Stack Overflow was launched five years ago. And then a miracle happened

Pavel Gorodnitsky - about technology that turns users into cartoon characters. And about how Apple, preparing for the presentation of the new iPhone, is afraid of competition.

Exactly one year ago, Tim Cook presented the tenth iPhone. In order to somehow explain to viewers why a smartphone for $ 1,000 needs such a giant cutout at the top of the screen, Apple came up with a tear-jerking story. According to top managers of the company, the exclusive and extremely useful Face ID sensor is hidden right in the “bangs” of the iPhone X, which not only helps in unlocking the device, but also entertains the user.

Entertainment called Animoji. What is the point? Owners of the tenth iPhone can open the built-in messenger (iMessage) and turn their faces into animated emoticons. The man raised an eyebrow - the monkey also raised. The man rolled his eyes - the piglet on the screen also stared them. Of course, Apple added not only animals - for example, for the sake of a viral effect, a smiling feces was integrated into Animoji.

As a result, after the release of the iPhone X, animated foxes and poop became almost the main topic of discussion. The owners of the new smartphone found out how accurately their device repeats human facial expressions, and the musicians even released videos where their songs are sung by Animoji. All this collected thousands of reposts and retweets.

But there are many downsides to this story as well. Firstly, people were annoyed that Apple only allowed cool emoticons to be used in iMessage - this, to put it mildly, is not the most popular and convenient messaging application. Secondly, it was annoying that Animoji were available only to iPhone X owners. Apple’s policy infuriated most of all after bloggers sealed the Face ID sensor, leaving only the front camera open, and the function continued to work as if nothing had happened. It was immediately revealed that in Cupertino they simply clamped a new chip for old iPhones - those where there is no Face ID.

I won’t exaggerate if I say that in 2018 Animoji don’t resonate at all - now it’s a “thing in itself”. I have been walking around with my tenth iPhone for almost a year now, but I only dabbled in animated emojis in the first week after purchase. I don't have anyone to chat with on iMessage, and I don't have many iPhone X friends - it's easier to send a Telegram sticker or a WhatsApp emoji than to mess around with Animoji.

And then Miracle happened. Ashot Gabrelyanov's team has developed an application with universal animated emoticons. For the sake of this app, 15 thousand faces (different race, gender, age) were scanned in order to achieve a complete copy of human facial expressions based on machine learning. Compared to Animoji, Chudo has three key advantages:

ATTACH_BLOCK">

Alas, there are three problems that complicate things.

Apple keeps Chudo off the App Store

The developers prepared the application for publication a month ago, but so far to no avail. In Cupertino, at first they didn’t react to Chudo at all, and then they said that Chumoji was too similar to Animoji, so the program would not get into the App Store.

On the one hand, Apple did everything in accordance with its official regulations: it states that the company has every right to prevent someone else's app from reaching the store. On the other hand, the giant corporation behaved cowardly and showed complexes. If they are so afraid of the application from a small studio, then Animoji is in a very precarious position.

Generally speaking, there's a good chance that a complete redesign of the app will help Miracle. Now the interface is pretty much reminiscent of iMessage and Animoji - even the smileys are located in almost the same order. Perhaps it is worth radically changing the design in order to pass moderation and no longer evoke associations with Apple's own product from Apple's Cerberus. At least, in the App Store there is an application "Supermoji" - it does not work well and frankly mimics Animoji, but it was still missed in the Play Market. Probably due to the dissimilarity to the original.

So far, Chudo is slow on older Androids

It is currently impossible to install Chudo through Google Play in Russia, but the .apk file is found on the Internet without any problems. I tested the app on the Chinese average Xiaomi Mi A1.

What can I say? The program itself works smartly, does not lag anywhere. But it was possible to scan the face only the second time - everything twitched, hung up and even flew out once. The conclusion is simple: the new messenger will have to work hard on optimization. To date, Chumoji does not lag only on flagships - this is not enough. And it's also strange that in the Android application there is no way to take a screenshot - it is blocked at the software level.

Chudo is not built into popular messengers

Record Chumoji. "But this is not possible now, so there are zero complaints about the developers. It's just a fact that with an instant penetration into these messengers, Chudo's technology would instantly break all Animoji.

Now, in order to send a cartoon sketch to a friend, you must first record a video, then save it, and then upload it as a video file. Pretty cumbersome, even though Apple doesn't even have that functionality.

What shines "Miracle"?

