United States
I'm a California-based multilingual writer specializing in marketing copy & content writing, Russian-to-English translation, and social media comms. My main area of interest and editing expertise is tech, ranging from AI-driven B2B solutions to gaming.
I come from an academic background in Public Policy and International Relations, which gave me a solid knack for everything languages and communications. Check out my work!
Highlights
Yandex is a technology company that creates innovative products based on machine learning and neural networks. A team of talented mathematicians and programmers develops one of the most popular search engines and other services that help people in their everyday lives. Among our businesses are: search, advertising, ride-hailing, e-commerce, video/audio streaming, autonomous technologies, and cloud.
Depending on who you ask, weather forecasting has been around for hundreds or even thousands of years. Having an idea of whether it rains on a particular day is endlessly convenient, yes - but it's also hard to overstate the importance of weather tech for many modern industries.
At a glance, modern weather forecasting almost seems magical, or at least wildly futuristic. And in many aspects, it really is: meteorologists are often the first to apply state-of-the-art advancements in AI and machine learning. However, once you take a look under the hood, you'll find some odd antiques.
The challenges we face today often have nothing to do with technology. They call for a different kind of experience - the kind we accumulate throughout life. Professional connections have become more valuable, and the community has gained more significance than ever. We hold difficult conversations, seek contacts, ask for advice, and form regulations and standards.
The demand for Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) is experiencing an unparalleled surge, especially in Israel. GPUs have evolved into versatile tools that offer a range of benefits across various industries and use-cases. By integrating these advanced GPUs into our Compute Cloud, Instance Groups, and Managed Service for Kubernetes, we aim to deliver incomparable performance and value to our customers.
Humans have attempted to predict the weather for thousands of years. It's easy to see why: the weather has always been a paramount factor in hunting, agriculture, fishing, warfare, sea navigation, land travel, and general day-to-day safety. Some of history's greatest minds have left their marks on the weather forecasting knowledge that we are lucky to have today.
Yandex Station 2 is our newest device that is becoming the centerpiece of the smart home with Alice, our voice assistant. We have completely overhauled the interior and exterior design, added an LED screen on the top panel, and tried to learn from the previous generation's experience when it came to many details that may not be immediately obvious.
Meteum
The agriculture industry is undergoing rapid transformation as innovative technologies are being developed and implemented, from precision agriculture to vertical farming, and beyond. In this series...
While most services provide weather data for the next 10-14 days, operational planning in a variety of industries requires insights into weather patterns beyond this limit - for the next few months. For instance, agricultural companies and cooperatives need to know when seeding can be started and what potential risks they may face during the growing season.
As the winter hits its peak, many people begin planning their ski vacations. But with the volatility of weather in ski resorts, exacerbated by climate change, it can be a challenge for advertisers to create effective campaigns. After all, people won't hit the slopes if there isn't enough snow to ski, no matter how well you promote the resort.
This is Ilya Drigo, Lead Meteorologist at Meteum.ai. As a business-focused weather intelligence provider, we understand the impact that climate risks can have on a company's operations, finances and reputation. Supply chain disruptions, property damage, and changes in consumer demand can all lead to increased costs and liability.
The weather impacts customer behavior in a straightforward fashion. A well-maintained connection between weather forecasting and marketing can help firms accurately manage their businesses and improve the quality of their products. Weather data allows you to make better business decisions, set realistic goals, plan promotions, and produce your product on time.
Hurricanes are growing in vigor and intensity as the climate warms. Recent projections indicate that tropical cyclone intensity could increase by 2-11% over each degree of warming. The average number of tropical cyclones per year has increased since the 1970s, and this trend is expected to continue into the future.
On rainy days, storefronts bustle with umbrellas. Gloves, hats, and candles sell best when it's cold outside. Soft drinks, ice cream, and fans get swooped from the shelves when it's hot. Severe weather events can disrupt supply chains and cause abrupt changes in consumer behavior.
More than 80% of the global energy supply comes from fossil fuels. Suffice it to say, this isn't a viable long-term strategy due to massive pollution and the resulting climate change. However, energy demand is constantly growing and is projected to double by 2050.
At Meteum, we push the boundaries of weather forecasting accuracy. Our algorithms, powered by machine learning, receive data from various sources, from weather radars to meteorological models. While the former is a simple tool to comprehend and work with, the latter requires a lot more tinkering.
Weather forecasting today has everything to do with big data: the need for a high-throughput, high-performance computer cluster is apparent. Behind every weather forecasting platform, a data center does much of the hard work, and Meteum is no exception. Data centers vary in size, from small server rooms all the way up to groups of geographically distributed buildings.
When you hear "weather forecasting", what first comes to your mind? Sure, knowing whether it rains on a particular day proves helpful if you're planning a hangout with friends. We bet you also know that weather forecasting is instrumental in delivery and shipping, aviation, public transit, and construction.
