Personal blog of Nikita Zhuk
Distance: 300km Total time: 09:35:47 Moving avg: 32,9 km/h A beautiful night ride (start at 8 PM). Our group consisted of 7 riders, 2 of which were exceptionnally strong riders who stayed at the front for the whole 300km. We had two fairly quick bottle stops. Had no issues on the fitness front, but suffered a bit from stiff neck, tingling in the fingers of left hand, and had very sore legs…
Liikenne- ja viestintäministeriö on julkaissut asetusluonnoksen Liikenne- ja viestintäviraston sähköiseen viestintään liittyvistä suoritteista perittävistä muista maksuista, ja pyytänyt siihen lausuntoja 20.11.2025 mennessä. Kyseinen asetus vaikuttaa suoraan siihen, kuka voi toimia .fi-verkkotunnusvälittäjänä ja millä kustannuksilla – ja siten suomalaisen verkkotunnusjärjestelmän tasapuolisuuteen…
It started with a post from Mark Zuckerberg . It wasn't the content of that post that drew my attention – that was just the Metaverse pitch recycled with "AI" swapped in – it was the form. It felt quite surprising to see plain text in Times New Roman following a good old H1 tag. But something felt off. The page didn't load instantly - something one would expect from a minimalistic page like this.…
Walk down a street in Helsinki and pick a random 7–12-year-old with a smartphone. In 9 out of 10 cases, you’ll find WhatsApp installed. In Finland, WhatsApp is widely seen as a simple messaging tool — private, low-risk, and the default choice for kids to stay in touch with friends and family. But this view is outdated. It no longer reflects reality.
I created my Facebook account 17 years ago, in the fall of 2007. Early Facebook was quite different from what it is today. It was about a new way of staying connected with old and current real-world acquaintances—whether childhood friends, coworkers or relatives. Networks were built primarily between people with some kind of real-world connection, and within these networks, we shared updates about…
A couple of weeks ago, I had the TV on, and the Finnish version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? was airing, hosted by Antti Holma—a famous Finnish actor and host. A young man was sitting in the participant's chair. A question about Finnish literature came up, and after using one lifeline, the young man chose the correct answer.
Kuuntelin viime viikolla Psykopodiaa -podcastin jakson “ 159. Häiritsevä tinnitus. Vieraina Mari Havia ja Kristiina Laakso. ”. Jaksossa käsitellään tinnituksen ja ääniyliherkkyyden hoitoa terapian menetelmin. Aihe on minulle henkilökohtaisesti tuttu, ja ajattelin tarjota siihen yhden tarinan yhden ihmisen elämästä häiritsevän tinnituksen kanssa. Vaikka tinnitus on vaivana hyvin yleinen, se on…
This book was originally published in 1951 by Abraham Joshua Heschel, who was a Polish-American rabbi and one of the leading Jewish philosophers of the 20th century. The first time I've heard about it was from Cal Newport's Deep Questions podcast. I've been listening for Cal's podcast for a while, and one interesting theory has stuck in my mind: Cal's theory of media consumption . Cal's theory…
29.9.2024 Marbella Half Marathon Total time: 1:38:28 Pace: 4:40/km This was a flat course at the beach of Marbella, Spain, in very moderate 20-25C temperature. Garmin’s race prediction gave me 1:48, but I was fairly certain that I could get under 1:45. For the first 10km I followed a 1:40 pacer, but then decided to overtake him and run at my own pace. Got some nasty stitches at 19-20km, but…
Tämän kisan tarina alkoi jo vuonna 2020, jolloin minun piti osallistua puolimatkan kisaan Grazissa. Koronan takia kisa peruuntui, ja Ironman antoi vastineeksi voucherin mihin tahansa Itävallan kisaan. Kun voucherin voimassaoloaika alkoi lähestyä uhkaavasti loppuaan, oli tehtävä päätöksiä. Kisaksi valikoitui Zell am See, jossa kävin kisaamassa viimeksi syyskuussa 2019. Näin neljä vuotta myöhemmin…
URLCache class implements the caching of responses to URL load requests, by mapping NSURLRequest objects to CachedURLResponse objects. It provides a composite in-memory and on-disk cache, and lets you manipulate the sizes of both the in-memory and on-disk portions. You can also control the path where cache data is persistently stored. If you have been working with URL loading on iOS, you are…
Matthews Owen's book offers an exceptionally well-written analysis of the historical background, starting from the earliest times, even before Kievan Rus, and tracing events up to the present war. Owen has access to numerous insider sources and isn't afraid to share his and his family's personal stories, such as the harrowing account of his 19-year-old son Nikita fleeing mobilization in Moscow.…
As the COVID-19 pandemic has now become an integral part of our daily lives, companies around the world are rethinking their policies around how and where the knowledge work is done. Approaches vary: Airbnb announced its “ Live and work anywhere “ policy and is partnering with governments to make it easier for more people to travel and work around the world Apple first announced their…
Book commentary in my essay about remote work . Title: Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World Author: Cal Newport Year: 2016
Book commentary in my essay about remote work . Title: Effective Remote Work: For Yourself, Your Team, and Your Company Author: James Stanier Year: 2022
(This post is in Finnish since it's a reply to a LinkedIn post in Finnish). Ferrix Hovi postasi LinkedInissä erinomaisen listan ajatuksia IT-alaa harkitseville ihmisille. Jokaisen ajatuksen kohdalla nyökyttelin päätäni ja näytin mielessäni Ferrixille peukkua. Luettuani listan mielessäni alkoi heti kuulumaan ajatus: ”Loistava lista, mutta voisin kommentoida että lisäisin vielä...”. Ei, en ala…