It is not clear how the situation with Apple will unfold (now the iOS version is only distributed to beta testers), but the fact is that the niche has definitely been chosen correctly. Stickers are already outdated, gifs are too, but people still want to express emotions. Animated emoticons are ideal for this - it's a pity that in Cupertino, where they seem to like to change the world, they are so afraid of even minimal rivalry.

In this difficult situation, it is important to remember that: a) there is a huge Android audience that needs to be interested in "Miracle"; b) you can leave "Chumoji", but remove all "Epl's" minimalism from the interface - maybe they will let it in the App Store. But the most important thing is not to give up: if the technology takes off, no cowardly moderators will interfere with the Miracle.

Leap year 2008 turned out to be very difficult for the leader of Russian basketball Ilona Korstin. In the spring, women's CSKA stopped a step away from winning the Russian Championship and the Euroleague. At the Beijing Olympics, the team failed to reach gold, and then Ilona suffered the most severe disappointment - in November, her club went bankrupt. However, there is a place for a miracle in life, and CSKA has risen from the ashes. Ilona told Izvestia correspondent Nikolai Chegorsky about this.

“In youth, everyone fed Masha Stepanova”

-From the Russian championship, who do you communicate with the most?
- With the girls I have a great contact. You know, training camps are a great test of friendship. When you live with a person in the same room for three months, you either become completely attached to him, or you start to turn back from him. There is no third. We are, in fact, at the training camp like in the army - here you quickly learn to understand people. But we have very warm relations with Masha Stepanova and Oksana Rakhmatullina. I generally consider Rakhmatullina one of my best friends.

-What do basketball players talk about when they gather in a cafe for a cup of coffee?
- About the same things that all the other girls are talking about: we are discussing new clothes, recent trips to boutiques, we are talking about diets. Well, let's not forget about the strong field (smiles). Basketball takes up only a hundredth of the conversation. In general, I do not like to dwell on one thing.

- You have known Masha Stepanova since the children's basketball section.
Yes, since the mid 90s. I remember the first time I saw Masha in training. Some skinny girl came. Our coach constantly at the training camp made her eat two servings of the second. Yes, and we all the time told her: “Eat, Masha, eat!”

- Poor appetite is a consequence of falling in love. Did Stepanova like some boy then?
- No, she just treated food calmly ... But we had expanse - her parents always made a bunch of sandwiches on her trip. And Masha fed them all to us (smiles). It is fate that we have traveled almost all the way together. And they got into the national team at the same time, and left for the women's NBA in one year. Until the last moment, they played in CSKA.

- By the way, Stepanova's departure from CSKA was called by many a wake-up call, a harbinger of the club's death.
- I know Masha very well, we constantly share our secrets ... But I can assure you that then no one thought about the collapse. Everything was announced to her at the last moment. Both Stepanova and all of us were in shock - after all, one of the leading basketball players was removed from the squad. And the explanation that her game did not suit the management seemed strange. And although we were assured that everything would be fine, after that the girls became more wary of everything.

"Putin is a very charming man..."

-And a month later it became clear that your alertness was justified...
-Yes, it would be better if it was not confirmed, and the women's CSKA did not die. This was announced to us a week in advance - it's good that the club bosses said everything directly, they didn't play up. The only thing we were asked was not to leave right away, to wait another week.

You quickly packed your things and left for France. It seems that there was already a ready-made option for continuing a career?
- Not in this case. It's just that the first two or three days in Moscow I was literally bombarded with offers. I wanted to leave and take a break from all this fuss, because my head was ready to explode! After all, the leaders of the clubs, who wanted to get me, persuaded me to sign the contract in as soon as possible. Therefore, I vacated the Moscow apartment that the club rented for us and went to France. When the deadline came, CSKA announced that the sponsor had not been found. It remained to wait for the start of the working week and sign a new contract. And then a miracle happened...

-Who acted as a savior?
- The head of the "big" CSKA Sergey Kushchenko and the leadership of the women's club. I also know that Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov used all possible leverage and in the shortest possible time found a sponsor for the club. It is very touching that the fate of women's CSKA is not indifferent not only in sports, but also in political circles.

-You watched the Euroleague match with the participation of the men's CSKA in the company of Vladimir Putin. Worried, perhaps?
-Certainly! But more, in my opinion, the guys were nervous: as soon as Putin appeared on the podium, they missed the advantage (laughs). I didn't even plan to go to this match. I had a ticket to St. Petersburg in my hands, but the day before I left, they called me and asked me to accompany the Prime Minister. It was impossible to refuse such an offer.

