Recently, on the social network VKontakte, an interesting quest, if you can call it that, appeared, called “Red Fox”. Today, many users of this social network are interested in such a quest and people actively participate in it, performing all sorts of tasks. Today it is popular among the people, although in fact it does not carry anything important with it.
Of course, many are interested in how to outwit a fox, why it was invented and what such a quest gives. In our article today, we will look in more detail at what kind of red fox this is, why it was invented and how to complete the quest, what it actually is.
"This is a challenge of mind-blowing stories. Post stories every day - this way you will open new stickers and collect the whole set"
Red Fox is a kind of quest in which you need to complete tasks on the VKontakte social network, for which this fox will reward his performer with stickers with his image. To get a sticker, you need to complete the task that comes in your personal messages. Often these tasks are not difficult; to get the first three stickers, you just need to write “yes” to the fox. Next you will have to complete a certain task. The next 4 stickers are given if a person takes a selfie and adds it to the “history” section of this social network. After completing this task, the next task comes the next day and the fox may ask you to write him a story. You shouldn’t copy texts from the Internet, since the robot determines that they are not unique and does not give you stickers. You can write a simple set of words, as long as it is unique, for which you can get another sticker.
A story is a short video or photo above your news feed. It can only be done in the VKontakte mobile application. Find the blue circle at the top of your feed and click on the plus sign to create your own story. The red fox tells you how to get additional stickers in private messages. However, it’s nothing complicated, you complete tasks and get stickers. 
Everyone can notice that stickers that are not very beautiful, not interesting, a lot of free stickers on the social network VKontakte look much more attractive than this fox. But excitement takes over and gambling people will definitely fall for the idea of collecting the entire set of stickers that they actually don’t need.
Recently, this social network has been updated and has become very similar to Facebook; many functions have appeared that are actually not needed. This is how the “history” function appeared. But experienced users of the social network were not very accepting of the innovation and refused to use this function. The story usually appears in the news feed, which would have been a great feature for an ad that failed miserably.
Now, to revive this function, they came up with a red fox. If you really want to get stickers, then only through the function in the “History” news feed can you get stickers. In addition, the fox turns out to be very annoying and sends new messages every day with content that is not understandable to everyone, as can be seen in the next photo.
So, if you don’t “hack” the system, what else is “hack”, then it will hack you.
In general, it’s up to you to decide whether you need a red fox or not, but it’s already clear that this is a completely meaningless game or quest, for which they give you completely unattractive stickers. Unless you have passion and interest in what will happen next, then you can try and put yourself in the story in the news feed, which looks somehow strange.
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“Aren’t they dizzy?” - this question was asked by everyone who has at least once seen their strange, incomparable dance. These unique people are called whirling dervishes. Their dance is as old as time... or a little younger. At different times, in different eras and in different countries, dervishes delightfully whirl themselves and turn the heads of thousands of spectators. And today they have become perhaps the main symbol of Turkey, a kind of inexplicable curiosity that thousands of tourists from all over the world come to see.
This “dizzying” story began a long time ago, in the 11th century. At that time, Muslims assumed a dominant position in many regions of the Middle East and North Africa. As a reward for successful campaigns, warriors received power, lands and gold. Some took it for granted, while others took it for granted. And then the so-called spiritual reaction to wealth and comfort arose. Many wealthy people began to mistake earthly blessings for a temptation that forces a person to forget about his true purpose. As a sign that they did not need anything and were voluntarily giving up wealth, these people began to wear rough woolen robes, sewn by hand. Thus, a new ascetic religious movement, Sufism (translated from Arabic “suf” - “wool”) appeared. His followers were called dervishes, which is translated from Persian as “poor”, “beggar”. The movement did not oppose itself to the generally accepted canons of Islam. In Sufism, rituals and ceremonies simply appeared that were not previously characteristic of Islam. One of these mystical ceremonies was a mesmerizing dizzying dance, which will be discussed below.
* * *
At a certain time, many orders arose in the Muslim world, each of which was distinguished by its own set of rules, its own complex rituals and its own orders. One of the Sufi communities that appeared early in Turkish history and is still very popular today is the Mevlevi Order of Whirling Dervishes. This is a religious group whose members are followers of the great Persian-language poet Mevlana, or Jalaleddin Rumi. The order settled in Central Turkey, in the city of Konya, where it exists to this day.The main and main condition for joining the order was considered to be the absence of any movable or immovable property. For the sake of serving God, the dervish renounced all worldly temptations. It was categorically unacceptable for him to call things “his own.” He had nothing of his own - no house, no shoes, no clothes, no food. Some of the dervishes lived in communities, but mostly they wandered and lived away from people. The Dervishes once and for all chose eternal wanderings, long roads and foreign cities.