In today's world, where having direct, unhindered access to up-to-date information is the key to success, we aim to make your weather-dependent enterprise more efficient and profitable than ever. Drive your company in the black by seamlessly integrating our API into your IT infrastructure and optimizing your processes.
City dwellers are dependent on weather conditions for their everyday activities. Temperature and precipitation define the lives for millions of people in many ways, just like in ancient times. Nowadays, modern weather forecasting services display all kinds of parameters: type and intensity of precipitation, cloudiness, humidity, atmospheric pressure, and wind direction and speed.
When you can access a reliable weather forecast from anywhere just by opening an app on your phone, it's easy to forget that it hasn't always been this way. In our recent article, we've explored the turbulent history of weather forecasting theory and applied tools.
Taxis are an integral part of any city's transport system. Ride-hailing services powered by cutting-edge technology have become a staple all around the world, and their convenience is unmatched. However, despite the simplification and automatization of processes over the last decade, managing a successful rideshare can be a logistical nightmare.
Humans have attempted to predict the weather for thousands of years. It's easy to see why: the weather has always been a paramount factor in hunting, agriculture, fishing, warfare, sea navigation, land travel, and general day-to-day safety. Some of history's greatest minds have left their marks on the weather forecasting knowledge that we are lucky to have today.
Weather forecasting is a tale of technology, design, and engineering. In one of our earlier articles, we discussed how Meteum combines run-of-the-mill weather models with machine learning to make precise forecasts and nowcasts. Our algorithms never sleep: every single minute, we produce over 160 million forecasts for each point on the map.
Any city is an intricately crafted system, more fragile than one might expect. Unfavorable weather conditions can disrupt the flow of an entire megalopolis. Fog, rainfall, snow, severe winds, ice on the roads, excess heat, or frost can dramatically impact transit time, safety, and working conditions for millions of city dwellers and lead to insurmountable costs for businesses and the city government.
At a glance, modern weather forecasting almost seems magical, or at least wildly futuristic. And in many aspects, it really is: meteorologists are often the first to apply state-of-the-art advancements in AI and machine learning. However, once you take a look under the hood, you'll find some odd antiques.
Agriculture and farming may spark rustic associations in most people's minds, yet it's one of the industries that heavily benefit from technological advancement. The logistics that go into managing a successful farm are mind-blowing - there are just so many factors to account for!
In the past, weather forecasts were entirely based on ground-level observations. Although those got the job done, the accuracy was hit-or-miss at best, especially when it came to precipitation. Just like in any other data-driven field, more data leads to better forecasting: thanks to giant leaps in technological advancement, surface observations are now accompanied by thousands of weather stations, radars, and satellites collecting varied and precise measurements all over the world.
Yandex Games
Getting into browser and mobile game development has never been easier: with the emergence of HTML5, small developers have a vast arsenal of easy-to-learn tools to bring their ideas to life. However, technology isn't the only thing behind games: creativity is arguably even more important.
It's easy to think that game development works as it did decades ago: make a game and release it, move on to the next project, rinse and repeat. But modern game lifecycles span years - and players expect games to act as SaaS (software-as-a-service), receiving continuous updates with bug fixes, new features, and gameplay additions.
The web revolution spearheaded by HTML5 made modern browsers more powerful than ever. Instead of having to rely on third-party plugins, they are now capable of rendering sophisticated graphics...
It's no doubt that games are a form of art: how the game looks often goes hand in hand with how it plays. And where there's art, there's inspiration. Way before massive game distribution platforms were a thing, Newgrounds and similar websites had occupied the niche of the Wild West of gaming.
In the world of gaming, there are all sorts of different genres and subgenres to choose from. While some are easy to pick up and play for a few minutes just to kill time, others require serious dedication to get good at.
Not too far back, all games used to run on a premium model: after a hefty one-time purchase, the player could access every bit of the game's content. This method made sense when gaming was still a nascent industry and there weren't a whole lot of games to buy.
Without a sliver of a doubt, ads are the ultimate way to make your games accessible to a broad audience while generating a stable revenue stream. We explored the benefits of in-game advertisements compared to freemium-style monetization models in a recent post (go check it out!)
Over the past decade, HTML5 has replaced Flash as the go-to technology for developing simple (yet incredibly addicting!) games. One of the greatest benefits of HTML5 is the accessibility of games built for it.
Yandex Games, our browser game platform, has been around for only a few years. In such a short time, some developers have managed not only to accrue a player base tallying millions but also expand globally.
Pixel art is an art style unlike any other: resembling embroidery techniques, the pixel art we know today owes its very existence to the technological limitations of early computers and video game consoles. The old displays could only display so many pixels, and their color range was beyond restrictive by today's standards.
Game development is easier to get into than you might think! And why wouldn't you: it's a great choice of career and a rare industry where developing a product can be as much fun as actually playing the game. One subset of the gaming industry that's all the rage right now is HTML5 games.