-Did you choose a place closer to Putin yourself?
- No, it was assigned to me in advance. I didn't even know that Vladimir Vladimirovich would sit next door. Of course, I was rather nervous, but Putin turned out to be a pleasant person to talk to and a very charming man.

- Did you tell the Prime Minister about the collapse of the club and its miraculous rescue?
“Unfortunately, we didn’t really get to talk. There was a terrible noise and hubbub in the hall, besides, Vladimir Vladimirovich arrived in the second half of the game. There is a Direct Line for detailed communication with him, however, I think we will have enough time to talk. After all, Putin was invited to the women's CSKA game (smiles).

Mykola CHEGORSKY, Izvestia in Ukraine newspaper

This shelter cat has completely lost hope that someone will take him home. And then one day, sitting in a cage with an expression of universal sadness and sadness, a ray of hope lit up. They came for him, that very real and such a long-awaited new family.

Meet BenBen, the cat who was only one day away from euthanasia. But then a miracle happened, and he not only survived, but also found a new family.

It turned out that only one hour separated BenBen from such a dramatic transformation from the saddest cat in the world to the happiest bundle of orange fur.

For all the time that the cat had to spend in a shelter, he was nicknamed the saddest cat, which became known to the entire Internet community.

When BenBen got to the shelter, the workers thought that he was attacked by street animals, as the cat had rather deep cuts on his muzzle, his ear was bitten and his spine was broken.

Of course, how can you remain cheerful in such a situation when you are literally twisted out of pain, not only physical, but also mental. And the gloomy muzzle of the saffron spoke about it.

BenBen was planned to be euthanized. Shelter workers say that by the expression of the cat's face, one could safely say that he guessed what fate awaited him.

He stopped eating and drinking. The day before BenBen was supposed to be euthanized, a woman who works with a veterinary center decided to take the ginger sufferer home!

She said that as soon as they returned home, BenBen immediately changed. In just an hour, he began to smile, purr and wanted to cuddle.

And all because the cat finally felt safe, he felt loved and was just happy.

So much happiness for recently the saddest cat on the internet! No one expected BenBen to be able to walk again, but he proved otherwise.

BenBen can walk, run and jump, but only for short distances!

Many months have passed and now BenBen's favorite pastimes are sleeping, playing and trying to taste human food!

Once again we are convinced that love is a powerful force that works wonders!

And then a miracle happened

Luther was the most famous fighter for the reform of Catholicism, but far from the only one. There were many other devout preachers who opposed Roman doctrine: the Scot John Knox, the Englishman Thomas More, the French exile in Geneva, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli in Zurich, the Spaniard Miguel Servet, Sebastian Castillo in France, and many more lesser-known but important figures in Germany. Being opposed to Judaism in principle, they did not express hostility against the Jewish people themselves. Andreas Osiander of Königsberg, Protestant theologian and professor of Hebrew, in a letter to the prolific Yiddish writer Eliyahu Levite, compiler of Bove Buch , condemned the last writings of Luther with such fervor that he was horrified by possible consequences publication of this letter. He also wrote a detailed 20-argument rebuttal to the blood libel. And one of the authors of the Augsburg Confession, Luther's friend and supporter, Philipp Melanchthon (the surname by which he is known is the Greek translation of his real surname Schwarzerd) gave a remarkable example of the cruelty of Catholics towards Jews to illustrate the corruption of papal institutions and their tolerance for injustices.

The upcoming meeting was supposed to soften the differences between the Catholic and Protestant princes. After Luther turned down Josel's request to intercede with the Saxon elector Johann Friedrich the Magnanimous, the leader of the German Jews had no choice but to address him personally. In 1539 Yosel met him at the council of electors in Frankfurt. Here he had the opportunity to convince the rulers of Saxony and Brandenburg to lift the ban on the residence and even entry of Jews into their lands. In his diary, Yosel recalls:

Standing before numerous non-Jewish scholars and using arguments from our holy Torah against the words of Luther, Bucer and their group in a dispute with them, I was listened to with favor.