This way of life earned them the reputation of being close to God, ascetics and sages. Today, dervishes are called eternal wanderers, whose main wealth is an open soul. Many considered it an honor and happiness to meet a dervish somewhere on a dusty road: such a meeting promised great success in all matters.
* * *
The Mevlana poet Jalaleddin Rumi, whose followers the dervishes consider themselves to be, is also called the “Mentor with a shining heart.” He was born in Persia, in the city of Balkh (present-day Afghanistan), traveled a lot, studied in Iraq, Iran and Syria, and then came to the territory of modern Turkey, in Konya, where he lived until the end of his days. His father was a Sufi and gave his son to be apprenticed to a Sufi master. Towards the end of his life, Rumi founded the Mevlevi order of Whirling Dervishes. The poet left the material world in 1273 and was buried in Konya. His body rests in the mausoleum, which is visited by thousands of tourists and pilgrims every year.The small city of Konya 700 years ago was a refuge of writers, philosophers and poets, the cradle of Turkish architecture and fine arts. Creative people, fleeing from the Tatar-Mongols and crusaders, found peace and shelter in Konya. Where, if not here, could Sufism originate and where, if not here, could the dervishes come up with their mysterious dance? Legends describe how Rumi, hearing the rhythmic tapping of a hammer on the bottom of a pan being repaired, even in squares and bazaars, was able to freeze for a second and then begin to spin in a whirlwind of a magical dance.
* * *
The mesmerizing whirling of dervishes (Sema) is one of the most mystical and amazing dances in the world. However, this is more than a dance, it is a ritual, an art that takes years to comprehend. By the way, the dervish is not immediately allowed to perform Sema. Before this, the future dancer undergoes a three-year test: the beginner spends 1001 days in a monastery, devoting the first year to serving his neighbor, the second to the monastery, and the third to caring for his soul.The dance of the Whirling Dervishes begins with the recitation of a hymn in honor of the Prophet. The hymn was written by Rumi himself. There is a translated version, which, as a rule, tourists listen to. Then the dancers appear to the sound of music. Each piece of dervish clothing is symbolic: a floor-length skirt is a shroud, a black cape is a coffin, a conical headdress is a tombstone.
One by one, the dancers pass by the sheikh and bow to him, holding their arms crossed on their chests - by this they show that they are ready to draw closer to God. The sheikh gives them secret instructions, and to the sound of a flute and drum, the dervishes begin to spin in place. To facilitate movement, their heads are tilted to the side. Members of the order spin from left to right faster and faster, captivating the audience. During the dance, one hand of the dervish is raised to the sky, and the other is lowered to the ground: this means that he receives energy from space and, passing it through himself, gives it to the earth and people. All without a trace.
The music is playing louder, people are spinning faster. The dervishes spin separately, without touching each other's shoulders, each around its own axis and around the sheikh and other dervishes. They do not make a sound, do not make any movements with their palms or heads.
During the ritual, the dervishes stop four times. These pauses are called “selas” (greetings). The first symbolizes the knowledge of the existence of the Creator. The second is performed as a sign of admiration for the Universe. The third is in honor of the love born of this admiration and the transition to a state of endless creation. The fourth greeting is sent to the soul that has left the body to merge with God. During the ritual, the sheikh symbolizes the Sun, and the others revolve around him, like the Moon and stars.
This magical dance continues for several hours in a row. Eventually, a moment comes when the dancers begin to feel as if it is not they themselves who are spinning, but the whole world around them. This is an altered state of consciousness, a mystical trance. It is believed that while in it, you can travel through time, penetrate other dimensions and visit distant planets.
When the last musical chord sounds, the dervishes fall to their knees. By this, the dancers show that they have returned to people from their amazing journey.