Once you've released your first game, you may wonder: "What's the best way to attract an audience?" Yandex Games is here to help! We continuously promote your games with our algorithms, completely free of charge. That includes targeted advertising across Yandex services and any other websites or apps that have the Yandex Advertising Network integrated.
The gaming industry grows in leaps and bounds year by year, and there's no stopping it. There's still tons of untapped potential in emerging markets and among audiences that are only just starting to get into games en masse. See for yourself: our own platform shows rapid growth in player numbers and attracts thousands of new titles each year.
Translations
Our latest server rack generation presents two distinct node solutions: one custom-built for training and the other optimized for inference. But what makes GPUs and AI related so closely?
Internet, March 20, 2023. Yandex has published the source code for YTsaurus, a platform for storing and processing big data that is used in most Yandex services. YTsaurus is suitable for a wide range of tasks, from analytics to training complex models with billions of parameters.
Yandex has become the world's first company to integrate a next-generation large language model into its virtual assistant, Alice. Powered by the YandexGPT neural network, Alice can now generate text and brainstorm ideas nearly as effectively as a human expert.
Hello, my name is Maxim Babenko, I'm the head of the distributed computing technologies department at Yandex. Today we're pleased to announce that we have released the YTsaurus platform as open source. YTsaurus is one of the key infrastructure big data systems developed at Yandex and was previously known as YT.
Since our previous post six months ago, two meetings of the international C++ standardization working group have taken place.
For several years, I've observed that programmers and programming tools are divided into two distinct cultures: As someone who was originally part of the first culture, I used to dismiss the second culture as frivolous. But a few years ago, I finally realized how wrong I was.
My name's Fyodor Ignatkevich, and I work on the Yandex App and Yandex Browser for Android. About a year back, I suggested the idea of a dependency injection framework to the team. The framework ended up almost halving the build time of our projects.
Internet, 25 October 2022. Yandex has introduced its first Smart TV with Alice. The device includes a voice assistant and supports 4K Ultra HD resolution. Users have access to a huge selection of movies and shows from various streaming platforms, videos from the web, and TV channels.
What do we generally do at MaritimeAI? Our team applies various methods of machine learning in maritime, ecological, and many other kinds of research. We can recognize different sea ice types from satellite imagery, process sonar data, detect oil spills, and enhance underwater video recordings.
The challenges we face today often have nothing to do with technology. They call for a different kind of experience - the kind we accumulate throughout life. Professional connections have become more valuable, and the community has gained more significance than ever. We hold difficult conversations, seek contacts, ask for advice, and form regulations and standards.
Internet, September 12, 2022. Yandex has officially launched sales of a line of speakers and smart home devices with Alice in Azerbaijan. Users in this country can now purchase smart speakers from local retailers. Upon buying a Yandex Station, users will receive a Yandex Plus subscription.
Hi! This is Antony Polukhin, a member of the ISO WG21 C++ Committee, an organization that controls the development of the C++ programming language. The committee holds a meeting three times a year, each time in a new city worldwide. During the sessions, we consider proposals for changes in the language.
We already talked about how automated translation and dubbing of videos works in Yandex Browser. Users watched 81 million videos with voice-over translation in the first ten months after release. The mechanism works on request: as soon as the user hits the button, the neural network receives the entire audio track, and the dubbed translation to the user's language appears after a few minutes.
Internet, November 22, 2022. Uzbekistan’s local retailers have begun selling Yandex’s smart home devices and Stations with Alice. Upon purchasing a smart speaker, users will receive a Yandex Plus subscription.
Yandex Station 2 is our newest device that is becoming the centerpiece of the smart home with Alice, our voice assistant. We have completely overhauled the interior and exterior design, added an LED screen on the top panel, and tried to learn from the previous generation's experience when it came to many details that may not be immediately obvious.
Hi there! Yandex just published DivKit to open source. It's a framework for server-driven UI rendering; you can use this approach to speed up the app development. It allows you to roll out server-sourced updates to different app versions.
Proofreading
There has been an explosion of online content over the past few years. In 2020, more than 500 hours of video were being uploaded to YouTube every minute. Add to that the myriads of articles and hours of audio published, and you get an unfathomable amount of accessible information.
Since Toloka's founding in 2014, the data labeling platform has grown and evolved into a data-centric environment with enterprise solutions for AI and ML development. Toloka's platform runs on a robust, secure infrastructure that supports a combination of ML technologies like adaptive AutoML and best-in-class crowdsourcing technologies for data quality management.
Yandex has unveiled the TV Station and TV Station Pro. These are a new category of TVs combining an Alice-powered smart speaker with a smart TV. You can now enjoy Ultra HD (4K) video, billions of color tones, the Station“s features, and remote-free voice control — all within a single device.
Nebius