Philip Melanchthon was present at the meeting, representing his friend and mentor Luther. He read a sermon in which he denounced sinfulness catholic church, and cited the famous trial that took place in Berlin 29 years ago as an example of papal injustice. A coppersmith named Paul Fromm was arrested for stealing a golden monstrance from the village church, which contained two hosts - thin bread wafers, which, according to Catholic teaching, are transubstantiated into the body of Christ during Mass. Under torture, Fromm testified that he sold one of them to the Jew Shlomo from Spandau; the latter was captured and tortured until he confessed that he had desecrated the host and sold pieces of it to other Jews. The whole district was inflamed with anger at the Jews. A short trial in Berlin sentenced Fromm to death by torture with a red-hot iron rod, and 36 Jews to be burned at the stake; two of them who agreed to be baptized were mercifully beheaded. Burgomaster of Berlin Hans Brakov, who presided over the trial, read out the verdict to the crowd from a high platform built against the red brick wall and high Gothic windows of the Church of St. Mary on the New Market (by the way, this scene is the subject of the very first artistic depiction of Berlin known to us) . The sentenced were burned on a huge fire next to the city wall. All the Jews of Brandenburg were expelled.

Retelling Melanchthon's speech, Yosel writes:

And then a miracle happened. At this point, we learned that the 38 Jews executed in Berlin in 1510 were innocent. The one who stole the monstrance committed a crime, but the bishop, being an evil man, forbade the one who confessed to reveal the truth to their master, Duke Joachim.

(In fact, the thief admitted that, under pressure from the bishop, he invented a story about the desecration of the host by the Jews.)

Hearing this, the dukes gave up their desire to exile us. All of them, including Duke Joachim, kept their word. Only the Elector of Saxony betrayed us and did us great harm. But punishment overtook him.

The punishment for the elector was his subsequent arrest, imprisonment and death sentence after he was defeated by the imperial troops in his reckless invasion of Bohemia. He was not executed and subsequently released, but lost the title of elector.

Melanchthon's accusations against Catholic morality, using the case of the Jews as an example, was a surprise worthy of attention. They show how far the position of Luther's associates was from the position of their leader and mentor, who never cited the misfortunes of stubborn and blasphemous Jews as an example of an unjust trial.

While Martin Luther was the inspirer and leader of the German Reformation, its most prominent and greatest figure, Philip Melanchthon was a scribe and a practical thinker. It was the position of the latter towards the Yiddish-speaking people, more balanced and practical than the ardor of the former, that reflected the mainstream of Protestant thought in Europe.

Some reformist countries, such as England, the Netherlands, France and Switzerland, did not support Jewish communities at all and were not interested in the attitude of religious minorities to big politics. But it so happened that at the council in Frankfurt, a later celebrated French pastor came face to face with Josel of Rosheim, who was present at the debate in a private capacity and had probably never seen a single religious Jew before his exile from Geneva to Strasbourg.

His name was John Calvin, and he was destined to have an even greater influence on world history than Martin Luther. In The Social and Religious History of the Jews, Salo Baron claims that at the council of 1539, Calvin personally argued with Yosel, who later reported that he was verbally insulted by one of the theologians present at the dispute - "furiously, viciously and with threats." According to Baron, this is very similar to Calvin, who himself admitted that he easily loses his temper, for example, he wrote to a colleague: "I committed a great sin because I could not keep calm." (Calvin's usually gloomy mood could be the result of ill health: he suffered from many ailments, including kidney stones, as a result of which every movement brought him excruciating pain.) Yosel, always a diplomat, no doubt remembered that "a gentle answer deflects anger," and answered with a smile a little condescendingly: “You, scientist man want to threaten us poor people? The Lord our God has kept us since the time of Abraham. In His mercy He will surely keep us from you.”

This short conversation brings to mind a later essay by Calvin called “Answer to the Questions and Objections of a Jew” (“Ad quaestiones et obiecta Judaei cuiusdam Responsio”), which has the form of a dialogue ( disputiato), in which the defender of Christianity argues, citing examples mainly from the Old Testament, and his Jewish opponent mainly from the New. According to Salo Baron, “this is a generalization of a real discussion that Calvin once had with a Jew,” and this Jew was probably Yosel.

Perhaps this treatise was an attempt by Calvin to respond to those questions of the Jew that he could not immediately answer in that dispute; it is a kind of theological esprit de l'escalier, when a witty response is found long after the event. The subject matter was the topics that were usually discussed in disputes, but it is rather strange that, even having the opportunity to consider the answers in a calm atmosphere, Calvin makes arguments that, unlike those of a Jew, seem rather weak. So, Yosel - if it really was him - claims that "if it were true that it was written that at the hour of his death Jesus turned to the Father, saying:" Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing, "while the Father and Are the sons of the same essence and have the same will? - and how do Christians justify their treatment of Jews, hiding behind the name of God? To which Calvin replied only that the oppression of the Jews was justified by their stubbornness, persistence in error and the cumulative sins of their ancestors, which is described in detail in the Bible. This is very similar to the "violent, angry and threatening" speech that Yosel complained about and which did not satisfy him as an answer. However, then Calvin's mind could be focused on other things, namely, on the search for a wife who would take care of him (Melanchthon reproached him for his thoughtfulness during the dispute and for being distracted by thoughts of marriage).