* * *
Today the Whirling Dervishes are the hallmark of Turkey. Every year from December 10 to 17, the Dancing Dervishe Festival is held in Konya. The choice of date is not accidental: this is how followers honor the memory of Rumi by marking the day of his death with these mysterious performances.In mid-December, thousands of pilgrims and tourists come to Konya. All shops and souvenir shops display huge posters with the symbols of the festival. Small figurines of dancing dervishes are sold at every step, which guests are happy to buy as souvenirs. Throughout the holiday week, admission to the Mevlana Mausoleum (it was converted into a museum in 1927) is free. Many Muslims come to the tomb to pray to their saint, but for most tourists this visit is more of an educational excursion.
In general, at the festival they try not to reveal the religious background of the colorful action. Performances take place not only in the main hall of the Mevlana Museum, but also in the stadium. Some of the celebrations are moved to larger venues, because every year more and more people come to watch the magic show, and the previous place is no longer able to accommodate everyone.
The performance leaves no spectator indifferent, be it a Muslim, a Christian or an atheist. Dervish dance is, first of all, an art that equally enchants everyone, regardless of faith and race. Of course, the majority of the public perceives this as a colorful performance, although there are also such impressionable spectators who, together with the dancers, go into a trance.
At the initiative of the Turkish government and the decision of UNESCO, 2007 was declared the year of Rumi in honor of his 800th anniversary. And then UNESCO ranked the Sema of the Mevlevi Order among the world masterpieces.
Red fox is a bot of the social network VKontakte, which offers users free stickers if they publish “Stories” on their pages - photos or videos that disappear after a day. The bot reminded many of the suicidal game “Blue Whale” and within a few days users were tired of it, which gave rise to many memes.
Origin
VKontakte launched the promotion on April 28. As part of this promotion, the social network created a bot known as Red fox. This character offered all users a free pack of stickers in exchange for posting “stories.”
After publishing the “Story,” you had to write to the bot and get the first part of the stickers. Then the Fox offered to complete his tasks - continue to publish photos or videos to open new types of stickers.
This game reminded many of the game “Blue Whale”, which teenagers played while completing tasks from unknown moderators. The tasks involved mutilation, and the last one was suicide.
Within a couple of days, users began to notice that their friends were filling their feed with their “stories.” Moreover, even those who had not published stories before were doing this. Why there is such a demand for stickers on social networks remains a mystery. However, in the wake of the popularity of the virtual game, popular public pages have become more active. One by one, memes related to the Red Fox began to appear. The vast majority of them were based on other memes.
In parallel with the funny pictures about the Red Fox, alarming messages began to appear that the game was not only similar to the Blue Whale, but was also connected with it. In particular, bots became active in the comments and sent the same text.
Have you heard about the Blue Whale? For those in the tank: this is a real quest in which you will be given various tasks every day at a certain time, the purpose of which will be to encourage you to commit suicide. There are 50 such tasks in total, the last one is not difficult to guess based on the goal. Your “curator” gives you tasks on VK after you post on the wall with the hashtag “Blue Whale”, “Quiet House”, etc. I haven’t heard of them, except perhaps the most deaf, since a lot of people on both TV and the Internet were broadcasting about the rise in suicide rates among teenagers who got involved with this game. The most popular bloggers sounded the alarm; in every news feed one could read about some 13-year-old girl who jumped from the roof of a high-rise building, or how a 15-year-old girl athlete from Kuban drank pipe cleaner, and much more. And if there are not enough similarities with the daily tasks received with VK and the unauthorized desire to complete them, then here’s another
Cool coincidence, don't you think? What is especially interesting is that all these “death groups” worked through VKontakte, and who, if not them, would know on what principle this game was built. And what is it then: the stupidest accident or the subtlest joke?
There is such an alarming text floating around.
In fact, LIS is nothing more than the Blue Whale game, which became widespread on the VKontakte social network this winter. LIS is the name of the instigator of the game itself and the creator of the f57 sect (he was convicted, it’s a pity that not for life). At the very beginning, LIS gives you stickers, as if opening a gate to the sacred world. To open them, you need to complete tasks every day and post them for people to see. Today he ordered people to show their faces, which can be associated with the Last Judgment, where all people will take off their masks (MASKS - filters for VKontakte photos) and show their essence. Every day the tasks will become more disgusting, and at the end the FOX will offer for an animated iridescent sticker - KILL YOURSELF! Repost this if you don't want your kids to get sucked into the new deadly game sponsored by the Jewish mail company. ru and personally Alisher Usmanman!!!
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Hackathon, codefest, programming marathon, hack day - whatever you call it, today this is one of the most popular event formats in the IT field.