I’ve heard David Goggings name from ultra running circles and watched some of his Youtube videos. He sounded like a stereotypical motivational speaker, but as these things usually go, there is usually so much more under the surface. Sometimes David’s obsession goes way overboard - to the point where you start to question whether you’re reading about self destructive behavior. In theory, he seems…
Kirja onnistuu asettamaan viime vuosikymmenen asuntojen hintojen repeämisen laajempaan historialliseen ja poliittiseen kontekstiin erinomaisesti. Talouselämän asumista seuraava toimittaja Karla Kempas ja Kauppalehden datatoimittaja Veera Tegelberg käyvät läpi niitä seikkoja, jotka asettavat nykytilanteessa ihmisiä voittajien ja häviäjien leiriin käymällä läpi omistajien, vuokralaisten, perijöiden…
Yeonmi sounds like a remarkable young lady - a child, really, who had to endure unimaginable things and take responsibilities of decisions which no child should have to take. This was a book worth reading. In addition to describing the tragic life of Yeonmi and her family, the story describes perfectly the society which is built on the ideas of Marxism-Leninism - on which Juche was later built on.…
Will Larson wrote a thoughtful post about managing technical quality in a codebase. The post goes through seven different approaches to managing technical quality, starting from fixing the most critical thing in your code right there and then, to planning & executing an organization-wide quality program with program sponsors, metrics, tools, dashboards, and reviews. The underlying premise, which I…
There's a new interesting blog/newsletter called The Observer Effect by Sriram Krishnan which has posted two interviews so far: Marc Andreessen and Daniel Ek . Both are fairly long, so be warned. A lot of themes are covered, but the topic of productivity and personal time management is strongly present in both. While Marc's and Daniel's daily scheduling routines were pretty different, one common…
As software engineers, we are used to designing large system architectures by defining the roles and responsibilities of each component. We assess whether some components have overlapping responsibilities, are overburdened with too many responsibilities, or if there is a gap that must be filled with a new component. Defining, maintaining, and evolving the exact set of responsibilities of each…
The idea that Taylorism isn’t the best fit for management in creative fields like software engineering isn’t new in any sense. However, rarely do you come across an article which lays down the historical roots of different management forms, their purpose & practices, and mapping between the types of values they were/are designed to operate on in so clear terms as Gene Bond does in his piece “ Why…
What is the most annoying thing you encounter as a professional software engineer? Back in the days when I was actively writing code, it was often missing the right context. Work would come in as a stream of tickets, often hastily written, each representing small pieces of work that would seem unconnected. That would usually lead to wrong assumptions, miscommunication and the one thing that all…
The book is based on a research of: 23 000 survey responses over 2 000 organizations, including startups, large enterprises, it/software and regulated industries projects including greenfields and legacy code methodologies from waterfall to agile/lean The research first shows that software delivery performance is one of the predictors of organization's financial performance, as measured by…
Ötztaler Radmarathon on vuosittain järjestettävä maantiepyöräilytapahtuma, joka täytti tänä vuonna 36 vuotta. Kyseessä on n. 230km pitkä reitti joka menee neljän huipun yli – Kühtai (+1200 hm), Brenner (+780 hm), Jaufenpass (+1130 hm), Timmelsjoch (+1760 hm) – ja kerryttää samalla 5500 nousumetriä. Reitillä ei juuri ole tasamaata, vaan koko matka mennään joko ylös tai alas. Suoritusaika vaihtelee…
Stage 1: Nice – Pra Loup Cols: Ascros, Cayolle, Pra Loup Dist: 172,5km Asc: 3590m TSS: 376 (BBS est: 379) IF: 0,68 (BBS est: 0,71) Moving time: 7:47:55 (BBS est: 7:31:04) NP: 205W (BBS est: 220 W) Sijoitus: 195 / 290 Viikon ensimmäinen aamuviiden herääminen tuntui raskaalta. Edellisenä päivänä olimme pakanneet kaikki tavarat kahteen Haute Route -järjestäjiltä saatuun laukkuun: heti maaliviivalla…
Frankfurtin täydestä matkasta on nyt kulunut viikko. Kisa ja siihen valmistava vuosi pyörii vieläkin mielessä. Pää vaatii ajatusten kasaamista, selkeyttämistä ja yhteenvetoa. Siksi: postmortem. Valmistautuminen Kaikki alkoi viime kesäkuun alussa: Pohdin asiaa hartaasti ja pitkään: Tämän jälkeen kävin suorittamassa heinäkuun alussa kolmannen puolimatkani Joroisilla ja sain siitä PRn, muutamalla…
Geoff Smart and Randy Street run ghSMART, a management consulting company which maintains a database of thousands of business executives and which is then used to analyze different aspects of what makes executives and businesses successful. They noticed that unsuccessful hires are one of the most expensive mistakes ever made, costing, on average, 15 times the annual salary of the hired employee.…
The best management-related book I’ve read lately. Ben Horowitz is currently known as the cofounder and partner of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. This book walks through Ben’s experience as a founder/CEO of his previous companies, Loudcloud and Opsware. Ben describes in a lot of detail the difficult situations in which he and his companies ended up in, and though those…
Surgeon Atul Gawande offers a fascinating perspective on the use of checklists in medicine, aviation, and structural engineering. Drawing on real-world cases and a successful WHO study on safe surgery procedures, this book effectively argues for using checklists as a cost-efficient tool to reduce errors, enhance team communication, and transform decision-making into a more disciplined and orderly…