But this does not mean that John Calvin was a gentle man, not at all. In the first four years of the totalitarian theocratic tyranny he founded in Geneva, he sentenced 58 heretics to be burned and 76 to exile; in a year he burned 43 women as witches; for three months of the plague, he executed 34 unfortunates for "sowing infection." In 1553 - and there is no forgiveness for him - he sent to the stake the great Miguel Serveto, a scientist, philosopher and theologian who discovered the pulmonary circulation (although it is said that Calvin usually preferred a less cruel form of execution).

Started by religious reformers, the movement, like movements inspired by political thinkers (and thinkers in general), developed in a way that its founders could not have foreseen. Just as Moses would have been puzzled by modern Judaism and Jesus would have been astonished by the Vatican, so the future of Lutheran and Calvinist Protestantism would probably have surprised its founding fathers. Luther's teaching became increasingly associated with narrow German nationalism. Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg proclaimed, "We must understand that it was Luther who began to Germanize Christianity," adding that "National Socialism must complete this process."

On the other hand, Calvin contributed to the emergence of an international religious movement that received a wider response and quickly spread to the east and west. It was his work, and not Luther's, that led to the reshaping of Christendom, to the founding of Reformed churches not only in France, Germany, Scotland, the Netherlands and Hungary, but also to the emergence of the Anglican Church, which is some semblance of Calvinized Catholicism. William Pitt, who made his country an imperial power, in his speech delivered in the House of Lords on May 19, 1772, explained it this way: "We have a Calvinist creed, a papist liturgy and an Arminian clergy." Moreover, Calvin's views were developed by the English Puritans, who broke with Anglicanism and brought Calvinism to North America. Today, the Anglican Church and the Episcopal Church in the United States, as well as non-conformist and dissident churches—Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, and even Unitarian—can count Calvin among their founding fathers.

The Genevan Reformer's support for the laws of the Old Testament, especially the Ten Commandments, his aversion to images of saints, his support for commerce, even his belief in predestination, freeing the sinner from full responsibility for sin, formed a new direction in Christianity. The consequences were unpredictable. Researchers reasonably describe how much they owe modern world Calvin's legacy: separation of church and state, enlightenment, liberal humanism, religious tolerance, capitalism. We owe, at least in part, the existence of the State of Israel and the wealthy, influential Atlantean diaspora to this man who wrote:

If we compare the Jews with other peoples, undoubtedly, their wickedness, ingratitude and rebellion surpass the crimes of all other peoples.

The Encyclopaedia Judaica compares Calvin to the biblical prophet Balaam, whom the king of Moab called to curse Israel, but instead of cursing, a blessing was uttered: "the Genevan reformer was also about to curse the Jews, but in the end, as it turned out, he blessed them."

For no other country was this more true than for the Polish-Lithuanian Union, where Calvinism had political implications associated with resistance to important clans, Catholic bishops, and the Lutheran preferences of the German burghers. Thanks to Calvinism, east of the Oder, Catholics were for some time only a dominant minority. Thus, according to Norman Davies, this land was "a land without fires":

As a Benedictine Pole wrote, “beautiful harmony was born from contradictory things, like playing a lute on which different strings are stretched.”

The Polish historian of the XIX century Sergei Bershadsky wrote that in 1587, during the interregnum - between the death of King Stefan Batory and the election of the Swedish prince Sigismund to the Polish throne - due to the fact that the constitution of the Polish-Lithuanian association did not allow the throne to remain free, rich and a worthy merchant, Shaul Yudich, a representative of the Yiddish community of Brest-Litovsk and the son of the famous Padua rabbi Katzenellenbogen, was elected king for one night and was subsequently named Saul Val ( wahl in German means "chosen"). Even if this is a legend, it shows that the spirit of ecumenism and polyreligion that prevailed in the country allowed the Jews to believe that such a thing was possible.

In this generous atmosphere, the Jewish community of Poland became a beacon of learning in the Yiddish world, a place for the intellectual rebirth of European Jewry, demonstrating that Yiddish civilization can contribute not only to the European economy, but also to the development of European thought.