This type of competition is similar to classic work on a full-fledged project, only the life cycle is reduced to 24 or 48 hours and the conditions are dictated by nominations from organizers and partners.
Alexander Frolov, author of the DMPipeline project, wrote a column for Rusbase, in which he talked about what was done in 48 hours at the AI Hackathon, organized by Science guide together with Flint Capital, Haxus and Embria Ventures.
Victory or participation – what is more important at a hackathon?
The story of one project, or a hackathon as a challenge
Alexander FrolovOur project received second place and recognition from representatives of venture funds for the potential that lies in the use of artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data technologies in medicine and pharmaceuticals.
The starting point of any success is desire
I try to follow interesting IT events, seminars and conferences in our city. About a month before the start of the hackathon, I saw information on the Internet and registered. At first I thought about joining some team whose idea I liked, but then I decided to participate with my own project.
Modeling and designing molecules is something of a little hobby for me. There is a phrase: “physics is what physicists do in their free time in the evenings.”
This phrase completely describes me; in my free time on weekends, I am interested in reading articles, understanding modern algorithms and approaches in chemoinformatics, computational biology and drug design. Therefore, I had no doubt that I should go and participate in the AI Hackathon.
I wanted to hear opinions about the project from the outside, to see what questions experts would have in order to evaluate the attractiveness of the idea “from the outside,” to understand where the problems lie and what areas of improvement could be found. I want to say right away that this was my first prototype, developed together with the team; before that there were only ideas, articles, experiments. The experience of participating in such a large-scale hackathon for 270 people is also new to me.
Progress happens outside your comfort zone
In general, drug development based on small molecules is a complex and resource-intensive task.
On average, pharmaceutical companies take from 7 to 15 years to develop a drug molecule, conduct multiple tests and clinical trials.
At one of the stages of development, molecules are assembled from different fragments and synthesized. Various tests are carried out on these molecules - the molecules must be soluble, have low cardiotoxicity, have good cell permeability, and so on. And they must also be active in relation to the oncological target.
It's all expensive and time consuming. As a rule, even large pharmaceutical companies do not have the ability to synthesize and study all possible chemical structures. The hackathon became for me a way out of what is called my comfort zone, and the pipeline was designed to automate some of the above-mentioned processes.
We can use a computer to sort through a huge chemical space of molecules, which can never be done in a real laboratory, evaluate their physical and chemical properties and obtain the most attractive structures to become a cure for a particular disease!
Take it and do it
We implemented the project as a SaaS application and called it DMPipeline (Druggable Molecules Pipeline). The main goal of the project is to improve the quality of drug molecules and reduce R&D costs.
Bringing the project to a prototype was a difficult task, since there was a constant temptation to dive into studying articles about ML algorithms and experimenting with different libraries. We even managed to train the grid on Shakespeare, as everyone probably did once :)
In the final, DMPipeline consisted of three blocks:
- Generating pretrained RNN molecules based on a prototype (drug molecule). We trained a recurrent network (lstm) on a sample of 17 million drug like molecules.
- Prediction of physicochemical properties (solubility, blood permeability) using xgboost. The training set includes 1800 molecules with known solubility and 700 structures with blood permeability data.
- Ranking and selection of the top molecules that are closest in properties to the prototype. The process is carried out using the analysis of a pharmaceutical molecule (prototype), as a result of which the service provides a set of similar molecules that have acceptable pharmacological properties and activity in relation to the disease.
In the future, we plan to implement the fourth block: prediction of the synthesis circuit.
Our technology stack is quite trivial:
- backend – python, Flask, gunicorn as wsgi and everything starts with supervisor,
- ML – xgboost, char-rnn,
- working with molecules – rdkit, AutoDock.
Of course, we understand that our service will not be in demand as a Saas platform. For them, one of the main values is data, and they are not ready to outsource it, that is, load it into third-party applications. Pipeline should rather be implemented as a Daas application. But we have several ideas on how to make uploading to our service safe, from the point of view, and we plan to implement them.
In addition, we want to improve the UI/UX, expand the functionality and range of tasks, and also add the ability to integrate with existing platforms used in pharmaceutical companies.
In a dispute, truth is born, or is everyone doing everything?
We met the team only on the first day of the hackathon; before that we only knew each other virtually. It is especially important that there are no professional specialists among us. And for us it was very interesting to immerse ourselves in the area, a kind of challenge! The entire team is four people.
