case


Email marketing has emerged as a vital tool for businesses to nurture customer relationships and drive growth. In this article, we will explore the immense potential of email marketing through personal experiences and examples from renowned companies. From personalization to segmentation, retargeting, and building anticipation, discover how these strategies can elevate your email campaigns and deliver remarkable results.

The Art of Personalization in Email Marketing:
Personalization is a key aspect of successful email marketing. Take, for example, Amazon's tailored recommendations and exclusive offers. By delivering personalized content that matches customers' preferences and interests, Amazon creates a sense of exclusivity and fosters customer loyalty. In my own experience, implementing personalization in email campaigns resulted in increased open rates, click-through rates, and conversions. It's clear that customers appreciate the effort put into crafting messages specifically for them.

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Rating 0
Comments 3

How Java works with fonts

Level of difficulty Easy
Reading time 3 min
Views 778
Java *
Sandbox

Hello!

In this article, I will try to briefly describe how Java Virtual Machine works with fonts. Once I needed to change the font used by the JVM and, surprisingly, found only pieces of legacy information about this. I spent a little time investigating the problem and now want to share this information with anybody who could find it useful. Feel free to leave any comments :)

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Rating 0
Comments 1

Business Process Management Part 2. How to

Level of difficulty Easy
Reading time 12 min
Views 1K
System Analysis and Design *Project management *Product Management *
Tutorial

This article is written in a how-to style. It is based on my personal experience and opinions, so it may omit some steps that are common in BPM practice but that I have not encountered in my work. The topic is broad, and each section deserves a separate article. Therefore, if you are interested in a specific topic, please comment, and I will prepare a more detailed description.

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Total votes 3: ↑2 and ↓1 +1
Comments 3