- Misha is a very cool developer,
- Tanya is a bioinformatician, graduated from the Academic University, worked in a pharmaceutical company,
- Sveta – graduated from the Physics Faculty of St. Petersburg State University (Physics Faculty champion!), now works as a programmer,
- I also graduated from the Faculty of Physics (molecular biophysics), was engaged in drug design, and now I work in a cool startup.
I can say that everyone was doing everything. And the preparation of data for training, and the stack, and the presentation - we discussed and prepared all this together. Everyone shared their knowledge and expressed their opinions, which is why we ended up with a product that each of us believes in.
All work took place on site. We went home for a few hours to get some sleep and read a little about ML algorithms.
A molecule that is located in the active site of an oncological target
If you ignore preparation, you are preparing to fail.
The question of how to use 48 hours did not arise for us. On the first day, we found a sample of molecules, cleaned it, and started training the network. By the end of the hackathon, the network was not fully trained, so we had to generate molecules on an undertrained network. But, I must admit, the quality of the structures turned out to be very acceptable. I expected a worse result.
On the first day, we quickly sketched out a prototype of the backend, then on the last day we were already redoing it, or rather, Misha urgently completed it while we were preparing the presentation. In fact, on the first day we dealt with the generation of molecules, and the second day we devoted to filtering by physicochemical properties and activity. We found several datasets and tried different models.
I would like to note that the model for estimating solubility showed itself to be quite good! The molecules that ended up in the final sample had tails with ionized nitrogen or sulfonamide, which actually provide solubility!
Already on the last day we collected everything into a single pipeline, debugged our application and prepared the presentation. And a day after the hackathon, we noticed that our network understood that oxygen and nitrogen can be ionized, but does not always arrange the charge correctly.
So a new challenge arose for us - to figure out how to improve our network so that at a given pH it selects the right structures.
Follow the vision, not the money, and the money will come.
We didn't expect to win, so we were pleasantly surprised. In addition to the prize of 200,000 rubles, we were also given the opportunity to keep a server with a GPU for three months!
I really like the phrase: “The more you do, the more you can do.” If you have an idea, you need to try it! A hackathon is a great event to try your hand at programming and as an organizer or creative, to test your endurance, courage, ability to make presentations and communicate with people.
“Being the richest man in the cemetery has no meaning to me. Going to bed with the thought that we have done something wonderful is what is important to me” - I think everyone knows whose words these are.
Therefore, the key factor in any story or business is the opportunity to do what you love and interesting. Only this way is correct and successful! But if your project also helps others and saves people’s lives, then it will find its niche.
Only those who do nothing take no risks
Now we are trying out different ideas that we didn’t have time to try out during the hackathon.
Over the past few years, many healthcare startups have emerged. Most of them involve personalized medicine or genetics. In the field of small molecules, we probably don’t have any competition yet - only two companies come to mind: Atomwise and Insilo Medicine (our compatriots, great guys, they have interesting developments).
- On the one hand, we have a clear understanding of what the product should look like, who the potential users are and what their current needs are.
- On the other hand, we know how complex this subject area is (we can say that it is only in its infancy), and how little has been done so far. But we have to work, study and try new things, experiment!
As for promotion, many of my friends work in pharmaceutical companies, laboratories, and universities. We often communicate, share news, and I can say that at least the top 20 pharmaceutical companies cooperate with startups or have their own internal teams that work at the intersection of AI, chemistry, and biology. There is a demand, the opportunities are enormous!
But in 2 or 4 months it’s not worth waiting for a finished prototype, the emergence of a new company and conquering the market - it’s too early ☺
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to wait for it.
Of course, hackathons today no longer surprise anyone, and not every one of them produces anything even conventionally similar to a product. However, if life prompts and gives you different options to experiment with, make the most of them.
- At the AI Hackathon, I found the missing “minds” for my team. So, the Data Science specialists who were present at the site also helped us a lot with advice.
- We asked experts technical questions, even learned about their experiences of professional growth in their companies.
- We learned a lot of useful things after presenting the prototype - we were already asked very useful questions that are now worth thinking about and analyzing.
- Even at the presentation of ideas (and there were 57 of them together with ours), I noted several interesting projects for myself. I plan to use some of the algorithms in our pipeline.
In general, new acquaintances are never superfluous! And personally, at the hackathon, we found ourselves in such a coding atmosphere, when so many people are creating projects in one place, which in itself motivates us to achieve high standards.
